Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Weekly News Update 2.12.21: Valentine's Day Weekend, Experiential Marketing, and The Shoe Surgeon Creates Hot Sneakers with Chips Ahoy

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

This week's marketing news is naturally focused on Valentine's Day Weekend. There's so much happening in experiential marketing. In this episode, Ryan and Reiley share what Lowe's, Dunkin Donuts, and 7-Eleven have in mind for the sweet holiday. The Shoe Surgeon, Dominic Ciambrone, is creating some pretty hot sneakers for Chips Ahoy. People who vote on their favorite sneaker are entered into a sweet sweepstakes!If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and share the word if you love what we discuss, so we can keep giving you the strategies to achieve radical marketing results! You can follow us on Instagram @the.rad.cast | @radical_results | @ryanalford | If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to the latest radcast news update. Here's Ryan and Riley. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's Friday, February 12th, 2021, and it's Valentine's weekend. Riley Clark? Yes, it is. Are you excited?

I'm excited about it. Hey, roses are red, violets are blue. There's nowhere else I'd rather be than sitting here with you. Oh, that's awesome. That's so sweet. I just made that up. I was going to say, I was excited. That might be the nicest thing I've ever done for someone.

I don't think I've ever made a poem up right in here. Yeah, that's good. That's good. No, that's super good. That's impressive. No, it is Valentine's Day weekend. Do you have any special plans with Nicole? Yeah, we have four boys, and we're going to.

I love all of you. We have a blended family, and we, every other weekend, we either have Nash, who never goes anywhere. He's our together son. and the other boys are at their other halves. And it's a weekend we have all of them. And so we, you know, I'm going to try to surprise her with something tomorrow. Oh, that's sweet. But it's not going to be, you know, and we agreed.

We've done a couple of other things here recently. So, and we're going to Vegas in April. Nice. And we have the Mexico trip with the boys. So we've got a few things kind of coming that are. you know, going to celebrate each other. Right, right, right. You know, it's a, what's your feeling on the Valentine?

I mean, you're a woman, obviously. Thanks. Yes, I am. Quite clearly. But are you, but not all women are Valentine's Eve. I mean, not every, most of them like it. Yeah, I mean, like, but I'm more romantic. Like, I mean, so, you know, my boyfriend and I, like, we have plans, but, like, I mean,

we're also in a distance relationship. So, like, we have, we have, like, this virtual long-distance. date we're doing and it's like this thing that he found actually and it's like specifically targeted for people in long distance relationships which is actually really cool but it's like this date and you like go explore like different things and it's it's interesting so we're gonna be doing that and but yeah but I mean I love I think the sentiment behind Valentine's Day is just like a beautiful thing and I just I like the sentimental holidays you know yeah yeah I've always enjoyed good

Valentine's Day I like doing surprise Right, right, right. I think I've done more of my surprises for Nicole have been on Valentine's Day, not always just flowers or something. I don't know. I mean, and I'm not a huge, like, you know, jump out and scary a surprise person. Try to be sweeter surprises, you know. Right.

So, yeah, but it feels like love is in the air. Absolutely. I mean, I think, especially, you know, speaking of love being in the air, would love to say, you know, we love you to all of our listeners, you know, not even to be cliche about it, but genuinely, like we talked about this this week and just looking at our heat map of where everyone is in the world that's listening and it's awesome to just see everyone engage in just the, just where everyone is. It's really nice and we just want to say hello to everyone across the world literally. I mean, we have people in Cairo, Egypt listening, people in

Sydney, Australia, in South America all over the all over Europe and all over the United States. We're just thankful for you guys and yeah. Yeah, Riley, you showed me this, the heat map from our analytics. I was just like, holy cow, we are a international podcast now. We are, very clearly. Yeah, very, very clearly. It's like heat on like 15 cities like worldwide. None of them are exactly dear each other.

