It looked like a mutant. Or a dinosaur. Or a mutant dinosaur. And it took me a minute to figure it out.

I saw it after waking up at the lake and meandering upstairs like I usually do. I walked over to the patio door and looked out at the water.

And that's when I saw something out of place. A big, weird, dark blob was crawling slowly through the pebbled rocks by our fire pit.

I squinted, but couldn’t quite make out what it was. So I got out my phone to zoom in.

And my first thought was, “That is NOT a turtle.”

But it was. It was a snapping turtle. It had to have been 2-3 feet long from head to tail. And it had some kind of gunk stuck on its back—algae and mud probably—that apparently it brought with it out of the lake.

It scooted along the rocks faster than I imagined it would. Even though it was moving slowly, it was making good progress exploring the area, almost like it had done it before.

I froze for a minute and just watched it. And then once I realized it may not be there long, I called for my husband to come look. (Which is its own phenomenon when you think about it. You see something that stops you, and your first instinct is to make sure someone else sees it too. Like if no one else witnesses it, it doesn't count.)

We stopped what we were doing, stood there, and just watched.

The turtle looked ancient. Like a creature from another time. Way bigger than the painted turtles we're used to seeing. It was weird, and didn’t seem like it belonged there. Yet it crawled around in front of our Adirondack chairs, and clearly, it was perfectly comfortable.

After checking out the rocks, it decided crawling into the fire pit looked like a good idea and went right in. It didn’t hesitate to look first or poke its head in. I panicked a little that it wouldn't be able to get back out. (My husband once mapped wetlands for work, and he and his crew found a giant snapping turtle trapped in a cement hole. It took multiple full-grown men to get it out. Apparently, they like crawling into holes.)

Luckily, this turtle crawled in, and scooted right back out the other side. Not phased one bit. It was like it meant to do it.

I started wondering what it was looking for. The way it moved was unlike any animal I'd watched before—slow and deliberate, circling without an obvious destination. Like it had nowhere to be and all the time in the world.

And it turns out, it kind of does.

I wasn’t wrong about it being ancient. The snapping turtle family has existed in North American ponds, lakes, rivers, and wetlands nearly unchanged for 90 million years. They were here when the dinosaurs lived. They were here when the dinosaurs died. They’ve seen continents move, ice ages, and they’ve survived multiple mass extinctions. Through all that, their body design—featuring a large head, powerful jaws and neck, sharp claws, a long tail, and a reduced lower shell making them unable to hide inside their shell—has remained virtually unchanged. And they can live to be 100 years old.

The snapping turtle was quite literally built to last.

The one by our fire pit probably wasn’t 100 years old, but I could imagine it fitting right in with other ancient creatures millions of years ago. Still unbothered and still not in a hurry to get anywhere. Completely unimpressed by holes it might fall into … like it had seen much worse.

When it was done exploring, it turned back toward the lake and slipped in. It was probably out of the water no more than 10 minutes.

If I hadn't been looking at that precise moment, we would have missed it entirely.

Except now we know what's been digging up our rocks this whole time.

I love unexpected moments in nature like that. There’s something about them that stops you and leaves you in awe. No one plans for it, or is ready to explain it, but everyone can appreciate it, and it often sticks with you.

That’s what great marketing does too. It stops you before you know why, and sticks with you long after it’s gone.

Marketing that lasts stops you the same way that snapping turtle stopped me.

Not because it makes immediate sense or because it’s logical, but because there’s something about it that’s different and unexpected—even weird and mutant-like in this case.  

Which brings me to a brand I stumbled across as I found myself deep into a rabbit hole researching everything there is to know about snapping turtles.

It turns out, one night in November of 1983, a broke artist named Kevin Eastman, and his collaborator, Peter Laird, were thinking about mutant turtles too.

Eastman and Laird were both big fans of Bruce Lee and they started talking … “If Bruce Lee was an animal, what is the dumbest animal that he could be? What makes no sense to anyone on the planet?” 

