Zach Bryan: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Hit Song “Something in the Orange” with Todd Raphael, Head of Content at SkyHive
Remarkable Content with Ian Faison
Introduction
Todd Raphael discusses the viral success of the song 'Something in the Orange' by Zach Bryan, including its Grammy nomination and high chart rankings.
Marketers are trained to create targeted content for specific personas. But creating a message that’s open to interpretation is a highly effective strategy that strikes a cord across personas.
Because your audience will fill in the blank with how the message is meaningful for them. So instead of speaking to pain points specific to one role, speak to the human pain points. Maybe your product is a solution for a task that takes too much time or is overly complex, for example. Nobody likes feeling like they’re wasting too much of their workday on one task. So talk about how your product saves time or simplifies their work.
So in this episode of Remarkable, we’re listening to Zach Bryan’s song, “Something in the Orange,” the hit song that resonates with a wide range of listeners. That’s because Zach Bryan’s lyrics are open to interpretation. And we’re talking with Todd Raphael, Head of Content at SkyHive, about how you can use this strategy in your content marketing to resonate with a wider audience. We’ll also cover the best time to brainstorm content ideas and why you could easily double your output with one simple idea. So grab your cowboy hat and stare off into the sunset while you listen to this episode of Remarkable.
About our guest, Todd Raphael
Todd Raphael is Head of Content at SkyHive, a cloud-based workforce management and reskilling software provider. Todd joined SkyHive in November 2022. He previously served as Head of Content at eightfold.ai. He also worked as Editor in Chief at ERE Media for over 14 years, and prior to that, Online Editor at Workforce.
About SkyHive
Recognized as a top AI innovation by Forbes, a Gartner Cool Vendor in HCM, and a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, SkyHive is cognifying the world’s labor economy and fundamentally changing how we work, learn, and live. SkyHive has built the world’s only Quantum Labor Analysis platform to optimize human economies in real-time for companies, communities, and countries. Essential to global economic empowerment, SkyHive allows people to future-proof themselves and their workforce faster than ever before. By marrying economic theory with workforce modeling and human analytics, SkyHive illuminates the reskilling journey and builds a capable and future-proof workforce that closes the skills gap with speed and efficiency unleashing human potential for individuals, organizations, and governments. SkyHive supports customers across all industries and geographies globally, and is focused on strengthening the overall economic resilience of workforces and communities.
About “Something in the Orange” by Zach Bryan
“Something in the Orange” is a song by American singer-songwriter Zach Bryan, a 25-year-old from Oologah, Oklahoma. Zach Bryan started writing music when he was 14, and putting it online when he was still serving in the Navy. His song “Heading South” ended up going viral after he posted a video of himself playing it on TikTok. He has two self-released albums, DeAnn and Elisabeth, and is now signed to Warner Records. His first studio album, American Heartbreak, debuted at number five on the US Billboard 200 with over 70,000 album-equivalent units. The 34-song triple album has been certified Platinum as of June 2023, with over 1 million units sold.
“Something in the Orange” was Bryan’s first charting single. He told Today’s Country Radio that the song wasn’t about “some deep, dark thing.” He came up with the idea while sitting in a cabin in Wisconsin watching the sun set. It’s now certified 4x Platinum.
His video for “Something in the Orange” starts with a message, saying, “Thousands of videos were submitted by my listeners for the video of Something in the Orange. I decided to make this myself because it’s a feeling I know we’ve all shared at some point. Thank you guys for contributing and thank you guys for listening.” His idea to crowdsource videos reflects an appreciation of his fans, a sharing of energy, and a homegrown, grassroots effort true to his roots and the nature of country music. The video is a compilation of sunset videos taken by fans.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From “Something in the Orange”:
- Leave room for interpretation in your marketing message to resonate with a wider audience. Create a marketing message that lets your audience fill in the gaps. “Our tool saves you time to do more of what you love.” Could mean spending time with loved ones, walking their dog, doing a hobby…your message doesn’t have to be specific to strike a nerve. Todd says when he was looking at comments on Zach Bryan’s video for “Something in the Orange, “the song means all of these different things to different people. It's a song about their grandma. It's a song about their dog. It's a song about their ex-boyfriend. It's all these different things.” So let your marketing speak to multiple personas by leaving room for the imagination.
- Create two versions of your content. One is the typical kind of B2B, serious, technical content. The other is conversational and human. Both can be your brand voice. Ian says, “We make content and we write it in a certain way, in a certain language and a certain approach. And then we just say, ‘Well, this is our brand voice,’ as if that's how everybody just automatically wants to read stuff. You could get way more mileage by creating a second version of that same piece of content and writing it in an extremely conversational, approachable voice that's actually tied to a human being.” Zach Bryan wrote two versions of “Something in the Orange,” So create a second, conversational version to humanize your brand.
- Brainstorm content when you’re doing everyday routine tasks. Todd says it’s when people do their best thinking. He says, “We're walking the dog, we're riding a bike, we're doing something that's mindless and repetitive. It's always when we think of our best ideas. It's never during a brainstorming meeting.” Zach Bryan was sitting at a campfire when he wrote “Something in the Orange,” and it’s during that contemplative time that the lyrics came to him easily. So take notes when you’re out and about, and have a great idea for content.
Quotes
*”We choose the words for what words work best for SEO, instead of what emotions we want to provoke. People used to think of two different audiences, right? It was like pain avoiders and pleasure seekers. Like, this car will keep you safe, versus this car is so much fun and so cool. And I think maybe sometimes we get away from that.” - Todd Raphael
*”There's a lot of B2B content that is just done one cookie cutter way. And we always talk about repurposing for a different medium. But some people want the creative to feel different, to read differently.” - Ian Faison
Time Stamps
[00:55] Meet Todd Raphael, Head of Content at SkyHive
[1:36] What’s Zach Bryan's song 'Something in the Orange' about?
[2:39] What does Todd do at SkyHive?
[4:10] Learn more about Zach Bryan's musical journey
[8:01] What was the impact of 'Something in the Orange'?
[11:30] How can you harness the power of storytelling in marketing?
[24:00] What’s the content strategy at SkyHive?
[29:08] How does Todd prove the ROI of content?
Links
Listen to “Something in the Orange”
About Remarkable!
Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.
In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.
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