Benjamin Ard (01:20)
Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Logan. Logan, welcome to the show.
Logan Freedman (01:18)
Thank you for having me.
Benjamin Ard (01:20)
Yeah, Logan, I'm excited. This is going to be an awesome discussion, something that all of us can learn a little bit more about and improve, especially in the marketing side of things. But Logan, before we dive into the subject, let's get to know you, your work background, history, and all that fun stuff.
Logan Freedman (01:37)
Yeah, sure. My name is Logan Freedman. I'm currently the Global Head of SEO for a company called ManyChat. We do social media automations for content creators on all Meta products and also on TikTok. We're actually partnered with both. Background is I've been at a ton of different startups, whether that be in the SEO or the content field. Originally started off in the agency world like yourself, eventually transferring over to startups where I found a home.
Benjamin Ard (02:08)
I love it. And the variety of different businesses in the startup world is so perfect for really figuring out how to be creative no matter what industry you're in, what the product or services that you're operating in. And that's the focus for today's discussion, being creative, regardless of your industry. So Logan, let's start here. When people hear the term creativity, I think their minds kind of wander into a lot of different places. What does that mean? How are we defining creativity when it comes to B2B or traditionally non-creative contexts?
Logan Freedman (02:46)
Yeah, the way that I look at it is it's figuring out how to stand out in a sea of gray. Especially in B2B. A lot of people look at B2B as something that is generally stale, pretty boring and safe. When I look at creativity, I'm looking specifically from the startup world. I'm looking on how to stand out from my competitors. And usually that weighs through content and being creative. And when I talk about creative, I mean fun. What is something that will help stand out that people are like, "Wow, this is really fun. I want to engage with this." If you can figure out what that is and you can figure out personally how to have fun yourself with it, I think the customers will have fun as well. And you'll stand out in that crowd or that sea of gray.
Benjamin Ard (03:31)
I love that. I love the fun. I know we've talked about the term on this podcast of "entertaining and educational." I love the word fun. I think that's a cool way of defining it. So when you're at a business for a long time, sometimes creativity stalls and you kind of lose that little special something. How do you notice that that's happening? Do you have any telltale signs of knowing when creativity is just not flowing anymore?
Logan Freedman (04:47)
Yeah, usually it's when stress starts to creep up, when you start getting overloaded, and when you honestly start getting bored. And there's definite ways on how you can break through that. But I think that's like the biggest signal for me — when I start getting bored with a role or bored with the work that I'm doing is when I start to look on how I can spice things up.
Benjamin Ard (05:09)
I like that. And I think that's an important thing when you're looking at management and leadership styles as well. If your team is stressed, the creativity and all that kind of stuff just dies and it's gone. I'm sure you've hit a wall like this before. It happens to all of us. What have you personally done to get the ideas moving again and getting creative again?
Logan Freedman (05:42)
Yeah, so one of the biggest things that I like to do is having constant ideation sessions with your team and also building that relationship with the team. A lot of the time during ideation sessions, which are usually an hour long, we will talk about something that is completely not work-related. For some reason at ManyChat, we tend to start talking about cults a lot, which is very strange. But it's almost daily that we talk about some weird cult that we figured out. But honestly, how do you talk about something that's not work that you then can loop back into work that kind of sparks you into being creative, coming up with new ideas. And honestly, it's just rolling back into having fun.
Benjamin Ard (06:30)
Okay, that's super cool. And I think one of the coolest parts about having fun and creativity is people don't want to engage with brands. They want to engage with the people behind those brands. So can you walk us through any specific ideas you've ever implemented? Maybe some stories to tell about creative ideas, maybe in some different industries that you've worked in.
Logan Freedman (07:07)
Yeah, definitely. I can talk about one that I always like to tell at parties or whenever I go to conferences because people are kind of shocked by it. I used to work at a company called LawnStarter. It's a lawn care company. Think about Uber of lawn care. They didn't actually provide the service, but they connected local lawn care specialists, people looking for lawn care in 130 different metros when I was there. And so we were looking for backlinks. We were looking for content that we could send out to media outlets that would pick it up.
And it's really hard to get media outlets to care about lawn care. Lawn care is inherently boring. Before I joined, they talked a lot about different grass types and no one cares. Unless you are working in that industry, no one really cares. So I came up with the idea because it was an Austin based company. How much damage was Austin City Limits, which is a music festival, doing to the lawn every year? Well, I filed for what's called a FOIA request, Freedom of Information Act, and they turned around and told me that they didn't do any damage to the lawn. Well, there's a hundred thousand people walking over the lawn for three days straight and running everywhere. That was a lie.
So I thought, okay, cool. Well, this is a dud story. What's something that I know the media is going to pick up and run with and how can I form that into drawing back into that we're an Austin based company? I came up with the idea of — you can go to a couple of different labs that do this, but you can test a bunch of different surfaces for bacteria, for E. coli. And I was scrolling through and I was like, "Wait, I can test Austin City Limits for fecal matter." And so what I did was I convinced the CMO who was going to Austin City Limits to go into the festival with a bunch of swabs and he swabbed six different locations, three times each. We sent it off to the lab in between weekend one and weekend two. And we figured out that Austin City Limits was covered with fecal matter particles. We then pitched that to every single news agency in the state of Texas and almost every single one picked it up. It was a great study and I simply told reporters that being an Austin based company, we were worried about the safety of people going.
