Brian Bell (00:00.495) Hey everyone, welcome back to the Ignite Podcast on a special three hundredth episode with a repeat guest and my good friend David Meerman Scott. He's the author of dozens of books and has sold close to a million copies in thirty languages, including the new rules of marketing PR and the Wall Street Journal's bestseller Phanocracy. thanks for coming back on, David.
David Meerman Scott (00:19.992) So good to be here, Brian. How you doing? Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:22.061) I'm good. It's good to see you. and for folks that don't know, David was my book coach for my book that just launched. But today we're gonna be talking about his new book. So tell us about that, David.
David Meerman Scott (00:33.1) Yeah, it's called the Fandom Playbook. And I've been talking about fandom now for several decades, and I've written a number of books that are related to fandom. The New Rules of Marketing and PR has a bit about fandom in it. However, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, I'm focused all on that one band and it's fandom. Marketing the Moon is about the Apollo Lunar program and how we we meaning the NASA and American people made fans of the astronauts. and then a book called Phanocracy, which you know, came out in twenty twenty. That's a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and the new book is called The Fandom Playbook. I wrote it because so many people said to me, I love your ideas about growing fans. How specifically do I do it? So it is a playbook on how to grow fans.
Brian Bell (01:23.351) What is a like a common if if you look out, I mean, this is very much a start a podcast, right? what do you think founders get wrong about growing their fandom?
David Meerman Scott (01:28.771) Yeah. (01:33.623) Yeah, and I'm I love I love love love the idea that we're talking to to founders here. I am an an advisor in a number of different early stage startups. have done some early stage startups myself, have lots of friends in this ecosystem. as you know, I'm an LP in in a in a couple of funds, including yours. Thank you very much. so I love this ecosystem. by far, hands down, number one biggest.
Brian Bell (01:53.827) Yeah, yeah.
David Meerman Scott (02:02.604) mistake I see is founders focus way too much on their product and service, the product or service they're trying to sell. And they just ramp, try to ram it down people's throats. Buy my product, buy my product, buy my product. and yeah, eventually you want someone to buy your product. I get that. But if you lead with that, it's a tough slot.
Brian Bell (02:26.233) So what is what is creating fans look like versus just creating, I don't know, followers? What's the difference?
David Meerman Scott (02:32.936) I look I I like to come at it from the perspective of neuroscience. So you know, we humans are hardwired in our brains going back tens of thousands of years to be safe and comfortable in our tribe of like-minded people. and that's actually a survival technique going back thousands and thousands of generations, because you know, cavem cavemen. By the fire, if you're with your tribe, you're safe and comfortable. If you venture out, there's danger. And that actually plays into the idea of fandom. Because if you're in a, let's say you're in a football stadium or baseball stadium and you're rooting for your team, you're with like minded fans, you're safe, you're comfortable, you're with your tribe. And the same thing is true with with with any fandom. And so that's a different than just followers or j different than just customers, because you're actually activating people's brains in this this this this deep deep deep need that we all have to be part of this tribe. So you know the broad idea of fandom is how can you in your organization As you're promoting your startup or whatever business you're in, can you create a tribe of like-minded people? Now that's, you know, I said earlier the biggest mistake I see is around products and services. It's not to say it's around your product or service. Perhaps it's around something related to it or the problem related to the problem that you solve for your products and services. but that's the basic idea of what it's about. It's it's tapping into neuroscience.
Brian Bell (04:30.765) And this came out of a conversation in a car with your daughter. Tell us about the the origin story.
David Meerman Scott (04:35.768) Well, the origin story to my book Phanocracy, which came out in twenty twenty, was that it was actually it it was, it was in the car. I had written a couple of books, marketing lessons from the Grateful Dead and and Marketing the Moon that were related to fandom. And back in it would have been 2018, I was with my daughter. At the time she was just finishing up university. she she went to Columbia for n a neuroscience degree, funny enough. And and just beginning medical school. She went to Boston University Medical School. And we were talking about what we're a fan of, you know, and I I you know, she knows, of course, I'm a huge fan of the Grateful Dead, I'm a huge fan of the Apollo Lunar program, I'm a fan of dancing s of swing dance. She she then talked about her fandom. She's a fan of Harry Potter, the you know, read all the books, saw the movies multiple times. She even wrote an alternative ending to the Harry Potter series, put that out as a book.
Brian Bell (05:35.087) What was that what w what was the ending that she came up with?
David Meerman Scott (05:35.529) for free for for free. Draco Malfoy was a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. How about that? Yeah, yeah, it's cool. And she did a full 80,000-word book, alternative ending. That's how much of a fan she is of Harry Potter. She's a huge fan of K pop and travels around the country to go to K pop concerts. Like, so we're both like we were and we're talking about how we're huge fans of the things that we love. They're different.
Brian Bell (05:42.236) that's cool. (05:46.564) Wow.
David Meerman Scott (06:04.524) You know, she's a she's a millennial mixed race woman who loves Harry Potter and K-pop. I'm a white middle-aged dude who loves Grateful Dead and and and swing dancing and the Apollo Lunar program. So we're utterly different, but we had the exact same idea around fandom. So we we ended up deciding to collaborate on this book Phanocracy that came out, originally came out. in twenty twenty a new edition came out this earlier this year. and as I mentioned earlier, it had quite some some great success. It became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. But the idea of us we wrote that and we ended up writing that book together. And the idea of writing that book together was great because two utterly different people but coming at the same perspective of fandom. And I loved learning about her fandom for Harry Potter, her fandom for K-pop. hopefully she thinks the same f about my fandoms. but it ended up ended up that writing that book together was a fabulous thing to do because of those two different perspectives. Yeah. You should put that put that on the list. Write a book with your with your young your the young people in your life.
