These ‘sins’ are hidden in plain sight by creative marketing professionals, who disguise them in ways that allow indulgence while aligning with culturally-acceptable choices and behaviors.
In his book Day Trading Attention, Gary Vaynerchuk formalized and condensed a framework for marketing that he had been using implicitly for more than a decade. It has just 2 pillars: “Platforms and Culture,” or PAC for short.
When it comes to understanding where culture crosses platforms, Gary’s in a league of his own. An open book, Gary tells the world exactly what they need to do to mimic his massive success. “To crush it, you need to post 12, 15, 20 times a day, touching on all these cultural elements. Test the waters, see what works, and double down on it,” he wrote in a 2023 Linked In post.
How many brands are willing to create 20 organic posts per day? That’s what it takes, and almost nobody will do it. Very few are willing to do what the truly elite do to succeed—not just in marketing, but in all professions.
Sure, you can get lucky at lower volumes, but to increase your chances of success for truly great content that resonates with your target audience, you have to constantly test organically. Anyone can get mediocre content in front of an audience with paid dollars, but only organic marketing that spreads far and wide meets the definition of “truly great” content.
We know this because platform algorithms will spread your organic content for you—for free—if your target audience engages with it. Algorithms are incentivized to keep people scrolling so that they can sell more ads. They do that by evaluating and spreading content that hooks an audience, and they’re getting better and better at it. Followers and likes aren’t nearly as important as they once were: it’s all about keeping eyeballs engaged and scrolling for more.
Bottom line: Our “professional opinions” of what is good or bad content is officially worthless: the only opinion that matters is the algorithm’s. If the algorithm deems your content worthy, it will be shown to your target audience.
What’s worthy to the algorithm? Content that resonates with the cutting-edge of today’s cultural trends. Gary calls this the “TikTok-ification of social media,” because TikTok was the first platform to figure this out at a deep level.
To stay with the elite of the elite in our industry, we’ve adopted Gary’s PAC framework for ourselves and our clients. Yet one pillar seems to be missing: where’s the individual?
The third pillar
When considering any dimension for strategic framing, the critical question is: does inclusion improve decision-making? Or does it just add unneeded complexity?
As helpful as PAC is, it excludes emotion, habit, personality, anxiety, and other areas of psychology. We know these things drive people to buy, with decades of research underpinning it.
Thus, psychology seems like a compelling third pillar. But I would guess that Gary would argue against it. Why overcomplicate a simple and effective strategy for marketing by introducing something as squirrelly as human psychology? Like lawyers, marketers can overcomplicate everything they touch on the road to making things worse.
In the end, in my imaginary back and forth with Gary, I agreed that the downside of psychology as a third pillar outweighs its usefulness. The field is too vast to offer a framing that’s helpful for doing our jobs better. There are just too many rabbit holes to go down.
The 7 deadly sins
But then I remembered a framing I learned from a grizzled, industry-leading copywriter back in the 1990s as I was cutting my teeth in advertising. His name was John Carleton, and he insisted that great copy always includes an element of one or more of the 7 deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.
Yes, it’s meant to be provocative. It might make you uncomfortable, even squeamish. But look at any effective campaign and you’ll find one or more of the “sins” as reward for taking action.
Who doesn’t feel the seduction of a fresh, cheesy pizza flashed across a television set when it’s well past bedtime? What drives people to throw their hard-earned money away on the lotto, or to take a vacation in Vegas? Is it easier to sell a weight loss pill that promises better health, or one that implies attractive people will smile at you more often?
That’s how vice became our third pillar. These “sins” open a doorway into the deeper, often uncomfortable aspects that drive buying behavior: emotion, anxiety, personality, and more. It’s incomplete on purpose: the idea is to start with vice—the instant gratification—and see where it leads you.
Social media is a vice in and of itself. So let’s not shy away from the “dark” motivators that make us human. It offers a framing that leads to more creativity and playfulness. It’s a reminder that all marketing is about instant gratification, at each and every step along the buyer’s journey. Putting ourselves in the buyer’s shoes and asking, “What’s in it for me right now, with this very next step?” leads to better creative, every time.