Remarkable Content with Ian Faison Love is Blind: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Hit Reality TV Show with Senior Director of Brand & Events at Seismic, Katie Brunette
Marketing is an act of love.
The marketer puts out content like little thirst traps. We want to dazzle with our beautiful pictures and words. And we definitely didn’t lay awake at night trying to think of the perfect thing to say.
We marketers are gently wooing our audience from their first glance to becoming a dedicated customer. We are working to build everlasting relationships. And today, we’re learning about doing just that from the hit reality show that explores what it takes to go the distance.
In this episode, we’re talking about Love is Blind with the help of special guest, Senior Director of Brand & Events at Seismic, Katie Brunette. Together, we chat about breaking the ice, wooing your audience, and using cliffhangers.
About our guest, Katie Brunette
Katie Brunette is Senior Director of Brand & Events at Seismic. She joined the company in November 2021 as Senior Director of Global Events. She is an experiential marketing professional specialized in strategic corporate events and large-scale sporting events. Prior to Seismic, Katie previously served as Associate at Revenue Collective, Director of Marketing Strategy & Brand at Lessonly, and Event Marketing Coordinator at Salesforce.
About Seismic
Seismic is the global leader in enablement, helping organizations engage customers, enable teams, and ignite revenue growth. The Seismic Enablement Cloud™️ is the most powerful, unified enablement platform that equips customer-facing teams with the right skills, content, tools, and insights to grow and win. From the world’s largest enterprises to startups and small businesses, more than 2,000 organizations around the globe trust Seismic for their enablement needs. Seismic is headquartered in San Diego with offices across North America, Europe, and Australia.
About Love is Blind
Love is Blind is a reality show in which people who are looking for love get engaged before actually meeting each other in person. So how it goes is 15 men and 15 women who live in the same area come to live in pods. And they can “date” by talking to each other through speakers but never see each other. Participants can propose at any time. If and when a participant says “yes,” then they can meet their fiance in person. The show follows their relationship right up to the altar in some cases. For each season, there’s a reunion episode, and “after the altar” episodes.
Production-wise, the first season filmed for 38 days. And then some couples got married. They started on October 9th in 2018 and weddings were held on November 15th. Participants do get paid $1,000 a week, and the rings, resort stays, wedding, etc. are paid for by the show. However each person is responsible for their own hair, makeup, and clothing.
The series was created by Chris Coelen, produced by Kinetic Content and streams on Netflix. It premiered in February of 2020, and got tons of viewership, especially because of the pandemic. 30 million households watched the series within four weeks of its launch, and according to the Netflix 2020 viewing trends summary, it "stayed in the US Top 10 for 47 days straight after its release – the second-longest run of any title that year behind Cocomelon.” (64 days). It got some really funny reviews, the best being from Lucy Mangan of The Guardian, who said, “Love is Blind is, basically, crack. Or meth. It’s crack-meth. You will decide to give it five minutes before bed one night and find yourself still on the sofa as the sun rises on another day. You will be bleary-eyed and shattered from all the shouting you have done, the emotional investment you have made, the WhatsApp messages you have typed to a specially formed group and the heartfelt contributions you have made to various internet forums on the subject. It’s that good, is what I am saying.” But then she goes on to say that it’s not good from a moral sense.
It now has 5 seasons out.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From Love is Blind:
- Break the ice. Introductory content meant to build awareness about your company or product is a great place to use humor. It’s attention-grabbing, light, and memorable. Plus, it starts you off with a positive brand association that will help build your relationship with them. Ian says, ”Long-term commitment is scary for most people, and it's very serious. And so you need to start with an icebreaker. So much of our content or our marketing stuff is so serious. We don't have good icebreakers. So much of the stuff that we create has so little levity, when even just showing a little bit of that allows you to break the tension.”
- Woo your audience. Commitment takes time. The content that will resonate with someone who just found out about your company will be different than someone who is ready to buy. Create touchpoints in your content that speaks to them at different phases of your relationship. Katie says, ”I kind of equate getting engaged to taking the demo. So how do you get your audience to the demo? You have to talk about the values. You have to talk about the things that mean the most to them, so that way you can connect on that human to human level, but also connect on their business outcome.”
- Use cliffhangers. Save the good stuff for the end of your blog post, your video, your podcast. Ian says, “Choose your best stuff and just put it at the bottom of the article. That stuff is so powerful and we don't do it enough.” When relationships hang in the balance on Love is Blind at the end of an episode, you know people are going to tune into the next episode. It’s how you keep people engaged and even improve viewership.
Quotes
*”If you knew that you had 30 hours to try to attract somebody to take a demo with you, what pieces of content would you put all your efforts into? Is it a webinar that you can get some live engagement? Is it an in-person event that you're trying to get them to? Is it a really great designed ebook? Is it a blog post? If you know that you have 30 hours of their attention, what is that high quality content that you're going to produce?” - Katie Brunette
*”It's so important to make that investment in your voice early on, especially when you're trying to set yourself apart from your competitors. Your voice is the easiest way to relate to people, and the easiest way to set yourself apart from competitors who essentially have the same product. Maybe some of the features are different. It might look a little bit different. It might work a little bit different. But you're selling the same thing. So how do you differentiate yourself? It's through your voice.” - Katie Brunette
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet Katie Brunette, Senior Director of Brand & Events at Seismic
[2:24] What does Katie’s work at Seismic entail?
[3:07] What is Love is Blind about?
[19:27] Katie on the Impact of Love is Blind on Marketing
[36:44] Reflections on Brand and Content at Seismic
Links
Connect with Katie 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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