Brian Bell (07:08.759) That's that's amazing. Yeah, I'd love to do that with my kids someday. put that on the bucket list, right? Well you you helped me berth my own book and and now I'm it's funny, once you once you get to the end of a book, you kind of have all these other ideas for new books, right?
David Meerman Scott (07:24.43) It's well, you know, it's funny 'cause I've worked with it we I've worked with dozens of authors on their first books. I'm on the board of Forbes Books. It's a a book publisher. and as you know, we worked we worked together on your book. I wrote the forward to your book.
Brian Bell (07:37.027) Yeah. It was a year. I mean we we collaborated, people listening don't know this, but David and I talked every week for nine months about my book. And you read every single word
David Meerman Scott (07:44.567) Yeah. Yeah. And and and it's hilarious to see somebody like you who's like, I don't know if I should write a book. It's gonna take a lot of time. And then, you know, we worked really hard on it and you're like, I wanna do another one because
Brian Bell (07:53.827) Yeah. (07:57.712) Yeah, I'm I I have all these ideas. I'm like, which one do I write next? you know, and
David Meerman Scott (08:00.992) And and now and now you know a heck of a lot more about how to do it than than you did when you first started. but you know, I've d I've the fandom playbook is gonna be my fourteenth book, you know, and I I've got an I've got another one in mind for the next one. And but but here's the thing for me and what and why b wh why fourteen books, David? What the hell are you doing? That's that's crazy. Well, like you said at the top of the show, I've sold over a million copies in 30 languages.
Brian Bell (08:11.79) Wow.
David Meerman Scott (08:29.346) That that's driven my primary revenue source, which is speaking gigs. I've done many, many, many hundreds of speaking gigs, forty countries so far, all seven continents. and I regularly present around the world. And so it's super because my books are in 30 languages, it's super cool to, you know, have something randomly come in. Which I I just booked a speech in Dubai for for first of the year. And and you know that came into my email yet last week. Hey, would you like to speak in in Dubai? Sure, please, let's do it. and and and I don't I don't ever place a a sales call. Never, never once have I placed a sales call to do a speech, yet I'm speaking all the time. And that's driving the revenue that that feeds my family and and keeps me keeps me in Grateful Dead tickets.
Brian Bell (09:02.415) Yeah. Yeah, I'll fly to Dubai. (09:19.523) Yeah. Keeps you investing in venture funds, but
David Meerman Scott (09:22.89) And and allows me to have enough left over to invention to invest in venture funds. Exactly right.
Brian Bell (09:27.801) Yeah. So so your daughter brought the neuroscience, you know, which is interesting. And you guys came f you know, at this this question of what makes a what makes a fan or a following a fandom. for a founder thinking about that, like what what's what's happening actually in a customer's brain at a at a great conference that's not happening over like a like a webinar?
David Meerman Scott (09:52.311) so what what's happening is that people are thinking, how can I you know how can I I'm I'm talking from the perspective of the the company, the startup. How can I create so much value that this person who I'm engaged with is going to love me and then want to do business with me? And there's many manifestations of what that means. one aspect of it, and and it ties directly to this idea of of of of tribe of like-minded people, is can you physically bring people together? so as we're doing this recording, which is in September, next week I'm going to be presenting yet again at the HubSpot conference. It's now called HubSpot Unbound. and I've I keynoted the very first one. I've presented at almost all of them over the last 15 years or so. And what's remarkable about their event is that they bring together people who want to learn more about marketing, about sales, about customer support. They don't have to be HubSpot customers. And they convene in both in the Boston area. and people spend a lot of money to do this, and they take a full week out of their out of their life to do it. And airline tickets they had to buy. The ticket to go to Unbound is I think it's fifteen hundred dollars starting price. There's other tiers you can buy. Hotels are expensive here in Boston in the fall. People want to come in September to the Boston area. So it's a it's a big investment. But there's well over ten thousand people who come because they're with their like-minded people. And you know, when you've got the badge on and you're sitting at a bar near the convention center. You know, you can have a great conversation with that person because they're part of the same tribe. So people come to learn about marketing, about sales, about customer support. And they have been doing since the very beginning, the first one I spoke at, the first the first event that they did, which I was the keynoter, was for only 400 people. Now they're wet well over 10,000 people. and then people remember that. And they remember, my gosh, I really had a great time at that event. And I learned a ton, and there's some great speakers there. And and then when they're ready. (12:14.946) To maybe need a software product to manage their marketing or their sales or their customer support or all three, they I should check out HubSpot. and and and that's the that's how this works is
Brian Bell (12:26.123) Or or if people are asking them like, Hey, which marketing platform should I use for my business? without with without a doubt. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (12:31.8) correct, correct. Exactly right. Yeah, because then it becomes word of mouth, it becomes referral, it it it becomes, you know, and it sure as heck beats trying to cold call to get new clients or or or or you know trying to to bug people on LinkedIn or what however people are are are trying to get new clients. and yeah, it takes some time, you know, you don't get those new clients instantly, but but once you have that fan base, I mean, those people stick with you for a long time. You really have to do something bad to. For them not to continue to remain your fans.
Brian Bell (13:03.801) So phanocra phonocracy really kind of defines, you know, t this fandom concept. But the fandom playbook organizes it into plays a company can actually run. Give us some of the, you know, some of the plays that are in the book.
