3 Keys to Successful Chaos Marketing

Whether Author, Artist, or Entrepreneur, there are ways to stand out from the crowd.

There’s a phrase I’ve been finding myself uttering with more frequency lately:

“That’s on-brand.”

If you know me at all and have not been under a rock, you know that I’ve been promoting a Kickstarter campaign for the last two weeks (which you should TOTALLY GO SUPPORT! There’s just a few hours left!). Now, this is something I’ve never done before. I had no idea how, or what, has been going on. I still don’t, but I’m rolling with it.

You see, this summer I set a goal. The goal was to promote my new sci-fi comedy novel, SPACE PEW PEW.

Now for me, this story is on-brand. I am goofy, I am weird, and I am a storyteller. All of that is wrapped into a book with a solid storyline, great characters, and some hilarious banter. These are the things that are in my wheelhouse, so to speak, what I do best when it comes to the written word (to my own consideration, not that of others).

How do you promote something that’s wildly goofy, with such a ridiculous name?

How do you promote *gulp* yourself?

How do you engage in that sorcery labeled, “get yourself out there?”

I held on to THREE techniques to ensure that what I was doing was staying on-brand and getting some traction.

STEP 1 - Stay On Brand

I would not promote Fantasy/Romance or High Fantasy by throwing out memes and stupid gags, because memes and stupid gags are for a different audience than High Fantasy (though one look at LOTR memes may say otherwise, but follow me here).

SPACE PEW PEW, however, is ripe for meme-ation. Because it is a few things all at once: Nerdy, Funny, and Current.

This is a story where an android issues current-day slang like, “I WILL YEET YOU,” or “BRUH. SUS,” or “TAKE SEVERAL SEATS.”

In that above description alone you’ve got android (nerdy), slang (current), and YEET (funny). Everything about that is preposterous, so the marketing and promotion had to match.

Enter the bookmarks …

The first one. OG bookmark. Embracing the Gen X nature of yours truly, I needed a mom joke, and I needed something nerdy and funny. This dovetails with the characters, the gags, and the storytelling in the most general sense.

Bookmark #2 hints at a major plot-line in the book, cheesy pick-ups as the main character, Alex, is trying to get with the Princess Andromeda Calypso. Again, this hammers at the humor, directly ties to events in the story, and it’s ridiculous.

Lastly …

The “SASSY” bookmark. This one hammers at the nerdy (singularity joke, I mean come on), plus the funny with current humor, plus a direct tie-in to the storytelling as a peek into some of the playfully naughty gags going on in the book.

Here’s the thing. EVERY AUTHOR HAS BOOKMARKS. They’re ubiquitous at events like conventions because they’re easy and cheap to make, and decent marketing.

I did not want bookmarks like everyone else. “SPACE PEW PEW” doesn’t even appear on the front of these bookmarks, and it doesn’t matter. It’s on the back:

That alone is enough, and on-brand to get a ton of attention, and they did. These bookmarks were WIPED OUT at LibertyCon this past June. I went to the convention with 150 of them, and set them onto random tables in stacks of 10, and they were always gone within minutes.

This is how project matches personality - branding. I am goofy, I like the gags and the jokes, and the personality I have and my humor matches the marketing, the project, and how I interact with people. That trifecta is resonant, and people pick up on the fact that this is consistent. In other words, you know what you’re getting when you see one of these bookmarks, talk to me, or read the book itself.

When it came to online promotion, I went in the same direction.

Memes. And for these, I wanted to accomplish two things (YES, making memes requires thought and planning): First, draw a contrast between HARD/SERIOUS sci-fi (think Herbert, Asimov), second, promote the kind of humor that is in SPACE PEW PEW, but amplified with the help of something familiar - Le Meme!

Like these, contrasting HARD SCI-FI with Space Comedy:

Once that was established with a batch of “promotional memes” I set out to do something else - let the reader know that IT IS OKAY TO LAUGH AND HAVE A GOOD TIME. I did that by drawing a contrast between the very serious sci-fi, and the goofy stuff I write:

With that message established, I amped up the type of humor that you’ll find in SPACE PEW PEW:

Lastly, because I don’t take anything seriously, I needed a batch of these memes to illustrate that it’s okay to be self-deprecating and to make fun of my own work, because my work makes fun of everything. So a few of these memes poked fun at the outrage mob that hates everything, or the stuffy sci-fi nerds that don’t think anything is funny, and plenty of them made fun of SPACE PEW PEW because you can’t be dishing it out if you can’t take it.

