The Age of Digital Marketing – Marcus Whitney LIVE with Joseph Jaffe
This episode's guest on #MWL is Joseph Jaffe. We discuss reinventing yourself during a pandemic, brand strategy, and his book, “Built to Suck.”
Where to watch live:
https://youtube.com/marcuswhitneysvideouniverse
https://facebook.com/marcuswhitney
https://linkedin.com/in/marcuswhitney
https://twitter.com/marcuswhitney

MW
what's up what's up what's uh peppy
tuesday
uh I have uh somebody who i
super looked up to um as a social media
marketing
icon uh sort of in the early days of all
this
this social stuff uh I i've been able to
to talk to so many of these guys over
the last uh
guys and gals over the last month I had
mitch joel on
i was able to do the chris brogan show i
got to get him on uh
and and this gentleman definitely is in
that very same category of people who
was very very influential for me uh in
the beginning and then
later on I found out through the magic
of facebook that he and I are both
supporters of tottenham hotspur which
just
quite frankly I love mitch and chris but
this just nudged him over the line he's
a little bit more special to me than
they are I have to say it it's just the
truth so
uh so with that uh the guy with the most
ridiculous background
to ever come on this show welcome my
friend joseph jaffe what's up joseph
JJ
wait i'm just trying to I i'm still
figuring out how to mirror the
backgrounds but yeah I mean it's just i
i'm
it said what what did you say it's the
marcus whitney universe
i'm living in the marcus whitney
universe
quite quite literally and i'm loving it
let me tell you
MW
oh my gosh dude I I should have known
you were gonna come on with something
wacky like that so
now all of the uh all the people
watching are seeing
three of me they're seeing marcus
whitney live everywhere so thank you
very much joseph for that incredible
background
JJ
it's all about you
MW
that's not the mom
of this show this point of this show is
to be all about you my friend
uh so man look with that let's let's
just jump in
and you know I honestly I don't know
this I would love
to hear how you entered this space as
an expert in marketing and social you
know I remember following you and
watching the different companies that
you were part of that you co-founded
books that you've written but like i
don't know your your origin story so i'd
love to hear
how you and this world actually came
came in collision
JJ
yes so my my origin story begins in
in south africa and and I actually i'll
try and tell the first part
really quickly but it's hard to like but
i'll try and be as
succinct as possible so I was gonna
leave
at the end of my uh senior year in high
school I was gonna go
and tour and study and and maybe even
live in israel I felt like that was a
cool thing to do
but I fell off a wall I fell off the
wall trying to break into my friend's
house
so that he could be the designated
driver in the car
with me because I was gonna go pick my
mother up from the airport now I was
driving
illegally without a license and I could
have made it easily to the airport
but I knew that my mom would have been
royally pissed with me so i
i try and get my buddy to come with me
to come in the car with me
but he's been out to a club partying
until about six in the morning I arrive
at seven in the morning
he doesn't wake up there are no cell
phones no one's at his house and I try
and drop myself
down from a construction site from one
wall to another wall to another wall
but I hit the wall uh and I fall
backwards and I fall
15 to 20 feet hit my elbow on the ground
shatter my elbow in three places break
my shoulder
uh in two places and dislocate it and
long story
short I spend my birthday my high school
results
new year high on pathadine basically
in in the hospital with pins and wires
in my arm
and my mother walks in one day and
throws the prospectus at me and says
you're gonna you know like what are you
gonna study because you're not going to
israel you're going to university
and for the first three months at
college I walk around with my arm in
this massive brace
i'm left-handed it was my left hand i
had a like a nervous shape in my arm for
about six months
extensive physiotherapy long story short
i I register for for for a pharmacy i
figure i'm going to open up a chemist
or thomas or a pharmacist but I but i
then get chickenpox
and you know at the age of 18 years old
and and suddenly everything starts to
fall apart I fall behind in math
and I just realized the sciences are not
for me so I went from
bsc pharmacy to bsc computer science to
business science computer science to
business science finance
to business science marketing all and in
under a year
