UnMarketing
Everything Has Changed and Nothing is Different
byScott Stratten, Alison Stratten
Book Edition Details
Summary
Banishing the era of intrusive marketing, "UnMarketing" invites you to a paradigm shift where engagement reigns supreme. Tired of the relentless buzz of cold calls and disruptive ads? Step into a world where authenticity and connection replace outdated tactics. This second edition arms you with cutting-edge insights on leveraging social platforms like Snapchat and mastering the art of targeted ads and search. Discover how to transform your business strategy by listening and building trust, making you the obvious choice when your customers are ready to act. "UnMarketing" isn’t just a book; it’s your blueprint for cultivating genuine relationships in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
Introduction
Picture this: You're walking through the grand entrance of the Wynn casino in Las Vegas, just another visitor among thousands. Suddenly, a man operating a carpet-cleaning machine stops his work, looks up with a genuine smile, and says, "Good afternoon, and welcome to the Wynn, please enjoy your day." In that moment, everything changes. This wasn't a scripted greeting from a customer service representative—this was Wes, a carpet cleaner who understood something profound about human connection that billion-dollar marketing campaigns often miss entirely. In our hyperconnected world, we're drowning in marketing messages, social media noise, and automated interactions that feel increasingly hollow. Traditional marketing approaches—cold calls, interruptive advertising, and one-way communication—are not just losing their effectiveness; they're actively turning people away. Meanwhile, authentic moments of human connection, like the one Wes created, have the power to transform entire businesses and build lasting relationships. The digital revolution hasn't changed the fundamental truth that business is built on relationships. What it has done is provide us with unprecedented tools to build those relationships at scale, to listen to our customers in ways never before possible, and to create experiences that truly matter. This book explores how to harness these tools not to bombard people with more messages, but to engage with them as fellow human beings deserving of respect, value, and genuine care.
From Cold Calls to Conversations: The Social Media Revolution
The phone rings at 6 PM, right in the middle of dinner. It's a telemarketer pitching home security systems to someone who's never expressed interest in home security. The conversation is one-sided, scripted, and ends with a frustrated click. This scene plays out millions of times every day, representing everything that's broken about traditional marketing approaches. The marketer sees potential customers as targets to be conquered rather than people to be served. Now imagine a different scenario. A local security company notices someone on Twitter mentioning a break-in in their neighborhood. Instead of immediately pitching their services, they offer genuine sympathy and share helpful, free advice about home security basics. They engage in a real conversation, answer questions, and provide value without asking for anything in return. When that person is eventually ready to invest in security, who do you think they'll call first? This shift from interruption to engagement represents a fundamental revolution in how business relationships are built and maintained. Social media platforms haven't just given us new channels to broadcast the same old messages—they've created opportunities for genuine two-way conversations at unprecedented scale. The companies that thrive today are those that understand this distinction and embrace the patient work of building trust through consistent, valuable interactions. The transformation requires abandoning the spray-and-pray mentality of mass marketing in favor of what feels more like old-fashioned relationship building, but powered by modern technology. It means showing up consistently, listening more than talking, and always prioritizing the other person's needs over your own immediate sales goals. The companies mastering this approach aren't just surviving the digital disruption—they're building deeper customer relationships than were ever possible in the pre-digital era.
Trust, Transparency, and Customer Experience Excellence
When Amy ordered pizza during a storm and received the wrong order an hour late, she did what millions of frustrated customers do—she vented on Twitter. She didn't tag the restaurant or expect a response; she was simply expressing her disappointment to her network. What happened next transformed her from a dissatisfied customer into a raving fan and created a customer service legend that spread worldwide. Ramon De Leon, who owns multiple Domino's locations in Chicago, saw Amy's tweet and responded immediately with an apology and a promise to make things right. But he didn't stop there. The next day, Amy woke up to find a personally crafted video apology from Ramon and the store manager, acknowledging their failure and demonstrating genuine remorse. Later, Ramon showed up at an event Amy was attending to deliver a personal pizza and roses as a final gesture of accountability. This story illustrates the profound shift happening in customer service expectations. In the past, a customer complaint might reach a few friends or family members. Today, that same complaint can be seen by thousands, shared by hundreds, and become part of your brand's permanent digital record. The stakes are higher, but so are the opportunities. Companies that embrace radical transparency and go beyond standard service recovery create experiences so memorable that customers become voluntary brand ambassadors. The key insight isn't that customers have become more demanding—it's that they've become more visible. Every interaction is potentially public, every service failure can go viral, and every exceptional experience can reach far beyond the original customer. This reality terrifies companies clinging to old-school damage control approaches, but it energizes those who see it as an opportunity to demonstrate their values through action rather than marketing copy. Excellence in customer experience today requires treating every customer interaction as if the whole world is watching—because increasingly, they are. The companies that thrive in this environment are those that have aligned their internal culture with their external promises, ensuring that every team member understands their role in delivering experiences worth sharing.
