I opened a marketing email today from a creator whose newsletters I had mostly ignored until now.
He was promoting a YouTube course.
That was not the problem.
Selling courses and promoting them by email is a perfectly normal business model. What bothered me was the way the message used two highly successful public figures to make the writer’s own strategy appear more impressive.
This article is simply my personal response to that marketing approach. It is a discussion of messaging and strategy, not an allegation about anyone’s character or intentions.
Was Netflix Really the Wrong Choice at the Time?
The email referred to a world-famous motivational speaker who had once released a documentary on Netflix.
When asked why he chose Netflix instead of selling the documentary directly to his existing audience, his answer was simple:
“Distribution.”
In other words, he believed Netflix could place his documentary in front of millions of people.
At the time, Netflix offered a powerful way to reach millions of people and bring the documentary directly into living rooms around the world.
The email writer then cited current data showing YouTube’s enormous reach across television viewing, age groups and total viewing time.
His point was that YouTube may now offer an even greater opportunity than appearing on Netflix.
That is not an unreasonable observation.
The media landscape changes.
Netflix may have been one of the best mass-distribution channels at the time, while YouTube now offers creators a much lower barrier to entry and direct access to an audience.
But using today’s media environment to imply that a decision made years ago was wrong does not seem fair.
It is like using today’s smartphones to question why people once relied on button phones.
The earlier decision was not necessarily mistaken.
The world simply changed.
More importantly, releasing a documentary through Netflix and using YouTube to build trust, attract customers and sell a course serve very different purposes.
The scale, resources and objectives are not the same. There is little value in forcing them into a competition.
The World’s Biggest Entertainment YouTuber Is Not Your Competitor Either
The email also mentioned one of the world’s most successful entertainment YouTubers, known for enormous projects, huge production budgets and extraordinary viewing figures.
The writer explained that he did not optimise his channel for watch time, clicks, views, shares, followers or subscribers.
He optimised it for revenue and customers.
He described this as a better game to play, partly because he did not need to compete with the world’s biggest entertainment YouTuber for attention.
The core idea is valid.
A YouTube channel does not need millions of views to generate real business value.
For consultants, coaches, freelancers and small businesses, a video watched by a few hundred highly relevant people may be far more valuable than one with millions of views but no meaningful conversions.
That is a useful strategy to discuss.
The comparison, however, felt unnecessary.
One person produces global entertainment, large-scale videos, brands and consumer products.
The other uses YouTube to build trust and sell educational products.
They are not playing the same game.
So why bring the larger creator into the sales pitch at all?
Saying that you do not need to compete with someone, while still using that person as a contrast to make your own strategy look more attractive, feels slightly contradictory.
At least, that is how it came across to me as a reader.
I Am Not a Fan, but I Respect What They Have Achieved
I am not a devoted fan of either public figure mentioned in the email.
I do not follow everything they produce, and I would not automatically defend them whenever somebody criticised them.
But I respect what they have achieved.
One spent decades building a personal brand with global influence.
The other pushed the scale, production quality and commercial possibilities of YouTube entertainment far beyond what most people had imagined.
Whether I personally enjoy their work is one matter.
Respecting their effort and achievements is another.
Using famous names from unrelated fields does not automatically make a course promotion feel more authoritative.
Sometimes, it simply makes me wonder:
Was the comparison really necessary?
You Can Market Yourself Without Making Others Look Smaller
Good marketing should make your own value clear.
Explain what problem your method solves.
Show whom you have helped.
Demonstrate the results your customers have achieved.
Explain how your approach differs from other methods.
Those are all convincing reasons to buy.
But when a sales message relies heavily on comparisons with famous people, I begin to wonder whether the offer could have stood more confidently on its own merits.
A strong method should not need another person’s name to make it appear valuable.
There is a saying that captures an important principle for me:
A person’s character is their best calling card.
I am not using that line to judge the sender’s character.
It simply reflects how I decide whom I feel comfortable learning from and doing business with.
When we buy a course, we are not buying information alone.
We are also deciding whether we trust the person presenting it and whether their way of communicating feels right to us.
In this case, the framing did not create that sense of trust for me.
The Email Did Successfully Make Me Take Action
From an email-marketing perspective, the message did succeed in prompting me to act.
Just not in the way it intended.
It earned my unsubscribe.
Before reading it, I had simply ignored the emails.
After reading this one, I not only had no interest in joining the course, but I also decided that I no longer wanted to receive the content.
Perhaps that still counts as a conversion.
Just not the kind the sender was hoping for.
Final Thoughts
There is nothing wrong with marketing yourself.
There is nothing wrong with confidently presenting your product either.
But effective marketing should not need to make people pursuing entirely different goals appear smaller.
It should help customers recognise your value on its own.
You are allowed to stand tall.
You simply do not need to push others down to do it.