How WeWork created a mega brand - Promotion

BottomUp - Skills for Innovators

003 - WeWork Case Study - Promotion

Mike: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the BottomUp podcast. This is episode three. I'm your cohost Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man from New York state, Mr. Chad Owen himself. Hey,

Chad: [00:00:13] Mike. We're, in the middle of our WeWork case study, podcasting here. What's your biggest takeaway so far?

Mike: [00:00:21] Well, you know, for all the criticism WeWork have had, they did some good things and I just don't want us to lose sight of those.

How about you?

Chad: [00:00:29] Yeah, I mean, certainly here at the end of 2019, they're getting tons and tons of bad press, but I think that's why you and I are sitting down here to catalog. Both the positive things that we can learn from, WeWork as well as maybe some of the missteps in the lessons we can learn from that.

And so today we're going to continue the discussion talking about the third P, the promotion, of WeWork and what they did wrong and what they did right and what we can learn from that.

Mike: [00:00:55] Exactly. So, this is all about decoding a business under the four P's. So so far, we've done the product, we've done the people, we're in promotion.

Now the next show will be all about profit, which is the big, stinky, hairy one. Let's just. Get it out there. and we really hope that on this show today that we can share with you one insight that you can take away a bite-sized, compressed, a little practical tool or tip, that will help you build better products or a better business.

So, promotion, well, you know, it's fitting that we use promotion as our third P because WeWork with the grandmasters of self-promotion. Chad, who rivals. WeWork, particularly Adam Newman, the founder over the last few years. Do you think there's any company? Maybe Elon Musk is a great self-promoter. I mean, Adam did an amazing job.

Chad: [00:01:52] I would put Elon above Adam, but yeah, Adam Newman's was certainly giving Elon Musk a run for his money.

Mike: [00:01:59] and there's so much to unpack here. not only on a positive side, there are some very critical learnings. and I think we're going to start with a great little tool that we love to do when we're working on projects.

It's a free tool, Google Trends where you can look and quantify, you know, generally awareness or some version of intent by comparing, different search queries. So, here is a massive insight. WeWork is actually bigger as a brand than the entire category of coworking. Keeping in mind that it popularized and brought to life this world of coworking.

But if you put into Google Trends, so just. Typing Google Trends into your search engine, you'll get there. But if you type in WeWork and compare the search interest with the term WeWork and the term coworking at its peak, WeWork with almost 10 times more popular as a search query than that of coworking.

I find that ridiculous. Chad, this is enormous.

Chad: [00:03:12] It's the Holy Grail for brands, right? Becoming synonymous with, right. You don't ask for a tissue, you ask for a Kleenex. You don't ask for a, you know, sparkling, sugar water. You ask for Coke.

Mike: [00:03:23] Right?

Chad: [00:03:24] And yeah. You don't, talk about, Oh, doing, coworking.

You talk about WeWorking. I think its kind of the brand Holy Grail to get there. Where

Mike: [00:03:31] yes,

Chad: [00:03:31] you've overcome the category in which you're in.

Mike: [00:03:34] So for me, that's just a great little tool that anybody can use. So, if any of our listeners just, it's so fun. You can do your Pepsi versus Coke.

you can do new England Patriots versus the San Francisco 49ers whatever you like. and compare that data and it gives you a really good sense of what moves the needle on search activity, which should be a proxy for awareness and intent, of your product. And, I think that this is where we should also credit, not only the company but particularly Adam Newman, their founder.

In the previous episode, we mentioned that he was the one that went out and got the first, investment, from SoftBank. And, he played a massive part in, getting so much press, so much awareness and conversation going around the brand. It was a credit to him, and I think, the fact that they were bigger than the category is a big idea.

But I think Chad, this is where we kind of pivot into some of the cautionary tales. I think the second idea that we want to bring you around promotion, building a brand and marketing, is that you need to be very careful of the promises you make, and they had a big promise at WeWork. What was it?

Chad: [00:04:50] To elevate the consciousness of mankind?

Mike: [00:04:54] I think if we were looking at Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, I believe that might be at the top, Chad.

Chad: [00:05:00] Yeah. But I think you can lose sight of the fact that you know, their business fundamentals, make them a business that's in real estate, right? So how do you get from real estate to elevating human consciousness?

Mike: [00:05:14] Right? And that's where we talk about being careful of the promises you make, because not only did they say they were elevating the world's consciousness, that they also said that they were a tech company. And the truth really is that when you make a big brand promise, you will be held accountable to it.

So, one of the things that happens is there becomes a reality distortion when the things that you say don't match the things that you do. And we've got this great, data, from CB Insights, which produce a lot of really good work. And they actually studied over the course of three or four years, the volatile new sentiment that was around WeWork.

And what you see are there, these peaks where they do interesting things such as new offices, partnership with MasterCard, something like this. But then what you see is how fragile that is because it's so big. You're really held to a very high account. And, what you see is that the sentiment in news shifted from.

Positive two incredibly negative in just a few months. The first news that really started the avalanche was that WeWork disclosed that their founder, Adam Newman, had taken loans from WeWork, had then bought buildings, and then leased those buildings back to WeWork.

Chad: [00:06:45] If that's not self-dealing, I don't know. It is.

Mike: [00:06:47] Yeah. And you can make these fine nuanced argument between, was it legal or not? And you might even find ways of saying, Oh, actually I didn't break any laws. But when you've gone out to the world and said, we're raising the world's consciousness, you know mankind's consciousness.

When you behave in such a self-serving way, it's so contradictory to that promise. You can see an enormous downside in new center. People started getting very upset with WeWork because of this lesson that we're sharing, which is, be careful what you promise to the world. And if you're out there self-promoting and getting yourself on the front of every maga...