The Business of Kayfabe

by Sean Oliver

  We had recently begun our foray into DVD production with our series Guest Booker. I was on vacation with my family when the all the major TV stations aired the most cutting edge presidential Q&A to date—people asked the candidates questions via YouTube videos. With Guest Booker and its future very much on my mind, I remember sitting up in the bed thinking this could be a great segment for that series. We would have people send in booking scenarios and our guest would do a booking exercise with those fan ideas.

  Down in New Jersey, Anthony was watching the same thing and thinking in terms of using this format also. When we finally talked about it a few days later, Anthony’s concept was a little more risky—center an entire show around fan submitted questions. We don’t do traditional shoot interviews so this would have to be all or nothing. The whole show would be done this way. That was the hook. The YouShoot name came to me right there on the spot as we discussed it.

  The risk was obvious. What if the fan questions sucked? What if we got no submissions at all? We have the show booked and now what? We’ve announced it, told people they’d get to shoot on our first guest The Honky Tonk Man, or ask him anything in the world and he’d be bound to answer it.

  We decided to take that risk because we are our market. Just sitting and talking for ten minutes about the questions that he could be asked convinced us to go ahead and develop the show. The people who would be submitting videos and emails were like us, complete with the same likes and dislikes about the market, we had hoped. If we were marking out over the potential hilarity of this show, then they would likely be excited too.

  The marketing angle had so many advantages. The product was the public itself, literally. People would love to see themselves, as a collective group, interacting with the stars of the business. We also knew we would have to choose the most provocative and outspoken stars of pro wrestling to be the guests, and a dangerous but popular formula was built.

  During a radio review of one of our Guest Booker shows, reviewer Derek Burgan was telling Figure 4 Weekly editor and radio show host Bryan Alvarez about the new YouShoot concept he had heard about. In trying to digest the concept, Alvarez said, “So the entire two-hour DVD is people asking The Honky Tonk Man questions and him just yelling at them and calling them names?”

  “Yup,” Burgan said

  “That’s awesome.” Alvarez’s reply was confirmation. It was one of those concepts that seemed innovative but very basic to me. I had to do the innovator’s test and ask myself that all-important question—why has no one done this before? I didn’t have an answer but I also couldn’t see any impediment in our trying.

  I did drop that little revelation earlier that we sometimes slip a little something into YouShoots here or there to keep things moving, and we certainly had a deck of that ammunition ready for Show One. There was a real possibility that people would be so unfamiliar with the concept that no one would submit anything. Or maybe they’d be too timid with Honky. So we had a video or two made by a plant or two, along with some text questions written by our own hand if we needed them.

  Did we? Yes. We needed some.

  But I can happily say that the overwhelming majority of what you saw on YouShoot: The Honky Tonk Man was fan generated. Hey, shit man, we’re fans too. We should count! But honestly, we didn’t have to resort to working the show that much. After the series dropped, it exploded. Everyone knew what to do when we announced a new YouShoot guest, and we never needed to stack the deck for lack of content. Anything we did in subsequent shows was to add polish.

  The marketing advantage in having a fan-centric show was really an afterthought though. What really sold the concept was further solidifying the bond between our fans and our company. We were becoming one.

  Inspiration can certainly come from external sources. Look around for inspiration. Our access to eclectic media of all forms is like a massive learning tree bearing fruits of all kinds. It’s up to us to sift through them and use the right ones as ingredients in our Business of Blood. They can be ingredients in our products or in our operations. Outside-in may be a great management system to find best practices or run data, but the inside-out model is the one you want for the life of your Business of Blood.

  Part Two:

  Running It

  8. Building a Moat

  THIS MAY SURPRISE you, but there are shoot interview fans working in WWE, TNA, and all over the wrestling marketplace. Oh, they may not admit to such transgressions publicly. Street urchins we are, aspiring only to someday walk among the masses of the mainstream content producers. But if you’re a fan of our shows then you know we’ve been influencing content in the major federations for years. It may have never been as egregious as we’ve seen since the launch of WWE Network and podcasts, but the signs have always been there.

  People doing grunt-work in Titan Tower, WWE’s headquarters in Connecticut, and in production, have my cell number, and me theirs. I’ve gotten the occasional text when they see something in which I might be…erm…interested. I might get a text after a pitch meeting at Titan Tower wherein exact concepts of ours were pitched to decision makers that have never seen a shoot interview.

  “Great idea, son!”

  I might have gotten a text or two, maybe even a photo, of a DVD case for YouShoot: Jim Cornette on someone’s desk over there. Might have even gotten a text from someone who was standing in the same vicinity of a couple of WWE producers who were discussing our series Back to the Territories when it first launched. Fortunately they were putting it over.

  Internet trolls like to flame me for past claims of our content being emulated by other companies, but the events above are true and there’s simply no denying it. I’m not crying in my beer—I know Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player, and I know that no one knows or cares that, depending on your source, it may have been SaeHan or Advanced Multimedia Products. No one cares, myself included, that theirs was superior to the iPod when it first came out. I’m well aware of the rules of the jungle—it’s all about scale. Apple could bring it to mass market, regardless of a step down in quality or not. And I know WWE can bring YouShoot, Ring Roasts, Guest Booker, or an animated show ala Wrestling’s Most to mass market, and position it as if it were their own. And it’s because of their moat—in their case, their size and market share. Same with Apple.

