Are CEOs From 100 Years Ago Cringing at Today's Content-Creating Business Owners?

Jordan: My name is Jordan McFadyen. Welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. This podcast is designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of marketing and challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning intentional marketing strategies. Great to have Aarti back on the podcast today as well. Afternoon, Aarti. How are you?

Aarti: Hi, good. Thanks for having me again. I’m a bit of a regular now.

Jordan: And this one started actually with a conversation in the office as well.

Aarti: It did.

Jordan: And it was one of those conversations that we kind of had, and I was like, oh, we should have actually just had two microphones and push record, because it was interesting to kind of hear both points of view. And it’s having a look at a post that I saw on social media recently. It kind of bothered me a little bit when I just kind of saw it. I got it sent to me. And the post, so just to explain the post, about what it looked like: it was like a meme on Instagram. And it was a clip of Seinfeld. Now, you’re a Seinfeld fan.

Aarti: I’m a Seinfeld fan. I love it.

Jordan: I don’t actually know what the clip was referring to, the actual video clip, but the caption itself was talking about how every business owner in 2024 is being forced to also become a content creator, accompanied by a video of Seinfeld clearly doing something.

Aarti: Distressed.

Jordan: Yeah. And then the caption of the post, which essentially said, would business owners from 100 years ago be appalled at what business owners are having to do today to market their business? Maybe I was bothered by those posts because I happen to be one of those business owners that is having to actually use myself as content and as part of our marketing. Or is it the other way? So I can kind of see both sides of the coin here.

Aarti: Yeah. Then we kind of went into, yes, we’re doing different kind of formats, but ultimately, has every business since way back when been doing some type of content marketing forever anyway?

Jordan: Well, yeah. Then so that was a big thing, was when I have a look at it. And the reason I think it bothered me is because then I started thinking about, okay, clearly content isn’t a new thing. Content has been around a very long time. And the fact that content has been used to market businesses has also been around a really long time. So that got me thinking: there must be some really well-established businesses and successful businesses that have done well that required some level of content, and some level of the leadership team, or the founder, the CEO, whatever, to actually have been a part of some of that content as well.

Jordan: We need to look at both sides of the coin here: that, yes, there are some really key examples that I really want to share with you today around businesses back in the day that have done really well based on content marketing. But also, as you’ve pointed out, not every business needs to follow this trend as well.

Aarti: Yeah, I think there’s a level of creating content for content’s sake. And I think that we’re in an age of just ridiculous amounts of content all the time. So it’s this balance, I think, for some businesses. And I think we have differing views on some of this stuff. But I think that, yeah, ultimately, back in the day, content was still relevant. And today, content is more relevant maybe than ever.

Jordan: We’re going to talk about some examples of what that looked like in the past and what it looks like now. I have gone to my good research assistant, Claude.ai. I don’t know if you’re using Claude.ai, but it is a great tool, especially for writing. And if you need assistance and having like a copywriting editor or a research buddy, I find it really good. So I put in there, essentially, I uploaded this meme, and I put in the caption, and I said, surely there were businesses 100 years ago, and business owners, that needed to rely on content marketing and putting themselves out there to build the businesses and the empires that they grew.

Jordan: And luckily, there were some actually really good examples. There were quite a few international examples. I’ve tried to pull it back as much to Australia, New Zealand as possible. And even when you think about that, there was some that kind of surprised me, and some that you think, oh, yeah. The first one was Thomas Edmonds. So we all know Edmonds from the baking products. So I had a look in the pantry the other day. We still use the baking powder.

Aarti: Baking powder, baking soda, wouldn’t buy another brand, always Edmonds. Isn’t it funny?

Jordan: Yeah. And then you think about Thomas Edmonds. So, kicked off the Sure to Rise cookery book. And Sure to Rise even turned into a bit of a marketing slogan that was used across all the products.

Aarti: I think it still is on the boxes, isn’t it?