Content Creation and Community Building Strategies
Scott's first viral video, "The Time Movie," started with a simple observation: people needed a reminder that life is too short to waste on routine and too precious to take for granted. Instead of creating another promotional video about his speaking services, he crafted a powerful emotional experience about valuing time. The video wasn't about him at all—it was entirely focused on what his audience needed to feel and remember. When the video launched, nothing happened at first. Scott had fallen into the common trap of thinking that simply creating something valuable would automatically attract an audience. He learned the hard way that even the best content needs a strategic approach to reach people and create the engagement that turns viewers into community members. The breakthrough came when he shifted his focus from trying to get attention to genuinely serving his audience's emotional and practical needs. The video eventually reached over four million views, generated hundreds of thousands of newsletter subscribers, and led to more than a thousand speaking opportunities. But the real success wasn't in the numbers—it was in the quality of connections formed with people who resonated with the message. Scott discovered that when you create content that genuinely moves people, they don't just consume it passively; they become active participants in spreading your message and building your community. The most crucial lesson from this success was understanding that viral marketing isn't actually about the creator—it's entirely about the audience. Content succeeds when it serves the audience's needs so well that they feel compelled to share it with others. This requires creators to step outside their own perspective and deeply understand what their community values, fears, dreams about, and struggles with day by day. Building a genuine community around your content requires consistent value delivery over time, authentic engagement with community members, and the humility to make the community's needs more important than your own promotional goals. The companies and creators who master this approach build audiences that become genuine advocates, supporting not just individual pieces of content but the creator's entire mission and future endeavors.
Scaling Success While Staying Authentic
When Scott's viral video exploded in popularity, he discovered a painful truth: success can be more dangerous than failure. His $9-per-month hosting account crashed under the traffic, generating a $1,400 bandwidth bill in just one week. Meanwhile, he was manually copying and pasting thousands of email addresses from new subscribers into Outlook Express, a process so time-consuming that he eventually had to delete 140,000 potential subscribers just to manage the workload. This experience taught him that authentic marketing success requires infrastructure that can scale without losing the personal touch that created the success in the first place. Too many businesses focus entirely on generating demand without preparing systems to handle that demand gracefully. The result is often a customer experience that contradicts the very values that attracted people in the first place. The solution isn't to avoid success or limit growth, but to build scalable systems that maintain authenticity at every touchpoint. This means investing in technology and processes that can handle volume while preserving the human elements that matter most to customers. It also means training team members to embody the same values and approaches that built the initial relationships, ensuring that growth enhances rather than diminishes the customer experience. Scott learned to use professional email management services, scalable hosting solutions, and fulfillment partners who could handle the operational demands while he focused on maintaining the authentic connections that drove the business. The key was understanding which elements needed to remain personal and which could be systematized without losing their essential character. The companies that successfully scale authentic marketing approaches are those that view systems and processes as tools for preserving rather than replacing human connection. They understand that growth should amplify their core values rather than dilute them, and they're willing to invest in the infrastructure necessary to deliver consistent experiences at any scale.
Summary
The stories throughout this exploration reveal a fundamental shift in how successful businesses build relationships with their customers. From Wes the carpet cleaner at the Wynn to Ramon's personal video apology, from Scott's viral video lessons to the systematic approaches of companies like Zappos and FreshBooks, we see the same pattern emerging: authentic human connection scaled through thoughtful use of digital tools creates sustainable competitive advantages that traditional marketing approaches cannot match. The digital revolution hasn't changed the fundamental importance of relationships in business—it has simply made those relationships more visible, more scalable, and more crucial to success than ever before. Companies that try to use digital tools to amplify traditional interrupt-and-pitch approaches find themselves increasingly irrelevant. Meanwhile, those that embrace digital platforms as relationship-building tools create communities of engaged advocates who drive sustainable growth through genuine word-of-mouth recommendations. The path forward requires courage to prioritize long-term relationships over short-term transactions, wisdom to invest in systems that can scale authentic interactions, and discipline to consistently deliver value before asking for anything in return. It means treating every customer interaction as an opportunity to demonstrate your values through action rather than words, and understanding that in our hyperconnected world, exceptional experiences spread just as quickly as disappointing ones. The choice is yours: continue shouting louder in an increasingly noisy marketplace, or start listening more carefully and responding more thoughtfully to build the relationships that will sustain your business for decades to come.
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