and the minute that I started with
marketing it just clicked wow I was a
marketer
i was meant to market I was meant to be
in marketing
i fell in love with this profession with
this croft
and and I tell you I I you know lost two
years at college
i I was on the dean's miracle list I was
literally you know acing every single
subject I was
in my element I was losing weight i
found a girlfriend who ended up being my
wife
suddenly I was able to do everything
well
instead of before where I was doing
nothing terribly
and uh and and I ended up actually
and I won't even talk about the
serendipity of how it happened
but I ended up working for maybe one of
the most
funkiest coolest incredible brands
that is a brand today called nando's
chicken land
many people have heard me
i was the third marketing employee in
the company's history
and I started I I started with them when
there were 26 stores
i left when there were 600 you know i
still
bleed there is still peri-peri in my
veins
it's so much so good oh my gosh okay so
i
yeah so wow that's amazing so that
this gave me the grounding and I think
you know that look i've been i've been a
marketer i've been on the agency side
when I came to the us 27 years ago
i worked on the agency side so i've
worked on the brand side on the agency
side
and and you know every time i've fallen
as opposed to for i've either fallen off
a wall or i've fallen in love with a
profession
you know i'm such a believer that you
have to love what you do and be
passionate about it and
and so every aspect of my life you know
eventually discovering digital marketing
and then social media and then
the power of innovation and then
startups and so
each one of these aspects it's not
what's hot right now
it's an addition it's like i'm building
like
arrows in my quiver i'm i'm arming
myself with
with a broader wider and deeper
knowledge
of great marketing but the common thread
will always be
creativity risk taking innovation
change that's always the red thread
through everything that I do
MW
joseph when when I first came in uh
in into awareness of you and your work
it was it was really around
um internet digital marketing but
but this this sense that it could be
more than
advertising that it could be about
authentic voices and this was
you know the first uh rising of
blogs and uh and the first
first rising of podcasts so we're
talking you know 2005
six seven you know that first wave i
know that you've been
on the on the front end and front lines
of of all of this from from the early
days
did you get the opportunity to play in
the digital space
and and find a love for it when you were
at nando's or where where did that
you know opportunity come up for you and
then how did you transfer from that
opportunity
into the position of leadership that
you've that you've been in
JJ
so so you know the um so i'll tell two
things one is
Back in the South African days,
you know South Africa was still as a
country
transitioning and emerging from the
apartheid
regime into you know, a free and
democratic republic.
Technology-wise, we were always behind...
5-10 years behind the rest of
the world.
And so you know, I remember going to... so
that
I had I've had a love for gaming and
computers and
and technology since I was 9 or 10
years old with a
with a ZX Spectrum you know at the time
of
-I think it was the Commodore 64 in the
the BBC,
and my Apple compatible
because Apple wasn't in the country-
but I remember going to sleep at night
trying to download the new
Netscape navigator.
And it was probably like 20 megs then,
but in order to download it, I would have
to start it at 11pm at night. And then come back, I
remember at night 3am,
5am, 7am, and we'll get to like 19 megs
and then the connection
would fail, and I would have to start
again. So
I've been you know... it's a weird thing
when I think about this
Marcus, which is I remember you know,
tracing paper or you know carbon copying. You know
I remember all the old technology,
all of the old technology. I still
remember going
you know, to my mom's coin dealer. I would
go and I would pick up her, the
electric typewriter -which was so heavy I
could barely carry it-
and what made this typewriter so
exceptional
was the fact that you could actually
delete a letter at a time.
There was a special thing where you
could delete a letter at a time.
So when I go back and think about that,
and then I
see this new technology, I could always
see it for
for what it was meant to be, not for what
it was. And I will tell you, I remember
speaking at a Microsoft conference. A
guy by the name of Rex Briggs was on
stage -I never forgot this-
and he stood up and he went like this [points finger].
