How an Entertainment Strategy Helps You Cut Through the White Noise

This week’s master is always down for some fun, and he’s got the receipts to show it.

“The most fun brand in the world hired us to make them fun,” he grins. “We’re certified fun and we can prove it.”

Case in point: When I asked Chandler Quintin for an interview, I failed to mention what it was for (I’d blame Monday brain, but it was a Thursday) and he still gave me more laughs and insights than I could squeeze into this email.

Lesson 1: Have an entertainment strategy.

“People are subject to marketing all day long, whether we ask for it or not,” says Chandler Quintin. I immediately think of scrambling for the mute button on the gas pump that’s blaring ads at me. Is no place sacred?

“If it’s at least interesting to watch and checks a box of ‘Hey, I didn’t mind seeing that,’ then everybody’s life will improve because we won’t be so inundated with boring stuff.”

Quintin fully believes we’re at what he calls “the peak of white noise on most platforms.” (And that goes double for you, B2B marketers.)

Do you use an ad blocker? Does your thumb have lightning-fast “skip ad” reflexes? Do you scroll past sponsored posts on LinkedIn? Well, so does the audience you paid so much to reach.

Quintin believes that the best way to cut through the white noise is to make content fun — and that one day soon marketing departments will have entertainment strategies the same way we now have editorial strategies.

“Now, I do want to clarify that when I say fun content, I’m not saying all of it has to be funny.” Funny is just one kind of fun, and fun looks different for different brands.

He gives the example of a campaign Video Brothers created for an outsourcing company. On the fun-ness scale, outsourcing usually ranks somewhere around popcorn kernels stuck in your gum line. Quintin and his team created an ad suite that focused on bleeping out the word “outsource” like a curse word. By tackling the taboo of outsourcing head-on, their ad stood out from competitors that danced around the topic.

And I’m a living testimonial to this tactic. Thursday morning, I’m sipping tea and cruising LinkedIn in search of marketing masters. (I do it for you! Well… not the tea. That’s for me.) Minutes later, Quintin messaged me asking for help because he was upside down. (See the hero image above.) Friday morning, we’re scheduling an interview.

Quintin acknowledges that this takes effort.

“It does take a lot of time. There might be some ways to automate it. But at the end of the day, I think people can kind of see through automations a little bit. Especially when you’re trying to make an authentic connection. The bar for that is: Just be authentic. Be a human being.”

But the return is worth the effort.

“If you only have $1,000, you’re going to be able to turn that $1,000 into the power of five or 10,000 if you just go that extra mile and engage.”

Throughout our interview, the conversation kept returning to two points: Being human. And having fun. That seems to be the soul of Chandler Quintin, who smiles as he drops the moral of our story:

If you commit to making fun content “the worst that can happen is someone remembers your brand.”