The Business of Kayfabe

by Sean Oliver

  21. Bottom-Up Marketing

  “DON’T TRUST ANYONE over 30.” That was a popular credo of the 1960s in America as the post-30 crowd was seen as conformist and part of the establishment. They weren’t part of the enlightened group, or so it was believed by the under-30 crowd, who were fostering social change.

  Today that type of sentiment of distrust is very much alive in advertising. The trust factor between a company and a consumer is greatly fragmented and it’s totally understandable. After decades of buying the great, new car, we watch the model’s brakes fail, cause dozens of crashes, and then learn that the company was aware of the defect. They didn’t tell me that when they crawled through my television and into my living room. All they said was it was a great, new car.

  We watched toy companies allow their products to be so poorly and cheaply manufactured overseas in China with so little oversight, that they contained toxic levels of lead. Then they made cute commercials, crawled through our televisions and into our living rooms, and spoke to our children. Our kids saw the colorful commercials and were told the toys were fun.

  Our televisions are loaded with goofy infomercials hawking the latest gizmo that will surely change our lives for the better. You can tell just by watching that the results are being staged and simulated, and we’re told so in tiny, unreadable type at the bottom of the screen that reads something like “You are watching a dramatization…results may vary.” If you ask me, I think that should be in giant font, splashed across the screen because it’s an admission that everything we’re seeing is fake! It’s deception. So much of advertising still is.

  The really funny thing about this deception is that we always know it. Do we really believe that this glob of goo that is squeezed onto a rag will really erase a 10-inch gouge on the hood of a car? Even if we buy the product, we do so with a healthy dose of skepticism. We’re accustomed to being lied to by the sales business. We know all salespeople are full of shit 90% of the time. Truth of the matter is, when an outstanding product is discovered by the masses, word of mouth does most of the selling. And it certainly does the best selling of all. Customers become the proverbial evangelists and tout the product or service’s merits to friends and colleagues. This is a million times more valuable than any ad or demonstration. Why?

  The answer is trust. Your friend or co-worker has already passed the tests that allow them to be ingratiated into your life. Their word is respected and reliable, with no agenda. This marketing carries a ton of weight. An amalgamation of this is what is considered bottom-up marketing. It cannot be manufactured, and it must be genuine to really work. It’s more than just testimonials, which are usually staged and cherry picked. Though it can’t be manufactured, it can be channeled. It’s imperative you put vehicles in place for this. But more on that later.

  Ages ago, top-down marketing, the antithesis of today’s desired process, was all that existed, in a formal sense. Sure, your co-worker could recommend the restaurant, movie, or soft drink that they love. But outside of that, companies were sitting atop the world concocting messages and ads and throwing them down at us. There was no social media for us to send messages upward to the masses. Big advertising was not addressing us one at a time, as individuals, trying to appeal to our senses and tastes. We were carpet bombed by commercials, billboards, and print ads as they dropped on the masses.

  That model is mostly dead, or at least ineffective. We still have print and television ads, but they’re not succeeding. The reason most often cited for the death of traditional advertising is the growth of technology. I suppose the DVR did put a big dent in how many people actually watch a commercial nowadays, but I’d suggest they were dying before that and it had nothing to do with recording devices.

  It had everything to do with trust. We’ve progressed to a point where the consumer doesn’t care what Carmaker A has to say about their own product. That consumer shopped on Amazon earlier in the day and read 42 customer testimonials and ratings about her blowdryer. She didn’t even bother to look at the manufacturer’s write up. Why would they now trust the television equivalent of the manufacturer’s write up?

  In this market, the people, from the bottom up, will choose the winners and losers. Each product in today’s marketplace is a participant in this revolution. As a business owner, you will be chosen by the army in the streets and either uplifted or summarily slaughtered.

