 From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hello everyone, welcome to this special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, Inc. and theCUBE. We are here with Andy Cunningham, who is the president and founder of Cunningham Collective and also the author of the book, Get To Aha, best seller online, four categories on Amazon e-book. Great book, I recommend it all. Andy, welcome to theCUBE, great to see you. Hey, it's great to be here, good to see you. You're a thought leader. First of all, you've seen many ways of innovation. You've done so much in your career. You mean I'm old. Now you're experienced, you know? We're all old here. We have no ageism issues here at SiliconANGLE, but you've done so much. And communications and PR, PR is part of communications. You've seen it all, you've done it all, and now you're helping companies. You got a great book out, which I recommend everyone should get, really kind of breaks down 35 years of experience into one book that you had. Talk about the book and your firm. First talk about Cunningham Collective, give a quick plug. So Cunningham Collective is a small marketing consultancy that focuses on positioning, which in my opinion is the epicenter of marketing. If you don't position yourself well for success, you're never going to achieve success. So the book is about a framework for figuring out how to position yourself. And it's a framework I developed probably around 17 years ago that I've been using it over the last 17 years with clients, and I find that it's super successful, especially with technology companies, and because it's an actual step-by-step sort of framework. So the book tells you how to do it, and then there are six case studies at the back of the book that show positioning and action. I want to get into the book and ask some specific questions on the positioning, but I want to get your take on, because you've seen many waves around PR, public relations, which is corporate communications and communications in general over the years. Where are we now? Because you're seeing the media business change, I mean Facebook's on the front page of all the news these days around how they sucked all the data in and fake news, all these things are happening. Companies still need to get the word out. You now have new channels, new realities. Take us through how you see the evolution of what the old way is and the new way of communications. So PR was actually invented by a guy in the 1920s named Eddie Bernays, and Eddie Bernays actually figured out that if you created a stunt-like situation, you could get the journalist to cover it. He was very strategic about it. It sounds kind of loopy, but he was very strategic about it. And he actually invented the concept, he actually invented the phrase, public relations. And he was modeling it after propaganda. That was where he came up with that phrase. So it was like that for quite a long time until we got into an era of what I would call influencer marketing. Now we call it influencer marketing, but back in the, you know, when there was a lot of investigative journalism going on, it was really just about who are the influencers that you need to influence in order to get them to say what you want them to say about your company or your product. So that was what my old boss Regis McKenna called the he said, she said journalism. If you're gonna launch something into the marketplace, you need to get all the he saids and the she saids to say what you want them to say before you actually say it yourself because the journalists are gonna go back to those people and they're gonna corroborate your story or not. So the idea was influence the influencers and then you can get your story. That lasted for about probably 30 years that era. Now we're in an era that I call, it's the era of content marketing. And really what happens today is you almost don't even need the journalists at all because first of all, there aren't very many of them left. And second of all, there's so many channels available to ourselves as communicators that if you build a digital footprint that has a great story in it that is compelling and consistent and you keep saying the same key messages over and over again. You build yourself a digital footprint that actually becomes, starts to take over the word of mouth that we talked about earlier because word of mouth is really what it's all about. But word of mouth happens today because it results from a giant digital footprint about your story. I remember back in business school, back in the day in the 90s when I got my MBA, the advertising class would break down. You need a copy strategy because reach media and print ads and radio really was the old school media and frequency was the certain, was it for say radio, print, you get time to read it so all the specs get laid out and reach is reach, right? So you broadcast cable or TV impression. Kind of digital brings everything kind of weaves it all together but you mentioned frequency. Why is frequency so important because is that because of the targeting? Is that because there's not a lot of reach? It's more specialized, which it's possible. It's still the same reason. So there's a thing called the marketing rule of seven and that means that a person needs to hear your message seven times before it seeps into their brain and they actually either decide to do something about it or not do something about it but that's what creates awareness, seven times. So that still is true today as it was before but now it's so much easier because now you don't have to buy ads to do it. You don't even have to pay a PR person to do it. You just fill your own social channels, your own website, your own blogs, your own vlogs, your own video. You just fill up your own personal channels, however many that you have with your own story and then once it's out there as a digital footprint then it's time to start talking to the journalism community which is smaller than it used to be but those who are left are pretty good. The Washington Post is pretty good, The New York Times is pretty good. So you call up the guy at The New York