David Meerman Scott (13:18.254) So there's nine plays. and and and the what the reason that I wrote this book is because a number of people would reach out to me on a regular basis, people would reach out on a regular basis, either after my talk, they would come up to me and wanna wanna chat and ask me questions or or through social media or send me an email or whatever it might be. And they say, David, we love your idea about fandom, we love this idea of phanocracy, we love this idea that you know the Grateful Dead build is following, but how specifically do I do it? And so that's where the fandom playbook comes in. It's got nine plays. And and we can chat about a couple of them. Here's one. I call this play Make It a Game. and the basic idea around this one is can you install something in the way that you do business that encourages people like me, by the way, who have a collector gene. to want to engage even more with your organization. I'll give you two examples. so I'm a scuba diver, and I was I was down at Ocean Frontiers. It's a dive resort in the Cayman Islands. I happened to be with my daughter Reiko at the time, who's she's also a scuba diver. And we we got to talking with Steve Broadbelt, he's the owner of Ocean Frontiers, and we were talking about. You know, as I do when I meet someone, how do you grow your business? This is a cool place. How you know, tell me about it. And he said, David was really weird because I would have people who come down to my resort and they they would have a fabulous time. They would give us five star reviews. They were glowing about how wonderful our resort was, but they would never come back. And I and and Steve told me he dug into that. He wanted to know why. And he found out it was pretty obvious to anyone who's a scuba diver, but once you've dove a reef. You don't want to dive the same reef again. You know, once you've climbed that, I'm I'm interpreting that to mean once you've climbed that mountain, you don't want to climb that one again, you want to climb another one. So what Steve did was he mapped out 55 dive sites that are all within a a boat ride of his resort. And he created the green shorts challenge, which is if you dive all 55 dive sites with him, then. (15:40.351) You win the green shorts challenge. You get a pair of green shorts that you can only get if you do all 55 dive sites. They make a they put a plaque with your name on it on the dock. They throw you a party that night with champagne and cake. They take your photographs, post it on their social media, and there's a lot of people who that's a really big deal for them to be able to say that they have dove all 55 dive sites. They give you a punch card where you punch it out. It's also electronic. so they've figured out that now when people who have a collector gene who want to rack up all those things and get that prize, they will come back. They have to come back four or five or six times to be able to dive all those dive sites. One more example. I mentioned earlier, I'm a huge fan of swing dancing, have been now for for about three or four years. And I love it, love it, love it. And there's a dance school I go to here in the Boston area called Boston Lindy Hop. And Andrew, who's the the owner of the Boston Lindy Hop, said he had the same problem. People would take some lessons but not come back. So they created what's called a starlight pass where if you take all of their classes, every single one of them, you get a special jacket that the only way to get it is to take all of the classes. And he said that gets people to go through the entire program, through all the advanced classes and and so on as well. and and from the perspective of startups. perhaps you can have leaderboards for various things. And we we've all seen those sorts of leaderboards for how many people do certain things. Or in the case of HubSpot.
Brian Bell (17:17.887) Yeah, I wonder if I should do this with LPs who invest in our our funds. It's like dollars invested,
David Meerman Scott (17:21.174) There you go, right? If you invest in all the if you invest in all the funds, you get this really cool leather jacket or something, whatever it might be. Yeah. and so so from the startup world, my buddies at HubSpot use this ta this strategy. And it's really different because the way theirs works is they have something called HubSpot Academy. HubSpot Academy has hundreds of free courses that anybody can take. You don't have to be a client, they're totally free.
Brian Bell (17:26.467) Yeah. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (17:50.251) and if you pass the course, you get a badge, a digital badge that you can put on your CV, you can put on your LinkedIn, or you can put on your website. And so what they found is that a lot of people were getting those credentials. They got the badge, and then they could put on their resume, I'm certified in HubSpot, or they can put on their LinkedIn, I'm certified in HubSpot. Again, it's all this idea of making it a game, which is one of the one of the plays in the fandom playbook.
Brian Bell (18:21.081) So another let's let's talk through another one. I guess play two is let go of control. What does that mean?
David Meerman Scott (18:26.642) that's an interesting one because so many organizations want to control the narrative. They want people to interact with their company or their products and their services in one way and the only the approved way. So from the perspective of what not to do, I'll point to Adobe. So Adobe, you know, provides an their software company a number of different applications. and and for for one of those, the software that that's used for manipulating photographs and images, Photoshop, Adobe said you are not allowed to use the word Photoshop as a verb. You cannot say that you photoshopped something. That's against our policies. And that's like in their terms and conditions. It's ridiculous. But what you can do is you can say that you manipulated an image using Adobe R Photoshop TM software. And my daughter told me this about this example, my daughter Reiko. And this example is in the fandom playbook and the and Phanocracy. And she said she couldn't believe it. She was talking about. Photoshopping something, and she learned that she you can't you you're not allowed to do that, they said. And I'm like, what? and so the basic idea on this play is can you allow fans to do things that will cause them to be even bigger fans? And let me give you a another example. So you know the the Roomba vacuum cleaners, the robotic vacuum cleaners.
Brian Bell (19:54.872) It's like Google saying you can't use that as a verb. You can't say to Google something. Right. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (20:22.374) the videos, as soon as the Roomba came out, the first version of it, videos started to appear of people with their cats or their or their small dogs on the Roomba and going around riding it around. It was hilarious. and so what they could have done, the the company behind Room Roomba, i iRobot, could have said, Don't do that. You know, it's not safe. It's not dangerous, this is not the way you're supposed to use our product. But they and they encouraged it. They actually shared them sometimes. and that's the idea is don't try to control what's going on with your with with your product or your service. Instead, let your fans have ownership.
Brian Bell (21:05.263) I think the most famous example that you talk about is the Grateful Dead letting their fans tape tape their shows and and trade them.