  After hosting YouShoot LIVE with Dixie Carter, TNA’s head honcho at the time, people from their camp talked to me about doing something down there. I feared they’d actually want me to hold a microphone and ask someone about winning the title, so I was a little more proactive and prepared a slideshow for TNA about what Sean Oliver and Kayfabe Commentaries could do for them.

  They were chasing the same market that WWE owned and, quite frankly, had wrapped up pretty tightly. The market that WWE didn’t have was the Internet wrestling fan, loaded with skepticism and sarcasm, waiting each week to spit out what the massive conglomerate in Connecticut was serving them. Those fans that read The Wrestling Observer and watched our shoot programming needed a hero—a product that spoke to them. They saw themselves as too smart for the WWE product and, on some level, they were.

  The presentation I did for TNA was geared toward those fans. I pointedly told them that targeting the 11 year-old fan of John Cena was a lost cause. You’d get some spillover anyway. But designing your product to look like WWE, sound like WWE, and feature former talent of the WWE was probably a dead end.

  It never really looked like it. It was not fooling anyone.

  But the talent was pretty deep down in TNA and people were watching. The federation was on the radar, so doing something cool would have been noticed and if they reached the real influencers on the Internet, its effects would have been multiplied exponentially.

  Imagine if Tod Gordon and Paul Heyman had decided to try and emulate WWE’s product in 1994, rather than doing everything they could to lure those that were disenfranchised, thirsting for something more real? This was that next opportunity, and I thought TNA could have the balls to grab it.

  I suggested they should enter the shoot programming market, allowing us to be their conduit. If they gave us access to their roster and we produced shoots with their talent, they could use that in angles, or just to make these characters real—actually strip them of “character.” They needed to target the Internet wrestling fans that were doubling and tripling in size, and we could deliver them to TNA’s door. We were the biggest and best producers of shoot material in the world at the time.

  Below are some of the actual slides from my July 2010 presentation to Bob Ryder and Brian Wittenstein at TNA:

  That same message was a few years ahead of its time, but I saw the importance of gathering the people and letting them do all the work. It’s organic—it would have happened on its own. Beyond their graciously having me attend one of their tapings at Universal, they never followed up. As of this writing I think their product is still on TV somewhere. I know WWE’s still is.

  Slick ads that only mask a flawed product will not succeed because the army in the streets gathers and communicates. Rather than clubs and bats, they’re holding smartphones, and these gadgets are much more deadly for your company if you defraud their trust. A viral bludgeoning on Twitter or a slashing on Facebook can be passed on again and again, causing you to die a thousand deaths.

  Conversely if you are the one placed upon their shoulders and trotted through the mean streets as the hero, you have amassed the many and the mighty who will fight for you. They are your army. You can’t fool them, so don’t try. They can smell your Blood.

  Kayfabe Commentaries has had such a loyal allegiance with our bloodthirsty fans in the mean streets. We’ve found that they will literally take to the streets for us if provoked. The WWE began producing a line of high-profile products that were very similar to ours and our fans (they go so far beyond customers, it’s almost an insult to refer to them a such) took great offense to this.
They began showing up to WWE televised events holding up signs with our company name on it. One “Kayfabe Commando” got onto the grounds of WWE’s headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut and took a photo of himself holding a big sign declaring WWE’s fear of KC. We certainly don’t want any of our fans to get in trouble but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that kind of loyalty to our brand left me speechless and honored. We’ve struck a Grateful Dead-type loyalty with our viewers and it has nothing to do with the brown acid.

  “Viral” has become such a buzzword today it’s now worked its way into the lexicon of the big business blockheads and ad firms, always a day late in identifying cool trends. They see an ad going viral as the grand slam, but there’s one component of that which is often absent. A truly viral campaign with strong brand association is a grand slam in bottom-up marketing. How often does a clever or touching ad emerge and get people talking about the commercial…but not the product? As a viewer it happens to me all the time. I can rattle off a handful of interesting commercials I’ve seen in the past six months and I bet I can recall maybe one or two of the products or companies they advertised.