Those silly questions were the start of it. A slow-moving turtle, standing on two legs, was the funniest answer. Eastman drew the turtle wearing a mask with nunchucks strapped to its arms. At first, it was a joke. They both laughed at the drawing.

But then they kept going. While weird, the idea stuck.

And by May 1984, they had a 40-page black-and-white comic book. Eastman used his tax return to support it, Laird emptied what little was in his bank account, and they borrowed what they still needed from Eastman's uncle to cover the printing costs. With all that combined, they had just enough left to run a single ad in the Comics Buyer's Guide.

Their company was called Mirage Studios (because there wasn't an actual studio). Just a kitchen table and couches with lap boards.

They printed about 3,000 copies of the comic book. It sold out within weeks.

Over 40 years later, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a multi-billion-dollar franchise. Multiple reboots, movies, and toys, and eventually one of those things that everyone grew up with. “Cowabunga, dude!” outlasted a lot of things launched alongside it.

And it started because two broke artists thought an unexpected mutant ninja turtle was funny. They kept going even though the turtles were strange-looking and not like turtles anyone was used to seeing. Just like the ancient-looking turtle I saw—it didn’t seem like it belonged.

Nobody planned for four ninja turtles. And no one was ready to explain why a slow, prehistoric reptile with weapons and an obsession for pizza was going to become a cultural phenomenon either. Yet, over 40 years later, everyone knows their names. And millions of years later, snapping turtles are still hanging around too.

The turtles in both stories, are clearly unique. They embraced weird. And their mutant status is what made them memorable.

Kevin Eastman didn’t have a flashy studio, a big budget, or a fancy pitch that made logical sense. He and Laird had a turtle with nunchucks (well, four actually). All living in a sewer. Fighting crime and eating pizza. Nobody was scrambling to green light that idea with a business and marketing plan. It was too weird. It didn’t seem like it belonged.

That snapping turtle didn't survive 90 million years by being the flashiest or fastest thing in the water (or on land) either. It was, by most accounts, a slow-moving creature with algae on its back who occasionally crawls into fire pits for no logical reason. Weirdly, it couldn’t even hide inside its shell, despite being a turtle.

And yet, both are still here.

There’s something about both turtles worth paying attention to, especially for marketers today, when everything feels urgent, loud, and like it’s changing faster than we can keep up. When everyone keeps declaring something dead. And when panic feels like it's one metric away.

But the things that last don’t usually look like they’re trying to last.

They just are what they are, and they keep going.

Whether it’s a turtle that crawls into a firepit without hesitation, or one drawn with nun chucks that starts as a joke, neither waited for someone to help them or tell them what to do. What helped them most was the mindset to keep going. People love them because of their weirdness. Logic never took lead.

And that’s what The MEL Method looks like in practice when you embrace what seems weird (mindset), you get close and understand what details make something unique (empathy), and you use logic to interpret why it works so you can build growth that lasts (logic must come last).

Even as the environment around us is changing faster than ever before, marketing that lasts never forgets to put those fundamentals in the right order.      

Mindset Makes You Move

When I first looked out at those rocks, my brain rejected what I was seeing. “That can't be a turtle,” I thought. “What is that?” “It has to be something else.”

How often do we do that in marketing?

We see something weird or unexpected, like a channel performing when were told it was dead, a potential customer responding when we thought they weren’t the audience, a message resonating when logic said it wouldn't … and our first instinct is to question it. Explain it away. Or to wait until it makes more sense before we act on it.

But the snapping turtle didn't do that. When it was done checking out the rocks, it didn't pause at the edge of the fire pit and weigh its options. It just crawled in. No hesitation. No guarantee it could get back out. It moved like it had already decided.

Eastman and Laird moved the same way too. They called their company Mirage Studios, because there wasn't an actual studio, and launched their comic anyway. They didn't need permission or a data-driven proof of concept. They shipped a joke drawn on a kitchen table and let the market tell them if it was worth more.

Mindset is what you bring to the moment before the data exists. It's your foundation.

It shapes how you approach everything that comes after—and it's what keeps you going before anyone else sees it.

What are you standing at the edge of, waiting for a guarantee that isn't coming?