Times and you pitch him on your story and instead of trying to spend a bunch of time pitching him you just refer him back to some one of your channels. He Googles it, he gets online and he sees, oh my God, there's a giant story here because you've built the story. So you have so much more control today. We have so much more control over our stories. So the way to pitch then, based on what you're saying is to have the raw materials out there so they can make their story. Exactly, we put it out there and then the journalists just find it. It's like an Easter egg hunt, like look under that tree there. Here's a clip of an expert that's talking about something that you might be interested in. This is the new model, have the assets real. Obviously we love that given what we do but I want to get that to the book and the years of experience you have on this but before we do that, I got to ask you when I was watching the Steve Jobs movie, you're on the stage and you're part of that. You must guess. Well, an actress was. An actress was, well, not you, but your role. You were very instrumental, hectic days, people who know Steve and know the Apple days. What did you learn from that that's in the book from the Apple days and what has changed from the Apple days now is there's some things that are similar, obviously the world's changed but what are some of the key learnings that came out of those magical moments? So my biggest key learning was, we spent about six months with Steve working on the messaging for the launch of the Macintosh and we got it down to a series of what I now call memes that were just very, very, the computer for the rest of us was one of them, right? Everybody remembers that one. Small footprint was another one. Nobody remembers that anymore. Easy to use was another one. There was a series of these things to explain the Macintosh. We then went through a process of educating 100 journalists about that and pumping them with those key messages at every juncture. Then we go to DeAnza College and we did the big launch. We said those messages again and there's a bunch of TV people around and everybody reported on it and I'm driving home in the car after the show was over with. I turn on the radio and there's the messages that I had written coming back at me over and over and again. I changed the station, same thing over and over again. The Macintosh was launched today and this is what everybody's saying the same things. It gave me chills. It was like, wow, this really works. And that lesson that I learned with Steve is the same lesson Eddie Bernays learned 100 years ago. It's the same lesson Regis McKenna learned with influencing the influencers and it's the same lesson people can learn today. You just get to, you get to aha with a slightly different strategy and today it's about building a big digital footprint before you ever talk to anybody. And I think this is key to the book and one of the things that you mentioned earlier that's clearly in the book and this is a lesson for the folks watching and learn from this is that positioning is critical before the branding. The knee-jerk reaction for most people, new person, let's rebrand. Let's get some new logos out there. You're taking a contrarian view or based on experience and success. Position first, brand later or brand second. Thoughts on that, why is this so important? Obviously, the specific successes you had but what other reasons are important? Well, I learned this because the first part of my career I would get called in after somebody had already hired a branding firm and they rebranded everything, got a new logo, new tagline, new color palette, all of this stuff and a few bits of copy that were really sexy and interesting. But they were finding it wasn't sticking. It wasn't making a difference in their sales because really at the end of the day we're all here to sell stuff, right? So I would come in and I would realize, oh my God, you did all this first. You didn't figure out your positioning strategy, like who are you in the market and why do you matter? Those two questions are the two most important questions anybody can ask themselves as a marketer or as a CEO. Who are you and why do you matter? If you can't answer those questions, doing a branding exercise is a waste of money. Talk about the conflict involved when you work with a client or when you have to get to this moment, this aha moment. Sometimes it's not apparent, sometimes it's pretty clear. Sometimes you might think you're one but you're really another. There's always maybe opinions about what people are in terms of a company. Internally amongst executives or the stakeholders. How do you figure it out? Is there a golden rule or what's your take on how to get to that moment of self-reflection? Sure, that's actually the key point of the book. It's based, positioning, really good positioning should be based on what your DNA as a company is. And the book tells you how to determine what is your DNA. But at the end of the day, there are three kinds of companies. There are product-focused companies. I happen to call them mechanics. There are customer-focused companies. I call them mothers. And there are concept-focused companies. I call them missionaries. And interestingly, each of these types of companies do things entirely differently. They talk about different things in meetings. They hire different kinds of people. They train them differently. They measure success differently. They market themselves differently. The DNA is reflected in their actions. So when I'm sitting around a workshop with a client, we have to determine are they a mother, are they a missionary, or are they a mechanic, before we can actually figure out how to create marketing around them. So that's the biggest thing is there's some people over here who say, oh, we're a product company. These people say, no, we're trying to change the world. And these people say, no, no, no, we're all about the customer. And the discussion that you have around that is actually where the aha moment comes when you decide, OK, we really are a customer-focused company. Doesn't mean the other two things