Right, exactly. And hey, if you're listening, we appreciate you wherever you are. Absolutely. However you're listening. Absolutely. Yeah. What's something that's happening, Radcast-wise or Radical-wise, it's coming up for you on on uh well i've enjoyed the super bowl we did part one of the super bowl if you

haven't listened to that you know talking about the impact of ads as a whole not only with super bowl but because it was such an ad advertisement experience that and in time of year and moment in time where everyone's kind of glued to it it was a good time to talk about the impact how ads you know how we think ads impact us and our feelings on the super bowl you know our general reviews our likes and things like that. And then next week, we've got Tyler coming back from Neuro Insight to talk about what the real neuro responses were to the ads. Absolutely.

Put the brain pads on people. I mean, it is high tech. Oh, yeah. And if you haven't listened to that episode yet that came out this Tuesday, definitely take a listen because they really get you all, you know, was you, Mike, Josh, and Tyler, and just really dissected kind of obviously the ads. and then next week just giving all the data. So that's going to be an incredible episode,

really looking forward to that. And then our Tuesday episode release, though, is going to be with Michael Loeb. And I'm really excited about that episode. You all had a great conversation. And again, that one will come out Tuesday at 7 a.m. And that's kind of radcast stuff.

Obviously, our merch, go ahead. We're wearing our merch today. We're very much heavy. We didn't even plan it, but I was like, you know, got so many options now. Seriously. I love our options and the sweatshirts are so cozy. We had champion sweatshirts guys.

So definitely go purchase one of those for sure. Things are good or radical. You know, we've had a busy week. We've got a lot of new clients kind of either coming in or getting at various stages. So that's been good. We're working on a lot of websites, a lot of, we've got an experiential project. Like, it's kind of all over the map, but they're fun and exciting. and have a pretty cool company that we're going to look at tomorrow that does like steel and copper.

Like they make like hoods and things for kitchens and staircases. Like really cool, potential client and to be named. Right, right, right. Excited to go. We're going to go explore the quote unquote factory. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Get a feel of for them. You think about ways we could bring their story to life.

So I'm kind of pumped about that. Yeah. I know I do have a weekly wine tip. I think I'm going to start with this. Oh, yes, yes. It's Valentine's weekend. This is so appropriate. Let's like, let me think here.

If it was like a chocolate-covered strawberry thing, what would you pair it with? Well, I do want to say this. So I used to do a segment called Secret Wine Tasting. So if you followed any of my content, even here at Radical, we did like this little thing where we'd shoot it in a random place. and I would taste a wine and talk about it. It was part of my content. And kind of got away from it as we've gotten busier. You kind of have to pick and choose.

And so the podcast is kind of taking the forefront. So we might get back to a secret wine tasting here and there. But I do have collected wine for like 20 years. I do not claim to be a connoisseur, though I know and like wine. And so I try to keep it like approachable. I'm not like, oh, oity, tooty, like, you know. Right, right. I've been known to stir a glass or two, you know, like to really get the scent out of it.

And, you know, one of my best buds now these days is Austin Hope who's been coming on our podcast. So I won't, you know, I plug Austin and, you know, on another, sooner or later he will be in the tip. But for this, we talked a little bit about this and you didn't tell me exactly what you were going to name. But that's a perfect Valentine's type of dessert, you know, trying to. chocolate covered, strawberry, sensual. You know, it's what you think of with Valentine's, like feeding each other, holding it over. Right, right. But here's the deal.

If you've ever had the prisoner wine, it was made originally by a guy named Orrin Swift, and it's now owned by the prisoner wine company. He sold it. Okay. But he still is super popular. If you're a wine drink, you're probably not in your head right now. You've heard of the prisoner. He makes probably 8 to 10 of his own bottles. Somebody's listening to go, he makes 14, sorry.

It's somewhere in there. He makes a number of bottles. But the bigger point is there's probably five or six that are really popular. This one's kind of under the radar. It's called Abstract. It's a granage, a petite sarah, and a sarah. It's a blend. Super rich, which all of orange-swiss wine are super rich and approachable.

They're kind of a mouthful, but they're delicious. Nice. And when I was thinking like strawberries and chocolate can go red wine and chocolate. are kind of like, you know, perfect matches. Yeah. But the strawberry and some of the flavors you get with the abstract, you almost get like a blueberry strawberry in there. And so abstract by Orange Swift, it's not completely outrageous.