David Meerman Scott (21:10.828) Yeah. Well, and and and interesting that that particular example is an example of two different things. So it is an example of lose control because they've lost control of their music by allowing fans to record them. But that's part of another play, which I call give away what's most valuable. Give away what's most valuable within your organization. So I I recommend everyone who's listening in, you might In some database somewhere, have some interesting data that you could manipulate with AI and then make available to people because it's super valuable to them. Most companies don't think that way. They don't think that I've got something incredibly valuable sitting locked away in some database somewhere that would be valuable. So for The Grateful Dead, it was please bring your recording gear. You're allowed to record the concerts. Our only rule is you can't sell the tape. Originally it was a cassette tape, now it's MP3 files. You can give it away, you can share it, you can trade it, but don't sell it. and that's how the great one of the reasons Grateful Dead became so popular. So another two other examples of this idea of looking into your database, finding data, making it available for free as a way to build fans, one is Haggerty Insurance. They they're the largest classic car insurance company in the world. and they realized that locked away in their database, they had the amount of money that people were insuring their classic cars for, the actual dollar amount that that literally three million classic cars that they insure were insured for. And they said we should provide that data free to classic car enthusiasts. actual data for how much their car is worth based on the valuations that the cars were insured for. I have a 1973 Land Rover Series 3 2 hardtop. And so I could go in and find out exactly how much mine is worth, which I did. And that is because Haggerty has made their entire database available for free. You don't have to be a customer. Anybody can access it on their website. One more example a company that at the time was a startup (23:29.518) Called Intralink Software Company. Intralinks provides secure data, virtual data centers for companies going through MA activities. So companies that are emerging or getting being acquired or doing an acquisition. And it's this is the place where investment bankers and people like you who own stock and companies can share data. that can be used during the due dilig do due diligence process as they're planning on potentially having an some MA activity. It's called interlinks. So interlinks realized they had a an a huge amount of data that they could aggregate as a general look at how much MA activity is happening. Now they're obviously, because these are secure data centers, obviously can't give away individual details of a company that's planning to do a merger. But what they could do is say, okay, in Q2 2026, we saw 186 you know potential mergers for our in our database or potential acquisitions in our database. That was this amount less or more than last quarter, and therefore we can interpret that. that the number of these acqu these types of transactions are going up or going down or staying the same. Super, super valuable data for Wall Street, which they they have now been and and I spoke with them about this. Part of the conversation resulted in this happening. I'm not taking credit, they did the work. but just asking them about data they might have that they could make available. It's been now well more than a decade that that this data has been provided for free. Anybody who wants it, no registration required, you can get. access to this data.
Brian Bell (25:23.673) Yeah, I'm I'm I'm having all these ideas for Team Ignite right now. Like a leaderboard for deal flow, a le a leaderboard for SPVs, special prizes for, you know, being first in a p particular year or something like that. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (25:27.437) Right. (25:31.04) Mm-hmm. (25:35.679) Right. Or or like or like, you know, you've got so many transactions that you're working on. Can you interpret based on those transactions what the startup ecosystem looks like, how many deals are getting funded versus not funded? It's all sorts of cool stuff if you can figure out how to use that data in an interesting way. And then when you do that, people remember you. So like going back to interlinks, the startup ecosystem. Might, I mean, sorry, the the MA ecosystem will say, okay, I'm learning about how many deals there are. this is valuable information. now I'm a part of a deal. I need a secure data room. Who do you think they're gonna go to? Of course they're gonna go to Interlinks. That's the company they know. That's the company that has been providing them with all this data. That's the company they become a fan of.
Brian Bell (26:25.133) Right. Any other plays you want to mention be before we talk about AI slop? 'Cause I want to get to that.
David Meerman Scott (26:31.534) yeah, let's talk about that. Let me yeah, let me give some thought. What is the what is a good one to do? Yes, I want to talk about one that was the most surprising idea that we that Rako and I found when we were doing our research for the original book that became Phanocracy. we talked with hundreds and hundreds of people about what they're a fan of, why they're a fan of them, and so on. And and so the idea is share. in your per in your professional life, what you're a fan of in your personal life. So showcase your passions. What we discovered, and and I'm sure you recognize this because you talk to a lot, you have a lot of LinkedIn connections. I know that we're connected on LinkedIn is is most people have a brick wall where they separate their professional life, which is primarily on LinkedIn, where we're all buttoned up in professional.
Brian Bell (27:29.699) I'm so proud to announce my investment in this startup. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (27:31.343) Yes, exactly right. And then there's the other side of this big fat brick wall over here, where someone has a personal life and they're doing super cool stuff on on Instagram, on link on on Facebook, you know, and they're, you know, here here I am, you know, I I'm coaching my kids' little league team, and I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And over here we're buttoned up and doing business. I say break the wall down. And so we we we found a number of people who have done that, who have said.
Brian Bell (27:34.775) Mm. (27:44.535) Mm.
David Meerman Scott (28:00.94) You know what? I'm gonna break the walls down. I'm gonna share what I'm passionate about. and that can be super benefit beneficial. So that's one of the reasons that you hear me talk about the Grateful Dead, you hear me talk about the Apollo Lunar program, you hear me talk about swing dancing. Those are the things that I'm a fan of. And I share those things regularly on my social networks, and people know that about me. Lots of people, when they meet me for the first time, already know what I'm passionate about. and my favorite example of this is a dentist in Southern California. His name is Dr. John Marashi. I met him at a Tony Robbins event. I speak at Tony Robbins Business Mastery events and have done so for 12 years. And I met him a couple years ago, and he says, David, I love your idea about fandom, but I'm a dentist. People don't become fans of their dentist. And I said, I think you're wrong. I think people people can absolutely become fans of their dentist.
Brian Bell (28:51.907) Challenge accepted, yeah.
