Marketing Muckraking

I watched Undercover Billionaire with Grant Cardone so you don't have to. I was forced into it by Cardone's relentless Instagram ads from his $63 million dollar private jet about how he made 7 figures in 90 days.

What was he selling on the show? Overnight success. Go figure.

Some say "it takes 20 years to become an overnight success," but they've got it wrong, because the biggest secret to overnight success is actually selling the dream of living the dream.

In this episode of Marketing Muckraking, I break down how to become an overnight success the dickfunnel way! And why, despite following the "easy" formulas, the success rate for students in celebrity business coaching programs like B-School, StoryBrand, and whatever Grant Cardone is selling, is so damn low.

Mentioned on the show:

• Undercover Billionaire: Season 2 with Grant Cardone
• Episode 6 of Marketing Muckraking, "Why Are There No Negative B-School Reviews?"

This episode was originally published as an essay on my blog on April 5, 2022. Read the full text transcript of "How To Be An Overnight Success.": https://rachaelkayalbers.com/how-to-be-an-overnight-success-no-really/

This is my story of FREE SCHOOL: how I burned out, burned it all down, and why the cult of online business pushed me to a mental breakdown.

You want to know the true story — my story — of what really happened with FREE SCHOOL? And where I am a year later? Well, here it is.

You might have heard about this from others or even from me and not known the whole story. And I'm finally ready to tell you.

Last year I had a very public meltdown.

I burned out badly within the cult of online business — and I shared it on Instagram in real time. I was on my stories each and every day, which was part of an experiment I was doing that I called FREE SCHOOL. Yes, I branded my own breakdown.

You might have heard OTHER people brand me and my story. But I want to tell you myself.

I also want to tell you about what this means about my work now, the book that I'm writing, and how I'm slowly pulling myself out from the darkness and rebuilding. I named a lot of names during FREE SCHOOL.

But I didn't just name any old names.

I didn't name small business owners.

Because vague generalizations about "bro marketing" aren't helping people.

Tony Robbins, Marie Forleo, Dean Graziosi, Russell Brunson, Jenna Kutcher, Rachel Hollis, Sophia Amoruso...

All of these people literally sell their programs based on how they make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Here is text from GirlBoss Sophia Amoruso's sales page for her Business Class program:

Named "One of the most inspiring entrepreneurs in America" by the Huffington Post, Sophia made her mark when she founded fashion retailer Nasty Gal, bootstrapping it to $12 million in annual revenue and eventually scaling the business to over $100 million.

Their immense revenue is their #1 selling point.

These are not the girl bosses and boy bosses next door.

Yet, then they want to hide behind "just being people" — the problematic business models that made them millions aren't a reflection of systemic exploitation, it's just "people making mistakes." Whoops!

I named names because when we talk about the harms of this industry in generalities, it doesn't help people.

I don't want people to spend tens of thousands of dollars before they find the truth.

And this is ultimately what I'm writing my book about and I will share more about that with you soon.

This book and the research I'm sharing with you in the Marketing Muckraking podcast honestly saved my life.

It helped me un-gaslight myself.

It helped me see my problems as part of a larger systemic issue.

It helped me see that my branded self was something engineered by consumer capitalism.

I'm writing this book because I don't want someone else thinking they're CRAZY because of the emotional toll brand culture takes on their lives.

Ultimately, "my" work is really a contribution to OUR work. It's not just about me. It's about US. I can't do this alone.

The world needs more muckrakers.

Will you join me?

What's a muckraker, RKA? And why does marketing need more?

The Marketing Muckraking podcast is an experiment in bringing my essays and some of my more scandalous lives — examining what brand culture is doing to us — to life in a new way. More importantly, I wanted to make my essays more accessible.

And this podcast is also a reflection of my research and writing process; when I find a good book, I typically read it twice: once with my eyes and once with my ears. I process information differently based on how I consume it, so this is what inspired me to begin Marketing Muckraking.

As for the question, "What's a muckraker?"

I'm going to need to start with Instagram to answer that — and what the return of the chronological feed means for creators. (Spoiler: it's not all good news.)

In this episode of Marketing Muckraking, I discuss the social media business model, how Zuckerberg & Co line their pockets with our unpaid labor, and the connection to muckrakers of the Progressive Era.

You don't have to be a journalist to be a muckraker anymore. You simply must have an eye for injustice, corruption, and exploitation — and a willingness to stir some shit to find the truth.

This episode was originally published as an essay on my blog on March 10, 2022. Read the full text transcript of "What's a Muckraker? And Why Does Marketing Need More?"

Sources for this show:

• Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture by William R. Leach;

• Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture by Stuart Ewen;

• Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market by Susan Strasser

Why aren't there any negative reviews of B-School? What about Digital Course Academy? Or StoryBrand? (Or fill in the name of the celebrity online business course here: ______.) Is it because B-School and programs like it are SO GOOD that NOT A SINGLE ONE of its 65,000+ students have anything bad to say? In a world where ppl write ESSAYS ripping apart the $5 widgets they get off Amazon, is it possible that nothing similar exists about a program that costs $2499 ($2868 if you do the payment plan)? In CoMuckraking edition of the show, originally recorded Instagram Live, I break down why programs like Marie Forleo's B-School, Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy, Donald Miller's StoryBrand, and other celebrity courses like it (I'm looking at you, Tony Robbins) have so few negative reviews. This episode of Marketing Muckraking is all about being critical, informed consumers. Is that boilerplate non-disparagement clause in your form contracts legal? And, when a B-Schooler or one of Marie Forleo's affiliates swears they're giving you an "unbiased, honest" review of the program, can you trust them?