Jordan: I think so. Of some sort. But Edmonds, Thomas Edmonds, obviously started a baking powder business, 1879. This is going back. So I’m going back in the archives of this one. And as a marketing tool, decided to publish the Sure to Rise cookery book. And that was in 1908, that they decided to create this piece of content, which then became like an absolute staple in New Zealand kitchens.

Aarti: It’s a cultural icon, really, isn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t see many Kiwi families who don’t have a version of that. We’ve got, from my family home, a tattered one, and I’ve got a new one for my kids. So it’s pretty institutionalised.

Jordan: It’s pretty amazing. And when you think about it as well, genius as well. So obviously it was created in a way to actually promote the use of the products, which makes sense. And there’s heaps of examples of content being able to do that. But then it’s kind of essentially spawned like a whole second business for them as well, in terms of the book did become a bit of a cultural icon. By 1955, it had sold over half a million copies, which is pretty incredible.

Aarti: For that time, that’s pretty insane, isn’t it?

Jordan: Yeah, it is. It is. And then by 2020, having sold over 3 million copies, one of New Zealand’s best-selling books of all time. And as you say, it just became like a real household name. And it all started with baking powder, and the founder, the leadership team, the business, deciding to use content to encourage use of that product.

Aarti: It’s an amazing use of a marketing tool, to build a recipe book, essentially, to market your product. And that’s a form of content creation that has nothing to do really with the product itself. It’s a subset to be able to educate, inform users on how to use your product, essentially.

Jordan: Yeah. What a clever and amazing way to do that. We go back even further now. John Deere, very similar idea. Obviously, we all know John Deere, and the company started with the steel ploughs, but it’s turned into tractors and everything in the agricultural sector. They published a magazine called The Furrow, and it was for farmers, and it is still, I understand, in circulation today. It started off as just a bit of a product catalogue, but they found that the more that they included, like, informative agricultural journal-type content in there, the more it got picked up, the more storytelling they could put in there. So it wasn’t just a catalogue. It was more trying to share the stories, and informative stories, to kind of build up that community of people.

Jordan: And, again, very similar story to the Edmonds cookbook, is The Furrow is still the largest agricultural farming magazine in the world. Still got the largest circulation, still being published today, and, obviously, John Deere’s a bit of a household name among farmers worldwide. And, again, another cool example of content and a business kind of going, thinking a bit different, getting themselves out there to try and find that little niche there, yeah?

Aarti: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s incredible that these types of things also started in, obviously, print, historically. That makes sense, that these kind of print publications were super popular, because that was the content format of the time, right? And so I think that’s an interesting element to it as well. But the actual words and the things that you’re putting in it are very similar.

Jordan: Even from these two examples so far, it’s pretty clear that content marketing, and using content to actually market the business and build these brands and communities, is really important. But I think the thing is, and it takes me back to that original post, that meme that was shared around how business owners 100 years ago would be turning over in their graves seeing what business owners today are having to do. Very similar thing, just very different mediums, different technology that we’re having to deal with.

Jordan: My last example before we get into that as well was Arthur Yates. So Yates is obviously synonymous with seeds and planting and things like that. Started with their first seed catalogue in 1887, which not only just included product listings, but very similar to the John Deere example, and even to the point to the Edmonds example as well. The catalogue evolved into a Yates garden guide, first published back in 1895, still in print today.

Aarti: Another prime example of essentially building like a gardener’s Bible that is still read. I know that we’ve actually, funnily enough, got a Yates book that we use. When we first bought property, we got ourselves one of those outdoor garden beds, and we got one of these Yates garden books, so you know when to plant the seeds, how often they need watering and everything like that. And so still today, it is helping customers and consumers to actually use the products even better. And another example of, like, informative content marketing. And it’s helped to really build trust, I think. Obviously, when these brands build these types of things, and then people are talking about having the Edmonds Sure to Rise cookbook, as a classic example, it’s something that people can bond over. It’s something that people then talk about. And it’s something that then becomes this household name that people trust to keep purchasing, and be repeat customers over and over again. And I think with all three of those brands, that is quite relevant.