  You can be clever as all hell and win all the Obies and Cleos in the world, but if it doesn’t generate sales or brand awareness for the company being advertised, you failed.

  Viral ads are not awarded such status by the executive. Once again, it’s the people who uplift the ads worthy of being shared, and they do that sharing on their own. It can’t be manufactured. Bottom-up marketing is an organic process whose results you can’t fabricate.

  The mechanics are pretty simple—it really just entails social networks, blogs, podcasts, and any other ways the masses share. It’s the application of these tools in concert with your brand messaging that is really the skill. If you make the tools available to your fans and you operate a genuine Business of Blood, they’ll take to the streets for you too. How close to viral you get is up to them.

  22. Give Them What They Want

  AS YOUR PRODUCT line expands, you’ll be blessed with the requests and hopes from your customers. They’ve been using your products and they have now formed some strong ideas about them. The access you’ve given them as well as the ownership stake you’ve instilled has made them take the time to formally address you. They’ve taken time out of their day, so this is clearly important to them. So in turn, we must listen.

  Their opinions will vary. You’ll get ten requests to make the handle blue. And then ten to make it yellow. You’ll have some who feel the handle is too big, and others who think it’s just right. It’s pretty heavy for him, but way too light for her. They’ll all let you know this, via their various opportunities to touch you…email, social nets, and otherwise.

  Which of these are valid? Which do you pay attention to?

  All of them. You don’t have to act on any of them, but you do need to hear them. It’s important to file these away and make note of what is being said and has been said about what you’re producing, all the while being cognizant of the fact that you can’t serve too many masters. But if you have a base awareness of their likes, dislikes, and suggestions, there may be a time when this will prove valuable to you.

  Don’t get me wrong…there are plenty of requests and comments that are dismissible from the get-go. Technology and all of these communications advances have given a voice to many who enjoy that newfound power, and look to be nothing but inflammable and negative. They post their knee jerk reactions and poorly thought-out conclusions to the world without forethought. It’s pretty easy to spot them.

  You need to block those out. They’re not productive and they will in no way help to better your product. What they are looking for, you cannot provide, unless you have a degree in psychotherapy.

  You’ll become pretty good at properly categorizing customer requests after you’ve dealt with enough of them. Hopefully you haven’t cannibalized your product too much at their direction in the meantime. You have to be able to make the distinction between preferences and problems. A customer’s preferences can run the gamut. The foundations for their requests may be either thoughtful or illogical. You’ll probably be able to distinguish.

  If you keep reading the same thing out there, it’s time to pay attention. Ask yourself some questions and be honest with the answers. Does what is being written correlate with reality? Are there conflicting comments? And most importantly—does the cash register agree?

  After producing YouShoot: LIVE with Vince Russo, we brought him back for editions of Guest Booker and two Timelines before eventually giving him the Vince Russo’s Attitude series. People are pretty passionate about Russo and they’re very vocal with their displeasure. People posted on YouTube and on our socials about how we should be ashamed for giving him airtime. There were posts saying that people were never buying any of our shows again because we were featuring Russo on our programming.

  There were lots and lots of supporters apparently, and they weren’t busy posting. They were busy buying. That was their vote. And we had to listen to them. Ultimately, Vince Russo’s programming became one of our top sellers.

  Don’t get me wrong; if the show was a deviation from our brand or we thought it wasn’t servicing our fans, we wouldn’t have done it in the first place. You have to ignore any post or email simply stating it was a mistake to feature Vince Russo, one of the sport’s most high profile members of creative teams, most often in the head writer slot. Whether you liked what he wrote or not, his appearance on Timeline or Guest Booker is consistent with KC’s brand. Sorry to those of you that don’t enjoy him, but we have lots of options for you to watch other than Russo.

