Desert Oracle: B2B Marketing Lessons from Ken Layne’s Love of Lo-Fi Media with Chief Evangelist at Contentful, Nicole France

You would never send a postcard instead of an email, create a zine instead of a white paper, or take polaroids instead of digital headshots. 

But that’s why you, the digital marketer, should do it.

There’s an appeal to all of these lo-fi, analog mediums that call back to yesteryear. A nostalgia. A deliberate denial of modernity. 

Not only would it surprise your audience, it would lure them right in.

So in this episode, we’re making a case for lo-fi content. We’re doing so by pulling marketing lessons from Ken Layne’s Desert Oracle.

With the help of our special guest, Chief Evangelist at Contentful, Nicole France, we talk about creating lo-fi content, bucking convention, taking a distinct perspective, and much more.

About our guest, Nicole France

Nicole France is Chief Evangelist at Contentful. Nicole is a passionate customer advocate evangelizing new ways of thinking about content and organizing the work of digital business. It’s the wave of the future — and her mission is to make sure everyone knows why. She brings the perspective and critical thinking of an industry analyst and the first-hand experience of a practitioner. Before joining Contentful, Nicole worked as an analyst at Constellation Research and Gartner. She also held a variety of strategy and marketing roles at Fujitsu, Equinix, ITSMA, and Cisco. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Nicole enjoys the outdoors, flying small planes, and embarking on yet another house project in her spare time.

What B2B Companies Can Learn From Desert Oracle:

• Create lo-fi content. Make a zine, a radio show or podcast, a book or comic book. Something your audience can touch and can use to get a bit deeper into your world. Make your brand real for them. Nicole says that when it comes to Desert Oracle, “There's something here that kind of harkens back to what the arts and crafts movement was. In the industrial revolution, you know, this idea of kind of going back to this craft, this artisanal, this very human, this very lo-fi way of doing things. And ironically enough, I think there's a real space for that, even in these digital channels.”
• Buck convention. Feeling disillusioned with the mainstream take on building an audience? Ken Layne grows his audience by creating niche, tangible content with a strong sense of place and it has garnered a dedicated following. In 2024, 44% of Spotify listeners were new to the Desert Oracle podcast, and it ranked among the top 5 or top 10 podcasts for 5,000 listeners. Nicole says, “ [Ken Layne] is actively rejecting conventional wisdom about how you build an audience. And yet that is absolutely part of what is making him successful at doing it. And it's almost like the extent to which I think of Patagonia a lot of times in this kind of context, where Patagonia is telling you, like, use the stuff you already have. And that somehow is part of what makes you want to keep going back to Patagonia. This is what makes people so loyal to Patagonia is the bigger mission. And like weirdly telling people not to buy it somehow is what makes them want to go and buy more, which is sort of, but not actually their intent.”
• Take a distinct perspective. What is the story that is unique to you? That’s the story you want to tell. Nicole says, “ That distinctiveness in that perspective and that point of view, I think that's something that really effective brands gravitate toward anyway. They're good at it consciously and sometimes unconsciously as well. And I think B2B marketing needs more of that. You know, where what we offer our customers, regardless of what we're selling is typically not generic stuff. So why should our marketing sound like generic stuff? And yet a whole hell of a lot of it does. For a long time, we’ve been in a world where there's a tremendous volume of noise and the kinds of things that get cut through are things like Ken Layne's curmudgeonly, somewhat dismissive and yet somehow totally compelling take on the world. That’s what draws people in."
• Curate an experience. Ken Layne curates an experience that captures the mystical nature of Joshua Tree and the greater Mojave Desert. And he does it by appealing to the senses - more than just the sight that digital content requires. You hear the voices of the desert through his podcast and radio show. You can hold an artifact of the desert: the Desert Oracle zine. His multimedia approach creates a world unique to Desert Oracle. And you get the inside scoop. Nicole says, “ There is a very specific point of view, it is Ken Layne's point of view. But he also brings in a bunch of stories from other people and from other places and sometimes from other times as well.  he's curating an experience for you. And I think that is a really powerful takeaway here.”

Quotes

*” What Ken Layne does with Desert Oracle is paint this very compelling picture of a place. In some cases, a literal place, like when he's hiking out in Joshua tree, or in some cases, it's more of almost like a spiritual place, a conceptual place that we want to be in.

*” How do we get back in touch with the things that are really fundamental, that really are the most important in our existence and nature and, you know, as people? And then how do we associate those meaningful things with what we do in the rest of our lives?”

*” [Ken Layne] is actively rejecting conventional wisdom about how you build an audience. And yet that is absolutely part of what is making him successful at doing it. And it's almost like the extent to which I think of Patagonia a lot of times in this kind of context, where Patagonia is telling you, like, use the stuff you already have. And that somehow is part of what makes you want to keep going back to Patagonia. This is what makes people so loyal to Patagonia is the bigger mission. And like weirdly telling people not to buy it somehow is what makes them want to go and buy more, which is sort of, but not actually their intent.”

*” When you have a really compelling idea or message at the core, you can find all of these different ways of communicating it really effectively.”

*” We found the podcast and then we found the publication. And I guess it really speaks to this idea that multimedia is everywhere. It's in a whole bunch of different stuff. And I think that is actually a really important message and takeaway here, too.  I think that  this idea of being able to explore different aspects of the story and the story world is really key.  Knowing where your audience is, but also being able to bring your audience to where you are, or where you want them to be.  Like, I have totally been brought in and then bought into the world of Desert Oracle. How I got there is almost immaterial, but like there are all these different places that I'm getting this enjoyment from, being part of that world and I feel like I have found a path that brought me in there.”

*”[Desert Oracle] is not for everybody for sure, but boy, it creates an incredibly loyal and dedicated audience. That's actually what we want to do as B2B marketers as well.”

Time Stamps

[0:55] Meet Nicole France, Chief Evangelist at Contentful

[3:45] Nicole France's Role at Contentful

[4:54] The Creation of Desert Oracle

[7:07] Ken Layne's Career Journey

[10:17] Marketing Lessons from Desert Oracle

[13:57] The Power of Authenticity in Marketing

[14:49] The Role of Generative AI in Marketing

[39:06] The Importance of Longevity in Content Creation

[41:34] Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Links

Connect with Nicole on LinkedIn

Learn more about Contentful

About Remarkable!

Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction 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 Meredith Gooderham, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. 

Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.