Paxton (00:00) Hello everyone, I'm Paxton Gray, CEO of Ninety Seventh Floor, and this is the campaign. thank you for joining us for another episode of the campaign, where we talk with marketing leaders about better understanding your audience, innovating beyond best practice, and converting visitors into customers. The campaign is produced by 97th floor, a world class digital marketing agency designed to build organic and paid channel strategies for mid-level and enterprise organizations. You can find past episodes of the campaign on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, and at 97thFloor.com. Today's guest is David Meerman Scott, author of fourteen marketing books, including The New Rules of Marketing and PR and Fanocracy He's back on the show today to talk about his brand new book, The Fandom Playbook, which is all about how brands can build fans. In this episode, David breaks down what makes somebody a true fan, how to bring your personal passion into your work, and how to build true fandom alongside AI and algorithms. Let's get into it. Paxton (01:01) All right, David, thank you so much for joining us again on the show. We're excited to have you back. David Meerman Scott (01:05) I am so happy to be here, Paxon. Good to see you. Paxton (01:07) so we are recording this one day before the launch of your brand new book, The Fandom Playbook, Building Your Human David Meerman Scott (01:13) Woohoo. Paxton (01:14) Connection in a World of Digital Chaos. Uh David Meerman Scott (01:16) I actually have a copy. I got a stash last late last week, so I'm super excited. I love the cover too, by the way. Paxton (01:24) Yeah, awesome. I I imagine, yeah, speaking of chaos, you're probably right in the midst of it, launching a brand new book. What's everything you have going on right now with? David Meerman Scott (01:30) But I I'm not in enough chaos that we can have this conversation. I'm happy to do it. Paxton (01:35) Yeah, great. Well, I'm excited to have you join. Um, so building on our conversation from last time, which was talking about uh a lot of content from your previous books, this is kind of focused on this playbook. So uh I think it would be David Meerman Scott (01:49) Yes. Paxton (01:50) good for us to establish the kind of grounding framework of what is a fan? How does someone know they have a fan? What is a play? Like what are the boundaries of that? David Meerman Scott (02:02) Got it. Cool. So um I've been studying the idea of fandom now for three decades. I actually started jumping into it because I'm obsessed by The Grateful Dead. I've seen them 111 times. I've owned artifacts that were used by band members, including guitar by Bob owned by Bob Weir. so I'm I'm really deep into it. And I like, why am I so obsessed about The Grateful Dead? Why are other people so obsessed about The Grateful Dead? So I wrote a book with Brian Halligan. He's the co-founder and former CEO of HubSpot and Bill Walton, the NBA Basketball Hall of Famer. We wrote a book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. Main thing we learned is that they really did focus on building fans. And one of the most important things was they allowed fans to record their concerts. No one else did that. You know, every other band from the 70s, 80s, 90s did not allow recording devices, big signs they'd kick you out and they'd take the tape out of your machine. The Grateful Dead said, sure, why not? You can do that. So that got me really interested in this idea of fandom, and I've been studying it since then. A fan is somebody who will stick with you even if a lower cost competitor comes around. A fan is someone who loves you so much. That they'll share about what you do with their friends and their colleagues and their family members. A fan is somebody who will forgive you if you make a mistake. ah And that's really different than the relationships that many companies, many people have with the companies that they do business with, where uh if there is a better competitor, they're gonna jump on that right away. and so I I got fascinated by the idea of fandom. And then I wanted to study it even deeper and especially interested in the neuroscience of what's a fan. and I dug into that aspect, and it turns out it actually is hardwired into our brains to want to be part of a tribe of like minded people. Because when we're with a tribe of like-minded people, We feel safe and comfortable. And that goes back tens of thousands of generations when if you were out hunting in the savannah or somewhere and you were with your tribe, you were safe. if animals or another tribe came along and you were with your tribe, you were safer than if you were alone and you encountered somebody else. And that still affects us today. If you walk into a room where you know people, you feel safe and comfortable. If you walk into a room or maybe a crowded elevator where you don't know people, you you feel vulnerable. it's just a natural human reaction. so those are some basic ideas of fandom. And I wanted to create a new book, the fandom playbook, um, it has nine specific plays, different ways to create fans of a business. and I always suggest to people don't try to do all nine. I don't even do all nine. I wrote the book. pick a couple of them and and run with them, and we can dig into a few of them in the time that we've got together now. Um, but there are specific ways that you can do this. And it really comes down to that human connection, the idea that fandom is hardwired in our brains, the idea that when you have fans, they will stick with you. Paxton (05:31) let's dive into some of the plays. Let's maybe start with what you think is the maybe most broadly applicable or usable and and go from there. David Meerman Scott (05:40) Why don't I jump in by sharing two plays? the first one's super easy. It's one the one I suggest everyone, if you're not