David Meerman Scott (28:57.322) And I said, and he said, Well, David, there's thousands of dentists in the Los Angeles area. That's where I that's where I practice, you know, we and we all look the same. And I said, That's the point. You all look the same. You all have the same kind of website with you looking professional in your white coat and and looking into teeth and dirty teeth becoming clean teeth and what schools you went to. You all look the same. And I said, What are you passionate about? What do you love? And he lit up, like completely changed. He changed from being a dentist to being a human. And he said, I love skateboarding. And so I said, Well, Dr. Marashi, that's it. You should be talking about skateboarding in your dental practice. And it was just a short five-minute conversation after my talk. about six months later, he contacted me, he goes, You know what? this was amazing. So he started to he he started to post photographs of him skateboarding on his dental practice website. He put skateboards up on the walls in the hallway of his office. And then he created an Instagram where he, yes, he talks about dentistry, but he also talks about skateboarding. He's well over 50,000 followers now. And he told me just by doing this, because he tracks the data and he knows how he gets new patients, that he increased the number of new patients just in the first year by 33% and grew his revenue as a result by 23%, directly attributed to the single fact. That he started to share his passion for skateboarding. Now, this isn't other skateboarders, this is just people attracted to his passion. And this is true of anybody. You know, if you're you're a CEO of a startup company, we want to know who you are outside of what you're doing in your business. Who are you? You know, what are the things that you love? What do you do outside of work? How can we be a f become a fan of of what you are passionate about because that makes a huge difference today when everyone tends to look the same.
Brian Bell (31:03.055) Love it. so the t subtitle of the book is Building Your Human Connection in a World of D Digital Chaos. why that subtitle? What is that about?
David Meerman Scott (31:13.958) you know, it's it's it it's interesting, Brian, 'cause you you you know me pretty well. You know that I got my s my my well I at first I was a corporate guy and I did marketing for some publicly traded companies. I rose to be the the chief marketing officer of a publicly traded technology company. And you know, we had this we had the same same playbook. Everyone did the same thing. You know, you did this, this, this, this. So then when I when I was f fired from that job because the company was acquired by Thomson Reuters. I went out on my own. This is 24 years ago. I went out on my own and I did comp the complete opposite of what everyone everyone was doing the playbook around technology marketing. and I started to say, you know what? You need to have a great website. You need to have a blog. And then soon after social media started, you need to get onto social media. And I was really rah-rah cheerleading about digital marketing. And I was the really the first person to define the idea of digital marketing. The book I wrote, New Rolls. Marketing PR sold half a million copies because it was the first book to really articulate the idea of social media marketing. And and now in the last couple years, especially since the Chat GPT ushered in the the AI era, what I've noticed is that people are are are focused way too much on these digital channels, number one. Number two. The algorithms of the social networks, whether that's LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or whatever it might be, the algorithms are tuned so tightly that unless you are a slave to the algorithm, it's really difficult to get noticed. And the third thing I noticed is that there's so much AI slop out there. There's this tsunami of online content coming out. You know, back in the day you had to. Work hard to create a blog post. Now you push a button, you've got a blog post. and so I said to myself, I love being a contrarian, you know, and and back in the day, everyone was doing this marketing playbook when they were doing startup companies. I said you should do a different idea. I called it the new rules of marketing in PR. Now I'm saying everyone's focused on what I was talking about before, but using AI to do it. Well, maybe there's a new way. It's a human connection. (33:36.653) And that's what that's what this idea of the fandom playbook is. This that's what this idea of what we've been talking about for the last half hour or so is. How can you build a genuine human connection, a genuine way of of engaging with your existing and potential customers so that they become your fans? And so you know, I I like having the idea of being a contrarian. The whole world is talking about AI and marketing. Well, I understand that. I do it myself. That's not what I'm talking about anymore. I'm talking about this idea of building fans. It's also, I love this idea from the marketing perspective. A good marketer knows who the enemy is. Right. And and when I when I first started talking about digital marketing, the enemy was traditional ad agencies who wanted you to spend money on magazine ads. Now I'm talking about fandom human connections. The enemy is. all of this algorithmic driven stuff. I'm not saying it's terrible. most of it is terrible, but I'm saying I'm not saying don't do it, but just understand that all that algorithmic driven stuff is w only one way to approach marketing. I like that currently the approach of marketing where you're creating a genuine commun connection.
Brian Bell (34:46.263) Makes sense. So you wrote the book in collaboration with a Waldgarden AI from Cone, is that right? Well yeah, tell us about that.
David Meerman Scott (34:51.552) I did. Yeah, I did. and yeah, so I'm a writer, I can write, I can strategize. I'm pretty good at seeing patterns in the universe and articulating what what I'm seeing in a way that resonate with people. I sold a million copies of my books. and so what I'm not an expert in is how adults learn. And so the idea of the fandom playbook came around. Because so and I mentioned this earlier in our conversation, because so many people were asking me, okay, I like I love your ideas around phonocracy, I love your ideas, marking lessons from Grateful Dead, I love the idea of growing fans. I want to grow fans of my business. Help, how do I do that? How specifically do I do that? I understand the strategy, but what are the tactics? So so the fandom playbook is distilling my ideas of fandom into these nine plays. We've talked about a couple of them already. But I I did not have the skills to be able to understand how to take those strategies and create the actual steps and put those steps into the playbook in such a way that it's optimized for the ways that adults learn. And so it was I I wrote the fandom play. I know I wrote all of the of the of a narrative myself. I you know, I had a little bit of help with AI, but I wrote it. and then and then I took that narrative and with the help of cone.ai, C-O-N-E Cone dot AI, who helped me to using artificial intelligence to take a first stab at how to then create. these individual plays with step by step by step by step by step to exactly how to do it. And then I hired an expert in adult learning, Jill, she's amazing. And sh her her whole skill set is how adults learn. And she then took the AI output and helped me to arrange it and organize it and rewrite it such that it was optimized for ways that adults learn. So this has now gone from my (37:09.634) sort of high level strategy, here's what fandom is, that I've been writing about for more than a decade, to now be writing and speaking about for more than a decade, to here's how exactly to implement those ideas. And that was partly with AI, partly with the help of an of an expert in adult learning. And the majority of of of that work was my writing.
