I was suddenly surrounded by a bunch of smart peers, and I saw a career ladder placed in front of me. I saw that an MBA, according to my observational data based on my peers, contributed to and accelerated that career path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, there\u2019s nothing wrong with an MBA. I admire those who have gone through the programs and find the skills acquired through them to be valuable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But here\u2019s the problem: that goal wasn’t my goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never wanted to climb a corporate ladder. I wanted to build my own company. I was the precocious 10 year old with a lemonade stand. I wanted to be a pirate, consistently having opted for freedom and optionality over security or prestige up to that point (startups were not as cool in 2014, so there was very little prestige to be gained).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I had to consciously snap myself out of it to remember that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mimetic Marketing: Escaping the Echo Chamber<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThis same phenomenon plays out often in marketing, particularly in SaaS where we\u2019re often marketers marketing marketing software to other marketing marketers (hope that sentence makes sense to you). God forbid you’re marketing to sell courses on how to sell courses for other marketing looking to sell courses! <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWithout noticing it, we often optimize for the admiration of our peers instead of the needs of our customers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd it\u2019s worse now than ever, because social media accelerates peer-based mimicry and competition. With algorithmic feeds that deliver variable but always on dopamine prizes, we can get immediate engagement and accolades (whereas in the past, it was a periodic “awards” display, something you worked up to like a Super Bowl). It turns marketing into a performance for other marketers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think about it:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n- How many times have you crafted a LinkedIn post to sound really smart to other marketers?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- How often do you analyze competitors instead of listening to your customers?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- How much of your content is optimized for engagement metrics instead of actual business outcomes?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
This is how entire industries fall into the same trends, same messaging, and same playbooks, often at the expense of real results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Mimetic Trap: Why We Copy Each Other<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nLuke Burgis<\/a>, in his book Wanting<\/em><\/a>, explains how we don\u2019t just desire things independently. We desire what others appear to desire. This concept, based on Ren\u00e9 Girard\u2019s<\/a> theory of mimetic desire<\/em>, explains why we unconsciously imitate our peers, especially when there\u2019s competition involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBurgis breaks it down into two types of models:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Celebristan<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Distant role models (in marketing, say, Seth Godin or Mark Zuckerberg). You might admire them, but they don\u2019t impact your day-to-day decisions, and you don\u2019t compete with them.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Freshmanistan<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Your peers, competitors, and industry colleagues. This is where the real trap lies.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
When you optimize for prestige in Freshmanistan, you\u2019re not marketing to your customers, you\u2019re marketing to your industry peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This may help explain: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Why every SaaS company started\u00a0using those quirky illustrated character<\/a>s in their branding a few years ago.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Why every enterprise B2B software started deploying interactive demos the past few years.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Why marketing Twitter\/LinkedIn falls into cycles of parroting the same jargon, memes, frameworks, phrases (\u201chigh agency,\u201d \u201cvibecoding,\u201d \u201cAI won\u2019t replace you, someone using AI will\u201d), and trends (ABM, PBM, PLG, and every other three letter acronym)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t just copy ideas, we copy what we think<\/em> will win admiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd in doing so, we lose sight of what actually matters: the people who pay us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How This Alters Your Marketing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThere’s obvious nuance here in that you can learn a ton from your peers, and you should do so, constantly sharpening the sword and improving your craft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real danger is when you start to shape your marketing, which is ostensibly aimed at your, well, market, based on what will appear impressive or brilliant to your peers (at the expense of your market). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This mimetic marketing can distort your perception as to what actually works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few symptoms of this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- You overvalue engagement metrics.<\/strong>\u00a0Likes, comments, and shares from your peers feel great, but do they translate into customers? Maybe. But as\u00a0Finn McKenty<\/a>\u00a0has taught me during our consulting sessions, there\u2019s often an inverse correlation between \u201cvirality\u201d and targeting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- You chase complexity over clarity.<\/strong>\u00a0When writing for other marketers, you try to sound smart. We\u2019ve described this as sitting at the \u201cnerds\u2019 table,\u201d perfectly acceptable and frankly useful for sharpening your craft. But I would never talk about\u00a0bayesian versus frequentist statistics<\/a>\u00a0while presenting to the C-Suite.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- You invest in tactics that make sense to peers, not customers.<\/strong>\u00a0Marketers love to talk about \u201cinnovative\u201d ideas, but customers usually just want simple, effective solutions. Case in point, no advanced marketer will admit to reading or making decisions based on SEO listicles (though they actually might<\/a>), but they still work pretty damn well in most spaces.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- You assume your audience knows what you know.<\/strong>\u00a0Inside the marketing bubble, everyone is talking about these really cool things like AI agents and semantics and generative engine optimization. It\u2019s a lot of FOMO fuel! I fall for it all the time. Meanwhile, I\u2019ve done the customer interviews – many are just trying to work out their attribution, drive solid pipeline, and stand out in a crowded market.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- You avoid \u201cuncool\u201d but effective tactics.<\/strong>\u00a0Maybe your ideal customer actually\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0like webinars. Maybe they\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0want long-form content. But you hesitate because your peers would roll their eyes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve caught myself doing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For instance, when we first started our Kitchen Side<\/em> podcast, we sometimes got caught up in the marketing discourse of the moment, debating trends that, in hindsight, our actual audience didn\u2019t care about (nor did we, quite frankly).<\/p>\n\n\n\nWe began reacting to discourse, debate, and hot takes among our peers instead of talking about what we were working on solving or what issues our actual clients cared about most. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We ended up refocused our content and continue to conduct customer and market research to make sure we\u2019re calibrating what we\u2019re messaging and building to what our market cares about. And we anchored much of our approach to content on a differentiation principle we use with regard to our services and our clients:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Filter the Noise, Move the Needle.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is a judicious and no-BS approach, intertwined with decision principles, that forces us to focus on what actually drives impact in our client work. It’s also how we want to run our own messaging and marketing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- Talking to customers, not just competitors.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Writing about what our audience\u00a0actually<\/em>\u00a0cares about, not just what performs on social media.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Running the\u00a0\u201cboring\u201d marketing tactics<\/a>\u00a0that make money, even if they don\u2019t win awards.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Leaving a basket of creative and fun bets open, such as\u00a0creating a print magazine<\/a>. This\u00a0barbell approach<\/a>\u00a0gives us one foot into the unknown while providing a base of predictable results.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