  If you or I created a cola soft drink company, could we realistically make a run at Coca-Cola’s business? If we started a computer company could we encroach on Apple’s place in the collective consciousness? Likely not. But maybe our cola is much better tasting than Coca-Cola. And our computers are faster than a MacBook.

  Wouldn’t matter. And the reason it wouldn’t matter is moat. Just like a fabled castle, any successful company has a moat built around it. It is, in simplest terms, a barrier to entry.

  Business is a war, or sorts. If your want your company to exist in a given industry, you have to introduce new consumers to that industry and/or take market share from a competitor through brute force. More often than not you’ll be competing for market share with the other warriors in your industry. I suppose you could introduce some new consumers to your chosen industry, but realistically how often can that happen? In our fictional foray into the soda pop market, to how many people can we really expect to introduce cola for the first time? Probably none on this planet. Maybe we’ll start creating billboard space on Mars. It’s free right now. (As we laugh, Coca-Cola is planning this right now I bet.)

  So if our hypothetical and incredibly delicious soda is to succeed, we have no choice but to take drinkers of Pepsi (we picked on Coke enough) away from their soft drink of choice. And since both Pepsi and Coca-Cola know this, they have built a formidable moat around their respective products.

  When I asked if we’d be able to make a run at disrupting the business of Coca-Cola, you probably chuckled or at least recognized the absurdity of the question. Do you know why you laughed? Perhaps not consciously, but certainly instinctively, you reacted to Coca-Cola’s moa
t, and that’s exactly how they designed it to work.

  What a commentary on that company’s moat. The mere thought of entering their market made you laugh at the impossibility, and you haven’t even tasted my drink yet.

  Every company has a moat unique to their own identity. Coca-Cola’s moat happens to be its market share and thus, its ubiquitous presence. Coca-Cola has been reported to spend more than $2.5 billion on advertising in a given year. They spend that money for reasons very different from, say, a grill company, a spray-on hair product, or affordable car insurance. Coca-Cola’s ads are not stimulus-response driven. There’s no desperate call to action.

  “Hey, that’s a cool product! I can cover my bald spot with that spray. Quick, get me a pen so I can write this number down and order it!”

  “I can save how much on my car insurance every year? Pause the DVR. Get me a pen!”

  These are the desired reactions to such a product’s advertisement. But after watching Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial, no one says, “I’ll be back before the second-half starts. I wanna run to the store and grab a Coke after watching those cool, talking polar bears.”

  Coca-Cola knows that you already know what Coke tastes like. You either like it or you don’t. The CGI polar bears drinking it aren’t going to make you salivate and rush to 7-Eleven. Their commercials don’t generally announce any changes or updates to the product. (Not anymore, anyway. Was I the only one that actually thought New Coke tasted good?) So that ad money is spent on a commercial that asks nothing of you. Coca-Cola is implanting their product into every brain watching that commercial. It’s reinforcement of the brand’s existence in the world. It’s further digging that massive moat that made you laugh when even considering anyone attacking their market share.

  Small fries like you and me have to find our moat. It’s not going to be market share or size, so we have to look in The Blood for that gift. If you’re reinventing an existing market segment, The Blood itself might be your moat. Your market might be so tired and played out that people will see your passion and, in turn theirs, in your work. That might get you a head start, but it might not necessarily be a barrier to entry against competitors who take your lead and emulate it. Your innovation will soon be pilfered by the copycats and then friends, it’s game on. You don’t own your ideas.

  9. Innovation

  I MENTIONED APPLE before. For a long time it was one of my favorite companies for many reasons. Not the least of which was the fact that we edit all of our programs on Mac editing software. I found their product line superb for a long time and I’ve been known to gush about them.

  What I’d like to spotlight here about Apple is The Blood they once exhibited. Their entire product line was born out of intense passion. Their marketing dripped with that passion. Beyond just that passion, Apple and Kayfabe Commentaries shared something in common—our moat, which happened to be innovation.

  How would one make a grab at Apple’s market share? For a long time their research and product development was so far ahead of everyone else in the tech industry. They stayed ahead by introducing their next innovation just as their competitors began to copy Apple’s previous line. They’re consistently ahead of the pack.

  Great companies strive to be innovators, not inventors. As we’ve seen, the innovator company is rarely the creator of the product they bring to the masses and are most notably lauded for. Our niche marketplace has allowed us positioning as innovators in the field of pro wrestling shoot-style programming. With much stagnation and a dearth of any variation on shoot programming, we elevated the industry. But as with any innovators, imitators are next to follow. So our challenge was staying ahead of the game, and we always did. Eventually, KC’s real challenge would come with a surge in cheaply produced podcasts that flooded the streets like crack, making our high-purity coke seem like an unreasonable luxury.