Brian Bell (37:33.379) Yeah, it's amazing how AI can extend and help you, right? It's really a a tool of leverage if you allow it. Yeah, you can press a button and just write a blog post, but if you actually use it as a thought partner and a collaborator, what comes out the other side is so much better.
David Meerman Scott (37:50.977) It's it's amaz it was amazing. And it amazing for me to see that because, you know, I I tend to be a little bit flip. And you you might be seeing a little bit of that in this conversation. Like, yeah, yeah, just have a general, just have a human connection. Yeah. Invite your customers to get together. It's really easy. You know, like, no, it's not easy. I mean, how how do I do that? What do I do? What are the steps? and so having that help from the AI to generate those steps, and then having Jill who goes in and And then helps to reorganize, rewrite them, make them crystal clear is amazing. It's great.
Brian Bell (38:24.771) And there's a real arc here on the AI front that most authors haven't realized yet. Back in twenty three, you found out three of your books were in the books three data set, used to train models at Meta and elsewhere without your consent. tell us that story.
David Meerman Scott (38:34.72) I did. (38:40.886) And then I and there's 12 of my books that were part of the Anthropic settlement. and I've been going back and forth with the administrator on what my cut of that settlement is like $1.5 billion settlement of anth anthropic for authors that were used to train. So the first time I learned about that was in the books three database, and I think there were five books in there. I can't remember the exact number, but it's like, what? What's going on here? They illegally stole my cop my books and use that to train AI? That's not right. And then I would I would go and I would see my work. Like if I went to some of those AI engines and I typed in a, for example, I invented the concept of news jacking, which is a huge, huge important thing right now. It's in the it's actually in the Oxford English Dictionary. And you'll love this, Brian, as tech company called MuckRack. yes no two days ago, Wednesday, I appeared on their virtual event, 12 1200 people on the virtual event, where they announced a new software product partly using AI to help, and so it's their newsjacking application. So I I I love the idea that I can create something, push it out into the world for free, absolutely free. I did not try to trademark newsjacking. That's important. I didn't trademark newsjacking. I'll let anyone who want to use it. Lots and lots of people are talking about it, lots and lots of people writing about it. And this is the third or fourth software product I've noticed that have come out that's that's actually for news jacks jacking. but I forgot your question. I'm sorry. What was I I got so excited about the idea of yeah, yeah, yeah. So so so then I I would go to some of these engines and I would type in something like
Brian Bell (40:21.175) No, I wanted to know the st the backstory. The backstory of the AI and getting it removed from the data sets and stuff, yeah.
David Meerman Scott (40:35.326) How do you do newsjacking, whatever? It was apt actually my words. I could see it was my words and it was stolen. I mean, there's nothing I could do. I bitched about it on my blog and on LinkedIn and so on, but there's nothing I could really do. But then it was really interesting when that anth anthropic suit was settled because it's three thousand dollars per book. I think I have a dozen books in there. and you have to fill out the forms and whatnot. It was a kind of a pain in the ass. But you it'd be nice to check. Maybe I can send it over to you and invest it. but but as far as I know, that's that's the only one that's settled, even though there's there's quite a few other of those large language models that have stolen the same book database. So who knows if there'll be a payout for the other ones? anthropic so far is the only one that's settled with authors.
Brian Bell (41:06.703) There it is. (41:28.111) Mm-hmm. And you actually shipped your book with a companion AI chatbot. Tell us about that.
David Meerman Scott (41:33.947) actually we're not sure it's gonna ship yet. I'll tell you why. so the original idea was that you would get the fandom playbook, the physical book or the or the dig no digital book, the Kindle version. But you would get the the fandom playbook, and then you would be able to ask me my AI questions. Well, it turns out that with extensive testing.
Brian Bell (41:37.621) Hmm.
David Meerman Scott (42:04.308) it really was difficult to put the right kind of guardrails around it because people tended to put specific things about their situation that I had never talked about, and I didn't want the AI to use the entire huge database and come up and and make up answers. Here's what I mean by that. so if someone were to go into the AI and say, What are the top three ways I can grow fans in my business? It would work great for something like that. But if it were to say, if someone were to go in and say, I run a chain of restaurants in Slovakia that serves meat dishes, how do I compete with with Slovakian restaurants that serve fish? And and the AI could create something generic, but it always wanted to be specific and then people would get frustrated because the AI would would answer in a way I would answer. You know, you got to understand your buyers and you know that's sort of my my my type of answering. But then the people would get frustrated. Well yeah but they're doing fish and I'm doing me. How do I do it? and and so at the moment it's not ready for prime time. I'm not sure if it will I'm not sure if it will ever be to be honest with you.
Brian Bell (43:20.335) Yeah. I I know I know how to solve this. I think the right architecture would be a skill that you can only unlock with a purchase of the book. or maybe it's an extra purchase, frankly, of five dollars. Kind of like you'd buy the audio version of a book. And that skill now ingests inside the context window of the AI. and so you could basically use all the knowledge of the book to apply to, you know, with that super intelligent kind of state of the art AI, basically.
