Welcome to Digital Gravity by Orbit Marketing
Welcome back to Digital Gravity 🪐
Every Friday, we share strategies to help you level up your sales, marketing, and lead gen.
This week, Maddie shares inspiration from a groundhog who's never paid for an ad and still gets more coverage than most Fortune 500 companies.
Enjoy 👇
Punxsutawney Phil Has Better Strategy Than Most Brands 🎩
Every February, Punxsutawney Phil pops out of the ground, squints at the sun for about five seconds, and then disappears back into obscurity. (dibs on Phil’s job whenever he retires)
That's it.
That's the job.
And yet, CNN sends a crew.
The Today Show goes live.
AP runs the story.
Phil has never boosted a post.
He doesn't run retargeting campaigns.
He has never optimized his ad spend.
He just shows up, and the media shows up for him.
There's something here worth paying attention to.
Most brands are spending serious money trying to get noticed.
Paid ads. Sponsored content. Influencer partnerships.
Phil spends nothing and gets global coverage.
The difference isn't the budget.
It's that Phil is genuinely interesting.
The media covers what people actually want to hear about.
Groundhog in a top hat predicting the weather? Personally, I couldn’t think of anything sillier. Of course I'm tuning in!
Most brand announcements are not:
New features that sound like every other feature
Thought leadership that reads like a press release
Content designed by committee to offend nobody
None of that gets organic attention.
So we pay for it instead.
Phil saw his shadow. That's the whole update. Pulitzer-worthy compared to most press releases.
But here's the thing:
Paid reach can put your message in front of people.
It can't make them care.
Phil earns media coverage because he's specific, weird, and committed. (goals)
Brands get earned media when they do something genuinely worth talking about.
The question isn't whether you should advertise.
It's whether you're interesting enough that you wouldn't have to.
Because if the only way people hear about you is because you paid for it, that's feedback.
So before your next campaign, try this:
Would anyone actually want to share this?
Is this memorable enough that someone might bring it up at dinner?
Or does it need a budget just to get seen?
Phil proves that the right story doesn't need amplification.
It amplifies itself.
Maybe we should all be a little more like Phil in 2026. 🦫 (close enough)
p.s. Phil, I will slide you a crisp $20 if you give us an early spring next year xoxo
–Maddie
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