Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Navigating Shopper Promiscuity Challenges in Today's Market with Devora Rogers

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential. Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn this episode of Right About Now, host Ryan Alford sits down with Devora Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer at Alter Agents, to explore the ever-evolving world of marketing and consumer behavior. They dive into the challenges brands face in truly understanding their audiences, the transition from traditional focus groups to cutting-edge research methods, and the delicate balance between performance marketing and brand building. Devora introduces the concept of shopper promiscuity, explains how familiarity drives brand loyalty, and examines the rising influence of podcasts in shaping consumer decisions. This insightful conversation highlights the urgency for brands to adapt to shifting consumer preferences and craft compelling value propositions in a competitive marketplace.TAKEAWAYSUnderstanding the significance of consumer behavior in marketing.The concept of "shopper promiscuity" and its impact on brand loyalty.The transition from traditional focus groups to modern research methods, including virtual formats and mobile ethnographies.The tension between performance marketing and brand building, and the need for long-term consumer relationships.The complexity of modern marketing strategies across various channels.The role of familiarity in fostering brand loyalty among consumers.The challenges of attribution in marketing and the difficulty in determining effective channels.The importance of engaging with real consumers for genuine insights.The potential of podcasts as a growing marketing channel.The necessity for brands to adapt to changing consumer preferences and market dynamics. 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. 

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Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about what you need to know now in business, even life sometimes. I'll give you some life advice. But I'm probably more the marketing and business guy. And that's why I like to bring the best, the brightest, and some of the smartest people in the industry on the show. And sometimes we venture back into the things that I always had my hands in in the industry on the show. And sometimes we venture back into like the things that I always was kind of had my hands

in in the agency world, less today with the podcast network, but definitely, you know, keeping a pulse of what's happening in marketing and research and what brands are thinking about. And ultimately, you know, I got to go to the source. That's why we got we've got the research poet. We have the chief strategy officer of Alter Agents. It is Devorah. What's up, Devorah?

Hey, how's it going, Ryan? Good to be with you. Yes. Appreciate you coming on. I get to get, I don't always get to get my nerdy marketing hat on, but I kind of want to get it on today. You think we- Let's do it.

In the beautiful LA, Santa Monica area, correct? Yeah. but I kind of want to get it on today. In the beautiful LA, Santa Monica area, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. What is it? Is Alter agents, I mean, is it look, feel, act like an ad agency? I know you're not involved maybe in the marketing campaigns, but in many ways is, is my mind

in the right place? Yeah. We're a, we're a full service research shop. So research shops tend to be a little bit different than ad agencies. Our offices aren't as cool. We got rid of our office during the pandemic, which has been great. We're fully remote and the team loves it.

And it's given us access to amazing talent all over the US. But yeah, we have a little, I came from the ad agency world. So we have a little ad agency in us, you know? all over the US. We have a little ad agency in us. We give off one day a month just because. It brings me flashbacks of focus groups in New York. Sitting there talking to people about Test Man, Can You Hear Me Now, which was one of the first campaigns I worked on back in the day for Verizon.

If you worked in New York and you didn't work on Verizon at some point, then you just didn't cut your teeth right. Our focus group's still a thing. I'm going to give you the German answer, which is, Jain. Yes and no. Look, if you enjoy traveling and going and having shitty food in a back room while people talk about things for days on end, then you might do focus groups.

And some people still do that. But honestly, we have moved to virtual focus groups because you get better respondents. People just don't want to leave their houses right now. So it's like, if we do a focus group in LA, to virtual focus groups because you get better respondents. People just don't want to leave their houses right now. If we do a focus group in LA, getting people on time at four o'clock in the afternoon, traffic's bad, it's really hard. We do them, but I would say judiciously, and more and more we're moving to something we call mobile ethnographies. They've also been called selfnographies, which is really freaking cool. The agency research, we always go with the best names

of shit. It just sounds important, but it is important. And that's why I was so thrilled when your people reached out. For our audience, it's important for people to know what the sentiment of today is. What's motivating shoppers and consumers? How does one learn what's doing those things? What are the techniques today? What should we listen to? And sometimes when I have brilliant people like you on the show, it's like almost what you don't do and what

you don't listen to sometimes. Because I feel like the inputs can be so confusing now because the channels are... That's the thing that just blows my mind with you doing what you do. I think about what I did 12 years ago, then the inputs felt complex, but they weren't. Now it's just like so many, how do you balance all of it? Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I feel like that, I have that same feeling that you have when I look at my clients who handle, let's say, CPG brand marketing in a space where you've got to compete on

