Structure 008: Selling Vibes

^{Welcome to this week's issue of Structure. As always, one topic, with the goal of providing you some extra insight into the themes you see online. If you enjoyed feel free to subscribe below!}

This week is all about vibes. Specifically, using vibes to sell, market, or grow online. It’s an overarching theme we’ve seen in brand marketing for decades (described in different ways instead of vibes), but today we’ll focus on a specific implementation from one of my favorite creators, Will Defries.

The Sunday Scaries Podcast is a lowkey, relaxing podcast focused on helping listeners fight through whatever happened over the weekend and set things straight before Monday. The podcast (and related social media accounts / merchandise) is primarily hosted by Will deFries who also hosts a few other podcasts with a group called Washed Media.

Check the podcast out here and follow them on Instagram here. Without any further ado let’s get into it.

Sending a Message

Marketing is all about sending a message. Brand marketing is about creating an identity that encompasses how people should feel about your product, company etc.. Creating that unique feeling or invoking an emotion when people see the company logo is the ultimate goal here. Social media makes the brand part a lot easier than ever before. Brands (and now creators) can interact with their customers 24/7 with any type of messaging they want. They can tap into trends, identify with their audience, and optimize for winning strategies at all times.

Slice of life marketing is the strategy of showing customers a product implemented into their daily life. Showing how a product can be beneficial in real time / real use cases. This phenomena of selling vibes I mentioned earlier is a similar strategy. Instead of constantly pumping out a brand or a product, selling vibes is more about a brand strategy focused in relatable feelings, situations, and emotions. I haven’t seen anyone do a better job at this than Will deFries with The Sunday Scaries Podcast.

Capturing an Audience

It’s hard not to read that description and feel something. You can imagine a hungover, lazy, or tired Sunday where you’re dreading the next day, absolutely in fear of that return to normalcy on Monday. The vibe starts and ends with that description and Will makes sure to get this across in every medium he uses. Will takes this feeling to another level with his social media posting. A curated collection of pictures with casual captions we can all relate to. A clean and consistent aesthetic is the baseline he sets, but the attention to detail in the imagery used each week helps really sell the vibe. Whether it’s a picture of a famous celebrity caught off guard, or a screenshot from an iconic movie. There is a very clear level of detail in the pictures selected and the messaging they are used to convey.

This meticulous methodology has resulted in an Instagram account with 417k followers and a merch business that can successfully sell both crewnecks and candles (outside of his standard podcast audience). The Instagram posts are extremely Story friendly. Instead of someone posting that they feel hungover on a Sunday afternoon, it takes a few taps for them to share a curated post from Will deFries on their story that fully conveys the message. Naturally this is an explosive growth mechanism.

Some numbers for context:

Washed Media, the overarching media brand that oversees The Sunday Scaries Podcast: 29k followers on Instagram

Will deFries: 18k followers on Instagram

Circling Back, a popular podcast Will hosts with a few other members (in my opinion likely more popular than TSSP, but I don’t have listener numbers): 12k followers on Instagram

The Sunday Scaries Podcast (vibes) : 417k followers on Instagram.

Selling vibes works.

A defined and relatable brand with content suited to just how the target audience is feeling on any given day of the week. This combination results in an absolute clinic in Vibes 101. There are cool posts that people want to share for any number of reasons, and then there is the Sunday Scaries Podcast which captures how users feel in real time and defines it for them through social media. A vibe above the rest.

That’s all for this week, the marketing side of me came out to play for a bit.

‘Till Next Time

Braxton

Song of the Week

As a thank you for checking out this week's edition of Structure here's a song I've been listening to lately:

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