Why social media is like ranch dressing

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jan 27, 2012 in Advertising, Foodblogging, Marketing | 0 comments

Have you ever wondered what the heck ranch dressing is? I have. It’s very tasty stuff, making almost anything better. According to Wikipedia, it was first invented in 1954 by the Henson family at their dude ranch, the Hidden Valley Ranch. Eventually, it became so popular that in 1972, it was bought by Clorox (yes, the bleach maker) and made commercially available. Internet-savvy cooks have managed to replicate the original recipe as follows:

1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon dried chives
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Mix well and let sit overnight.

Ranch dressing is known for its ability to make just about anything taste better. Salad, snacks, baked potatoes, you name it, ranch dressing can probably improve it, which is why it overtook Italian dressing in 1992 as the best-selling salad dressing in the world.

It’s also known for being hideously bad for you in larger quantities, since 2 tablespoons clock in at about 145 calories, 94% of which is fat.

Finally, Clorox had to work some scary chemical magic to make it shelf-stable, since so much of the recipe is dairy-based and would otherwise spoil within days of making it. Take a look at your generally available commercial bottle of dressing and you’ll find antifungal drugs like natamycin in it. This is why it’s generally a better idea to copy the recipe above and make it at home when needed.

Here’s the thing about ranch dressing: its powers only go so far. Put ranch dressing on a salad and it makes for a better salad. If the salad is really good to begin with, you don’t need much dressing. If the salad is a pile of shredded iceberg lettuce that’s wilted, you’re going to be making ranch dressing soup in order to be able to eat it.

You can (though you shouldn’t) put ranch dressing on things like piles of paper shreddings. Again, it’ll be barely edible, but the dressing will manage to help you overcome what is otherwise something you wouldn’t eat.

So what does a very tasty salad dressing have to do with social media? In many ways, social media is just like ranch dressing:

1. You have to do a lot of crazy things to it if you’re not making it fresh yourself. The end product is okay, but not nearly as good (or good for you) as when you do it yourself.

2. It will improve just about any product or service to some degree to make it more palatable.

3. It’s bad for you in large quantities. After all, if you spend 100% of your time on social, you’re spending 0% of your time on your actual business.

4. If your product or service is bad, you can overcome it to some degree, but you and your company’s health are much better off making a better product or service first, and then adding social media to it afterwards.

Enjoy the salad and the social media!

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4 signs that you’re not actually a marketing ninja

Posted by Christopher S Penn on Jan 26, 2012 in Marketing, Ninjutsu | 8 comments

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” – Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

Marketers love hyperbole, and when we ran out of superlatives like guru, expert, and maven, we turned to sillier superlatives like ninja. However, like many foreign loan-words, you have to be careful about using it. Here are 4 signs you’re not actually a ninja, and therefore probably shouldn’t use the word in your marketing efforts unless you want to be laughed at a whole lot.

1. You can’t spell or say ninjutsu correctly. In fact, the Japanese language escapes you.

2. You don’t practice the martial art of ninjutsu. There’s one surviving lineage of ninjutsu, from Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi of Noda City, Japan, and his many students around the planet including my teacher, Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center, and his teacher, Stephen K. Hayes. If you seriously claim to be a ninja, you had better be training at an actual ninjutsu dojo.

3. You don’t know what ninja were actually good at. Most ninja, during their miserable “golden age” (hey, who wants to be a refugee from the losing side of one of the civil wars that will be killed on sight?) were information gatherers, not assassins or martial arts experts. A webinar by an actual ninja would be highly interactive, where the presenter never presented any actual content but just kept asking the crowd for information for 45 minutes in one giant Q&A session.

4. You feature ninja outfits in your marketing. The black martial arts do-gi isn’t something historical ninja ever wore. Ever. It’s a holdover from Japanese theater – the stage hands and prop handlers wore them so as not to distract the audience. What did real ninja wear? Well, if your goal is secrecy and blending in, you wore what everyone else wore. Today, you’d be wearing a business suit or a sweater and jeans or whatever’s normal in your part of the world. The keyword is: boring. Your appearance as an actual ninja should be so boring and unappealing that no one even wants to look at you. I suppose a true social media ninja would wear a blazer and jeans.

It’s a tribute to the modern day ninja masters like Hatsumi sensei or An-Shu Hayes that the word ninja is held in such general high regard. For centuries in Japan, being called a ninja was right up there with being called a mercenary, thief, or prostitute. Now it’s being used by marketers everywhere. That’s some great marketing for you!

Bonus: if you’re a real ninja, you know why this post only has 4 tips.

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Want to read more like this from Christopher Penn? If so, please subscribe right now!

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Marketing White Belt Basics for Digital Marketers is now on Amazon & B&N

Watch me speak: Attend virtually!

I recommend: for Twitter audience building.