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is a brand slogan, if I've ever heard one! Were the founding fathers the original personal brands?! In today's episode, I welcome my first guest on Marketing Muckraking, Jeff Harry. Jeff Harry is an international keynote speaker and a workplace play consultant; he helps companies to promote a culture of psychological safety. He also speaks and creates comedy about how positive psychology and play can heal workplaces — — and he's a damn good follow on TikTok. Go check him out. Join us for a fast paced conversation on what might be the greatest grift in history, the United States of America. Why are we so obsessed with famous swindlers like Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, Frank Abegnale, and The Wolf of Wall Street? Was the Constitution the original Theranos?! What do you think? Visit MarketingMuckraking.com for the show notes.

Brand culture, as we know it today, owes its existence to World War I propaganda. What if "brand loyalty" is authoritarianism in StoryBrand clothing? Join your host, Rachael Kay Albers, marketing muckraker and brand strategist gone wild, in a deep dive into advertising history and how branding legitimized itself. Before WWI, the advertising industry was on shaky ground, synonymous with snake oil salesmen and outrageous patent medicine claims that promised a product could cure all ails, while ultimately making its customer's problems worse. The war rescued advertising's reputation, proving to business and world leaders just how effective mass media and propaganda could be to shape public opinion. The world has never been the same. The goal of propaganda is to subvert an individual's reason and logic to promote a biased agenda. In the case of wartime propaganda, that agenda is national loyalty above all else. In the case of advertising propaganda, that agenda is brand loyalty above all else. But should it be? Maybe it's time to betray our brands and our audience's expectations of them. Maybe it's time to be disloyal. Research for this episode came from The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu and The Human Brand: How We Relate to People, Products, and Companies by Chris Malone, Susan T. Fiske. See show notes on the Marketing Muckraking website for the full transcript and list of sources. This episode was originally published as an essay on RachaelKayAlbers.com.

We've all heard about what personal branding can do FOR us, but what is The Age of The Personal Brand doing TO us? 25 years ago, Tom Peters coined the term "personal brand" in a Fast Company article "The Brand Called You" and just a few years later, Naomi Klein's adbusting book NO LOGO burst on the scene. Join host Rachael Kay Albers, marketing muckraker and brand strategist gone wild, in the exploration of what happens when we apply market logic and corporate strategy to our selves.

Content Warning: This episode covers sensitive topics including discussions of abuse. What's gaslighting got to do with business? Wait a sec. Back up the truck. What's gaslighting? This episode, originally entitled "Loving The Gaslighter Within," was recorded live on Instagram on March 3, 2021 and blurs the lines between “personal” and “business,” which is why I decided it was important to include it in this podcast scrapbook of burning it all down and building a better way. Because gaslighting isn’t a problem that clocks in or clocks out. “Business” is a fancy way of way of saying how modern humans meet each other’s needs in the marketplace. Who’s your daddy? Capitalism. Yeah. And Jeff Bezos. And if the Bez is our capitalist daddy, GirlBoss culture is our big sister and she loves gaslighting even more than fedoras and getting unstuck. Oh, what is gaslighting you ask? Google will give you its own version — manipulating someone into questioning their sanity — but I have my own take. And that’s what we’re talking about in this episode. If “business” is how we meet each other’s needs in the marketplace, gaslighting warps our sense of what we need to begin with. Gaslight. Gatekeep. GirlBoss. And speaking of the GirlBoss next door, little did I know, when I recorded this episode that a month later, I would be personally gaslit by the big sister of GirlBossdom herself, Jenna Kutcher. Yeah. That’s why you gotta subscribe to this show. Come to figure out what the hell is going on here, stay for the Kutchinator. I can call her that, she’s basically my ex. I’ll explain in a few episodes. For now, cnsider this episode a joint study session in The School of Gaslighting, where we're reviewing: 1) How to identify gaslighting; 2) Who are the gaslighters?; 3) The most important step in eradicating gaslighting. Plus the 3 types of people who struggle to identify gaslighting and why we each of us are ALL THREE TYPES! Because we are all: 1) living in a gaslighting world; 2) being gaslit; 3) gaslighting others. Seriously, though. What's gaslighting? Gaslighting is manipulating a person into questioning their own reality. And it's so finely woven into the fabric of our system, most of us can barely spot it anymore. Because it feels normal. Because it is normal. Gaslighting isn't someone else's problem. It's not something that other people do. It's our problem. And fixing it starts with finding, loving, and forgiving the gaslighter within. Thank you to Dr. Paul Holmes of The Emotion Management Program for changing my life and helping me save it. If you love the show, please do subscribe and review! If you hate the show, please send it to your enemies!