Jordan: Speaking from, and as, a business owner who puts themselves on camera and in part of our content, this takes me all the way back to that post. And why it bothered me is because, doing the research and having a look at some of these other businesses, I don’t think that business owners would be turning over in their grave from 100 years ago. So I think it’s just the technology and how it’s changed, how we’re having to adapt, how now we are having to get our mobile phones and cameras out, and podcasting. It’s just different mediums of being able to do essentially the same ideas that have been done time and time again. So let’s chat about some of those changes. How has technology forced us into doing this?

Aarti: There’s this massive part of it that I think, for me, I’m a bit old school. I quite love a long format content, like that style of a cookbook or a guide. I quite like that style of content, but that’s just like a personal preference. But I think, the younger generation, content that’s being consumed now is much shorter, much quicker, needs to be more snappy. And like you said, technology has brought another whole element into it that is image, video, audio, AI, user-generated content. Things that are way more short and snappy are now kind of what’s required. And social media is a massive part of that.

Jordan: So if we break it down a little bit and think about all those different avenues of where we can be marketing ourselves at the moment, the evolution of content: the three examples we’ve shared so far are all to do around books and to do our own guides. But let’s just go through some of these things of how content has changed and has kind of evolved over time. Thinking firstly around the medium that we’re sharing right here. We’ve got two mediums. We also sometimes do a third, because we release this as an email or a blog or anything like that as well. But starting with, like, podcasts, and a way of being able to use podcasts to kind of share different ideas and different stories. So that kind of audio format, like you said, we’ve got video format.

Aarti: I think also the other massive one that generally most businesses have these days, unless they’re super offline, is just your basic website. Most, if not almost all, businesses these days have some sort of web presence, so that they can be searched, found and contacted. And I think that, at the very highest level, is kind of where people have to be at to be relevant and be found. I mean, people aren’t using the Yellow Pages anymore. They’re not using any really other format other than going to Google and being able to find and contact the people that they need to, the people that they’re trying to find.

Jordan: That’s actually a really good point, just around even the evolution of some of those older tools, like the Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages, that’s a great example. And that’s even something that’s happened in our generation, and even literally over the past few years. I remember when my wife and I bought our first business, one of the first things I remember we looked at was the Yellow Pages listing. I remember it was one of the first pieces of marketing, because it happened to be around the time that we bought the business that the Yellow Pages were kind of getting ready for their next edition. And that was kind of the first thing that was in the book. And it was one of those ones of, shit, we’ve got to do it.

Jordan: And now, looking back, again, it’s completely different. That was probably only around maybe eight or nine years ago that we were having those discussions about the Yellow Pages, and how much that’s changed even over that short amount of time.

Aarti: But I also remember the time when Yellow Pages was becoming digital. So you would have your contact listing on the webpage of Yellow Pages, which also, again, feels quite hilarious, because you’re like, why wouldn’t you just freely do it yourself? But that was where, that was the evolution for Yellow Pages, to then list their book digitally.

Jordan: Yeah. Right. And now, I mean, unfortunately, they’re pretty irrelevant. But the other thing that we need to think about here, we’re opening up a can of worms now, is some of the platforms that we’re using now. Even, let’s think about, probably not to the same extent, with Google. But the way that we use Google now: potentially, back in the day, referring to the Yellow Pages was like a normal part of being able to find information or contact somebody. Now it’s like, we’ll just Google it. I wonder how that’s even going to change over the next few years.

Aarti: I know.

Jordan: And even over the next 10 years, is it going to be that we’re still going to Google things? Or is it that we are actually going to be referring and using our AI assistants to help find this information instead?