Amazon. You've got to figure out TikTok. You've got, I mean, like to me, that's now brain science. And so we actually literally do brain science to understand because the amount of channels that people can be in, the importance of being offline, online, a mix of both, dealing with private label, it is rough. And so it's our job to help clients focus on what's really gonna matter for them when they bring something new to market or when they're trying to compete with their competitors. Yeah, and that's the thing that's interesting

that I really wanna dig under. I've watched these worlds with, I came up in what I feel like was a great mecca of brand marketing. You know, like the importance of that, of building brand over time and the resonance of that and reaching frequency and all of these things. And then, kind of in my in-between land, the last 10 years of owning an agency but kind of being on our own planet and doing podcasting and all that. Performance marketing, the savior of all things came in, right? I rolled my eyes a little bit, drove me crazy. I'm like, you know, you can't drive a sail until someone's aware of you. The last time I checked, you have to play that game too. But what's been your perspective the last 10 years? I want to turn to more specifically

some of the nuances that you work in, but I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit. As someone that's in it with the consumer, the performance versus brand thing, and the last 10 years of, hey, let's just scoop up all of the bottom of the funnel, but have we just completely lost our mind that we still have to build somewhere along the way the awareness and the consideration?

Yeah, I agree. I'll start with the bad news for brands. The bad news for brands is that consumers have more options than ever before. We call it shopper promiscuity. Think about it, if, you know, I'm married, I don't know about you, but if I had like four amazing suitors outside every single day, standing outside my house being like, you know what though? I'm pretty great.

I'm an amazing chef. I'm really good in bed. It'd be hard to stay loyal. Let's just be honest, right? That's what brands are facing. Consumers have so many choices. They could go anywhere. They could at any time of day.

That access, the choice that they have creates this promiscuity. The difficult news is that brands continue to be brands and what brands often do as brands, both in marketing and in research, is they do something we call brand narcissism. A lot of research is built on this idea that if you just track people's relationship to your brand, then you'll know enough and then you'll know what to do. It's called brand tracking. It underpins all of research and marketing and many people hate it, including the people that use it because things don't shift that much.

It's hard to really make sense out of it. It doesn't, and again, it's narcissistic. It's like, I mean, imagine Ryan, if you and I went out, let's just say for like a little friend hangin'. And the whole time I was like, hey Ryan, what do you think about my hair? What do you think about my cashmere sweater? What do you think about my friends?

Did you look at my friends? Do you think that they're, am I more innovative than my friend? You'd be like, get out of here. You wouldn't want to talk to me. And that's what brands do with their precious research. So we have really drawn a line in the sand. Our CEO, Rebecca Brooks wrote in our, in our book shopper promiscuity. Sorry, we didn't end up getting to name it that because we had a British editor and they didn't want the word. I love that name. I know it's too bad.

It ended up being influencing shopper behavior. The original name was Chopper. I know the Brits. Sorry. She was like, Oh, it's not we can't. But in a chapter in that book, she wrote what I call her Jerry Maguire letter basically to the research and marketing industry saying we're missing the boat here.

Brand tracking isn't delivering the answers that you want. To add to that, insult to injury, and that'll tell you the good part. The challenge is that when we survey shoppers by generation, brand loyalty basically stair steps down. So if you're a boomer, then you're pretty likely to keep buying, let's say 60% of boomers are going to keep buying products that they've been buying. By the time you get to Millennials and Gen Z, it's like 17% of them express that same brand loyalty. So that's the bad news. Yikes. But I would agree with you that performance marketing has shown us

that the answer is not just the race to the bottom. Yeah, you can get people to buy things if you, you know, do enough coupons and promotions or whatever. Wave a buy one, you're on free. Yeah, you can. But you may not have a lasting voice or presence in the space that ultimately means that brands still do have to do the hard work.