I know depending on where your budget levels are, you probably can find it from $25 to $40. There's such a difference in markup with wine. Right. It just depends on where you shop. You got an over to shop. Maybe we'll do a tip on that. Oh, that would be a good.

thing too. I can tell you where to get their best deals. But yeah, there is your wine tip of the week. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Love it. Cool. Well, here's Riley with the news. Here is the Radcast News. Basically, most of our news topics today are going to be covering actually what you even mentioned that radical as a company we're going to be doing more of is this experiential marketing. And a lot of these companies are doing it in, you know, lieu of Valentine's Day weekend and all this kind of stuff. So a couple topics here. First of all, Lowe's is doing a night of Lomance. And I think this is so cute. It's in densities across the U.S. And basically, you're going in and you're doing like this paint kind of excursion thing with your partner. And you're just

like painting all this stuff. And I just think that's such a fun way, obviously, for Lowe's as a brand, bringing in your partner and you're just painting. I would love, I always wanted to do one of those like big body painting things. And you like have this. huge canvas and you're like in that suit and you know you just spray the paint everywhere basically and you just go and just have fun like I just think that would be such a fun thing I like this it reminded me when when we talked about it and I was reading more into it the places where you can go and do art you know like Van Gogh I think there's someone around here in South Carolina I call something Van Gogh I don't know it brought me reminded that idea doing something

together and painting and building art so I like the play I like the uh the play on words, the night of loomance, you know, it's not Lose, Lose mans, probably a little awkward, but you know, these are those things where I'd love to see what the impact

is. Like what's, you know, it's small, it's 10 cities, you've got 50 couples, so roughly 500, but you know, again, some of these brands have money and want to test different things, so I applaud that with, you know, getting your brand out

there and making and tying in I do think that brands like Lowe's or Home Depot or other can very easily slide into we're just the place where you buy stuff and we just get there and there's not a ton of brand connection and I think things like this are meant to create a connection with the brand and not just with the stuff the tactical thing like I'm going to get my lawn seed or whatever you're doing. Right, right, right. The typical thing. Yeah.

These are things, they're doing this to create an emotional connection with the brand so that you tie that experience with them. It's smart, especially for transactional brands like this. I just, I want to know what the mechanism is for kind of how it works. You know, I guess if people do it, great, or you get a lot of social content, maybe it's worth that. See, that's what I'm wondering. I'm wondering if this is like that social engagement aspect where they're asking

their community to just like blast it basically and just create that social engagement and we saw a lot of that over the Super Bowl as well just that social engagement and increasing your social media content and TikTok Instagram I mean so many people can make many just fun posts and animations out of this kind of you know experience with their partner so maybe that's interesting I'll ask you this I do not mine is purely convenience driven like lows or Home Depot Like, I, if there's one, it's closer than the other, I just go to whichever one's the most convenient. I mean, yeah, there's something aesthetically more pleasing for me. I don't know if it's the blue with Lowe's.

But if I need paint or a random lawn thing, I go whichever stores in the shortest distance for me. I mean, yeah, it's a good point. And I'm curious, though, I say this as a focus group of one. I do think there A lot of people probably are more specific on which one they choose But I mean I know you don't go to Lowe's in On Depot But do you have a preference of either brand

No It just kind of depends on what I mean it's like which one's closer Like Lowe's is closer to my apartment So I do go to Lowe's more But it's yeah But now doing night of Lomance You might be more of a Lose person

I'm more inclined to do Lose now Tuging your heartstrings I know see it's sweet It's a sweet little sentiment You got me Lose You got me Yeah no but I think that's a fun thing and I'm looking forward to seeing exactly what comes out of it but we'll definitely

will definitely be keeping track of it and also 7-11 is creating a gamer palace another experiential marketing kind of deal they are really incorporating just gaming social content and also pulling at Airbnb so you get two nights to stay in this gamer palace at the 7-Eleven and it's you know two one-night stays excuse me for $11 on Airbnb and I just think it's super cool I'm going to pull up a picture here but you know what did you you mean you saw this what was your what was your I mean another example I think we have almost every week in the news not even purposefully of of the power of e-sports now and kind of that the whole modern culture pop culture e-sports and now you've got the the convergence with Airbnb and all those things so I think it's another one of those that's