go away. They just take a back seat to the marketing. So everybody has to agree that that's what they're going to move forward with. And that's what makes it so much fun. It's like doing a Myers-Briggs test for a company. Everybody loves that, right? Oh, I'm an INTJ. I'm an EN, whatever the letters are. And they say, I'm not that. I'm really into something else. But there's always company. But you also mentioned in the book that people can change, too. So you start out as something, maybe a missionary, evolve based upon the business change. Talk about that, Daniel. Yeah, so let's talk about Apple for a second, because that's a company that definitely was a missionary. And missionaries exist to change behavior on a fundamental level, and that was what Steve Jobs was all about, right? So when he was running the company, even before he was running it, but he was a big influencer there, he basically was a missionary company. He was trying to change behavior, and that's what the Macintosh was all about. But after he passed away, he left the assets of the company in the hands of Tim Cook, who, by the way, is an amazing, an amazing caretaker of those assets. I mean, he's grown them. He's turned them into, it turned the company into one of the world's most valuable companies. But unfortunately, he's not a missionary. And what he has done is he has kind of tried to keep the missionary thing going, but he hasn't been successful doing that. So what's happened is the market is turning Apple into a product-focused company. And the leadership is not steering the company in that direction. They are trailing. And so it's happening to Apple, in other words. So you're going to start to see Apple focus more and more on product over the years, which they have been, but they're starting to have some product issues. And I think that's the result of them not steering the company directly into this product direction. And finding that DNA and filling the head count or hiring people to get the new DNA up and running. Exactly, and just on that same point, Amazon is a company that is doing this to the market. So Amazon started as a product company, and now they're steering themselves purposefully into a customer-focused company. And if you go online and you check out their new mission statement, it's to be Earth's most customer-centric company. And this is the reason Jeff Bezos bought Zappos a number of years ago. It wasn't because Jeff couldn't figure out how to sell shoes online. Of course he couldn't. It was because he was buying that customer-centric culture. So he's purposefully steering the company into the customer direction. So you can change your DNA, but it ain't easy. I've been with Andy Jassy many times. Become a good friend on theCUBE as well. He's the word customer so many times, we can see the frequency. But they've been talking customer for a long time. So you say they were a product company. This is Amazon, you're talking about? Amazon Web Services. Are they a missionary? Are they product-focused? Because I think product would be, I think a safe one to say. I think early on meaning, they started this customer transition probably five or six years ago. But they were very much early on a product company. I think in Bezos' head, they were actually a missionary, but he never would go out and say that. What did he say about Amazon? We're an online bookseller. And oh, by the way, books are going so well, now we're going to do music. And now we're going to, you know. That's product. It took about, it's a product. It was product, product, product until he decided that he was going to eat the universe one bite at a time. And so in order to be successful with that, he has to have a customer, he feels he has to have customer relationships that are going to stick with him over the course of a lifetime. So you know a little about theCUBE. What's theCUBE? What are we? A missionary project? I think you're a missionary. I mean, you're trying to change behavior on a fundamental level. And you know, it's amazing what you've done. We had this great conversation beforehand and I learned about all the new things you're working on and it's groundbreaking, groundbreaking stuff. Okay, final question on the book is the funniest or craziest reaction you've had to it, either someone emailing you or a testimonial. Wow, craziest reaction. Because it's pretty inspiring. You break it down pretty simply, but it's really a core fundamental practice. And I've read a lot of marketing books in my day. A lot of these book authors come out of process improvement. This cuts to the chase. It's really a strong book. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's designed to be very... What's the biggest accolade you've heard or craziest comment about it? Well, this is the most recent thing I can think of. I ended up becoming number one on Amazon's e-book thing and four categories just like two weeks ago. And I got more social media coverage on that than anything else in my entire life. It's the most amazing thing that I've ever seen and all these congratulations. And you know, their category is not like, it's not like a New York Times bestseller. It's like, you're the best multi-marketing book. You're the best small business marketing book, those kinds of things. And it just blew up. It went viral. That's awesome. It's all online. What made you write the book? Was it a moment? When was the aha moment for you saying, you know what, I got to put the book together? Was it something that you had in mind that you got this data collective institutional knowledge of the trade? When was the aha moment for you to write the book? Well, this framework that I developed here has been working for me really successfully for like 17 years. And I just decided that, wow, other people should know how to do this. Because when we hire, not when we hire, when someone hires us, it's like $150,000 worth of work to do what we do. They could do it for $22.99 or whatever the heck this thing costs these days. And occasionally, you can get it. And they got an e-book out there too. It's number one of four categories. And an audio book as