What's interesting though, I think, and I think where the opportunity for brands is, is that brands have this idea that it's either all or nothing. I'm gonna put my brand out there, show you my brand logo again and again and again and again I'm going to have my billboards up that you won't even know what my website is or what I'm selling. I get so mad at those.

I love those. They think they're fooling somebody. They think they can do something because we're just so wrecked. It's just so distinguished that people know, that people will get there. I get mad. My husband has to listen to me for 20 minutes being like, who did that? It's like, okay, come back.

The ivory tower of the creative department. Right, or they say, okay, so either we're gonna go the all in, it's just our brand name, brand recognition, build brand, or we're gonna go all the way to the bottom and give you all these little details. But actually the center space is where we really see the opportunity for brands. Tell them about your products and what they do and why they're better and why people should believe in you as a brand.

So essentially what we've seen is consumers and shoppers becoming really, really smart. And every piece of research that we've done over the last decade shows that people consume more information than ever before about everything, but also all of their purchases. So more sources than ever before, more knowledge than ever before, and I'm going to put, I think, implied words in your mouth. They know they're being marketed to.

100%. And they're okay with it too. That's the thing too, is that brands don't have to pretend like they're not. We've actually seen an increase in people accepting advertisement as a useful source of information. They get the exchange. But do better. Tell me more. Yeah.

I have one of the few people I would call mentor, Christopher Lockhead in marketing. I don't know if you know Chris. He's a category pirates is his brand. He doesn't believe in brands. He just believes in category creation to where you carve out exactly what you are. You market the problem and you become the solution. I think that's a little bit of what you're saying with telling people about what you are. I take, I agree with about 75% of it. I choose to believe that brand isn't dead.

Yeah, I would agree with you. At the end of the day, people are, the way our brains work, right? So we do neuroscience, right? And I don't know if you know this, but turns out half the reason we like our spouses is because we see their face every day. It's familiarity.

It's a brain thing. So the next time you get in a fight with your spouse, just be like, am I with you just because I see you every day? And that's the same for brands, right? So brands, you wouldn't want to give that up. Yeah, comfort. Yeah, it's a name, it's a logo your brain recognizes, it's a logo or a service that you associate with something good.

So if that goes away, I do think it makes it harder for consumers. They'd have to do more work. It's not to say you couldn't. And I do think category matters a lot. And if everybody could do what he's suggesting can be done, cool. But I don't know that everybody has that benefit. Kyle Siversky I know. That's always my argument, Tim.

Not everybody's going to be the category king. You know, even if they want to, they don't have, there's a lot of money. And I think, you know, Christopher, you know, cause he gets to work with the companies that he chooses to, to help them carve out the category when they've decided they want to do that. But there's a lot of money to be made as the, you know, second person, second best in the category. And no, I know as somebody that's very competitive competitive that doesn't like to play for second in much of anything

But at the same time I do like to be Successful and there's not all it's first isn't always the second Yeah, honestly, like I'm pretty competitive. I get a second, right? Or even like five percent like you yeah being top 5% pays the bills. Yeah. Exactly. But the brand thing is interesting, the familiarity. And I just always think, and you talk about in a lot of your studies and a lot of the

writings I've read from you, it's just like that. The promiscuity is like the biggest thing is like, does it matter it's single moment of truth, if that performance bug comes in and I'm going to, I'm keeping it simple here, like the store, but whether it's a luxury thing or not, luxury is a whole other category, I mean, whole other thing.

But you go in and I buy Arm and Ham a toothpaste, but if there is a half price deal on Colgate and that's a flavor thing, so I'm probably going down a whole other road, but I think you know where I'm headed with this. It's like, am I cheating? Well, I mean, think about all the places in our lives where we make left turns. Yeah. You know. Yeah, it depends, right? It depends. Mustard is a category that I like talking about.