All of this hammers home a certain style of messaging, and don’t think for a second that I didn’t have a spreadsheet created to make these memes with these specific goals in mind, and scheduled them out in a staggered manner to post varying degrees of this messaging depending on how far along the Kickstarter was, or what I had posted that same day.

STEP 2 - Be Authentic Without Hesitation

What other people think of your marketing is not the point. If your intuition tells you something can work, do it. You may fail, you may succeed. You will absolutely learn.

If I ran this meme past one of my family members, they would’ve been horrified and told me that I’d make people mad:

After all, using an image from a p0rn flick that has been memed is a bit risque. Ditto this one:

But when I created these, I laughed, and to me, that was the measure. Thinking about it, putting it together, getting a good chuckle out of what you’re about to do, and being yourself in the process.

We have this tendency as authors in particular - to seek approval. We want beta readers to approve of our work, we want good feedback, we want reinforcement. The problem with that is, as the author you bear the responsibility and risk, and someone else’s opinion bears absolutely nothing. People can sniff out inauthenticity. By censoring yourself, or worse being a misleading squish because you aren’t confident enough to stand up, outstretch those arms and say, “This is me!” you are in fact being detrimental to your audience.

I wanted to leave ZERO question in anybody’s mind what this project was about, what the humor was like, and what my intention was with it. Why is that important?

If someone picked up SPACE PEW PEW looking for hard/accurate science fiction, they’d be sorely disappointed. I didn’t want anyone making that mistake. If someone picked up SPACE PEW PEW and they are typically offended by gags about the human anatomy, they’d trash it in reviews. Again, because the marketing would’ve been inauthentic.

When you don’t hesitate, you leave ZERO question in a prospective reader’s mind in terms of what you or your project is about. I’ve got space, humor, penis jokes and handwavium. I’ve got funny characters and great banter. I make fun of pop culture and I’m not shy about making fun of particular groups, either. That’s how I grew up, and I miss that humor, so that’s what I embraced and that bullseye I was communicating on.

By not hesitating in my promotion of this work, I guaranteed that it is authentically my own. Now, you may still hate it, but at least fair is fair - that means I am just not your cup of tea, and I can live with that because at no point have I misled you. I can sleep at night.

STEP 3 - Trust Yourself. Joy > Expectations.

Whether the Kickstarter made thousands, or made hundreds, I have had a GRAND time. I’ve been able to share my humor with a bunch of people, it has led to a pile of new and cherished friends, opportunities on more podcasts, a much bigger reach than I could ever have imagined, and epic moments like reading SPACE PEW PEW to a packed room of people at this year’s Liberty Con:

I went into this entire thing with ZERO expectations. I had goals, sure. One of them was to read my work to a packed room and by utilizing those bookmarks above, as well as invitations and sets of trading cards I was happy to give out to those who attended, I was able to put butts in seats.

I took charge and “put myself out there” because I knew nobody would do that for me. You have to be your own advocate, but you can’t measure your success in only numbers.

I have another Substack which dives into my thoughts on ROI in more detail, but suffice it to say that for me, it is more important to enjoy the ride to the destination as much as the destination itself.

New friends, hearing a roomful of people laughing hysterically at something that came out of my brain, and having a successful Kickstarter with a bunch of new fans of the PEWNIVERSE was my measure of success through this whole summer.

IN CLOSING …

You can do this. There are some things to keep in mind, certainly (Stay on-brand, be authentic, trust yourself). If you step back and understand what it is you’re trying to communicate as a person and with your words, rushing forward and embracing the chaos of making yourself known is in itself a joyous act.

So relax. Breathe. Smile. Be you and shove yourself out there because your tribe is waiting, and as long as you are authentic and communicate as the real you, you’ll find each other, and it will be magnificent!

‘til next time …

-David