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It was a watershed moment for Clubhouse. The app’s servers trembled under the weight of tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of listeners flocking to the platform simultaneously to hear Tesla founder Elon Musk talk. Members briefly panicked when the “room” he was speaking in quickly filled to its 5,000-listener capacity and bounced people trying to get in. Within 10 minutes, “overflow” rooms started popping up that Clubhouse piped Elon into. The platform malfunctioned but managed not to collapse.
And Musk did not disappoint.
- He said there are no aliens out there. That he is aware of.
- We are all already cyborgs, but our tertiary digital layers have very slow bandwidth.
- Monkeys with tiny wires in their brains can play video games with their mind.
- His kids’ primary source of education is Reddit and YouTube.
- And the gem of the night regarding his running commentary on Twitter: “Sometimes, I’m just talking smack.”
It was weird. It was wacky. And, it was kind of wonderful.
Obviously, Elon Musk’s brand is intertwined with Tesla’s brand, so while Elon hardly talked about the electric carmaker, the entire 90-minute ordeal served as an elaborate advertisement for Tesla.
Musk wasn’t the only eccentric personality commanding attention on the app last week. Mark Zuckerberg showed up a few days later for his own platform-rattling surprise appearance. Who will show up this week? You can be sure these titans of industry won’t be the last to be lured to join the club.
There are only one Elon and one Zuck, but there are implications that all CMOs and CEOs should consider. Clubhouse is about to blow up, and there’s much to be learned from Elon’s experiment.
People crave access
Brands have the power to grant access. Well-known CEOs or CMOs can quite easily start a conversation with thousands of customers or industry peers. You can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that folks like Marc Benioff, Marc Pritchard and Sheryl Sandberg will be having conversations on Clubhouse in the coming months—even if they don’t realize it yet.
Many big brands also have contracts with big celebrities. Hilton could give people access to a conversation with Anna Kendrick while she sits poolside at one of its hotels in Hawaii. Fans would love it.
Right now, your customers are actively tuning out advertising. But brands today are entertainment. Give them access to the show. They will tune in.
Authenticity is magnified on the party line
What made Elon’s musings so powerful is that he is unabashed about his mad genius persona. After listening to him for an hour and a half, you kind of feel like you know the guy. He’s imperfect, and that’s pretty endearing.
Your customers have high-functioning BS meters. They want the raw, unfiltered, imperfect version of you. One criticism of the Musk event I heard users share on the platform was that the interviewers were all so starstruck by Elon that they didn’t ask him any tough questions. Nobody’s interested in a puff piece.
Most brands will not want to open themselves up to getting roughed up live, but audiences don’t want glittery polish. There’s a beautiful space in between called being human. Clubhouse is a great place to try it out.
And for brands that are risk-averse, you can just be more selective in how you moderate. You get to choose who gets on stage to ask a question. You can kick someone off stage if they are obnoxious. And, unlike Twitter or Facebook, there’s no permanent digital record of every word that’s been stated published to the web.
Be unexpected
The night’s highlight was when Elon unexpectedly turned the tables, had his minions pull the CEO of Robinhood up on stage and did his best Rachel Maddow impression as he grilled Vlad “the Stock Impaler” Tenev about why the platform had shut off GameStop trading.
The interviewee suddenly became the interviewer—and everyone listening knew they were hearing something special. We were getting the raw, unvarnished story straight from the horse’s mouth, something people value a whole lot in the era of fake news. Listeners all instantly knew that this surprise was going to be a news story the next day—it was something they were getting to experience. It was something not to miss.
And therein lies the lesson for marketers. Perhaps the defining psychological motivator on Clubhouse is the fear of missing out. If you teach your audience that you will surprise and delight them, they will come back for more because they won’t want to miss what all the hubbub is about.
It remains to be seen if Clubhouse will ever achieve the scale that marketers crave along the lines of Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. But right now, it is attracting passionate, influential people like moths to a flame, perhaps not in the millions, but certainly in the tens of thousands. They will tell their friends, who won’t want to miss out.
Miss out on what? That’s for you to decide.