Ah, yes. And the reason I like talking about mustard is that. There are people that don't care at all. They're like, I just give me the grape of on or give me the cheapest. I don't care is yellow mustard. Fine. Right. My father in law is like that. Doesn't care. You know, maybe if there's like a flavor, he might splurge, but otherwise it's just like yellow mustard is sufficient.

And then there are mustard a fish on a fish and autos, like, you know, mustard sommeliers, Joe, and, and they're going to know every little thing. They're going to do little tastings, right? know, every little thing, they're going to do little tastings, right? So there are in every category, mustard aficionados, you, you may not be an aficionado in one category in your life, but randomly in another you might be. And even among people who consistently choose value over, I'm somebody that chooses like, I'm like, Oh, is there a more expensive price that I can pay? I'll do that. You know,

Devorah, you are that person, right? Do you want to charge me more? You might charge me more, please. Yeah, please do. But there are people that are the opposite who are, and it doesn't matter if they're wealthy or not, right? That they're going to consistently choose the value option. Yeah.

We tend to leave out a lot of the people that are choosing the value option in our research because they tend to not be very interesting. But I guarantee you, whoever they are, one thing in their life, most likely, unless they're just like a total weirdo, they have something that they really want to be higher quality premium. And for that, they're willing to do the research,

they're willing to do the looking, and they might be harder or easier to move. So that's the other thing is that this promiscuity means that there are a whole group of people who are just promiscuous, and they might be amazing to initially grow your brand. Because like, let's say they become obsessed with, I don't know, let's say, I feel like there was a direct to consumer underwear brand, like Meandies or whatever. People become obsessed early on and they're the explorers, they're the ones finding new things, they're evangelizing, and they are the ones that you can lose very easily. So you kind of have to know at every stage of building your business, because the idea that you could just have loyal people

that'll stay with you and that's everyone is just no longer true. So you have to sort of plan for, okay, I'm going to have these people that are going to come in. They might help me build my brand early on, but then they're going to defect because that's what they do.

And then I've got to get the other people to fill up the back, right? So that we don't completely lose when the explorers and promiscuous folks go away. You have a lot of job security because you know what I just heard, Devorah, is and it's very true. The it depends word is it's so unique to every different brand in every different category. And I know this instinctively, but I almost forget it too, because I think we all like to paint with broad brushes and make statements like TV is dead or Facebook is dead.

I've been hearing Facebook's been dead. I've written those trends reports, by the way. The truth is, but it depends. Because depending on your product and depending on the categories of consumers that buy that product, they can be very promiscuous in one but brand loyal in another. Listen, years ago, I did a call with someone who was very senior at the Milk Board. The call went very poorly.

She had seen the work that we did with Google, the Zero Moment of Truth work, and she's like, I want that. But I don't believe that people are doing a lot of different searching and researching and sources, using a lot of different sources for milk. Milk is an everyday household item. Nobody, and I tried to convince her on the call. I was like, listen, I know you think that,

and for a lot of people it is, but even if for 15, 20% of people it starts to shift, what's that gonna look like? She didn't believe me, the call went poor. I didn't win, never heard from her again. It was like really a bad call get look at where we are now go into the milk aisle and tell me that wasn't completely disrupted there is pea milk yes there is goat milk my doctor my child's doctor told me to get camel milk at one point. For my kid.

Okay? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we're in a different world. And anyone who thinks that a category is never going to shift or be disrupted is in for some surprises. And once it does, you either are ready or you lose your share. Yeah.