David Meerman Scott (43:35.639) Yeah. (43:40.449) Okay. (43:50.775) Yeah, I mean there yes, there might be ways to do it. and and I'm still working I'm still working around it. I'm in the process of launching some assessments to give you an overall readiness score for if you're ready to do AI. That will launch with the book. That will be available on my website. If you type fandom dot marketing, fandom dot marketing into your browser, that'll redirect to a huge set of free resources that I'm providing around fandom. There's no registration required whatsoever. It's all totally free. There's also an excerpt of the book that's all totally free. But there'll be an assessment on there. By the time this episode comes out, it will be live. There'll be an assessment there where you can enter it's it takes like a few minutes, like 10 minutes to enter, to answer a few multiple choice questions just pushing a button. And it'll give you some a readiness score for if you're ready to start building fans. so that's kind of cool because that's kind of bulletproof, but it was the free form stuff that was proving difficult for me and that's why I held back on the chat box.
Brian Bell (44:58.063) So you wrote kind of these original ideas before AI really took off. I mean, in my mind, AI took off fifteen years ago, but you know, the the AI that Yeah. But it really took off with Chat G GPT. Like how do you think, you know, marketing and creating fans generally has shifted in the last, you know, few years after, you know, this large language models, let's call it.
David Meerman Scott (45:04.918) Yeah, me me me too. I've I've been talking about it for a decade. I've been using it for a decade. Yeah, I I agree. Yeah. (45:23.446) Well, I mean, it was it's super interesting. I I I've been doing marketing for thirty years, professional marketing marketer for thirty years, and there's been nothing like the artificial intelligence boom. It's just been f unbelievably interesting to watch and see. And and right now it is so focused on AI, rightly, because it is a transformational technology. But whenever something is That focused on one thing and the marketing world utterly focused on artificial intelligence. Yeah, great. You need to understand it. I totally get that, totally agree with it. But that's not what I want to be an expert in. So that's why I've been focused so strongly on this idea of fandom, this so strongly on the contrarian view that when the whole world is is making artificial stuff, you're you can. stand out if you have a genuine human connection, if you're really truly engaging on a human to human level. And that can be digital. There can still be a human to human connection digitally. We're doing that right now. We're three thousand miles away from one another, but we're still having a human connection. It's so it's certainly doable digitally. But it's not my avatar talking to your avatar. It's real. It's real human. So I I love I love figuring out how you can be a contrarian and how you can engage in ways when the whole planet is doing something different.
Brian Bell (46:58.797) Yeah. What's a popular idea out there in in marketing that you think is wrong?
David Meerman Scott (47:05.574) I wouldn't say this is wrong, but it but but the idea very much forces you to do things you might not normally do, and that is chasing the social networking algorithms. so the social networking algorithms 10 years ago were basically very, very thin a thin layer over the top of what's going on. Now it's everything. You know, it the algorithm is everything. If If you don't do things correctly, your LinkedIn post will be seen by a dozen people. If you do all the algorithm stuff correctly, your LinkedIn post might go to f 3,000 people. And so what that's doing is it's forcing marketers to adjust all of the things they're doing on social networks. To be to to they're f they're they're they're modifying what they would normally do on social networks to feed the algorithm.
Brian Bell (47:53.017) Contort really. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (48:02.21) Because if you feed the algorithm, that's how you get seen. The other way you can get seen on social networks is if you pay the man. you know, so the word enchidification, which I absolutely love. I wish I could have claimed that word myself, which I but I did not. the whole idea of the social networks originally was to benefit users, individual users who are using, say, at the time Twitter or Facebook. then they morphed Into benefiting advertisers at the expense of users. Now they've morphed yet again to benefit investors at the expense of both users and advertisers. And the poor users out there. I mean, it's tough. So, you know, I I'm not saying it's wrong to chase the algorithms because if you want to get seen on social network, that's pretty much what you have to do. but it does force marketers. to contort themselves in this really weird ways to get seen by those algorithms. And I you know, I don't I don't do it myself. I don't I mean I do a few things like for example for example, don't put any
Brian Bell (49:13.017) Yeah. I don't do any of the algorithm tricks on my stuff. I mean I have a pretty robust social feed and I just put out the content I want to put out. And if people wanna listen to it, great. If they don't, that's fine and like whatever.
David Meerman Scott (49:21.292) That's what I do. That's what I do. Yeah. I I I'm the I'm the same way. And you know, there's a few things, you know, for example, on LinkedIn, don't put a live link in your LinkedIn post because LinkedIn hates linking to I mean for to an external site. Yeah, don't put it in the first comment. Exactly. Exactly right. so you know, know a couple of things like that. But what what I what I don't do is, you know, there's people who vr try to reverse engineer the algorithm and say that, you know, if you post on
Brian Bell (49:34.585) Yeah. Put it in the first comment. I do do that. Like that's one thing I do. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (49:51.467) on Instagram at least once a day and you do this, this and this and you post it this time, you're gonna get seen more. That's not for me. That's not for me. I don't wanna be a slave to the algorithm.
Brian Bell (50:01.584) Yeah, I love that. So everyone is pouring budget into influencers and paid social. we actually have some pretty fast growing startups in this area. So you've all you've written that the hiring of viral influencer of the moment barely moves the long term needle. Tell tell us about that.
David Meerman Scott (50:17.11) Yeah, you know, it's a tough one. it's a I I I I bucket that in the same category as chasing the algorithm. I I'm a very, very strong believer in when you have fans, fans talk about you. you know, I I mentioned already I'm s as we're recording this next week, I'm speaking at the HubSpot event in Unbound by the time the this episode drops, it will have already passed, but there'll be over 10,000 people there. Many of them have big social feeds, they're fans of HubSpot, they're talking about HubSpot. Those aren't paid influencers. Those are people who genuinely love HubSpot, want to talk about it, want to say they're at inbound, want to take photos and videos, share what's going on in the in the in the sessions. That's what I think is a better way to get out there. than paying somebody who may or may not even use your product or service. You know, I this influencer kind of marketing is not really something that I recommend. I mean, there can be occasions where maybe you take a chance and see what happens, but anything where you have to pay to get noticed, I would always look to how can you get that for free in a different way.
