Restraint is an Underrated Skill

Pushing boundaries. Testing our limits. Being relentless. Trying to recognize potential. We applaud people for doing it - all are honorable character traits. It's how we've achieved great things in business, sports, and the arts. Pushing our boundaries is how we've dared to do impossible things like mountain unicycling (yes, it's real). 

But I'm brought back to the famous quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: 

"..your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Strategy > Tactics

Marketing is a minefield of temptations to ignore restraint completely. I've only been in marketing/tech as part of my career, but it's a functional area with the highest proportion of shiny object syndrome.

A marketer's job is to make the brand they work for stand out among clutter, so we're incentivized to try things before anyone else does if we strike gold. 

But it's very easy to make unforced errors if we focus on gimmicky tactics over the "why" of what we're doing.

Just ask the DeSantis campaign. 

Case Study: Failure to Launch

To be clear, I'm not making a political angle here—just a marketing strategy. I also hate needing to type those last two sentences, but here we are. 

Anyway, in a season with abundant GOP presidential campaign announcements, I'm sure the DeSantis team was looking to do something different to stand out. That's my charitable view of why they took this announcement approach. 

Instead of the traditional stump speech in front of a backdrop that reflects their campaign, the DeSantis crew decided to use Twitter Spaces for their campaign announcement in a moderated discussion with Elon Musk (Twitter owner) and David Sacks. The platform crashed and delayed the announcement by 20 minutes. 

Let's take the technical aspects out of this. I know it's what the news (and most people) focused on because it was an Elon Musk-owned technology failing (again) in front of an audience. 

I want to look at the marketing strategy. 

Twitter has a big audience, but it's also very niche. Using that as an exclusive platform for a national campaign was taking a way-too-online view of reaching people. In the Democratic primaries a few years ago, the super online campaigns that let Twitter sentiment guide their messaging strategy didn't last long. You'd think the DeSantis campaign strategists would learn from that history. Apparently not. 

Also, Twitter Spaces is effectively a conference call. It's a quality that's a step down from a podcast interview. If he wanted to make an audio-only announcement, DeSantis would've been better off trying to score an interview on Joe Rogan than this. Plus, it was a moderated discussion. The moderators did him no favors by talking about themselves more than the candidate, which hurt his messaging reach. 

Plus, getting a redo on a first impression takes a lot of work. The DeSantis campaign may do just fine in the long run. Still, they have to overcome a massive hurdle with regular folks when the story of the announcement isn't DeSantis's policy proposals but the fact that their glorified conference call crashed. 

His lack of restraint on that front may send an unintentional message about his potential governing style they didn't want out there. 

The better approach for the campaign would be for DeSantis to do something more traditional. Instead of trying to be edgy and appear innovative, just doing a simple stump at a place in Florida that illustrated his achievements as governor would have been more effective. Sure, it may not have the style points, but the story would've been about his campaign - not tech difficulties. They would have had more control of the messaging. 

Wisdom Is Knowing When to Hold Back

Being bold and trying something is fantastic and should be encouraged. There is absolutely a time and place for it. 

The wisdom in marketing (and any area of life) recognizes when to go for it and when to hold back. 

Knowing when to hold back takes discipline. It's a muscle you have to build over time. And you won't always get it right. I know I haven't. 

But sometimes, you have to slow down to speed up. 

Restraint is a notable skill. And underrated. 

What do you think?