Welcome to another edition of PROse, where we explore the science behind building a brand.

In today’s email, we discuss:

• The value of personal brands

• Using YouTube for product walkthroughs

• The future of brand merchandising

Yo! I’m Darien from Antidote 👋🏾. Every week I share what I learn about the science of building a brand. If someone forwarded this email to you or you’re reading this online, welcome to the fold! What you're about to read is an unconventional view on B2B marketing.

If you enjoy it, join 100s of other B2B marketers on the journey to build a standout brand.

Basecamp is a rarity in the tech software world - lean team, highly profitable (tens of millions annually), and little-to-no traditional marketing before now.

Just in case you’re not familiar with them, let’s cover some basic background info:

Basecamp is one of the OGs in the project management software space, founded by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson more than 20 years ago. David is also known for creating Ruby on Rails, a popular programming framework used by companies like Airbnb, Shopify and Bloomberg.

Until recently, they had done very little formal marketing. Instead, Jason and David built the company on the back of their own personal brands. That all changed a few weeks ago when they went on a full-court press, launching a bunch of new marketing.

Today, we’re going to dive into elements of their marketing strategy and pull out some lessons:

• Jason and David’s personal brands

• Their first ad campaign & new YouTube content

• Their merchandising operation

The founder brands

For the last two decades, Jason and David have run an incredibly simple yet effective personal brand strategy:

• Part I: They developed a unique and clear narrative about productivity at work

• Part II: They distributed that narrative across formats and platforms

Effective because it’s led to a massive distribution network of 875k followers across Twitter and LinkedIn.

They weren’t just early to the personal branding game, they dominated it by consistently sharing their POV in conversations about the future of work, business development/growth, and building a product.

To understand why their strategy paid off, you have to see beyond the tactic of being in trending conversations. Jason and David weren’t just joining conversations, they were creating them.

That meant sharing spicy POVs that are in line with their core narrative.

Joining the conversation is reactive - you’re waiting to get lucky. Creating the conversation is making your own luck (and usually winning big for it).

You know the saying, “all press is good press”. If you’re like me it probably makes you cringe, but, alas, it turns out to be true more often than not.

There’s always going to be a group of people who see your perspective, and it’s typically as many people as the opposing group.

Creating the conversation didn’t stop at viral tweets. Jason and David have written books, host a podcast, and both founders and Basecamp also have their own blogs.

Is this a lot of content? Yes, it is. But the content helps reinforce core messages, reach new audiences (some people will never get on Twitter but will pick up a NYT bestseller because of its prestige), and even surface new useful ideas they can use for product development. In fact, that’s what seems to have caused them to launch a new email & blog host called HEY.

Lots of software startups want to be unicorns; few make it. Basecamp is one of the few unicorns. Not because they have a billion-dollar valuation (although they did hilariously troll the internet once).

They’re a unicorn because they’re one of a handful of companies that have built a massive organic distribution engine and customer base on the back of basic brand marketing principles: telling a compelling story in the places your audience exists.

$37k ad campaign and YouTube strategy

According to David, Basecamp has never really spent money on marketing. I mean, why would they when they’ve got a massive audience already.

Last year, they decided to change that—presumably because they planned to enter a growth push. They originally brought on a large ad agency. But that soured quickly when the agency wanted to spend $1m on production for a single campaign.

So instead, they hired a Marketing Director and a Visual Storyteller, and created the campaign internally. Out of that production came a series of videos and billboard placements.

But what I liked even more was their YouTube content strategy.

Both the founders’ brands and Basecamp generally fit into what I call the Product brand archetype. Product brands focus on communicating their narrative and product updates, usually through compelling visuals but it can also be long-form writing.

On the other hand, there are Media brands. They produce content with the goal of being quick to trends and culturally relevant. In a perfect world, a company would have qualities of Product and Media brand archetypes. Basecamp’s YouTube channel does a great job of marrying those qualities.

Product

The team put together a series of guided product walkthroughs covering the basics of the product and their most popular features.

Usually I would be less thrilled about product demos in a company YouTube channel because the average company’s execution of that strategy is boring and self-serving.

I’m a firm believer the primary goal of content is consumption. Shares, leads, and revenue all come after someone has consumed your content.

That said, Basecamp nailed it here. The walkthroughs are dynamic, engaging, and clearly outline different use cases for the product.

Plus, YouTube videos pop up in the above the fold results of Google Search, which also makes it a win for capturing high-intent SEO traffic.

Media

Basecamp didn’t just make an ad. They made an ad about the ad-making process. Meta, I know. The crew filmed how they used Basecamp to make the ads and showed a behind the scenes of the actual production. Now, that is repurposing content.

They also filmed a customer case study that felt more like a documentary than it did a testimonial.

Remember: the goal is consumption. Even though they’re still sharing a case study for people who are considering buying the product, you’ll go further if you can make it feel like the type of content someone might watch on Netflix at 7pm while drinking a glass of wine.

It didn’t stop there. Chad, Basecamp’s visual storyteller, did a series of street interviews centered around people’s opinions of work and meetings. This is the kind of content I would try to run as an ad to cold audiences (but don’t get your paid media advice from me LOL).

Merchandising

As mentioned earlier, Jason and David have written 5 books, including one NYT bestseller. Basecamp also has a merchandise store with stickers, posters, and apparel.

Every modern brand will run a merchandise operation. It’s been a growing trend for the last few years and it won’t stop soon - Shopify, CashApp, Stripe all have for-sale merchandise.

The point isn’t to create a full-fledged retail operation (some brands can pull it off). The goal is to deepen affinity with your existing audience and expand awareness into new audiences.

There’s lots for brands to gain from being the author of the book in the Zoom background with the vibrant cover, the name on a well-designed crewneck t-shirt or hoodie, or the logo on the hyper-functional but great looking gym bag.

These sorts of marketing and audience expansion plays are usually left to the major corporations (like putting your name on a sports stadium/arena). But more and more, “smaller” companies like Basecamp are getting crafty about how they connect with existing and new customers.

That's a wrap, folks! But before you go...

Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Your feedback goes a long way (seriously, I read & respond to every email—good or bad!)

See you next week,