Aarti: I think even using… If you think about evolution, it’s just massively changing even before our own eyes right now, you know? Even you mentioned Claude before, but being able to have that AI understanding of the type of information you need, and the type of format that you want to read it, just coming up at you within this chat function, suddenly you’re… I mean, I personally am not doing as many Google searches, because I’m just asking AI what I want to see. And it’s coming up, and obviously it learns from what I’m asking it, and it just gets better every time. So I actually do think that the whole Google will continue to get less. I mean, it has for me personally. So I find that super interesting. And obviously Google know this, and we know that that’s with Search Generative Experience, and all the changes that are happening to Google literally as we talk, is going to kind of change all of that. So yeah, it is…

Jordan: That’s a really classic example of how fast technology is moving at the moment. And if we think about even going back to some of those original ways of how we are kind of sharing content, the other one we’ve obviously discussed, like podcasting, there’s obviously video as well. And the fact that obviously video, back when Edmonds wasn’t around, and Yates when they were first doing their garden guides and things like that, video wasn’t a thing. But it’s massive now, and it’s so much easier for businesses and business owners to be able to create content using video. Do you think that’s why it is so popular, because it’s so accessible?

Aarti: I think so. But I also think there’s a level of, creating video content is not super easy. It’s easy in the sense that people can click it on your phone. I’m a real advocate of, why create content for content’s sake? And I think that there are businesses out there that are kind of trying to build out content that maybe isn’t the type of content that the audience wants. So I guess it goes back to, now I say this every podcast, audience. We’ve got to think about the audience first, and go back to exactly what they are kind of looking for.

Jordan: Does it actually work with your product and service? Is that kind of what you’re saying?

Aarti: Yeah. We haven’t really touched on social media yet, but I think social media is another massive one. Often people have, like, step one, got to have a website. Cool. We’ve ticked that box. Step two, now we’ve got to go viral on social media. But like, do all businesses need to go viral on social media?

Jordan: Okay. So let’s talk about social media, then. Obviously, again, social media wasn’t around a hundred years ago, when these brands that we were discussing before were marketing themselves. They were using very different, yet similar kind of techniques: building communities, reaching more people by sharing content, informative content, or their storytelling, which is essentially the same as social media.

Aarti: Yeah, it is. It is essentially the same thing, I suppose. And so maybe, I’m wrong, maybe everyone does need to do social media. I don’t know.

Jordan: Honestly, though, if we then unpick that a little bit, and this is one of the questions that we’ve kind of want to discuss here, is: do you think that every business needs to share their journey on social media?

Aarti: I think that people like to know updates. People enjoy, I think, that storytelling of your brand, I think, is always nice and relevant. But there are, I mean, for certain businesses, it’s probably not super relevant. And it also comes down to your business objectives. If you’re spending 80% of your time creating content that’s not generating new business or helping to achieve your objectives, then it’s probably not worth putting that much time into it. We’ve got clients that social media generate a lot of business for them, so I think that they should be putting more time and spend and work into their social media presence.

Jordan: Do you think that it needs to be the founder, or the business owner, or the CEO, or the leadership team getting themselves on camera? Or do you think that there’s a case for brands building themselves up as a brand, as opposed to the person behind the brand?

Aarti: I think there’s a place for both. I don’t think that business owners always need to get there. It always helps. I think it’s nice. People build that trust over the people or businesses that they can see the owner of, that they can see and trust. That’s why that user-generated content is so successful on social media, because it’s not so polished. People can kind of go behind that facade of everything being perfect, and see that real person with real things to say.

Jordan: Yeah. There’s probably a balance between the two of them. And it does come back to audience, and thinking about who your audience is, how they consume content, how are they buying, what’s their buy purchase journey at the moment. Now, Renee had mentioned an example before, with a TikTok creator. Her business is called Fate the Label, I believe. And, yep, got the thumbs up. So Fate the Label, she doesn’t post as Fate the Label, she posts as the founder. I don’t know her name, but I’m sure you could find her on TikTok. But she kind of posts her journey and her story and her own personal branding to help kind of build that brand. So I guess, again, there is a case for that, but it does probably work for her based on where her audience is clearly consuming and enjoying content, you know?

Aarti: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that it’s so subjective to the product or service you’re offering and the type of business you have. And I think that, again, with using those social channels and also using, for some businesses, your website is essentially a brochure. For some businesses, it’s actually a sales tool. So I think that the way that you kind of navigate that and build that into your marketing strategy is going to be a huge part of how successful you are. So essentially we’ve come full circle, in terms of identifying that not every business needs to put themselves out on social media. Not every business owner needs to be on camera, or on a podcast, or on a video, or writing blogs or content, or anything like that.