Empathy Comes from Getting Close to the Details

I could have seen that turtle from the window and moved on. Dark blob in the rocks. Weird. Moving on. But I didn't. I got my phone out and zoomed in. I called my husband over. We watched it the whole time. And that's when it got interesting.

The details only showed up because we got closer. I read about snapping turtles for an hour afterwards to understand them better. I zoomed in and saw the gunk on its back. Its long claws. The way it moved in circles, and the speed that surprised us every time we looked away for a moment.

When Eastman and Laird brought the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to life, they understood what details mattered. They didn't just create turtles. They created four of them, each with a unique personality distinctly relatable to a different kind of person (and named after a famous Italian Renaissance artist). Leonardo for those who feel responsible. Raphael for the ones who feel angry. Donatello for the quiet inventors. And Michelangelo for everyone who copes with humor.

People don’t connect with logic. They connect with feeling, emotion, and relatability. Not what you assume your audience wants, what you learn about them when you get close enough to understand what they’re feeling. And that’s what makes people, like your potential customers, stop when they’re scrolling. It’s what makes them lean in, and what makes them feel, even for a moment, like someone was paying attention.

A Fox Communities Credit Union business member once told me that in all the years they'd been with their previous financial institution, "They never sat down to talk with us."

They were watching from afar and never zooming in to understand and connect.

What are you watching from too far away?

Logic Proves When the Design Doesn’t Need to Change

The thing about the snapping turtle’s body design is that it works. No matter how many millions of years old it is, it still works. Through mass extinctions, climate shifts, and the rise and fall of entire species, scientists don't look at it and think, “Wow, what a missed opportunity for optimization.” They think, “Now that’s a solution that was right the first time.”

What followed the original 3,000-copy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic book was incredible—an animated series, live-action films, toys, video games, multiple reboots, and a franchise that’s still running decades later. But they never changed what worked. The names. The personalities. The weirdness. Leonardo still leads. Raphael still has an attitude. The pizza never went away. No matter how many times the franchise was reimagined, nobody touched the core—because the core was already right.

That's the logic of a design that doesn't need to change. You build on it. You don't fix it.

In marketing, we love to optimize fast and abandon faster. When something doesn't perform, our reflex is to change it, sometimes before we've asked the human questions. And that’s not to say we should never change. We have to. But if you put logic first without getting clear on your mindset and empathy before that, you can be misled to believe something is dead (or slow), when really it’s just doing its thing.

Logic that's grounded, and follows mindset and empathy instead of replacing them, doesn't panic when conditions change. It knows what it's built on. It knows what's still working even when the environment shifts, and it continues to build on it.

The turtle crawled into our fire pit and crawled right back out. It adapted to the obstacle without abandoning the direction. That's what logic looks like when it's built on the right foundation. Not rigid or reckless. Steady.

Are you building on what works, or fixing what doesn't need to be fixed?

What was most interesting to me about that snapping turtle was that it had probably been living in our lake longer than we’ve been coming there—digging up our rocks, doing its thing, completely outside our awareness.

I thought it was chipmunks or squirrels burying nuts, but that assumption was wrong. We just hadn’t been looking.

Eastman and Laird weren’t looking for a billion-dollar franchise either. Eastman was drawing a joke with Laird. The turtle by our fire pit wasn't trying to impress anyone with its flashiness, loudness, or speed. It was just doing what it had always done.

The most enduring things usually aren't the loudest ones. They're the ones that know what they are, show up with intention, get close to what matters, and keep going.

Whether that’s a turtle lesson or a marketing lesson, it’s been right there the whole time

What You’ll Need:

Find something that’s been around longer than you.

A tree. A building. A trail. A bridge. A lake or river that was there before the things around it. Maybe something in your town that was there long before you were.

Stop and spend some time with it.

Then, look up one thing: how long has it been there?

What was happening when it started? What has it outlasted?

And then put the phone back down.

If this story sparked a thought, a question, or even a gentle disagreement, I’d love to hear it. Tell me what resonated—or what didn’t.

I’d love to make this a conversation so we can learn and grow together.