And everybody was looking at him, he said
“no,” he said. “Don't look at the finger,
look at where the finger's pointing.” And
so for me,
what became my sweet spot -and it still
is to this day-
I'm not a futurist, I never will be one.
I can tell you where the puck is heading
ala Wayne Gretzky,
not where the puck is. I have no interest
in where all the lemmings
are right now... where everybody's piling
on when it's the
flavor of the month, right now. I lose
interest and I move on.
Not to the next big thing, but
understanding where it's all moving
towards.
And that's maybe the... you talk about a
leadership position,
that's where I try and lead and inspire
which is to
give you a different perspective, a
different take, an original take.
And always, always... you will never ever
see
a tactic in search of a strategy with me.
It's strategy
first.
MW
so uh
when coronavirus hit uh
i quickly moved everything from my
office in east nashville to this uh
not really spare bedroom it's my oldest
son's bedroom but he's a marine and he's
deployed so
i'm using this room uh and I went about
the process of
starting to build it into a mini
broadcast studio
and you know i'm part of a couple of
different facebook groups
that that you are a part of as well and
then I noticed
that you had already launched uh
something called
corona tv and you know
one of the things that I think is uh so
great about your style of leadership
is and something that I always try to do
is that you are a practitioner
so there's nothing that you're telling
anybody to do that you're not
willing to roll up your sleeves get
dirty and try yourself
and try in a way that is very uh
vulnerable you know it exposes it's like
while you're leading you're also
exposing that you don't have all the
answers you're not the expert in how it
all works and you're figuring it out in
public
Can you talk about like what
sort of drove you? What
circumstances, in terms of changes to
your own business -to the time,
to the way you were spending time- drove
you when when the pandemic really hit to
take on CoronaTV, and sort of what it
is for you? I mean,
if you're watching this... people know what
this is for me, but you know, talk about
what CoronaTV
is for you.
JJ
Yeah, and the
story which I don't know there'll be
time to talk about today
is one of the stories that I actually
write about in Built to Suck is how I
became an Uber driver.
And the point that I
make by doing it is there
are many marketing gurus out there...
I'll bet you not one of them has ever
become an Uber driver and can talk about what Uber's
building from the inside out from the
other side.
And there's of course, it's a you know, any good
hard honest day's job is a respectable
job and something to be looked up to. And for
me, you know, the ability to go, and
and understand, and see it from the other
side
was illuminating. And it's the message
that I always tell to marketers which is
you can't read about this in a book
-even mine, you know a little bit uh
cheeky, snarky or cheeky there-
you've gotta live it. So my story is a
very simple one, you know. I
was visiting my mom in South Africa,
-you know, thank god she's doing okay- But
it's four years into into a bout with
cancer.
That we, you know, we call it the red
dragon... trying to keep the red dragon at
bay. And i've been trying to visit her three,
four times a year.
And 20 minutes before I was meant to
give a presentation in South Africa
-because I try and you know do a little
bit of work there as well-
my wife calls me and she says, “I have the
coronavirus... I'm pretty sure I've got
COVID.”
20 minutes before, I mentioned, I flew
back, but
I flew back the next day. And I was
meant to fly back the next day,
but I would have anyway... Obviously the
day that I arrived I must have passed
her on the on the I-95 from JFK to
Connecticut because she was getting
tested.
I got home and I needed to be
self-quarantined...
different bedroom, different floor, you
know, away from her for almost a month.
I was on a different floor in the
house, and
I'm obviously faced with
- You know at that point it's like
March 15th.
Every hour, every day another conference
is cancelled.
I was going through the SXSW, you know,
thing at the moment, and I kept on
telling everyone on my Whatsapp group,
“guys this is definitely going to be
cancelled.” But I couldn't cancel it.
And because the hotel... So anyway, so
everything's been canceled,
all my speaking engagements have been
cancelled, consulting clients are
cancelling.