already doing this, you should do it right now. It's super easy. And that is to simply eliminate stock photos and AI generated photos and stock images, stock video and AI generated video from your marketing. Um, so many organizations that I see have used AI-generated images and videos, use stock images and videos to represent people. Now it's fine if you want to have a picture of a forest or something, but to represent people, your customers and your employees, please eliminate stock photos. It's especially true with business-to-business companies. I don't know what it is with B2B companies. They always have the The fancy shot of people sitting around a conference room and they always look fake. People see that it's fake. They know it is. Intellectually, they know it. And or even if they don't see it and they they can recognize it and be able to talk about it, it's in their subconscious. They see those happy multicultural people sitting around a conference room in a photo on your website, and they immediately think. I'm not sure if I can become a fan of this organization if they don't actually use real people on their website. Now that's not what's going through their mind exactly, but that is what happens. So that's a real simple play. Everybody can implement that right away. Use real photographs of real people, not a fake, fake representations of your customers and your employees. Paxton (07:20) to clarify on that point, are you suggesting like if a brand were to say, Okay, we're gonna use real photos and then they go and they get the real people at the real company in the real meeting, but they bring in professional lighting, they get people dressed, you know, like that's okay. Yeah. David Meerman Scott (07:34) I'm cool with that. Yeah. I'm cool with that. Sure. Absolutely. Uh 100%. it probably should be a good photo, especially for a website. I mean, social media is different, but I do I do see so many companies that just use these placeholder photos. And that's what we're trying to eliminate. Um, we want to have the real people involved. Paxton (07:57) Got it. Makes sense. All right, in the next one. David Meerman Scott (08:01) the most surprising play that we encountered, um, I I've been writing about this now for a couple of years, uh, is the idea of your passion is infectious. Your passion for what you do, both in your business, but surprisingly, what you do on your personal time is infectious. So people do business with people that they can um relate to. And What I've noticed is that the vast majority of people, again, especially B2B, I see this again and again in in business to business organizations, is they have an enormous brick wall between their personal life and their professional life. So over here in their personal life, you know, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, I'm having fun, I'm sharing what I'm doing. I, you know, I love to surf. In my case, I love to surf. I've got a surfboard behind me. I love to dance. I love the Grateful Dead. I already mentioned that. and then I've got my brick wall over here on LinkedIn. We are very buttoned up and we are very serious because this is business. That's nonsense. Actually, you build fans when you break down those walls. so I'll give you two examples. The first example is a dentist, his name is Dr. John Marashi. Um, I speak at Tony Robbins Business Mastery events um and have done so for the past dozen years, probably 30 or 40 times. And I speak about fandom. And one of the things uh I talk about, you know, is like all these ideas around fandom. And at the end of my talks, people come up, they want to ask me questions. And Dr. John Marashi came up to me. David, I'm a dentist, he says. I don't have fans. I can't make fans. And I said, Well, I think everybody can. Tell me a little bit about your practice. So Dr. Marashi is a dentist in Southern California. There's thousands of dentists, he says, in Southern California. And I know, and you know, that when someone chooses a dentist and you go to a dental website, they all look the same. Actually, quite literally, many of them are made by the same company. It's a very templated process. So they look the same. But if you're new to California or your dentist retired, you're looking for a new dentist, and you look and you you see the ones in your neighborhood, they all look the same. How do you choose? So I said, Dr. Mirachi, what do you love to do? Outside of dentistry. And he said, my God, I'm a skateboarder. I love to skateboard. And I said, Have you ever brought skateboarding into your dental practice? And he said, No. And I said, Well, maybe you should try that. So this was just a drive-by meeting, you know, after my talk, it was like two minutes with Dr. Mirachi. About, I don't know, six or nine months later, he contacted me and said, David, it's been remarkable. I said, What'd you do? And he said, I have skateboards on the wall of my dental practice. I have pictures of me skateboarding on the my dental website. He told me I created an Instagram where I have dental stuff and skateboarding stuff. And he has 60 six zero followers on his Instagram now, where he shows himself skateboarding. And he said, I can actually quantify that just by showing these skateboarding photos and videos on my Instagram and sharing with people that I love the skateboard and having the skateboards on the wall in the practice that I've been able to grow my business by nearly a hundred percent in new patients and nearly 50% in new revenue. And that's because people are attracted to this nutty dude who loves the skateboard and happens to be a dentist. and and that's the idea of sharing your passion. The other example I mentioned earlier, um, and this is a business-to-business example, that Brian Halligan, my buddy, um, and the is my co-author on our book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. And