Entertainment Is The Right Path
"Give value" is evergreen creator advice, but it hasn't caught up with the times
I went to Costco today. You know how it goes.
You get your cart, scan your Executive Member card (yeah I’m flexing on you right now) at the sensor, look at the things in the front, ooh I do need more lawn bags, start walking towards the produce/meat section and BAM.
In-store AT&T workers hound you. How’s your day going sir? Who’s your phone carrier? Are you looking for a better deal on phones for the family? You get sucked into a conversation you don’t want to be in, or you ignore it and scurry past them on your way to get a bag of clementines.
They probably could save you money. Costco tends to help you do that.
But there’s no shot you take them up on it.
Why is that?
I’ll explain but let me cook for a second.
As I get older and become more self-aware, I realize that I’m super quick to be hyperbolic.
Every good meal is “the best I’ve ever had.”
Every new sneaker is “the coolest I’ve ever seen.”
Every Pistons playoff win is “my all-time favorite Pistons game.” (Okay, this one might actually be true today.)
And, as I’ve been kicking around the idea for this post, it’s lived in my brain under a different title:
Entertainment Is The Only Path Left.
But I’ve stepped back from such a blistering take.
Kind of.
Working in social media, pretty much everything I do — booking cast and crew, setting up strategy, briefing creatives, writing concepts, managing client relationships, assisting on shoots, editing videos, etc. — is in service of making funny internet videos.
That’s the job.
So I’ve been shaped by this lived experience. I see inside of brand teams and work with comedian creator-types I wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
They want views, and people talking about them, and attributable ROI, and to feel fulfilled by their work.
It informs why I’d think of such a close-minded take, to call entertainment the ONLY path left.
But even though I’m wrong, I feel it, and I know in my bones it’s probably the right path for me and you, too.
Before I was on the brand side, I worked in the knowledge creator world. I saw inside these solo creator businesses doing $150,000 course launches, or $500,000/year just from newsletter sponsorships.
They, too, want an audience, and people talking about them, and sales, and to feel fulfilled by their work.
After watching people from these two completely different worlds hurl themselves towards similar outcomes, with the goal of providing “value”…
I think they’re getting it wrong.
I think a lot of creators — particularly knowledge creators — need to reframe what “value” means to them, if they want the audience & sales they say they do.
Replace value with entertainment value.
From my perspective, prioritizing either of these in your content BEFORE entertainment is a mistake:
Educating someone. It’s over dawg. AI knows everything now. If you want to teach others, you better be able to make them laugh first. The best teachers always feel like friends.
Inspiring someone to take action. Everybody on the internet is trying to get us to do something, and most times it’s something we don’t want to do. You know what we do want to do? Laugh, or look at/listen to something pretty.
This might sound so idiotic, and incriminate me as someone not worth taking seriously when it comes to social media. I could even get retroactively fired for saying this, because they never would have hired a guy this dumb.
Oh well.
I came into the social & advertising world without understanding that getting attention boils down to… give them something they like to look at on their phone.
And then do it again.
And a few more times.
And once they’re aware of something and how they feel about it, they take action to support it.
They click the like button. They send to a friend. They buy something.
You don’t ask. You don’t sell.
You entertain them into taking the exact action you want.
The poor Costco AT&T workers are playing a numbers game.
If they start enough conversations with customers they can probably get a few people to sign up per day. And that must be enough, otherwise AT&T would pull the plug on paying Costco to let them do this.
But you would never stop and sign up for AT&T in a Costco. It has no value to you. It’s not why you came to the store.
Are you seeing the parallel here?
You could get where you want by volume-posting a bunch of “helpful” content, or DMing a bunch of people, or cold-emailing as many decision makers as possible.
It works. Tried and true. You’ll get there, eventually.
But it will take way longer and be so much less rewarding than just… giving them what they’re on the internet for.
Laughs.
Eye candy.
Something to share with friends.
Our stupid dumb idiot brains will scroll until we see something we like to look at, then scroll away the second we don’t like looking at it anymore.
That’s the game.
Entertainment might not be the only path left, but for the way we use our phones and live our lives, it’s probably the right one.