  The late Scott Epstein was an agent/promoter type, and he grabbed me at a convention one day while we were between shoots. I’d booked occasional talent through Scott, most notably Superstar Billy Graham, and then Bruno Sammartino. That Bruno booking went a little sideways and it’s in my first book Kayfabe so I won’t rehash it all here.

  I would always see Scott at the events and he was a good guy. He was a generation older than me so he had great stories of the 70s WWWF and his interactions with those guys. I liked talking to Scott and was happy to see him one night at a WSU show in Union City, NJ. WSU was an all women’s federation and they were having a big show inducting some lady wrestlers into their Hall of Fame. If there’s an actual Hall of Fame for WSU I’m sure it’s in some garage in Brooklyn.

  We were at the show working a vendor table selling our DVDs. Lisa “Ivory” Moretti was there to induct the late Luna Vachon who had died that year. I hadn’t seen Moretti since we shot her edition of Timeline so I was happy to see her and catch up a bit. She’s great—everyone in the business loves her. I saw a few other talents that I knew and I took some pictures with fans at our table. Point is, people knew I was there.

  Scott Epstein came in and when it was time for the show to start, he positioned himself at a table about fifteen feet in front of us, the equivalent of two rows closer to the ring. Scott had a tiny tripod that he could clip to a little Flip camera—those were around just before every cell phone had the ability to record great quality video. I was intrigued by the little tripod and I asked if he got good video with that setup. He assured me he did, and as the show began I retuned to our table and Scott sat down at his.

  He then began to construct a tower of small boxes and random objects from the venue to place his camera and baby tripod on. The thing was like six inches tall, so he had to put it atop a bunch of shit so it could shoot above the fans’ heads into the ring. He then ran a cable to a laptop that he was using as a monitor to watch what the Flip was recording.

  By the time Scott’s production setup worthy of Our Gang was rolling, the ladies had assembled in the ring as Lisa Moretti eulogized Luna Vachon and inducted her into the Hall of Fame. There was a 10-bell salute and everything. As the girls talked about Luna and got emotional, I was touched.

  I remembered Luna from one of our first recording sessions of our mp3 product in the early days
. She wasn’t one of our talent, but she attended dinner with us that night and she was sweet as pie. The chick was scary as fuck on TV, but she was so soft spoken and truthfully, probably a little zonked. I know she got sick later that night and dispatched someone to our room while we were recording with The Iron Sheik, in search of pills. Sheiky looked up and said, “What, now I am doctor?” Sheiky gives away no gimmicks, Baba.

  Well, back at the arena in Union City, which was basically the size of a four-car garage, I didn’t have much time to be touched by the soft-spoken induction speech in the ring. Epstein, who wore two hearing aids that were apparently malfunctioning, had turned to me and began yelling my name. He was holding his laptop up in the air and showing me, as well as everyone else, that decent video was in fact being recorded by the gimmick in which I’d expressed interest.

  “Sean! Look at this, buddy! Is this beautiful or what?!”

  The entire frigging place starts looking over at me and like a child I begin to slide down in my chair until I was almost under the table. Scott was oblivious to his volume during the touching in-ring eulogy. I was so embarrassed all I could do was break into a hysterical laugh. I turned and grabbed either Craig or Anthony, whoever was sitting to my left and was too big to slide under the table as well.

  “Look at that video, my friend! Clear as day!”

  He’s still yelling, deaf as the day is long. Ivory actually pauses her speech in the ring and looks over our way, squinting to see what the commotion in the darkness was.

  “Hours of video, Sean! Got a hard drive in it!”

  I could stand no more. I slid out of my seat and scampered away, hanging my head and church-laughing at the mess. I ran into the restrooms for the rest of the ceremony.

  Fast forward a couple of years and Epstein seeks me out at the Crowne Plaza in Monroe during the Legends of the Ring convention. He wanted a meeting with me so we met in the lobby of the hotel when I had a break and grabbed a spot on the couch. He’d never pitched me a project so I was interested in what he had. He teased me a bit when he came onto our set while we were transitioning between shows.