Brian is not shy about sharing his love of the grateful dead and has been since he found co-founded HubSpot 19 years ago. And Many people in the company were nervous about him sharing his love of the Grateful Dead his work as the CEO of HubSpot. And I remember when HubSpot first went public back in 2014, Brian um said, I'm gonna play Grateful Dead music on hold for our um earnings announcement conference call. And so you probably know every public company is required to to deliver information to Wall Street in a transparent way. And one of the ways many organizations do that is through a a conference call with Wall Street that they have every quarter to go through their quarterly earnings announcement. Those are all sort of formulaic kind of things and you you go in and you wait on hold till the call starts. Brian played Grateful Dead music. Everyone told him don't do it. His IR people, his PR people, his board members, don't play Grateful Dead music. That's crazy. He said, I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm the CEO. And um and and the first question of being a public company came from JP Morgan. The guy from JP Morgan said, Hey Brian, congratulations on going public and thank you for playing Grateful Dead Music on hold while we were waiting. Um and Brian since then is you know, he's done podcast episodes. Talking about the grateful dead he frequently shares on social media, shared it from the stage. so this idea of sharing what you're passionate about in your personal life as you're doing business is a really, really, really interesting and underappreciated way to build fans. Paxton (13:47) So I I love those stories. Uh and so far these two plays, they make sense. bringing in your personal life, breaking down those walls, showing real imagery on your site. I'd love to know where these came from because they make sense. Is that are they just like good ideas? Are they backed by research? I know that you have done a lot of research. So tell me about where these are derived from. David Meerman Scott (14:11) I'm a writer and I'm I speak at events all over the world and I'm c and I've been on my own now for 24 years, and I'm constantly looking for how organizations can do a better job marketing their businesses. and I've done 14 books over the years. I've sold a sold a million copies of my books in 30 languages. And I don't do research from the perspective of like an academic PhD type research, or I don't do surveys or anything like that. I'm looking for trends and ideas that seem like they're working. And then I look for stories and then I look for evidence and then I look for other examples. And then I toss it out there typically on my blog or on social media and see if other people react to it. And then if it feels right, then I might put it in one of my books. And in the case of the nine plays in the fandom playbook, I've done three books that are related to fandom. I mentioned Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. I also wrote a book called Marketing the Moon. Which is about the marketing and public relations aspects of the Apollo Lunar Program. and that book came out about a dozen years ago. It was actually turned into a recent movie called Fly Me to the Moon, starring Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Paxton (15:34) Yes. Yeah. David Meerman Scott (15:35) Harrelson and Ray Romano. That was based on my book. So that's the idea of fandom. How did NASA build enough fans that the uh American public agreed to finance getting twelve people to the surface of the moon? and part of that was they created fans about on the astronauts. US government employees, the astronauts at NASA. created fandom around the astronauts themselves in a really great way, which helped to do that. Anyway, and then I wrote a book called Fanocracy that came out in 2020. And the fandom playbook is taking those three books and everything else I've learned about fandom and putting them into these nine discrete books. Plays. Paxton (16:17) So it's coming from just like a well of knowledge, observation, and what you have seen works. David Meerman Scott (16:23) yes, that's correct. The other aspect is I'm constantly looking for essentially the polar opposite of what everybody else is doing. and I've always done that with the way that I've created ideas for marketing. So book I'm most famous for is called The New Rules of Marketing and PR originally came out in 2007. It's now in its ninth edition. When it first came out in 2007, everybody was doing offline marketing. That was what they were primarily doing: television ads, newspaper ads, direct mail, things like that. and then I said, Well, no, it's about online. Create a great website and then do videos on YouTube. YouTube was just starting. Twitter had just launched, you know, put out social media, and then that was the basically contrarian to what most people were doing. Today, everyone's focused on c using AI to create content. I'm saying, well, sure, do that. But you also need to have a true human connection. So I'm constantly looking for patterns in the universe that are different from what everybody else is doing. Because if everyone's doing this, I want you to do that because that's much more likely to be able to be successful. Paxton (17:35) Yeah. So let's talk about that human connection for a second. Uh David Meerman Scott (17:40) Yeah. Paxton (17:40) I feel like marketers have gotten lost in this game of appeasing algorithms and they've David Meerman Scott (17:47) Yes. Paxton (17:47) totally lost that connection with their customers. You know, however, there is the business case of you appease the algorithm and you make sales. How how do you help marketers understand how to go around that? Get buy-in for something that is contradictory because that, you know, budgets are tight, they have to prove ROI and to say, you know