It's a cool experiential thing. It was, you know what sucks right now is just my head goes when I see these things. I also get into like, is it time with COVID different things like that? And obviously they're not, it's, they're limiting it to the, you know, two family members or whatever. I think they can go in. But it's like, can COVID just get gone so that like these kind of experiences can be like maxed out? Right, right. Because I think what they probably would do, they would probably turn this into almost like a East

sports arena within the thing. I think they pivoted a bit, if I had to guess, don't know this, you know, to the Airbnb, get two people in the same family. And it's still a cool concept. But again, it just shows the power of e-sports and the integration that every brand's kind of looking for with gaming. Absolutely. And I also just like this idea of Airbnb being involved or the travel and leisure kind of idea of like all the industries kind of coming together for this one moment. E-sports, you know, luxury. Palace Gamer Heaven

and Airbnb like basically coordinating this event I just think that's really cool Well you're going to start to see and we're in what's called the sharing economy now

And so you have You have this going on with how people think about And no different than a brand And the 7-11 thinking about their store In a way that you could rent

It's the same thing now where you're seeing this convergence of things like Airbnb are thinking more than just a random nice place on the beach that is that they have extra rooms at. They're thinking of ways that consumers can share other things, whether, and I'm not saying Airbnb specifically getting this, but you see bike sharing. You see, I even saw people share their pool, like their backyard pool, they'll rent their pool.

It's interesting. You're seeing, you're going to see increases. And like tools. I don't know if there's an app where like people that have tools. Because think about it. Tools sit in a toolbox 99% of the time. And so they're not used. I know.

And so does everyone need to own? We need 47 million hammers in the world. Or could we have someone a library where we check out hammers? And so some of the tool stores are to do that. But you're seeing this with consumers and experience with brands. And so not 100% related, but I do think it's a good pivot. point for thinking about the way the economy is is being built around this notion of sharing and conservatism and it's it's all of those things but it's also just smart because a lot of us have

things that sit there that never get used right i mean it's a good point and i wonder if it has anything to do with like the minimal culture that was really circulating do you feel like it has anything to do i think it's minimal culture you know tiny home like similar all types of mindset you know, just minimalist, but also just, I don't know, just that notion of sharing. Right. Yeah. And I like that. I mean, I think it brings more of that community aspect, more of just we're all human and

we're all in this together. Why not share, or, you know, just share the experience. Share, you know, share the hammer, like whatever it is. Whatever it is. And that's a little detour from the, you know, the convenience store of Airbnb. Right. So I digress a bit. But I do think it's all related.

and we are talking marketing, consumer behavior and all those things. So I think it's interesting. It's good to know, good to note. In other news, February 9th, so this is already passed, but it's definitely worth bringing up notion of Valentine's Day, experiential marketing, all these things, Dunkin' Donuts, which personally, I love Dunkin' Donuts. I'm such a big duck.

I'm a fan. Love their coffee. Oh, my gosh, favorite coffee ever. But in Vegas, they did a renew their vows, like, event, basically, and you do a drive-thru through this Vegas chapel, and you go and you renew your vows and you have this really cool bouquet of these donuts and they look like rings. They have a munchkin on top and everything. They look so cool and fun. I mean, again, I know it's already passed, but it's totally worth mentioning. And, you know,

if you went, I would love, it'd be so cool to see like how that affected everything. Another slight detour. I'm taking detours here today. That's okay. I got turned on Dunkin' Donuts living in New York, and there's a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner. and extra extra, extra cream, extra sugar. Like I lived on that. Yeah. Like every day.

Like I think I put on weight too because I didn't realize like, wow, this tastes so good, but it's coffee. But why am I, I'm putting an extra 1,200 calories in my body. I think a large coffee, extra extra, God, it tastes so good. It's so good. But I digress. Another cool, this is fun. You know, I don't know all the ends and outs of what's happening with the Vegas chapels and all that, but it's still a fun brand play.