Logan Freedman (09:27)
We got a ton of backlinks, a ton of coverage, a ton of people that came to the page. And it was definitely an interesting creative idea that drew a bunch of customers for us in a fairly boring space. And then the best part about it is I am now banned for life from all Austin City Limits music festivals. And luckily I just happened to move to Austin a year and a half ago. My favorite part is we have a new events and experience person that just joined, and she came from C3 events, which was the people that threw ACL and they still talk about it. And she knew exactly who I was when she started working with me and took a picture with me and sent it to all of our old coworkers.
Benjamin Ard (10:11)
So now your picture is like on the boards. You can't get in for sure. I love the objective where it started from — we want backlinks. And I think that's a part of this that I really love — we have a very specific objective we're trying to achieve. It wasn't "we just want revenue" or something like that, because that's everyone's goal. I want backlinks. And you knew, okay, well, I have to get backlinks from other people. So I have to do something that they're going to want to link to engage with. Now I have to ask — what was the room like when you pitched this idea? Like, "I want to test for fecal matter on the grass." What was the reception?
Logan Freedman (11:14)
Surprisingly enough, at that point, the CMO was so used to my weird ideas that he didn't even think twice. I've pitched some crazy ideas to him, which he actually went out of his way to find me from my agency. When I was at the agency world, this is all that I did — these types of weird studies to get backlinks or amazing content, looking at fresh creative ideas to get backlinks made sense for the company.
And I can give another example. I won't tell the pharmaceutical company's name, but we had a pharmaceutical company that was looking to get media coverage for their website. They basically made prescriptions for the pseudobulbar affect, which no one knows what that is. Basically what it is is when people get head trauma, you can get this disorder and it causes you to laugh or cry uncontrollably at random times. And so this is a really hard subject to talk about. How do you become fun and creative and get media coverage over it?
Well, I came up with the idea of asking the question — does the Joker from Batman have the pseudobulbar affect? He laughs uncontrollably all the time. And so what we did was we watched every Joker movie. We timed exactly how long he was laughing. We looked at why he was laughing, if there was any reason. We came to the conclusion that he does. And the reason he has it is because Batman kept on beating him up. So he started laughing more and more. And so that got a ton of press coverage. And funny enough, that's what the CMO saw. That's the reason that he went out of his way to hire me.
But it's coming up with these unique perspectives that are interesting enough and have enough draw into your brand that you can justify these crazy ideas and you can go after them and you can have fun. And a lot of companies don't do this. They get stagnant and their creative styles and people get bored with them. It's how do you — it's just such a lame way to say it — but how do you think outside of the box? My way of doing it is, what is the craziest idea that I can come up with? Is it feasible? Will it work? And why not test it to see if it does?
Benjamin Ard (13:45)
I love that. So just to get really tactical for anyone listening, after you come up with these creative ideas, does that turn into a major report on the website and that's what you have people link to? What's the nuts and bolts of that for anyone listening thinking, "Shoot, I gotta come up with some ideas like this."
Logan Freedman (14:09)
Yeah, so what we usually do is we create a full study. We have methodology at the bottom. We have some really interesting — not a full infographic, because media outlets don't like picking that up. We have little data snippets, some easy graphs to look at. Your goal is to make people understand what the information you're trying to put across in about five seconds or less. You have a nice, fun write-up with it.
And then you start pitching it out to media outlets. The way that I like to do it is password protect it, pitch it to media outlets as an exclusive. Once you have the exclusive, you take the password protection down and then you just let it grow. And the cool thing about that is the way that media works — if you had a large top tier publisher that picks it up, a lot of smaller tier publishers want some of that traffic, they'll pick up the same story. So that one person that you pitch to can turn into 100 different high domain authority backlinks back to your website. And so that's what we were really focusing on.
Benjamin Ard (15:08)
We are almost out of time. Logan, I have loved these experiences and these stories. For anyone listening, do you have any practical advice or ways for them to, on a regular basis, build creativity into the regular workflow?
Logan Freedman (15:36)
Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway is to build a relationship with your team, have fun with the team, and then find ways to sneak business ideas into that fun that you're having with them. We hold ideation sessions every two weeks at my company, but I'm also just talking to people nonstop during the workday, having fun, throwing ideas off of each other. And the biggest thing is always talk about crazy ideas that you have, because you usually can pull them back a little bit to make them work for your business and feel like no idea is bad, build off of other ideas on your team. And then just start collecting ideas in a giant database. We have a Google spreadsheet with all of our ideas. And then eventually, six months down the road, maybe one of the ideas we had was good. Maybe we can use it for a new campaign. We pick it out.
Benjamin Ard (16:28)
I love it. That's amazing. Well, Logan, thank you so much for the insights. My brain is churning, already thinking of all the cool things that I need to do. For anyone who wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Logan Freedman (16:44)
Yeah, I would say you can either go to ManyChat.com, where I have some articles that I've written, or just find me on LinkedIn under Logan Freedman.
Benjamin Ard (17:17)
Love it. Very cool. Well, Logan, again, thank you so much for the time and insights today. Really appreciate it.
Logan Freedman (17:22)
Yeah, well, thank you for having me.