Brian Bell (51:40.794) You've repeatedly over the last couple decades in your writing, really pinpointed and named a phenomenon hap you know, like happening in marketing. I think you've done a really good job of saying, Here's what's happening marketing, here's what to know about it, and here's what to do about it. Right. And you've done this over and over and over again over the last twenty years.
David Meerman Scott (51:57.507) Yeah. I've done it a number of times. Yeah. And I've done it for my clients too. You know, like for fruit let me just give you an example and I'll then I'll listen to your question. But I keep talking about HubSpot because I've been on their advisory board for 18 years. They're 19 years, sorry, 19 years. So they're they're one of my favorite examples. I've seen them grow from next to nothing to a behemoth. but in the very early days of HubSpot, we wanted to name
Brian Bell (52:01.923) Yeah. (52:11.406) Wow.
David Meerman Scott (52:23.542) a form of marketing that they were pioneering and we came up with inbound marketing. And that was huge. I wrote the forward to the book called Inbound Marketing, like I I worked with them, like I worked with you. That was huge. But yeah, the idea of own and it's in the it's kind of like owning a category. When you when you can identify something, and in my case marketing, and I and and and own that category, the benefits are are are enormous. So
Brian Bell (52:31.565) Right. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (52:50.55) New rules of marketing in PR, inbound marketing, newsjacking, fandom marketing, which is I'm talking about right now. I think that's just super powerful. And it's super powerful for any organization, but you asked the question about from the marketing perspective.
Brian Bell (53:05.007) Well the the qu where I was going with that question is you've kind of, you know, called the balls and strikes over the last twenty years really well. What do you what do you see in your crystal ball forming now in the next few years? You know? what are your w what are some of those ideas percolating in your head about what's happening now and what you might write about next?
David Meerman Scott (53:23.934) so obviously human connection fandom, that's what I'm talking about now, I see that as being more important for the future. But but something that's really on my mind as being really, really interesting right now is is the the reemergence of traditional sorts of public relations activities as being a super powerful way to get ideas into the large language models. So the holy grail now for for marketers is how can they get found when somebody enters a query? I mean if you enter a query in Google, you know, the old days, you enter query and go in Google, you get all the blue links. Yeah, and you hope you hope that your company is in the top couple of links or obvious or better yet, the the top the Yeah, yeah, yeah. But with but with AI answer engines, there is no there is no second place.
Brian Bell (54:06.511) It's SEO optimization, keywords, all that stuff, backlinks. Yeah. In the first page, basically. You want to be on the first page. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (54:21.9) You're either in the answer or you're not in the answer. and and and
Brian Bell (54:24.455) Yeah. Well, you hoped that you're one at least one of the sources cited, right? 'Cause you know how like AI will go read dozens of sources and kind of distill it for you.
David Meerman Scott (54:30.445) Yeah. Well, th if you're doing a deep research, yes, but if someone just enters a simple query, you know, like
Brian Bell (54:35.597) Yeah. Or if you're in high mode, right? If you're on like low mode, like it probably will just read a few of the top sites. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (54:42.35) Correct. And most and most consumers are just using the basic check function, unpaid unpaid basic chat function anyway. Yeah. So what what I'm seeing, and lots of conversations I've had with a number of people who are who are pretty serious and and very plugged into the AI world, is that those answer engines, those large language models.
Brian Bell (54:46.733) Right. Unpaid low mode. Instant instant shot. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (55:09.824) Are now really focused on real-time news to help answer questions. And they're looking for who's the authority or where the authority is coming from. And therefore, some of the traditional public relations things that you know were kind of minor league over the last 10 or 20 years are reemerging. So for example,
Brian Bell (55:16.43) Hmm. (55:35.203) Mm.
David Meerman Scott (55:39.124) Really solid LinkedIn articles. I don't know if you've seen this, Brian, but I have, are starting to be surfaced in in some of the large language models. Or or bylines that get published in places like Fast Company or Forbes or Inc. or Entrepreneur are often getting cited as because it's it's a a credible source. So if you can get a byline into some of these, these digital magazines, that can be really great. Even press releases in some cases. So don't ignore the the sort of traditional public relations ways of getting attention. And it's not the you're not generating attention with people seeing your article. You're get generating attention with the machines that surface the answers that people will then see.
Brian Bell (56:34.253) Yeah. really amazing. I I feel like I could I have so many more questions, but I I know we're at time. Where can folks find the book and you online?
David Meerman Scott (56:43.34) the book should be everywhere. It's about for pre-sale into before October 27th. That's the publication date. my name, I use my middle name, which is Mearman, M-E-E-R-M-A-N, because that makes me the only David Meerman Scott in the entire planet. and I started using Meerman professionally about 30 years ago.
Brian Bell (57:06.027) I I actually put my middle name on my book because of that. Brian Robert Bell. Instead of just Brian Bell. Yeah, so many Brian Bells. Yeah.
David Meerman Scott (57:09.14) Nice, because there's so many, because there's other Brian Bells. Love it, love it. so you Google my name, you'll find me. and if you want a lot more information about fandom, then type into your browser fandom dot marketing, and that will redirect to a page on my website with tons and tons and tons of free content.
Brian Bell (57:31.535) Awesome. Thanks so much, David. Great to catch up.
David Meerman Scott (57:33.241) Thank you, Brian. Always great to see you.