Aarti: It comes down to whether audience is consuming content, if it’s part of that buyer’s journey, if it’s a way to kind of build trust or authority in your particular product and service. Or is there different ways that you can kind of achieve the same goal, by using user-generated content instead, in replacement of that, of people using your product and service and kind of sharing that? So it all comes back to that high-level strategy, I guess. There’s so many different formats and types of content now that your businesses are most likely doing something, but it’s just about figuring out what you’re doing, what things you should be doing more of, and what things are probably not super relevant.

Jordan: So can I say, to wrap up, going back to the post, this meme, it’s bothered me for a while. So I think we’ve come to the point, again, we’ve come full circle. Hopefully you can agree with me now. I don’t believe that business owners 100 years ago are turning over in their grave, looking at what us as business owners are having to do in today’s day and age. But hopefully we can all see that just the way that we do it has just changed. And for some people, like what we’re doing right now, it’s a little bit more in your face, where for some businesses, it doesn’t have to necessarily be so in your face, but we still need to think about how we can share that content. Is that fair to say?

Aarti: That’s exactly right. Yeah, I think that everybody is doing some form of content. We’re also not pushing out the boat that much. It’s just the format and the channel and where we’re sharing it and how it’s kind of constructed. That’s the main thing that’s changed, and technology is the massive driver of that.

Jordan: And also probably the amount that we have to do it.

Aarti: Yeah. I think potentially the frequency has increased a little bit.

Jordan: But then again, it goes back to what you said, you’ll enjoy old-school content, which is more like in-depth guides. Let’s think about the Edmonds cookbook, which probably took them a very long time to put together, to get out, to market it, versus content that is being made today that can be much more ad hoc. Even these podcasts, very much more ad hoc, instead of years of planning, you know?

Aarti: And I think that comes down to longevity of content as well. Like, these types of pieces of content, they get digested and they die often, you know? Like, they kind of run in a cycle, whereas things like the Edmonds cookbook, it’s longstanding. It’s life, the test of time, you know? You refer back to it constantly. So there’s very different types in longevity, I think, as well.

Jordan: So content still very important, as it has always been, as we’ve identified, for years and years. It needs to head back to your strategic goals, the values and the mission that you have for your business, what you’re wanting to do with your business, what goals you have, the audience you have, how they’re purchasing, how they’re using and seeing your content. Build trust with that content as well. I think that’s all really important, and that’s obviously something that we do here at Done By Nine a lot, is spend a lot of time with businesses around identifying where they should be spending their time. And if you do want to go through a consultation so we can actually work through those with you, obviously you can reach out to myself and Aarti and the rest of the team on our website, donebynine.com.

Jordan: Look, I literally just had a conversation with someone just before jumping on this podcast, and she just made a flippant comment of, she’s not on Facebook right now, and someone told me I should just be on Facebook, so I’m just going to get this page set up. And I had to kind of remind you, remember, we don’t have to be everywhere. It’s going to be exactly where your customer is and where your goals are and everything like that. So if you need to chat around the strategy of being able to think about whether you’re going to build a nice big piece of content, like what you’re referring to, Aarti, kind of like the Edmonds cookbook-size content, versus more ad hoc podcast-type content, obviously it all requires that strategy behind it. So we’re more than happy to take you through that process as well. But again, thank you so much for your opinions. I’m kind of happy to get that off my chest.

Aarti: You’re not bothered anymore, you’re feeling better about it.

Jordan: I’m still a bit bothered, especially because I have 4,000 or 5,000 comments on it, of people kind of agreeing with the same thing about businesses having to jump through hoops and create content. But I’m feeling better, and again, it’s because we’re literally that type of business, and that’s literally the type of business that I’m working in now. So I guess that’s why it’s bothering me, but I do feel a bit better, so we’ve cleansed a little bit. Great. Thanks so much for your time, and we look forward to seeing you on another episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast.