5 Marketing Lessons from HBO's "Silicon Valley"

Yes, I can quote 75% of the show "Silicon Valley" and yes, I'll admit to having watched it about 25-30 times over (but who's counting?). Proud Piper head over here.

Unfortunately, I imagine that many of you might have missed the opportunity to watch this incredible show (on HBO or BINGE for our Australian readers), so here is a short recap of it before we deep dive into the five marketing lessons we can learn from Richard Hendrick's adventures in the wild world of Silicon Valley.

Gavin: I like it. But can we adjust the proportions? Make the logo bigger? And make the flag bigger? And make the box bigger, too. It all just needs to be bigger.

The Recap

The series focuses on Richard Hendricks, an awkward programmer working for a company named Hooli (equivalent to Google) who, after creating a revolutionary algorithm in his spare time, founds a startup company called Pied Piper. The show chronicles Richard's struggles to maintain and build his company with his four acolytes (namely Jared, Gilfoyle, Dinesh and Ehrlich) while facing competition from larger entities, hurdles to get funding, pressures from megalomaniac investors and stress in product development matters. Poking fun at well-known Silicon Valley personalities and companies (we won't go down that rabbit hole today, check out this link if your Friday night is looking bleak ??), the series uses subtle humor and entrepreneurial cliches to establish itself as a commentary of everything that is wrong with the Valley. Not only does this show teach lessons in marketing, but it tackles every aspect of entrepreneurship you could imagine, which makes it, in my humble opinion, the most incredible show on the planet.

Richard: "All the guys at the house, they think I'm nuts, but I'm not nuts. Got a lot of work to do. I'll be in the pool. Not crazy."

The Lessons

Whilst researching the show and the many lessons we can learn from it, I found out that nobody had really tackled the marketing lessons this show could teach us. Most of the content out there focuses a lot on the business or entrepreneurial side of things. This newsletter is called "The French Marketer", not "The French Entrepreneur". Here are the five lessons I think we can all learn from this show, enjoy! ??

Branding is everything

Richard Hendricks, our main character, decided to choose the name "Pied Piper" for his business and "PiperChat" for one of his products, in reference to the famous childrens' tale. Throughout the series, it becomes clear that the name does not resonate with anyone, even less so when Pied Piper's competitor, Hooli, comes out with a competing product labelled "Nucleus". Throughout the show, many elements of Pied Piper's branding are discussed and seem problematic, such as the logo, the messaging and the color scheme (Jared, the business manager, creates an allegedly hideous jacket that ends up becoming iconic).

Lesson learned: Branding is a core element of marketing and should not be ignored. The recognition potential of a well-crafted and well-rounded brand will help you build a core audience of supporters who will gladly promote your business for free.

Listen to your customers to craft your ad campaigns

Take 1 minute and watch this video: Tables Ad Pied Piper.

Tell me in the comments what you think the ad was about... Tables? Furniture? A home insurance product? ??

Nope. Pied Piper's compression platform, that is what the ad was about. See where I am going with this? Despite Richard's trouble to figure out the vision for his own company and not being able to explain exactly what the company is or does, at this point in the show, the ad campaigns should at least be able to simplify the concept and grasp potential users' attention to have them try out the platform. That is why Richard hired alleged marketing experts.

Unfortunately, this Tables ad is an absolute anti-ad. It uses cliches, stock videos, off-brand messaging, a wildly overcomplicated metaphor and no call-to-action whatsoever. Even if the campaign's aim was just brand awareness, this was not worth the money invested in it and will probably get close to 0% return on investment.

Lesson learned: Before you start crafting a marketing campaign, take a good, deep look at who your customers are, what they like, where they hang out, to which messaging they respond and where you want them to be in your marketing funnel. Set clear goals and make sure that your campaign makes sense to your customers (especially on the storytelling side) whilst aligning with your offers.

Think carefully before you spend on marketing

One of the toughest challenges Richard and his crew face whilst building up the company is the search for appropriate funding. Now, any founder and business owner will relate to this aspect of the journey, because sometimes money is tight and needed oh so urgently. However, in his quest for the perfect investor, Richard stumbles upon a megalomaniac called Russ Hanneman, who focuses on all the wrong things at the wrong time, despite his ability to provide the financial aid Pied Piper needs.

To give you an example, as the company is struggling to stay afloat, Russ Hanneman takes it upon himself to spend thousands of dollars on giant billboards placed along Gavin Belson's (Richard's Archnemesis) road to work. Said billboards (actually existing in real life!) illustrated a multiracial woman playing the guitar, coupled with the slogan "I am Pied Piper".

Richard: "Why is she Pied Piper??"

Whilst billboards might seem like a great eye-catching marketing initiative for companies that can afford it, this campaign was simply misguided and put into motion out of billionaire spite by a man who had no expertise in the field.

Lesson learned: Carefully think about your marketing budget before committing to any initiative or any marketing agency. Don't hesitate to interview multiple agencies and hear a few pitches before identifying the one that will align with your goals, your budget and your values. Good marketing does not always need to be expensive.

Simplicity does the trick

When I first started watching Silicon Valley, I got a bit distressed about all the programming jargon used in the dialogs. The more I got into the show however, the less it mattered. Despite my lack of initial understanding of Pied Piper's flagship product, the show was just too good to watch. Unfortunately, the characters playing users on the show did not have all the context I had when they first started using Richard's fictional platform.

Communicating their actual offer in an easy-to-understand manner is one of the biggest challenges the Pied Piper team faced on the show. After hiring a market research company to help them understand their customers, Richard soon realised that no user understood the tech behind the product and that the platform he created seems plainly and simply incomprehensible to the average user. In disbelief, Richard tried to explain the concept to the focus group and finally decided to invest the rest of his finances into a series of workshops held around Silicon Valley, to help users understand the product better.

The biggest mistake Richard made here was the following: he thought like an engineer. Not a user.

Lesson learned: Marketing is there to show off your product/service, to provide insight into its benefits/awesome features and convince your potential customer that it will solve their problem. It does not need to be complicated, it just needs to get a powerful message across and get the customers to convert in the end. If you can't elevator pitch your product/service, you need to review your marketing outputs.

It's okay to be different

Last but not least, one of the most hilarious parts of the show and one of the biggest lessons learned: it is okay for your business to be different. It actually makes our job as marketers much, much easier.

Whilst taking part in the start-up competition "Start-Up Battlefield" organised by TechCrunch (a real competition organised by a real company), Richard's competitors all pitch their businesses as being "social, local and mobile" (so-lo-mo). So much so, that we show watchers quickly forget which company is presenting because every single one of them uses the same exact message and advertises the same, not-so-special values.

Lesson learned: Every company is different, there is no doubt about that. Regardless of that, the way you present YOUR business to YOUR customers and future customers needs to differ from your competitors, otherwise it will create boredom around your target market. Take risks with your marketing and don't forget to not take everything so seriously all the time, marketing encourages singularity and promotes creativity.

The Conclusion

I can only hope that you have enjoyed learning both about marketing and the best show in the world (again, in my humble opinion). From getting your branding right, to choosing the right agency (check out Digitally LC for your digital marketing needs!) and having fun with your creative marketing campaigns, the marketing world is yours to seize with the right strategy in place.

Leave a comment down below if you watched the show! Did I forget any marketing lessons? I'm looking forward to reading you ??

Have a great weekend,

Signed, yours truly, The French Marketer??