And I don't even know what I
can... if you ask me what the spark was, I
would say honestly I don't
remember. But I just decided to do a
Facebook Live,
and the Facebook Live led to an
experiment with Zoom. And Zoom led to
using a piece of software called
Streamyard.
And the next thing I knew, CoronaTV was
just
there. And then I remember the day -I mean
there's such an
interesting lesson here- but I was
talking to my sister, and she has a
spinning studio in
London. And she was saying like,
“we've got to close our doors,
and I don't know what to do.” And so
she went and put all her bikes -she has
one studio, it's hers-
she put all the bikes on like a U-haul,
emailed her
customer base, said “who wants a spinning
bike,” and started streaming herself.
So I said to her, “why don't you come on
my show? You can be my guest.”
She was the first guest,
now my whole show 82, 83 episodes later.
and so you can see sometimes you know i
if there is a motto for all of this it's
the nike motto just
do it yes you know don't don't even
think sometimes
don't overthink it just do it do what
comes natural do what comes
normal you know I started corona tv with
a view
to helping people that were stuck at
home or stuck
you know from a mental health or
depression standpoint
i wanted to help my fellow authors that
were also stuck and I was like let me
just
help right everyone was saying helping
is the new selling
so people have said what are your views
and how are you monetizing i'm like i
have no idea and I don't
care right but I do know that if I do
this long enough and if i'm true to
myself
and if i'm passionate about what I do
and if I try and help people
surely good things will will follow and
maybe they won't but but hopefully they
will right and so that's
and that and that's and then you know
like what you and
and laura and myself and chris you know
i coined this term streamies we are
fellow
streamies and we help each other and we
support one another
why wouldn't we so this thing by the way
this became part of the interesting
style that instead of my green screen
being about
me I I wanted to make it about my and
there's nothing wrong with doing it the
other way but I just wanted to make it
about my guest
also because it because every day I have
to be creative yeah it has to be
original
it can't become a formula or template
you have to have a template yes but if i
could always
customize and change it and go what's
the green screen gonna be like today
um you know today i'm interviewing colin
shaw who's a customer experience
like one of the smartest cx people in
the world
well we met at a conference at stamford
bridge you can imagine as a spurs fan
so that's my background today it's the
chelsea it's the chelsea stadium
MW
wow that's fun I I uh
so how how many episodes have you done
now
JJ
i mean I don't I don't have like i've
been doing it pretty much
every day since march 15th um but I have
about 82 or 83
interviews
MW
it's that's unbelievable i
think you
are my 42nd or 43rd
uh episode of mark's live and it's it's
crazy when you do it uh I mean I do it
every weekday
and uh just about every weekday like
occasionally i've got like a speaking
thing or a board meeting or whatever but
just about every day I do it
and it's crazy how you rack up the shows
when you do it
every day you know and and just how you
get better at it how you you I am
at this point now where I want to spend
the weekend and really kind of
overhaul and upgrade my entire setup
because
i you know i've kind of got it dialed in
but as you
as you mentioned your your hack around
changing the background
every single show gives you that
creative juice
that i'm currently missing right now i
mean I don't get me wrong like i
i I love the shows but I do feel like
i'm kind of phoning it in for my guest
and so you just you called out something
that I had been feeling in a way that i
know I need to
i need to focus on um
JJ
things as well you can do like one of
the things that i've done is
i can come up with a quote where I find
a quote yeah
and and then and I probably did it with
you as well and
and I can't remember yours but like in
some cases the whole point is
because i'm a sadistic you know sob
uh i'm gonna make sure that it is so
esoteric that there's no
way that you're gonna figure it out but
of course what i've done sometimes
is i've actually used their own quote um
so they're like I did it with laura with
laura gastner arting and she was like
wait that's my quote
you know so so that's that's the thing
you know like I have one and sometimes
it can be like lady gaga and it can be
like
it's just so you know esoteric yeah um
but it but it's a
but it's another way of keeping it fresh
MW
yeah I think mine was
was like a ben franklin quote or
something like that
um man
Let's talk about your book.
