The Moral Knight Rises

A few people wrote in last week that they didn’t like the “Fight! Fight! Fight!” subject line because it’s a Donald Trump thing or something. Truthfully I didn’t even know that or care to know that… so if I somehow offended you, I apologize.

Offending people on the internet seems to be all too common nowadays. It appears we ruffled some features lately and have awakened an army of virtue signaling “business influencers.”

Let’s break it down. 

2 weeks ago we launched the Convert-to-beehiiv Kit campaign. If you need a refresher you can give it a read here. 

Fast forward to today and we currently have a couple hundred ConvertKit customers in the pipeline. If that sounds like a successful campaign, you heard right. 

Not only has the campaign been successful, but it has been applauded by hundreds of people for its creativity and for – excuse my French – its balls. It was as if the entire internet, exhausted from months of hearing about their rebrand (brands can be tone-deaf narcissists too), collectively embraced and welcomed our campaign with open arms.

But there was one small cohort of people who felt that running a creative campaign against a competitor violated some unwritten ethical code. Suddenly these insufferable “get off my lawn” types found themselves a virtual pedestal to stand on.

Our campaign was tactically catered around counter-positioning. While we have been busy shipping tons of valuable new features, they have been busy choosing between Pantone Ultraviolet or Peach Fuzz. His top of funnel looks like this:

The difference?

I don’t feel the need to chime in and explicitly tell the world I’m above posting clickbait on the internet for attention (this is assumed). But these ethical business warriors love any opportunity to virtue signal their moral supremacy — you’re welcome, by the way.

Well, I’m (not) sorry.

There are two killer ways to position a brand.

First, you can proudly shout from the rooftops about what you stand for.

Second—and far more entertaining—you pick an enemy, show why they’re stuck in the past, and tell the world you're their sleek, modern alternative.

And the best part? You can do both at the same time.

Case in point: Apple’s I’m a Mac, I’m a PC campaign.

The Mac guy barely had to lift a finger while the Microsoft guy did all the work showing how clunky, corporate, and robot-like he was. Meanwhile, Mac guy? Effortless, creative, human.

After the dust settled on our Convert-to-beehiiv Kit campaign, Product Hunt so elegantly summarized the whole brouhaha in their weekly newsletter: “That’s business, baby. It’s a free market.”

A free market means competition, and in startups that competition is hand to hand combat. My job is to find ways to grow the business, and if that means rubbing a few elbows and taking customers from a tone deaf brand masquerading as a competitor… well it’s not considered a competitive market for nothing.

While the peanut gallery was busy virtue signaling, I was busy driving results:

• Over $175,000 added to our sales pipeline.

• Dozens of mentions in various media publications.

• Over 250,000 impressions on the first day of the campaign.

By the way, those 250,000 impressions are multiples more than what they received on their actual rebrand launch. The one that they had been choreographing and parading for 6 months.

Not bad for an idea we came up with just 5 days prior and no budget — but that’s the difference between the hustle of a fast-paced startup and an incumbent resting on their (rebranded) laurels.

The next phase of the campaign involved some outreach to existing ConvertKit customers to inform them about the offer. For what it’s worth, it’s honestly a 10/10 offer and we’d be doing them a disservice by not telling them (by the way you can claim it here).

I believe the proper term for this strategy is called “cold outreach” and is commonly deployed by sales teams… but I had to ask ChatGPT to confirm:

Turns out we’re not as innovative as I thought — lots of people seem to do this! Despite that, it appears as if we had tricked ConvertKit’s CEO into thinking we were performing some unethical black magic to extract dollars from his company’s bank account.

I didn’t even have to jump in to share the obvious. The internet took care of it for me.

Or what’s even funnier: getting caught with your pants down because as it turns out, he scraped all of our user’s emails and spammed them with false scare tactics just a year ago.

Oh how quickly they forget. Perhaps there is just some weird neurological reflex these people develop when presented with an opportunity to virtue signal?

Nathan’s tweet must have triggered shock waves throughout the thought leadership ecosystem. Without missing a beat, our friend Nick emerged once again to DM our sales leader who had sent the emails (otherwise known as: doing his job).

I legitimately almost fell out of my chair laughing when I saw that.

9/11 was horrific. Child exploitation is horrific. But a salesperson replying to an automated email with an offer for a competing (and better) product? Dude, get a grip (or a self-storage facility or whatever).

Surely these entrepreneurial purists would never pursue such growth tactics. But hold up, what’s this?

It appears as if these ethical overlords actually did deploy such strategies in their glory days of yesteryear… only to now consider them below their moral standards.

It sounds to me they liked it a lot better when there was no competition 🤷‍♂️.

When your company has been around for 12 years and your greatest accomplishment of late is identifying the perfect hue of blue and tweaking tiny vector shapes… I suppose one angle of defense is to recruit those desperate for attention to paint us as the big bad wolf.

That’s one way to do it. But here’s how we compete:

These hypocrites are playing a game I simply refuse to lose. And for all the virtue snobbery happening on the sidelines, remember, you’re on the sidelines. Enjoy the show.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/moral-knight-rises

I want to tell you a secret. It's about CRE Daily - one of the top newsletters on beehiiv.

They are a leading voice in the commercial real-estate news, read by over 65,000 people, and are absolutely printing money.

The secret? They didn't do it alone.

Refact is a design and funnel-optimization agency that truly does it all. And in the case of CRE Daily; Refact led the redesign of their website, newsletter, and built an entire monetization engine.

If you like to nerd over brand development and revenue: then this case study is for you.

And if you want to build a scalable publishing platform like The Hustle, Workweek, and CRE Daily: this agency is for you.

TLDR: use Refact if you're serious about running a media business. It's a cheat code.

The perfect office doesn’t exi-

Looks like it doubles as a nuclear bomb shelter as well. Safety first, then MRR.

Reply with your own AI generated office and I’ll feature it in an upcoming issue.

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Click on any of the tracks below to get in a groove — each selected from the full Big Desk Energy playlist.

Some of my favorite content I found on the internet this week…

• Rachel Karten breaks down the rough few months at Sonos and their beloved viral employee, Keith (Twitter)

• Elon Musk at the All-In Summit (YouTube)

• WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg seems to want to fight everyone, including Ruby on Rails creator DHH (ma.tt)

• Porsche teams up with Almond for surfboard collection (Hypebeast)

• Excellent Figma ad at Times Square 👇️ 

@youcreativemedia

Genius @figma marketing in Times Square #youcreativemedia #marketing #timessquare #ooh #outofhome

Share this newsletter with your friends, colleagues, and cute girls.

1 REFERRAL = 25% OFF EVERYTHING IN THE STORE

Your referral count: 0 

Or share your personal link with others: https://mail.bigdeskenergy.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

Enjoyed this newsletter? Forward it to a friend and have them signup here.

Until next Tuesday 🕺🏽

📥️ Want to advertise in Big Desk Energy? Learn More