How failure planning can succeed [Kính màu hoa hồng]

An interesting question came up recently in a marketing group I follow on social media: “What content should we create?”

The first few comments on the post are what you might suspect. Some people encourage posters to interview people who match their personalities to find out what they struggle with. Others talk about passing writer block . Some suggest they list every question their potential customers might have and write posts about that.

The original poster responded by acknowledging the value of these responses but clarifying the question. They don't ask what they should write that will resonate with their target audience. They are looking for content ideas that can drive the most reactions. Dots.

They want to create controversy, provocation and virality. Theory: Do something that makes some noise and inspires a reaction, then the right people will notice your other content, focusing on what you do.

Predictably, the tone of the discussion shifted to a heated debate about the flawed (if not moral) notion of the theory. Let's save that discussion for another day.

But it got me thinking. Is there a case where it makes sense to deliberately put out content you don't like, agree with or endorse – with the express purpose of failing?

My answer is yes.

Is there a situation where you should publish #content with the explicit goal of failing? Yes, @Robert_Rose speaks via @CMIContent. Click to Tweet

Why deliberately failing can be a good thing

We all know failure can be a useful outcome. There are whole books about how people tend to learn more from failure than from success.

But the concept is almost always glossed over in the context of failure when trying to succeed. In other words, you do your best to get something done – and something in that approach has failed. The lesson is that you should do something different.

I'm interested in what happens when you deliberately try to fail or at least try something that the world considers incorrect. You can confirm what you expect or be surprised with the results.

Of course, some activities show this approach better than others. For example, I will not try to fail when learning to fly an airplane. However, in marketing – and especially content – this approach gives you an invaluable opportunity to expand your toolkit.

According to the book Brilliant Mistakes by Paul Schoemaker, advertising icon David Ogilvy frequently makes intentional mistakes. He would run ads that he and his group of clients had turned down just to test their collective thinking. Most will fail. But a few, including the Hathaway shirt advertisement that covers the eyes Iconic – will become the legendary campaign.

Think of creating time, money or content to test your core instincts. I don't mean running a simple A/B test to gauge two good attempts. That just determines which resonates better.

I recommend trying a piece of content that offers an idea that you flatly reject. Or try invest in a channel which from every angle looks wrong. For example, at the end of this month, I will try TikTok. I am 99.9% sure I will fail spectacularly.

What if you invest in a channel that from every angle looks wrong? Going forward, @Robert_Rose will try on #TikTok via @CMIContent. Click to Tweet But what if I'm wrong?

There is a famous quote by IBM founder Thomas J. Watson: " If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” To me, there seems to be only one mathematical way to double your failure rate – and that is if you deliberately try to fail from time to time.

How to fail on purpose?

A friend and I have a funny saying that we often say to each other when we fail an exam at school. We would say, “I would rather have zero than 59.”

Why? Since getting 59 means we tried and still failed.

Of course, we're not saying no one should try. We are silly teenagers.

In content marketing, we know the value of experimentation and experimentation. However, most testing is done to confirm an initial assumption. In fact, the core part of A/B testing is hypothesis formation first. You have a suspected or proven winner and you test an alternate version to see if it performs better.

Intentional fouling is a little different. In these tests, you assume you will fail.

What is the value of doing that?

Well, there can be two valid outcomes. One is that you confirm your assumptions about failure and learn something. Second, you succeed (in other words, you fail) and that long shot may well pay off. Even if it doesn't, you've learned something.

If you intentionally make a mistake and succeed, not only will you learn something, but you may also get the results you deserve, @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent said. #ContentMarketing Click to post a Tweet There are different flavors of intentional mistakes. One of my favorites was made by the VP of marketing for a large B2B company. Over the years, they have accumulated tens of thousands of subscribers to their email newsletter. Every week they carefully email 90,000 newsletters and weekly, the engagement rate is extremely low.

So the vice president did an interesting thing. He sent a large, but absent, registered audience an email with the subject line : Sorry to see you go.

In the body of the email, the copy lets the recipient know that the company is sorry they have unsubscribed from the newsletter. Still, the text goes on, if they think this unsubscribe might have been in error, they can respond by clicking through to a survey.

This move was clearly a deliberate mistake. Certainly most, if not all, of these subscribers will not engage with the email. But their marketing team decided they made a worthwhile mistake and risked losing 30,000 — plus people signed up to see if they could shoot with this unbundled audience.

Result? About 60% have never responded or clicked and received officially unsubscribed from the newsletter. But 40% clicked and replied, “No, this is a mistake.” They haven't unsubscribed yet. For a while, this email had the highest click-through rate.

Another surprising result? Of those who responded, about 10% said they were interested in subscribing to another topic addressed by the company.

The VP of marketing told me, “We learned a lot from that 'mistake'.”

There are several key times when intentional mistakes can have implications for your content marketing:

1. Little to lose

Obviously, risk plays a big part in how intentionally you make a big mistake. For example, skydiving is not the best activity where a deliberate mistake can pay off. You don't want to publish a piece of content that is completely unbranded, causes legal or compliance issues, or actually offends your audience. But like the VP of marketing for that B2B company. What could they lose but a third of an unattractive email database?

2. Institutional, rigid rules

When you make a mistake on purpose, it's more likely to go your way when the mistake goes against a rigid, outdated institutional rule or convention. A great example of this is the marketing for the movie Deadpool. For the most part, it was a campaign filled with deliberate missteps. Perhaps the biggest is its outdoor billboard campaign with images a skull, a poop emoji, and the letter "L" with release date. Adweek called the campaign "so stupid, so genius."

Billboard containing a skull, poop emoji, and letter L.

How about the rule that says never publish blog posts on weekends? Everyone said it didn't work, and publishing on those days was a mistake. Why not make that “mistake” and see what happens?

3. You are new

The optimal time to make a deliberate mistake is when you are new to a particular problem or challenge. That's when your audience, clients, or colleagues are most likely to forgive your mistakes – and then, of course, you can refer to the first moment above.

One of my good friends has been the CMO of several startups. He told me that when he joins a new company, he will take a “listening tour” to hear from practitioners. He often introduces a marketing novice mistake into the conversation to see if a practitioner pushes back, corrects the mistake, or just moves on with the process. Certainly, he ran the risk of being inexperienced. But, he said, what's more important is that they start to equalize, and he can initiate a dialogue with his new colleague.

Failed Failed

Of course, not every willful mistake ends up being successful. After all, sometimes a mistake is a mistake – and making it on purpose will get you exactly what you asked for.

Only one thing is guaranteed: If you only fail when we try not to, you may miss out on proof that you should trust your initial instincts.