As David Ogilvy put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cResist the temptation to write the kind of copy which wins awards. I am always gratified when I win an award, but most of the campaigns which produce results never win awards because they don\u2019t draw attention to themselves.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n(I do make the distinction with this newsletter, which is really coming from whatever I\u2019m interested in or have experienced in the last 1-2 weeks. But I hope you enjoy my indulgence from time to time as well). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What to Do Instead (Note to Self)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n- Make your customers the North Star.<\/strong>\n
\n- Stop looking sideways at competitors and peers. Look forward at your customers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Optimize for their problems, questions, and needs, not what\u2019s trending in your industry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Audit your marketing for peer-optimization.<\/strong>\n
\n- Look at your messaging: Is it full of industry jargon and extremely niche trends, or does it actually help your audience?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Look at your content: Is it answering customer questions, or is it designed to impress other marketers?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Look at your KPIs: Are you chasing engagement from peers, or business outcomes from customers?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Take a gut check on your strategy.<\/strong>\n
\n- Are you excited about what you\u2019re doing, or just following the playbook everyone else is using?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Are you making decisions based on\u00a0actual<\/em>\u00a0customer insights, or what you see on LinkedIn?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Your job isn\u2019t to impress your competitors. Your job is to win in your market. And often, that means doing the things your peers would find \u201ccringe\u201d<\/a> but your customers actually want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Want more insights like this?\u00a0Subscribe to our\u00a0<\/a>Field\u00a0<\/a>Notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Years ago, I found myself working at HubSpot. This alone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[184,25],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-field-notes","8":"category-seo"},"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWithout noticing it, we often optimize for the admiration of our peers instead of the needs of our customers.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s worse now than ever, because social media accelerates peer-based mimicry and competition. With algorithmic feeds that deliver variable but always on dopamine prizes, we can get immediate engagement and accolades (whereas in the past, it was a periodic “awards” display, something you worked up to like a Super Bowl). It turns marketing into a performance for other marketers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Think about it:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how entire industries fall into the same trends, same messaging, and same playbooks, often at the expense of real results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Luke Burgis<\/a>, in his book Wanting<\/em><\/a>, explains how we don\u2019t just desire things independently. We desire what others appear to desire. This concept, based on Ren\u00e9 Girard\u2019s<\/a> theory of mimetic desire<\/em>, explains why we unconsciously imitate our peers, especially when there\u2019s competition involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burgis breaks it down into two types of models:<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you optimize for prestige in Freshmanistan, you\u2019re not marketing to your customers, you\u2019re marketing to your industry peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This may help explain: <\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t just copy ideas, we copy what we think<\/em> will win admiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in doing so, we lose sight of what actually matters: the people who pay us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s obvious nuance here in that you can learn a ton from your peers, and you should do so, constantly sharpening the sword and improving your craft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The real danger is when you start to shape your marketing, which is ostensibly aimed at your, well, market, based on what will appear impressive or brilliant to your peers (at the expense of your market). <\/p>\n\n\n\n This mimetic marketing can distort your perception as to what actually works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few symptoms of this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve caught myself doing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, when we first started our Kitchen Side<\/em> podcast, we sometimes got caught up in the marketing discourse of the moment, debating trends that, in hindsight, our actual audience didn\u2019t care about (nor did we, quite frankly).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We began reacting to discourse, debate, and hot takes among our peers instead of talking about what we were working on solving or what issues our actual clients cared about most. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That was a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We ended up refocused our content and continue to conduct customer and market research to make sure we\u2019re calibrating what we\u2019re messaging and building to what our market cares about. And we anchored much of our approach to content on a differentiation principle we use with regard to our services and our clients:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Filter the Noise, Move the Needle.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a judicious and no-BS approach, intertwined with decision principles, that forces us to focus on what actually drives impact in our client work. It’s also how we want to run our own messaging and marketing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As David Ogilvy put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cResist the temptation to write the kind of copy which wins awards. I am always gratified when I win an award, but most of the campaigns which produce results never win awards because they don\u2019t draw attention to themselves.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (I do make the distinction with this newsletter, which is really coming from whatever I\u2019m interested in or have experienced in the last 1-2 weeks. But I hope you enjoy my indulgence from time to time as well). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your job isn\u2019t to impress your competitors. Your job is to win in your market. And often, that means doing the things your peers would find \u201ccringe\u201d<\/a> but your customers actually want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Want more insights like this?\u00a0Subscribe to our\u00a0<\/a>Field\u00a0<\/a>Notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Years ago, I found myself working at HubSpot. This alone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[184,25],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-field-notes","8":"category-seo"},"yoast_head":"\n\n
The Mimetic Trap: Why We Copy Each Other<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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How This Alters Your Marketing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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What to Do Instead (Note to Self)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n