Remarkable Content with Ian Faison Michael Crichton: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Author of Jurassic Park with the CMO of Promo.com, Joel Horwitz
It's easy to get technical when you're writing copy about a highly technical subject. But that's when you lose your audience.
Instead ask, "What problem is this solving for my customer?" And explain it in their language.
That's one strategy inspired by Michael Crichton that we're exploring today with the CMO of Promo.com, Joel Horwitz.
Together, we talk about writing in layman's terms, thoroughly researching the problem you're trying to solve, and learning something new about marketing every day.
About our guest, Joel Horwitz
Joel is an experienced High-Tech Marketing professional with a diverse background in data science & engineering, product strategy and digital marketing. Prior to Promo.com, he was the Chief Marketing Officer of AudioEye where he led the Go-To-Market team with a Product-Led Growth Strategy that helped grow the company from less than 300 customers to over 30,000 in a year. Prior to that, at IBM, he championed the value of a Digital Go-To-Market as the Global Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Digital Offerings for IBM’s Digital Business Group. In addition, his extensive background in Data + AI has helped him lead breakthrough customer experiences including the AudioEye Accessibility Solution, IBM Data Science Experience, Alpine Data Labs Modeler, Datameer Sheets for Hadoop, H2O.ai Sparkling Water, and more; through the introduction of platform partnerships, self-service offerings, and digital go-to-market.
Joel holds an MBA in International Business from the University of Pittsburgh, an MS and BS in Nanotechnology from the College of Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. He is a board member of NUMFocus, an advisor to a number of startups, and a volunteer in his local community.
About Promo.com
Originally launched in 2016 as a B2B video creation and distribution platform, Promo.com has since won numerous awards, scored top customer reviews and has been deployed by Fortune 500 companies for social media marketing purposes for 10,000+ Brands. Promo.com’s latest product, PromoAI Copilot, soft-launched in October 2023, gaining over 1,000 customers who are now using the Promo.com Platform. Its latest product, PromoAI Copilot is now available at Promo.com or on the OpenAI GPT Store.
About Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton is the late award-winning author, screenwriter and filmmaker, having passed away in 2008. He’s most known for having written Jurassic Park and having created ER. He was incredibly prolific. So he’s also known for books, movies and TV shows like The Andromeda Strain, The Lost World, Westworld, and all the other Jurassic movies (Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World, etc.) He also wrote frequently under the pseudonym John Lange of Jeffery Hudson. He has sold 200 million books, and his books have been translated into 38 languages, and 13 of them have been made into movies. He has an Emmy and a Peabody among other awards.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From Michael Crichton:
- Write in layman’s terms. Even when it’s a highly technical product or concept, write so the general reader can understand your topic. Joel says, “What makes Michael Crichton remarkable is his ability to explain highly complex and difficult ideas in a way that a nine year old can understand them. If you're in the high tech industry, you're working with cryptocurrencies, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, or large language models. All this stuff is very difficult to understand if you're a novice. So if you can communicate these ideas and not just explain them for what they are, but then to try to compel somebody to be interested in these ideas and then extrapolate a whole story and a whole vision of where this could take us, that to me is Remarkable.”
- Thoroughly research the problem you’re trying to solve. Become an expert on the topic and then teach your audience about it. Explaining how your product solves the problem in detail and backing it up with research builds credibility as well as drives engagement and conversion. Joel says, “Ultimately, marketers are teachers. What are we really doing with content marketing? We're teaching people about how to think about a particular product area. A lot of the work goes into really making sure you’ve got the problem right that you need to solve. Not as much on the solutioning side. Usually it's like, ‘What is the problem that we're trying to actually solve here?’ And researching that.” And he adds, “Not just reading, but actually, for example, going to the location or going out and actually talking to customers.”
- Learn something new about marketing every day. Ask questions and be intensely curious. Learn from your peers, from Google searches, or subscribe to a newsletter like Harry Dry’s, Devin Reed’s or Emily Kramer’s. Joel says, “Constantly be learning, coming into things with a beginner's mindset. I think that's another big thing Michael Crichton does well. He asks a lot of good questions. My grandfather told me the smartest men and women ask the best questions. They act as if you don't know something because that's how you learn.”
Quotes
*”I was never one for the big unveil. I've always been like, ‘All right, what are the things that we can incrementally change and test to see if we're moving things in the right direction?’” - Joel Horwitz
*”I think we often think of, ‘Who's that one ideal customer profile or who's that one champion that we need to target?’ But these decisions, especially B2B, they're never made by a single person. It's almost always a team. And so it's really helpful for me to think about, ‘Who are the different personalities in the room that I'm speaking to?’ Because I think if you can convince them or they can all see kind of their own story, their own journey, and how this product or how the solution is going to help them, I think you have a much better chance of getting their attention.” - Joel Horwitz
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Joel Horwitz, CMO of Promo.com
[1:35] Why are we talking about Michael Crichton?
[5:41] What does Joel’s work at Promo.com entail?
[8:27] Who is Michael Crichton?
[13:22] What was Michael Crichton’s creative process?
[17:35] What makes Michael Crichton remarkable?
[32:56] What B2B marketing lessons can we take from Michael Crichton?
[50:13] What have Joel’s favorite campaigns been over the years?
[53:10] What’s next for Promo.com?
Links
Learn more about Michael Crichton
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.
Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.