And that's why you got to get underneath it. Like to know within your own product and your own category, what the mind shift, what are the media, what are the mind thought process? What are the problems that you're solving or not solving? It's frustrating because we want and we've been chasing, especially which is before I want to go next door, is attribution. Ultimately, that's right. The old Pepsi saying, I forget who says it, I know that 50% of my marketing works great. I just don't know what 50%. And we've been chasing that attribution game,

but how do you, where do you fall on that? Because again, I get the hand raisers on Google, SEO is important, they're searching for you, and it gets a lot of credit, but did my friend down the street, good old fashioned word of mouth, put it in my brain, and so who gets credit, and how do I know what to do more of? Yeah. Well, you know, there were folks who built these tech stacks,

and they said, we'll be able to answer it all, and we'll know everything. You know, it didn't really play out that way, and certainly now some of the changes that have occurred in tech And we'll know everything. It didn't really play out that way. And certainly now some of the changes that have occurred in tech and some of the questions calling into question whether cookies are working and privacy, all kinds of different things, I think has shown us that there isn't an easy fix for attribution.

There's no special key that just unlocks it permanently. You have to do the work and you have to do the work among humans. Now working in research, we have, I don't want to call them colleagues, but we have people who are trying to use synthetic respondents, which by the way, that means not a real human in case anybody didn't know. Artificial, artificial, not real fake, uh, to essentially answer research surveys. And you know, I look at that and I go, why, why would you do that?

You could use big data to do that. You could use any number of things. Nothing reveals opportunities and challenges in the way that talking to humans does. It just doesn't. And so I think that attribution is worthwhile. And certainly if you're doing a lot of media spend, you've got to do it. But we feel that brands have to put in the work and ultimately get answers from real people dealing with real challenges that either your company can or cannot solve.

How do small brands, you know, I know that the techniques and online have probably brought the scale. I mean, I just remember what it costs. You know, I've been in a focus group in 12 years, but like it was expensive, you know, like research and stuff. So but how to I mean, I guess the online equations probably made it more attainable. But it has. Yeah.

So a couple of thoughts on that. So my mentor, you mentioned yours, my mentor was a guy named John Ross, who had been the CMO at Home Depot. And he oversaw Home Depot's growth, the biggest growth of its development. Right. And I learned a lot from him around how I think about research and retail and shopping. We wrote a book together called Fire in the Zoo, which is all about the difficulty of selling at retail and all that kind of stuff. And you know, he used to do so they had, you know, every imagine,

you know, they had Deloitte, they had all every consultant in the world was working for Home Depot at the time. Every single one. They had any amount of data or research they wanted. And guess what, as the CMO, he felt like he still didn't know why people were making choices. And so he would go down and, you know, put on an apron, stand in the pain aisle, and he would ask people a series of very, very simple questions. What made you decide to come in today? Where'd you go for information? What of that information was most influential? What of that information specifically? Was it price?

Was it what we told you about the product? Had you ultimately decided that you wanted to come in and make a purchase? And he would go do those conversations. And you know, small business owners can do that. You don't need a research agency to do that. So if you're really on the no budget side, I would say small business owners need to at least be having those conversations. They won't be at scale.

And you got to be aware of that. You know, and another reason- Did you tell him to take it with a grain of salt what he learned in those conversations? Or do you think they were meaningful? We turned it into a quantitative methodology. Okay. Yeah. And today clients do that methodology at scale when they're trying to figure out where is everyone going for information? Where should I be? I don't have billions of dollars. I have to choose between TikTok and Google or podcasts and Google search. What should I do? And then now you can do these self-nographies.

We use a company called D-Scout, which I'll give them a shout out. I think they've built something really cool. There's another one called Recollective. And for a relatively small sum, $20,000, $30,000, you can send out real people into the real world and find out how they're responding to your product or service or stores. And you know, okay, 30 people, that's not the same as a thousand. But you know what? If you work in research, the truth is after about 12 or 18, you start hearing a lot of the same things.

Yeah, I remember that. Random question. You're doing a lot of research, different clients, different things. And I'm sitting here saying we going to ask you a broad brush question. What's a medium or a tactic or something that might surprise people listening that is popping up over and over again in the influence or magnitude that it has? Is there something? As a marketing task? Yeah, just marketing. Maybe it's a channel. magnitude that it has. Is there something? As a marketing task? Yeah, just marketing. Maybe it's a channel.