what, CFO, I'm trying to make fans here uh is not the best sales pitch. So how how would you recommend that they get kind David Meerman Scott (18:14) Yeah. Paxton (18:15) of that buy-in? David Meerman Scott (18:16) Well, I I don't see it as either or. I see it as sure, you know, play to the algorithms, use artificial intelligence, this is important stuff. I do it myself. but at the same time, recognize that we humans now, this is post post-pandemic, are eager. For in-person connections. We're eager for human connections. We're eager to have to make fans, to become a fan of something. And, you know, the pandemic taught us that that when we're all shut down and we can't have human connections, it's a it's an issue. It's not fun. We want those connections. So whatever your organization can do to have that kind of human connection is a really good thing. And I'm not suggesting that you stop feeding the algorithms or stop doing artificial intelligence-based marketing. I'm not saying that at all. I am saying, however, you need to be thinking about how you can add these uh elements to what you're doing. And and and if I may, I'll mention HubSpot again. I've been on their advisory board now for 18 years. and HubSpot has done a a fabulous job. At doing some of this building of fans. they have many in-person events. I just spoke at their Unbound conference, which was in September 2026. And I was one of 300 speakers. And there's I think 12,000 or 13,000 people attended in person, plus people who attended virtually. And that's a place where fandom grows. one of the aspects of fandom that's so important is this idea. of a genuine human connection. And when you're at an event like that, not just HubSpot's event, but any event, and you've got that badge that says you're part of that event, you know, you can be in the hotel lobby. People see the badge. They're that that person's part of the same tribe. I can go up and have a conversation with them. or at the bar or at a restaurant or at at the cocktail reception or waiting in line to get into a uh one of the sessions or sitting next to someone at one of the sessions. You have something you can instantly talk to them about. So you're fostering that in-person connection just by virtue of of holding in-person events, which can be super, super powerful. How can you build that into the way that you're doing your marketing and sales and customer support? Paxton (20:49) yeah, I love that. to kind of wrap up a little bit. In the early days, you recommended to brands that they produce content as a way to like win attention. And David Meerman Scott (20:59) Yeah. Yep. Paxton (21:01) big results of that was this massive wave of content that we're still it's still getting bigger and bigger. and you know, now it's oversaturated, and you've said it's oversaturated. Obviously the goal the whole time has been to build fans. And you've been preaching that for decades. what would you say is the next, if you could read the tea leaves, the next tactic that will be novel for the next 10 years and then will, you know, potentially be saturated by that in an attempt to build fans? David Meerman Scott (21:32) I don't actually see the idea of fandom as I'm talking about it, um, as uh as something that could potentially become saturated. Because what I'm talking about here is truly something that's hardwired into humans' brains. The ideas, the idea of wanting to be together with other like-minded humans. And that's the idea of of fandom as a really broad uh way of looking at it. So I'm not I'm not seeing this as being, okay, it's gonna work for a decade and then it's gonna go away. I think this is something that that can be very, very, very powerful for all different kinds of organizations going forward. if everybody is focused on the digital channel, sure, you need to be on the digital channel too. But if everyone's focused on the digital channel, what can you do to meet people in person to Um and there's ways that you can do this virtually too, but to have that genuine connection that you can bring people together. and it's totally possible to do those those several different things. I do see some of the things I've been talking about for a long time. I thought were gonna go away or actually becoming popular again. So it just mentioned one news jacking. I invented newsjacking about a dozen years ago. It's the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story. The idea being that when a news story is breaking, um people are looking for somebody who has the expertise around the breaking news story. both the media who wants to quote people as well as consumers or or other interested people who might want to know more about that topic. So let's think in the B2B world, there's a a new cybersecurity threat. my gosh, what does this mean? People are looking for experts in cybersecurity to analyze what that means. So in the early days of news jacking, which would have been around I don't know, 2015-ish, I was all about trying to get yourself in the media. Now the exact same technique. Is sort of making a comeback because now you can use that technique to help get into the LLMs as people are searching on that per let's say the cybersecurity alert. what's going on here? Bang. well, someone just did a today they did a webinar based on that topic, or yesterday they wrote an article based on that topic. It's on their Substack over here. so so interestingly, as a way to build fans, some things that, you know. were pretty popular a couple years ago, maybe not so much now, might be making a comeback. Paxton (24:18) Interesting. you had mentioned the point of being in person. you know, I read the excerpt of the book, which everyone listening can get at davidmeerman scott.com. It's the first two chapters. And many of the examples that you go through the book talk about fans gathering together. And I'm I'm