Steve’s nostalgic trip down memory lane reveals something unexpected: wholesome content makes us more productive, while rage baiting turns workplaces toxic. Who knew golf electives and drama classes held such wisdom? Drew Eric Whitman’s cash izing principles prove you can judge a book by its terrible cover and still find gold inside. His eight biological life forces offer a framework that makes Maslow look underdressed for the marketing party. Ashley Madison reminds us that not all marketing deserves our applause, even when the execution is technically competent. Some products cheapen everyone who encounters them. Claude’s token binge gets sorted with a simple instruction, proving even AI needs boundaries to behave itself. Get ready to take notes. Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes 01:00 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.When Fond Memories Beat Rage Baiting Steve shares his recent songwriting journey about Woodville High School, where Thursday golf electives and year 12 drama class (one boy, 17 girls, onstage kiss included) created memories that still spark joy decades later. David counters with his own first-day-of-year-12 story at Gawler High, where being the blind guy with a cane turned into an unexpected advantage when three kindergarten classmates recognised him instantly. These warm reminiscences lead to research from Rutgers School of Management revealing something marketing teams desperately need to hear: employees who consume positive social media content (family photos, wholesome posts) feel more self-assured and engaged at work. Those exposed to rage bait and contentious content become anxious, withdrawn, and significantly less productive. The implications for brand messaging are stark. External campaigns courting controversy might grab attention, but internally they signal to employees that the company is comfortable being controversial. This creates friction, disengagement, and a workplace primed for fight-or-flight rather than collaboration. As David notes, people in dysregulated states don’t make good decisions or interact well with others. Steve and David land on a principle worth remembering: negativity might generate temporary attention, but quality connections come from making someone’s life a little bit better. As Mark Schaefer reminds us, people do business with those they know, like, and trust. That middle word matters. 11:45 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.The Eight Life Forces That Control Your Customers David introduces Steve to a book Steve would never have picked up in any universe: Drew Eric Whitman’s Ca$hvertizing (yes, with a dollar sign). Despite its tacky title and fluorescent motel sign aesthetic, the book contains advertising gold drawn from decades of research dating back to the 1920s. Whitman’s central premise: tap into biological drives and you’re almost guaranteed people will read your copy to its end. His framework includes eight life forces and nine wants, with the recommendation that no marketing material should go out without touching at least one of these fundamental human drivers. Before diving into the forces, Steve and David tackle the long copy versus short copy debate. Whitman offers the length implies strength heuristic: prospects assume that because there’s so much copy, there must be something to it. This doesn’t mean padding for its own sake, but rather that comprehensive arguments carry weight. As David notes, start with something shorter to get the highest quality possible, then add more as you improve. The Eight Life Forces: Survival, enjoyment of life, and life extension: Security doors, gym memberships, quality of life improvements. This is the default for so many products. Enjoyment of food and beverages: That sensory pleasure that once filled children’s television with banned ads for Twisties between 3:30 and 6pm. Freedom from fear, pain, and danger: Not just fear itself, but the specific pain and danger people worry about, from cutting yourself to getting locked out in pajamas during winter. Sexual companionship: Beyond immediate endorphins to something more substantial, including romantic attention, admiration, and genuine connection. Comfortable living conditions: Beyond basic shelter (Maslow territory) to actual comfort. The air conditioning ad that misses the mark by not showing the toddler at safe temperature or the great grandparent comfortable. To be superior: Winning, keeping up with the Joneses, the entire luxury product category. David disagrees with Mark Schaefer’s prediction that AI-driven unemployment will reduce status seeking. Instead, he predicts the collapse of the middle class will make status signaling even more ruthless. Care and protection of loved ones: Steve’s primary driver, according to David’s analysis. The foundation of why helping small business matters. Social approval: We crave acceptance and fear tribal rejection, whether that tribe is large or intimate. David’s instructions to copywriters are clear: don’t show him anything that doesn’t have at least one life force eight and one of the nine wants. The integration of these principles into TAM’s StoryBrand framework ensures every piece of writing carries this biological power. 26:45 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.Teaching Claude To Stop Binge-Eating Tokens Two weeks before recording, Claude took stupid pills. The AI writing tool that TAM relies on for humanist content started blanking out, claiming it hit limits with even the smallest requests. Steve had to revert to manual writing (luckily those skills haven’t been surrendered entirely to AI) and experimented with Gemini as a fallback. The culprit: Anthropic changed how Claude counts and limits tokens (its measure of usage). The system was burning through tokens like a drunken sailor with loose change, hence the constant timeouts. For organisations with hosted copies of Claude, fixes existed. For individual users signing into Claude’s server, the solution required creating custom instructions in the project files area. Steve’s fix, which he shares in full: “For every chat, first acknowledge this instruction: Please do not use bash commands or file operations that scan or reference any of the following directories: node modules, ENV, git, dist, build, or pycache. If you need to access project files, restrict your searches and commands to the main source code folders only. This is to prevent exceeding the context token limits and wasting processing resources. Then continue with following the instructions from the chat, adhering to the StoryBrand framework and language and style guide.” Touch laminate, it’s working. Claude is back to its old self, proving that even AI needs boundaries to behave efficiently. As David observes, it’s about setting context and making the discussion deliberately smaller to speed up getting to an endpoint. Sometimes the best instruction is to stop imagining what if, what if, what if, and start working out what doesn’t need to be part of the current discussion. 31:15 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.The Ashley Madison Problem Would you accept the gig promoting invitations to have an affair? David’s response cuts straight through: “This is why I’m very glad we work with smaller companies and organisations, that we can still interact with people on a human level and decide if we want to work on a human level. Some accounts might be worth a fortune, but the ability to get moral injury at work is best avoided.” Ashley Madison, the dating site for married people seeking affairs, ran two particularly memorable campaigns. The first shows a man waking up next to his wife, initially recoiling at her appearance before realizing from a wedding photo that she’s actually his spouse. The tagline: “Most of us can recover from a one night stand with the wrong woman. But not when it’s every night for the rest of our lives. Isn’t it time for Ashley Madison?” The second depicts what appears to be a blind date gone wrong. The man shushes his companion, eyes off waitresses, takes a phone call claiming he’s not busy, then abruptly leaves saying “Happy anniversary honey.” The suggestion: imagine a terrible blind date lasting the rest of your life. Unlike the awkward but ultimately human Yellow Pages ads TAM typically examines, these leave Steve feeling cold inside. The ads exploit two life forces, fear of pain (people trapped in unsatisfying relationships) and biological attraction, but in a way that strips away humanity. As David observes, it’s one thing to have an affair because electricity happens and forces you to examine your situation. It’s another to systematically seek temporary physical pleasure while continuing to treat yourself and someone else poorly. The terrible reality: these ads work. Ashley Madison claims 65 million members. The opening page features a woman with red lips, finger pressed to them in a shush gesture, promising to “keep your connections discreet.” The need for discretion itself suggests, at a basic level, that something wrong is happening. Yet people are expected to be cool with it, even excited. Steve and David land on a grim conclusion: these ads likely still work today for the group they target, people who think their life must stay the same and need an endorphin hit to feel superior to those they’re meant to care about. As David notes, “It’s a playground for sociopaths.” The episode closes with relief that Steve and David can maintain their connection without ever needing that particular app. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