Fantastic title,
“Built to Suck…” love it. Really, really
great title. Let's let's talk about it
though, what's this book about?
JJ
So the book was written,
you know... it came out actually at
SXSW 2019.
And on the cover of the book is this
corporate apocalypse. This
you know, you see the the remnants of
companies
that have fallen by the wayside. Kodak,
Blackberry, Toys R Us. And then
quite interestingly, Sears and JC
Penny on the cover both have since gone
out of business.
And then just to be even more
provocative, GM, GE, McDonald's
PNG, etc. of course but I miss, you
know, I mix it up. It's like GMP
and EG. And you know, just playing a
little bit of parody.
But the premise in the book is
that
you know... and I'll take a small step back.
I walked into my daughter's classroom
like four or five years ago,
and I saw this magnificent chart showing
-it was actually like a history chart-
but showing 5,000 years of of history of
civilizations and empires
-Romans, Ming, you know, Ottomans, Egyptians,
Nazi Germany- just all of these empires.
Every single one of them rose and fell.
Every one of them thought they could
live forever.
Every one of them, through hubris,
arrogance, whatever...
inability to change, died and.
And I said, “well if the corporation were
a civilization or an empire,
then surely it too will not be able to
outlive and and fool the sands of time.”
And the message
is that the business model of big
business is broken.
The day and age where size was a growth
enabler
-economies of scale ,efficiencies of scale
global networks, being a
multinational- it's now a growth
inhibitor
because large corporations have become
too slow,
too siloed, too political, too
bureaucratic,
too conservative. They're essentially
slowing down
when the world is speeding up, and they
are being disintermediated
and disintegrated by startups, by
founders,
by technology, just by change in and of
itself.
You know, if you look at what's happened
with COVID right now,
the companies that were on life support,
that were struggling,
that were really, you know,
coping very poorly with the Amazons
with all of these new forces... they're the
ones that won't make it through.
The only companies that will make
it through are the ones that had enough
of a buffer
or some kind of of wiggle room because
-and I write about a lot of this- they
were looking to put themselves
out of business. They were looking to
transform.
They were changing the business they're
- You know one of the examples I use is
IBM. You know, IBM went from being big
blue to big data, right. They went from
mainframes
to AI. If big blue could go from a
company of the most -I mean their main
frames were
multiple floors of a building- to
now dealing
in bits and bytes, then anything is
possible.
right
and so and and so you know it it's it's
i'm quite you know explicit about this i
take no
joy in seeing a company fail right
i am a messenger though saying you know
hawk the end is nigh
you know don't shoot the messenger but
the reality is right now that there is
no I mean i
even talk about another company in the
book that has gone out of business
uh which or or or file for bankruptcy
protection which is Hertz
you know and I said I I for for for the
life of me
i do not understand why a single car
rental company
is even in business today because of
uber and lyft
like I do not understand what the
business model
is yeah and so right now these companies
i mean they've got to rethink everything
if they want to survive and thrive and
part of the message in this book is
today we're all in the survival business
from the biggest of the big
to the smallest of the small yeah and
and that's a good thing because when you
have your survival instinct
in play right survival instinct is based
on two things
self-preservation and adaptation
self-preservation means don't
kill me I just want to live to fight
another day adaptation says i'm gonna
kill you
if it's between you and me i'm gonna
take you out
in order to kind of be the last brand or
lost man
whatever standing and so this book is
i'm very proud of it because because it
doesn't you know it doesn't mince any
words
and it calls it and says no company
can and will survive and I even take it
so far as to say
right at the end of that chart marcus is
you know
uh the united kingdom the eu
usa russia at one point well guess what
the ussr ussr is not the ussr anymore
china I mean who knows what's going to
happen when the whole world
decides to attack china you know nazi
germany
gone the eu and brexit very different
and then right at the bottom usa and i
actually say
uh you know even the mighty united
states of america
may have to face its own heresy which