Yeah. So what might it be? Honestly, podcasts are pretty amazing. We've been tracking podcasts for 15 years. And for a long time, it was like they were down there with the dust bunnies. Nobody used them. They weren't driving influence. And now we see that they are widely used, down there with the dust bunnies. Nobody used them. They weren't driving influence. Now we see that they are widely used, I would say, by about 30 to 40% of the population.

There's people that don't use them. Fine. But there's a decent audience that is really listening and really attuned and they really love the hosts. That can be a very powerful channel for brands. A lot of brands have worried that podcasts are not brand safe because you really attuned and they really love the hosts. And so that can be a very powerful channel for brands. And a lot of brands have worried that podcasts are not brand safe because you can't control everything that happens. But consumers tell us that they do not penalize brands if something, I mean, it's different if it's like a bigoted show, but if it's just like bad language, consumers don't care. It hasn't hurt our numbers and I have a potty mail.

Yeah, same, especially on Fridays. Oh, talking with Devorah. She is the research poet. Devorah, back to this attribution game, who does get the credit? I like, how do we answer that what 50% is working or not working? Yeah. I mean, I think there's some really great, speaking about podcasts, right? There's a lot of podcasters that use codes and that kind of thing. That gives you an opportunity to know what's working. We're seeing creators do that. Creators are certainly having a moment. I'm a little bit worried about creators

with the growth of AI because I worry that it could kind of turn things into slop. And that's not going to be good for consumers or brands, but that's an aside. I think you have to live with some level of uncertainty. You're never going to know everything. You just never will. But you can find out a lot. Let's say you're throwing money at TV and radio and podcasts and 10 other things. We do a study where we then ask people, what sources did you use before making a purchase? And we only talk to people who actually made the purchase. So these aren't intenders. These aren't random consumers.

They actually bought the thing that our brand is selling And if we see that TV is just really low not a lot of people are using it, but it's really influential We take note Or like one another one that we hear we see a lot like people kind of make fun of catalogs Do you know catalogs are like actually not so bad? Not a lot of people use them, but the people that do, they buy shit. Really influential. So we're looking at things through the lens of how many people are using it and we can find that out through research and how influential is it and

we can find that out through research. And then like we can hook that together with other attribution models to say, you know what, let's plus up the catalogs or the TV isn't showing up in some of our other stuff, but let's plus it up because consumers, a thousand of them, 80% are saying it worked. It's just applying the percentage and the scale, right? So then it's like, okay, we know that this has impact at some level, which research that you could help them with would tell. And some portion of that makes up, I don't know, 100% of the impact.

Or 90%. It's probably always that ambiguous 10% that we don't know. Cousin Eddie told them about it or influenced them in the projection. And cousin Eddie, people like to write that off. Cousin Eddie matters. Yeah. And Cousin Eddie, people like to write that off. Cousin Eddie matters. If Cousin Eddie bought from you and demonstrated any aspect of being an evangelist or somebody who's really excited about the product, give Cousin Eddie some codes.

Give him some ways to get other people on board. Cousin Eddie is great. We'll take him. What's the biggest problem you've solved? When you think about it, every client's your baby, I know. We don't have to call it. But, you know, divorce is a big deal. I'm telling the audience this. And so she's worked with a lot of big brands. She's smart as hell. I want her to brag a little bit, but also to, you know, the types of problems that you've solved and the scale and maybe what your research drove as a change.

Yeah. Oh gosh, it's like choosing among my children or my favorite poems. It's really tough, Ryan. But the one that's been most enduring, and I think for me is a really good B2B case study that brands can continue to learn from, is about in 2012, Google came to us. I was working at the time at the IPG Media Lab. And Google was having trouble convincing brands that people would buy things online. It's hard to believe that was like 13 years ago.

13 years ago, clients did not believe people would buy things online. Okay, so let's just how quickly things have moved. believe people would buy things online. And Google, however many trillion dollar company right now, I don't think that most of their sales guys are making decks anymore, slide decks that they have to get themselves a meeting with the client. People are like, yeah, generally Google delivers results, but at that time, the sales guys had to go in, they had to look sharp, they had to have nice shoes, and they had to go in in person. And they had to say, you know, we have this offering called search and we're starting to see that people are interested in buying things online and they're doing research.

