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Actionable
Takeaways
Invest in Stunts as Content Opportunities, Not CAC Plays:
Alex reframes stunts entirely—they're not direct response vehicles, they're content goldmines. The horse stunt cost $3,500 total ($3K donation to animal shelter, $500 in permits) but generated months of LinkedIn content, email campaigns, and pipeline conversations. Every prospect referenced seeing "the horse everywhere." Calculate ROI based on content volume and brand recall, not immediate conversions.
Use "One Quote Per Source MAXIMUM" Cold Email Strategy:
After the horse stunt, Alex sent a cold email with the subject line "You must open this email right now" to accountants, achieving a 70% open rate. The email told the story of the stunt with a link to a LinkedIn post that had hundreds of likes. This created social proof for an entirely cold audience at near-zero cost, demonstrating how viral content can make cold outreach feel warm.
Apply the "Thanksgiving Turkey" Content Model:
Borrowed from LinkedIn's Jason Miller, this approach treats major marketing moments like a Thanksgiving turkey—the initial event is valuable, but the real ROI comes from repurposing it into "soup, sandwiches, and leftovers." One podcast recording becomes audio clips, newsletter content, blog posts, LinkedIn quotes, and multiple content formats. Plan stunts with maximum repurposing potential built in from the start.
Recognize When You're Selling to People, Not Competitors:
For AI agent products specifically, Alex identifies a critical positioning advantage—you're not competing with other software in an apples-to-apples feature comparison. You're competing with human labor and manual processes. This creates "green space" for brand creativity since there's no incumbent feature set to defend against. Use this freedom to build distinctive brand personalities that explain fundamentally new value propositions.
Send Physical Gifts That Demand Social Sharing:
Inspired by Unify and Default's Series fundraising stunts, Alex sent cowboy hats to prospects with one simple ask: take a selfie and post it. The execution was expensive and complex (sourcing hats, designing multiple box layers for shipping damage, individual FedEx costs), but it generated significant pipeline from people who saw others posting about it. The key insight: the gift must be photogenic and aligned with your brand narrative.
Escape CAC Addiction Before It Starts:
Alex warns that LinkedIn ads become "very hard to turn off" once you start—you get reliable pipeline, but at $150+ per contact and increasing CAC over time. For pre-seed through Series A companies spending $5-20K/month, there's limited optimization runway, and your marketing becomes "less about creativity and more about CAC." His alternative: invest that budget in 2-3 major stunts per year that create lasting content and brand differentiation.
Understand the Two B2B Buyer Personas:
Alex simplifies B2B audiences into two groups: (1) Senior leadership asking "How do we save/make money faster?" and (2) End users saying "Please save me time, my job is killing me." Both groups are humans who watch Westworld, use Instagram, and appreciate personality. Stop treating B2B buyers like they're different people outside of work—they respond to the same creative, memorable content as consumers.
Execute "On The Line" Marketing:
Position your brand between "boring as fuck" and "prison"—right on the line where things get interesting but not offensive. Be provocative without punching down. In AI/tech startups specifically, there's enormous room to "punch up" at the sameness of competitor positioning. The goal: create permission structures within your organization to take creative risks that make your 50-person startup look like a 500-person company.
Conversation
Highlights
In this episode of The Marketing Front Lines, we speak with Alex Mann, Head of Growth at Lunos, an AI startup transforming accounts receivable. In a crowded market where every B2B AI company looks identical—same fonts, same color schemes, same website layouts—Alex took a radically different approach. Instead of pouring money into LinkedIn ads and traditional demand generation, he brought a horse and cowboy to Wall Street, sent cowboy hats to prospects, and built a content engine that generated more pipeline than any ad campaign could deliver. Through stunts that cost a fraction of typical CAC, Alex demonstrates how early-stage startups can break through the “sea of sameness” and create memorable brand moments that drive real business outcomes.
Topics Discussed:
- Breaking through B2B marketing sameness with provocative stunts
- The economics of stunts vs. traditional paid acquisition
- Securing permits and executing a Wall Street horse stunt for under $4K
- Converting viral moments into sustained pipeline generation
- Building content halos from single marketing events
- Navigating founder buy-in for unconventional marketing tactics
- Escaping the CAC addiction cycle in early-stage startups
- Positioning AI agent products that don’t compete with traditional software
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