well. So I really wanted to spread the word about this framework and this methodology. Because I really believe that inside my core of myself that the epicenter of great marketing is positioning. And if you don't get that right, you will never succeed with any of the rest of it. So do the positioning first. Well, great book. You've got a great track record. I've seen my personal success up close. Congratulations on that. Let's talk about companies now. I want to get back to successful companies. You had a lot of conversations. I had to build the rocket ship. So we live in Silicon Valley. There are rocket ships that get there. There are. You know, go big or go home. Blitz scaling, as Reid Hoffman would say. I endorsed that 100%. I think there's use cases clearly for blitz scaling. Other people have been throwing him under the bus saying that culture is not what we want and build a stable business. And so the basis side, there's two types of companies. There's the, okay, I'm going to build this company. I might not know when the growth's going to be there. And then there's the big venture back category changer rocket ships. Can you tell about the success criteria in your mind of both companies around positioning, approaches, things that you've seen in the past that work well? I think companies that understand who they are and why they matter are the ones that succeed. And it's also important that they have a good leader, a good, strong leader. But if you don't know who you are and why you matter, you can't build a new category. You can't even launch a new product. So I, you know, take a look at some of the companies that have done that well. Netflix has done that extremely well, right? Airbnb has done that extremely well. Slack has done that really well. Microsoft is doing it really well again, right? They went through a downtime and now, you know, their new CEO, Satya Nadella, is doing an unbelievable job with positioning. They're so much a product company and he's not trying to make them into a customer company. He's trying to double down on the product. So and Netflix is a missionary company. They're changed behavior on a fundamental level. The Microsoft's a great example because I think that's something, they didn't do anything radical on the product side. They looked at the tailwind of cloud computing and AI and said, let's throw the sales up there and let's get everyone behind it. They'll need to open source. And then they branded it. So they positioned themselves as a cloud company and then they branded it as Azure. So, you know. Tailwind's concept of trends. Pat Gelson said, if you're not out from that next wave, you could be driftwood. Riding the waves are certainly a big part of jumping on a successful or tailwind, some call it. How important is to have that positioning time to something that's trendy or something like that? Oh, that's a great question because the context in which you are actually putting something into the market is critical. So you have to really understand what are the waves that you want to ride and can ride and don't try to be riding a wave that passed five years ago or that hasn't shown up yet. You might think there's a wave coming. That's the biggest danger of a lot of these high tech startups is that they see a vision of something way down the line and there's no way for them to ride today and they launch their technology too early. And to your point, if they don't have the positioning right, they won't be able to ride it. You know what they want to. Right, they won't be able to ride it. So if they did a proper positioning exercise before that, they would realize that the context in which they're doing this is not right for what they're saying. So they have to pivot a little bit. And this is where pivots come from, right? So you have to pivot a little bit to make yourself relevant for the market today. And that's an important thing. Andy, final question for the folks watching and saying, oh, I love the book. I'm going to get it. Might have help. Might need help in saying, I need to call in Andy and the team or figure it out. What are some of the tell signs that they're not getting it right? Or what are some of these, when they need to call for help? And how do people move to the next level? Some people might say, hey, you know, we need help. We can't get consensus. The leader might not be strong enough. Could be a leadership transition. Could be a new wave that people have identified. This is a tough challenge of self-awareness. What is it, some of the tell signs and how does someone actually make the change? It is a tough, and most CEOs are not in tune enough with themselves to know those things. So what happens is they launch it and then they don't get traction. So the biggest reason why people call me is they're not getting traction. Now the really smart ones do more analysis like what you're talking about. Oh, there's something has changed in the context. So I better shift this or, you know, a competitor has come up with something that sounds awful, an awful lot like ours. Maybe we better get ahead of that. But that takes a really strategic CEO. And there are some of those out there, but not everyone is. Okay, so great book here. Getting to, ah-ha. Everyone get it. Good one, I read it. Give it to Dave Vellante. He's reading it. Thanks for coming on. It's been the time. Thank you, John. Communication, just find the word on the communications world. What's the message to folks out there? CMO's out there and head of communications. What's the future look like for them? What should they do going forward to be successful? Well, the future of marketing is really figuring out how to make word of mouth, you know, explode word of mouth, because that's why people buy things. You know, you told me I should check out this product or my book you said you told your friend I should check out the book, so he does. So it's all about word of mouth and it starts with building a big digital footprint yourself and then going to the press side. Awesome. Andy, cutting him here in Palo Alto Studios. I'm John Furrier with CUBE Conversations. Thanks for watching.