The bouquet of donuts. Who wouldn't want a bouquet of donuts? I do. I would love a bouquet of donuts. I have no complaints here at all. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Who wouldn't want? Oh, oh, wow, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Absolutely, of course. Because think about it. Is there anything, like, I mean, bouquet, bouquets come and go. They have no real, you use them in the moment, and then, you know, they store and get dried up and don't do anything great. If you could eat it.

As long as everybody's not touching it. Right. Ew, yeah, no, that wouldn't be. That wouldn't be fun, yeah. I mean, you could share it. I mean, you know, it's a bouquet. Everyone gets a little piece of the donut. I have to tell Nicole, like, if they do this, we'll renew our vows next time.

Oh, you'll go out to Vegas. Yeah. We're going in April. Maybe they'll do again. Here, honey. I got you a bouquet of donuts. This happens to be my favorite flavor. Yeah, with your, with your orange-swift abstract and we'll put it all together.

Put it all together. Full circle. They're fun. You know, again, content play here. Absolutely. I think. Social media. Social media. How do we create experiences that we can film?

I mean, hopefully they're filming, shooting, atomizing all that content. I'm sure they are. Well, and it's interesting because I feel like with all these examples we're talking about, even the next example we're going to be talking about too. And this is so obvious because it's happening so much more. But the consumers are basically your market or your advertisements because they're just posting it on social media and they're sharing it and they're tagging you and they're hashtagging and all this stuff. And it's like such an easy way to just increase. the eyes on what you're doing as a business or as a product.

And I just think it's really great to see it just continue happening. CGC, consumer generated content. Yes. That's the best that may. If you can get that going, number one, it shows an affinity to the brand. They're willing to do it. It gives you content to share and show. And it's social proof, almost like reviews because you're getting validation that they're

sharing these. I mean, so it's like check, check, check. Anything you can do that generates that. user content is huge. And again, last topic for today, but it's definitely worth mentioning. And this also just shows, well, I'll say it first, Chips Ahoey is partnering with shoe surgeon, excuse me, and he created basically different kinds of sneakers for the new Chips Ahooy like kind of mascot kind of deal.

And they're just, I think this really shows the integration of streetwear culture, sneaker culture, and just the rise of that. you see it all the time with, you know, companies like eBay's doing it now. Stock X is doing it and things like that. It's just really creating the streetwear culture. And I think it's such a cool thing that now you see something like Chips Ahoi, you know, bringing that in too. I think that's awesome. But, you know, yeah.

Shoe Surgeon I've been following on Instagram for like five years, by the way. Badass. Like unbelievable the designs he does are so cool. Like I want to say it renewed my sneaker. interest like five years ago and bought like all these Jordans that I'd rarely rarely rare rarely wear yeah but uh he's incredible and so they knew who they were going after as far as influencers in the sneaker game the customization that you can do uh I don't remember you know I guess I do I mean I'm old enough I mean I'm the old man in the room but it's like chip I'm trying

to remember like the commercials or the character chip you know like what he did necessarily You know, like I can remember, I couldn't tell you. I can remember, you know, like Kool-Aid man or, you know, in certain brands, like, I remember the thing. I don't remember Chip being, you know, like some incredible character. I remember on the side of the box, maybe. Yeah, I just, I couldn't even tell you. I mean, I was so, I mean, but I just like disintegration of a shoe surgeon again. He has super cool things.

Oh my gosh, I think it's awesome. But yeah. So that's interesting to see. Again, basically you can enter in for sweepstakes as well. So you can go in and vote on which sneaker you're really loving. And then from there, you get entered into sweepstakes, you know, all that, all the good stuff with that. But yeah, so that's kind of what's happening from a Chips Ahoi marketing standpoint. Cool.

Yeah. Had some good news this week. Absolutely. Valentine's themes for sure. And just be sure to continue to listen to our upcoming episodes that we talked about earlier. And you definitely got to listen to. to what happens with the neuro research. We're going to see what really tested well,

so I'm really excited about that. But thanks as always, Riley. Yes, absolutely. You know where to find us. We're at theradcast.com and at the. dot rad.com and at the dot rad. dot cast on Instagram. And we'll see you next time.

See it. Yo, guys, what's up, Ryan Alford here? Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else.

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