wondering what your opinion is of building fandom in remote work. can those two ideas coexist? Can you build a fandom of a business where the employees themselves don't even see each other in person? Is there some magic of being in person or do those just happen to be characteristics of the examples, but they're not necessary to building a fandom? David Meerman Scott (24:58) I think it's possible to build fans virtually as well. I definitely do. and what it comes down to are some of the things we've already talked about, which is you know, make it real, make it something that feeds people's desire to want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, that encourages people to share in different ways. and I definitely think that's possible. There's also actually a neuroscience element of doing virtual fandom the way we're doing right now over video. And so video has taken off as being really important um in the last couple of years, especially as the algorithms have been rewarding video, especially short form video, TikTok, Instagram, even LinkedIn is re rewarding short form video. There's actually a reason for it. it comes down to the idea that our brains are processing you and I talking together right now, as if we are literally talking to one another. so a neuroscientist named Edward T. Hall identified that the closer you get to someone, the more powerful the human connections, both positive and negative, and that goes back to what we talked about earlier about being in a tribe. When you're with your tribe, it's a powerful positive connection when you're physically close to someone. When you're not in your tribe, it's a negative. And that's why in a crowded elevator you feel a little bit nervous or in a room with your friends you feel great. And so Edward T. Hall identified the closer you get to someone, the more powerful the connections. further than 12 feet, he called public space. it's not so powerful from four feet roughly from someone else to 12 feet roughly from someone else. That's called social space. Um, that's a powerful place to be. Even more powerful is within four feet called personal space. And here in what we're doing as another form of neuroscience called mirror neurons. I actually am processing as if you are four feet away from me, as if we are. having a personal connection. And I'll demonstrate how our brain works like that. This is a lemon and this is a slice of lemon here. And if I take a bite of the slice of lemon, it kind of makes my eyes water and close a little bit. I can feel it on my tongue. And my brain is firing now as I'm biting into this. But your brain is firing too, am I right? Are you tasting the lemon? Paxton (27:31) Yeah, I can taste it. Yep. David Meerman Scott (27:32) Okay, that's mirror neurons. And the idea of mirror neurons is if we if you have video like we're doing right now, our brains are processing it as if we're in the same room, even though intellectually we know we're not in the same room. So what does all this mean? It means that one way to build fans is to use video. where your employees, your customers, whoever is on the video is shown about where we are, sort of head and shoulders, about four feet away, which is getting close to personal space, because we're processing it as if we are actually in the same room. So what does that mean for, let's say, a B2B company? Is like have lots and lots of video on your website of interviewing customers, interviewing partners, having people from your company share things that are going on, interviews with your CEO or a technology person in your company, whoever the right people are. Same thing with your social media. And that that is a way that virtually you can still get some of these ideas around fandom to work for you. Paxton (28:42) I love that. Great. Thank you. when you pulled out that lemon, I was like, man, this guy, I love that you come prepared with an object lesson. Thank you so much, David, for for joining us today. David Meerman Scott (28:50) My pleasure. Paxton (28:51) where can fans learn more about your book, learn more about you and and what you're putting together. David Meerman Scott (28:56) So the new book is called the Fandom Playbook. There's nine plays in there available wherever books are sold, as they say. I have a bunch of free absolutely free, no registration required resources. All you have to do is go to a browser and type in fandom dot marketing. and that'll redirect to a page on my website. No registration. I don't ask you for your email address. You're just take a look at it and you can download a free excerpt of the book. I have some examples of some of the plays there. I have some examples of some successes, some of which I've shared today. so that's the one place to go to if you want to really dive deep into this idea of fandom. Paxton (29:38) Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. we'll put some links in the show notes and we'll have to have you back on for your next book and uh maybe David Meerman Scott (29:45) That'd be great. Paxton (29:46) some some plays as these as this book comes out. David Meerman Scott (29:49) I would I would love that. Thank you very much for having me on. Paxton (29:51) Thank you. Paxton (29:52) Thank you for joining us today, everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a five-star rating and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Huge thank you to David Meerman Scott for joining us today. You can learn more about him and what he's up to at fandom.marketing. You can also find past episodes of the campaign and examples of our work at 97thefloor.com. There you can learn more about what we do as an agency and you can get in touch with one of our specialists to learn more about how we can help you hit your goals. That's it for now. Thank you so much for listening. As always, keep innovating, keep converting.