just
might be racism and I wrote that a year
ago um and I didn't expand on it i
didn't want to be too controversial
but I go back and I look at this and and
and you know you look at
brand usa like brand coca-cola
yeah yeah it's the same thing
if you cannot adapt if you cannot evolve
if you cannot embrace your heresy you
know
then then you will join that scrap heap
of all the empires and civilizations
that came before you
MW
wow that's heavy uh
yeah it
JJ
I thought it was a light read
MW
yeah I don't think so
um you know
JJ
it's funny
i make lots of jokes
MW
well well you're
funny you're a funny person
um we're to the end of the show and i
mean
i I feel like I don't really want to
leave that topic but i
i never like to leave uh these very
short shows
on a on a pessimistic view so
let's let's now look to the
to the innovators into the companies
that can embrace their shortcomings
and can uh self-disrupt you know what
what would you say
uh are are the the the inspirations that
we're seeing sort of around us right now
and the opportunities
well
JJ
I will say that the book is the
book is not
pessimistic and the note is not
pessimistic because
what I introduce is is a solution and
there are four growth pillars which is
which is digital
disruption like what's happening right
now is not digital disruption
it's digital catcher it's just companies
trying to catch up yes the next one is
customer obsession
which is something jeff bezos wrote in
his very first letter to shareholders
the third is talent resurrection like if
we
i actually say ban the word employee if
we can't figure out how to attract and
retain
and uplift our talent we are dead and
then the fourth is
corporate citizenship you know if you
want to be good
you know if you want to do good you have
to be good right
um and and it's just like a different
spin on or
or different take I should say on
purpose and corporate social
responsibility so
so even if you look at a company like
patagonia that has changed its mission
statement to say to save this planet
you know large of course anyone can
survive and thrive
if they are able to to continue as i
said to adapt and evolve
uh and and be dynamic and so the
inspiration around me right now
i mean i'm like you I believe in the
power of the entrepreneur
of the startup you know walt disney said
if you can dream it you can do it and i
believe that technology can solve
any business problem quite frankly
even what's going on with covert
technology and
humanity when combined when unified
when united we can solve anything
whether it's technology and
and contact tracing or humanity in terms
of the
i said this the other day to a doctor i
said why are all the top
doctors positions nobel prize laureates
not having a zoom core status call every
monday morning
or if it is why they're not streaming
that or giving us minutes of that
yeah because because because I do
believe
i do believe in redemption I do believe
in
in humanity you know I believe that
creativity
and and as I said disruption and
innovation and and just
the entrepreneurial spirit and grit
and determination and and and embracing
you know failure and failing for like
all of this stuff
combines to power what I call in the
book the
entrepreneurial revolution it is the
next industrial revolution
and it is so powerful right now and so
as long as we keep feeding our
entrepreneurial
potential and spirit and passion there
is always going to be hope for
for for humanity and for the world
amazing amazing note to end on and
uh but we gotta we gotta get you back on
here soon because there's a part two to
this conversation uh I wanna dig more
into your four pillars uh I love them
and i
i kind of could we could do a whole show
just on the four pillars and
and uh looking at who knows them well
you know any time any time and it works
both ways
right anytime you want to come back
amazing always open
uh thank you so much joseph everybody
out there please follow joseph you can
get him
online at jaffeejuice and at
jaffeejuicetv
jaffeejuice.tv or josephjaffee.com or
the web properties go follow
this this brilliant hilarious hilarious
man uh the book create an orchestrate
it's in stores right now hopefully
you've already picked up your copy if
not why not
it's uh it's only 6.99 at amazon right
now kindle edition
the podcast marcus whitney's audio
universe wherever you get your podcast
you can grab it please subscribe
downloads I need them thank you and you
can follow me at marcus whitney
everywhere online and of course marcus
whitney.com is the website
that is it I will see you all tomorrow
for another episode and until then
hope you were inspired by today and
let's build the new normal piece