Welcome to Marketing Macarons, a free newsletter where you get bite-sized nuggets on Marketing, AI, and how to optimize your productivity ☕️
​
​Read time: ~ 5 minutes

Let's get into it.

💌 In today's email:
​

• How to 10X Your Revenue … the Stanley Way 🔥 
• Make AI Your Email Assistant 👨🏽‍💻
• Easiest Time Management Strategy … Like, Ever ⏰
• A Tasty Surprise 🤤

How to 10X Your Revenue … the Stanley Way 🔥 

All Marketers are scientists. We observe patterns, deep dive into customer insights and data, and whittle down our observations into models or hypotheses to be tested.

And then we test.

A lot.

Our goal is to operationalize positive results and repeat positive outcomes. We tend to repeat what’s working and reject what fails.

And we learn from winning brands. Like Stanley.

A 111-year-old company that completely transformed its product line to meet the demands of a new audience, and 10x their revenue in the process.

Here’s how they did it (Steal their strategy for your product)

Stanley invented the vacuum-sealed bottle in 1913, catering to a primary target audience of men with rugged careers or lifestyles. Think construction workers, heavy machine operators, factory employees, mountaineers, etc.

The primary need of this segment?

To stay hydrated on-the-job or on-the-move, making the Stanley bottle “an essential part of workdays, road trips, and outdoor adventures.”

Then, in 2017, a popular women’s blog (”The Buy Guide”) posted about the Stanley Quencher, “Of all the insulated cups ... this is the one. Just trust.” Followers of the blog started to buy the cup. It was all organic. And Stanley was either unaware or unwilling to tap into this new segment.

Until 2019.

When "The Buy Guide" Founders informed Stanley of rising reader interest, Stanley had the bloggers order 10,000 units to test the market. All 10,000 cups sold in 3 days.

Instead of being content with this sudden and unexpected success, Stanley doubled down on this segment.

Thanks to Stanley’s new Global President, who had a background in, and really understood, Marketing – the brand partnered with influencers, and sales of the Quencher cup spiked through the roof.

Millennial women went crazy and the Stanley cup went viral.

Stanley decided to go all in – launching new pastel colors, partnering with brands like Starbucks and Target, engineering periodic seasonal launches (that had waitlists of thousands of women and sold out within a few hours every time).

They went from $75 million a year in sales (2019) to over $750 million per year (2023).

It’s made it to the Time 100 Most Influential Companies list (2024).

Stanley is now a viral phenomenon among millennials and Gen Z alike. Accessories like the viral TikTok attachable snack bowl, watter bottle pouch, snack ring, and straw caps are flying off the shelves faster than you can say "Macarons".

✨ Lesson from the Stanley model: Learning to pivot can be your superpower ✨

Make AI Your Email Assistant 👨🏽‍💻

There's no hiding from AI. It's here, it's the future. And we might as well embrace it.
​
And put it to work.
​
But AI is not what most people think it is.
​
AI is a brilliant tool, but it cannot do the full job (yet). Human intervention is still the secret ingredient to unlock its full potential.
​
​Here are some things AI can help with:

• Research
• Brainstorming
• Project planning
• Outlining a slide deck
• Learning about a new topic

I've created a library of awesome prompts and will share them in each issue of Marketing Macarons, so keep an eye on your inbox 📥

For today, here’s a simple ChatGPT prompt (courtesy Author and AI educator Dave Birss) to help you save a ton of time crafting the perfect email response:

You are an eloquent and professional executive known for your effective and persuasive communications. I want you to help me respond to this {email}. Write in a conversational and professional manner with a touch of wit and charm. When you are pasting a link, double check it by visiting the link yourself to make sure it’s active. If it’s a dead link, try again until you find a working one.

I want you to:

• List of requests (inc. make comment about weather in their area, find relevant news story, etc) {email}:

​

Take it for a spin, and let me know how you get on!
​
​✨AI + A human who knows how to use it effectively = Winning combination ✨

Easiest Time Management Strategy … Like, Ever ⏰

Time is the one currency that's always in short supply.

Most of us would love an extra hour (or two!) in the day, to get through our seemingly growing mountain of tasks.
​
Even though I'm a time management and productivity expert who's written for the Harvard Business Review, I too could use more time.​
​
Which is why this first productivity hack is as much a reminder to myself, as a note to you, my dear readers:

It's called "Batch processing"

This trick is so simple – you can start to implement it right away.

Now, I know it’s probably not as cool-sounding as “Pomodoro” or “Eat that Frog” but it works.

Taken from the world of computer programming, batch processing is a method in which you complete similar high-volume, repetitive tasks at one time.

Like emailing, for example.

Rather than checking your email throughout the day, and allowing notifications to disturb you when you’re in a state of focus or flow, schedule just 3x email checkpoints per day.

Read and reply to emails only during those time slots.

Start from the most urgent and critical, and work your way down the list.

✨ Simple is better, always ✨