Remarkable Content with Ian Faison Mad Men: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Peabody Award-Winning Drama Series with Palmer Houchins, VP & Head of Marketing at G2
You can learn a lot by looking at the past. Especially at an era that shaped how we think of marketing today. Today, we’re traveling back in time. And we’re doing it in style.
Come with us to Madison Avenue in the 1960s, a formative time for advertising and marketing. It was the “Mad Men” that walked so the 21st Century marketers could run. And even though we’re equipped with technology, AI and all sorts of new digital tools, many of the cares and struggles feel familiar. But we’re not just turning to the past today to commiserate. We’re looking at case studies and learning from the classic masters of marketing…through the lens of Hollywood, of course.
In this episode, we’re turning to the series that brought marketing into pop culture and earned Lionsgate $26 million a year: Mad Men. Joining us is VP & Head of Marketing at G2, Palmer Houchins. Palmer and the Remarkable team are discussing how to balance delivering on your brand promise with connecting emotionally with your audience, being persistent with marketing ideas, and paying attention to all the little details. So put on your sharkskin suit and wingtip oxfords for this episode of Remarkable.
About our guest, Palmer Houchins
Palmer Houchins is the VP, Head of Marketing at G2. He previously served as a senior marketing leader and G2 customer at Mailchimp (acquired by Intuit) and CallRail ($125M+ in funding).
He is a veteran marketer with 15+ years of experience growing businesses, scaling teams and building brands.
About G2
G2 is the largest and most trusted software marketplace, helping 80 million people every year make smarter software decisions based on authentic peer reviews.
About Mad Men
Mad Men is a drama series about a prestigious New York ad agency called Sterling Cooper in the 1960s focusing on debauched ad executive Don Draper, who’s played by Jon Hamm. It also stars Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks, January Jones, John Slattery and Vincent Kartheizer. The series was created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. It aired from 2007 to 2015. According to the pilot episode, the name “Mad Men” is short for Madison Men, or the men that worked on Madison Avenue in New York City. It won 16 Emmys, five Golden Globes, a Peabody award, averaged 2 million viewers over its run, and made Lionsgate about $26 million a year.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From Mad Men:
- Be persistent. If you have a cool idea for a marketing campaign, don’t let it drop. It’s only a matter of time before that idea becomes your next success. Writer Matthew Weiner wrote the script for Mad Men in 2001, but it didn’t get picked up until four years later. Palmer says, “Matthew Weiner was writing this script on his off time at The Sopranos where he was a writer and just had it in his back pocket. And he just kept trying to get it made, get it made, no one was interested. And then boom, this happens and it becomes one of the most successful shows of all time.” So hold onto those good ideas and advocate for them. If you believe they’re good ideas and worthy of being created, act with conviction.
- Pay attention to the details. Make sure every part of your design and marketing aligns with your brand. The logos, font, pictures, the messaging, are all a part of your image. Just like how every detail of the set and costuming in Mad Men are meticulously styled to make the viewer feel like they’re in New York City in the 1960s. According to an article by Zooey Norman on ScreenRant.com, “Every single secretary's desk included a small Rolodex in which each and every card was filled out with addresses and contact information. Their desks also contained documents formatted and filled out to appear like real notices, letters, and memos in order to create the illusion of a truly functional office.” That’s the level of detail you want to get into in your marketing. Every element matters.
- Deliver on your brand promise first, connect emotionally with your audience second. There’s a scene in Mad Men when they’re trying to win the Burger Chef business, and Peggy goes to the restaurant to do a focus group. Her goal is to hone in on the emotions of customers and what resonates with them. Palmer says, “you want that emotional connection, but your products also have to deliver on that basic thing. And so in a B2B context, we want to have that aspirational element. But we've also got to be able to just simply deliver on kind of a functional ROI level as well.” So focus on your brand promise first before tying it to emotional connection as well.
Quotes
*”Too often we fall into that trap, and the same thinking of, ‘Well, this is popular, so we're just going to keep doing more of that,’ and not going against the grain, or zagging when everyone else is zigging. And I think that [Mad Men] is a testament to that thinking, especially as it relates to creativity.” - Palmer Houchins
“You can spend weeks and months and years crafting the perfect copy, but in our world, it's going to get A/B tested, it's going to get split tested, and the distribution of getting that out in front of people [isn’t] linear. You have to know that that piece of copy that you spend so much time writing, that might not be the first thing they see about your brand. That might be the 500th. That might be after they've already talked to a salesperson. It might be before. There's so much more complexity to marketing now.” - Ian Faison
*”There's a lot of nostalgia in this show. They're using real products, like Coke, Heinz beans, Burger Chef, Hilton, Lucky Strike and Jaguar. Because they're real, it's cool to see an ad campaign for super common household brands. Giving the listener or the viewer some signposts that they're familiar with will go a long way.” - Ian Faison
“I think nostalgia is a part of it, but as someone who wasn't alive during the 60s, for me, it was almost like this exploration of history; a time to kind of live in that. And I think using real products, real elections and real world events is how they earmark it. It helps you tether to a different era.” - Palmer Houchins
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Palmer Houchins, VP & Head of Marketing at G2
[1:32] Why are we covering Mad Men?
[4:30] What does Palmer do at G2?
[6:09] What is Mad Men about?
[7:16] How was Mad Men made?
[13:47] What makes Mad Men remarkable?
[25:16] What are marketing lessons we can take away from Mad Men?
Links
Connect with Palmer on LinkedIn
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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