  For a long time, though, the video competition was always kept at arm’s length. I think our outside-the-box programming always pushed us ahead and served as our moat in this market. We were always aware when someone came breathing at our backs, and we were sure to be onto what we thought could be the next thing.

  By the time copycat products arrive in significant numbers in any marketplace, the innovator needs to be on to that next thing. Apple’s command of the marketplace with mp3 players was being challenged (perhaps not significantly) by other manufacturers of similar music players, as well as cell phones with mp3 capabilities. Though, by the time this proliferation became noticeable, the iPhone was introduced to great fanfare and more importantly, served to further construct a moat around Apple. And as smartphone manufacturers got on the touchscreen-appcrazy bandwagon, the release of the iPad reminded all owners of those non-Apple products, just who the leader was. And if anyone forgot too quickly, they got an Apple Watch in their face to remind them.

  Copyright Kayfabe Commentaries

  In the figure above, we see an illustration of what I believe to be the lifecycle of innovation. This was part of a presentation I made at a company quarterly meeting. After a launch, you’re given a period of time where you accumulate attention and recognition. The industry is not producing what you are—either they haven’t yet thought of it, or are incapable of it. This is your “free ride.” Sales are all yours, positive reviews citing your innovation are all yours, and the industry watches from the sidelines. These sideliners are there partially due to an inability and/or lateness to act, but also to await confirmation. Once the waters are shown to be safe, meaning your product is a success, they’ll hop in. And the waters are shown as safe 3/4 of the way up the free ride.

  The first indication that the innovations were indeed successful is the arrival of the imitators. In Kayfabe Commentaries’ case it was first seen when TNA aired members of our YouShoot “wack pack,” and their Rocky Balboa life-size cutout from our show on their TV. Soon after, WWE emulated our Timeline: History of WWE concept and format in their magazine. There were far more obvious instances to come, but they were the first to show us the impact we were having. This, amid all the wrestling media proclamations of KC being innovators, was the confirmation that the rest of our industry segment awaited. It is at this point, the apex of our arc in the illustration above, that imitation becomes a negative, and gives way to a proliferation of copycats.

  The latter upswing of the arc, after the “free ride,” is actually helped along by the imitators. Knee-jerk conventional wisdom would view this proliferation of imitation as a negative, but it actually isn’t yet. It is confirmation of one’s innovation and also subtly indicates to your diehard fans, that you were on the ground floor of the movement.

  But there is a critical mass to the imitation efforts. The proliferation becomes so widespread and the quality of the knockoffs vary so much that it is possible for some consumers to lose sight of how it all got there. Who successfully marketed the first compact disc? Who cares? But they’d better have been onto the “next thing” as I bought my first one.

  The copycat effect depresses the line of innovation recognition. It will probably never reduce to the zero point, but it will most likely ride out at its suppression level.

  Which is why the copycat stage should be your launch point for the “next thing.”

  Copyright Kayfabe Commentaries

  The innovation line’s decline as copycats pile on will be mitigated by your next free ride. You will consistently be ahead of the market, making decisions as the rest of your industry segment considers reaction only, imitation only, yesterday only.

  A quick innovation diagnostic you can perform on your company comes from a little anecdote I read somewhere. I don’t remember who wrote the article but it told of the old-time war tactic where a battalion would fire their muskets, advance a step, load, and then fire again. Advance, load, fire. As they neared their target, the opposing soldiers would have to bunker down and only return fire when they could, never initiating an exchange, as the battalion continued to advance. If that advancem
ent continued unabated, that would be the end of the bunkered group, forced to only return fire occasionally, with the advancing battalion eventually being upon them.

  Which is your company? Are they the advancing battalion or the bunkered prey? Are you firing all the first shots, or are you responding to what the leader is doing? In other words, are your actions and initiatives a response to another company’s actions and initiatives? If so, you’re bunkered and they’re advancing. You have to get out of that position.

  The article was insightful, and gave a quick, one-question assessment as to where you stand in your market. I wish I could remember where I read it.

  The story surrounding our Timeline: The History of WWE series is illustrative of the innovator-copycat relationship. The series is a year-by-year history lesson about the world’s largest pro wrestling organization, WWE. In each episode we tackled one year with a star from the federation as they recounted all the significant events from those twelve months. The series featured a timeline graphic with callouts indicating a date and event of note, at which time the star then went into detail about said event.

  The series was truly groundbreaking and since its inception, podcasts and TV shows have had stars recount specific events in wrestling history. Having the actual star there to take you through the day-to-day decisions adds an element to the show that historians just can’t capture. It’s as close to time travel as you’ll get.

  But the guests need quite a good memory, particularly the ones we ask to go back thirty years to recount their mindsets at certain times during the course of the year being profiled. We do comprehensive research and Anthony’s shooting scripts for a Timeline can run up to 80 or 90 pages. He includes as much background detail about an event as we can fit, just in case it’s necessary to jog my memory, or the memory of the guest. When possible we like to get advance scripts to the talent so they can read it and jog their own memory. Sometimes that plan works better than others.