And even if they don't buy it online, attribution, they appear to be looking and we think that they are then buying it later elsewhere. And clients are like, nah, what are you talking about? Nobody's going to buy laundry detergent online. They're just not going to do it. Well our research proved that they were. And it became a study that was called ZMOT and it went global.

People started for a while were hiring directors of ZMOT and They turned it into a case study a major thought leadership initiative and what that taught me is first of all never be too certain about what the future looks like because if You know 12 years ago people were like nobody's gonna buy laundry detergent online. Look where we are I mean, I haven't buy laundry detergent online. Look where we are. I mean, I haven't bought laundry detergent in a store. In a store myself, pick it up off the shelf.

Why would I do that? It's heavy. It's right in the ass. Why would I go in there? Right? So it taught me to be humble about what the future holds and also that if you, whether you're a big company or a midsize company, you've got to do the work to show up with the thought leadership, the data that says, here's what

we're seeing. Will you take a risk on me? And then if it works, turn it into a massive thought leadership thing that you take around and give out. And I speak a lot about thought leadership and I think that brands are wise to do the research and then where they can figure out how to tell that story publicly in a way that makes them look great. How much of the zero moment of truth, that's what we're talking about with ZMOT. Go Google that if you have it, it's a big, one of the most widely read research studies of all time. How much of that still is in play?

A lot. Feels like it. A lot because, well, so we've been doing it for 12, 13 years and we have norms and stuff, right? So we have watched the fortunes rise and fall of various media types. We saw where radio was increasing and then falling and going over to streaming and then newspaper that have watched that decline, have watched podcasting grow. We have about 50 sources that we've been tracking since that time, whether they're increasing, decreasing, growing influence, that kind of thing.

And what has happened is just that consumers are using more information than ever before. There are categories where they might use less, fine. But on the whole, if they're gonna go buy an expensive workout machine or plan a trip to Italy, they're going to spend a lot of time because now here's the thing is that now searching and being online as you research is like a form of entertainment. It's just an activity.

You could listen to a podcast, you could read a book, or you could plan your next purchase that you get excited about. Depending how research-oriented you are or neurotic, you might read hundreds of minutes of things. Did I answer your question? John Ligato You did. You did. It made me think when you're saying that, I tell people all the time that TV is not

the radio because I don't know that people aren't watching it but their heads down on their phone. So they're hearing ambient the messages that are there. So it has an impact. Well, I mean, and to that point, a lot of you know, we talked about attribution. Attention is another one that has been a real topic of interest. Right? So everyone said, okay, fine, fine, fine. We don't know all the attribution answers, but we're going to figure out attention.

We're going to see where they're looking. And so they did a whole bunch of stuff with eye tracking and looking, whatever. Well, it turns out that you can be attending something without looking at it. You can be attending something and looking at it and your brain can still be thinking about something else entirely. And that does brands no good. And so what we want to look at is how emotionally engaged our folks. And so we do that through using scotch devices or essentially like Apple watches, sport watches. And we can tell somebody's variable heart rate variability that tells

us their oxytocin is spiking in their body and sending them signals that it makes them more likely to do something in the future. And I think that's incredibly powerful. That is powerful. I was just thinking, we're doing a little segment on sports, our trading cards, because they're so huge. Yeah. In our news segments. And I've been opening like packs on the episode. I think about what's going through my head, because it's like legal gambling. You know, you're looking at opening. I bet your immersion.

That's the measure. I bet it's through the roof. It's usually on a scale of zero to a hundred and anything over 50 starts to get our attention. Yeah, you're probably I mean, because money's on the line. Your emotions are on the line. I would love you can download the app. It's called immersion Tuesday. They have another consumer one too. And you could just track and see that would be the number that your brain, your brain on, on sports cards. Yeah. And my kids,

I've gotten into it back into it because my four boys boys and they're all into it. I'm teaching them business through this lens. They didn't care about anything I did. I'm going to, I'm creating, helping them create a business. I love it. My daughter sometimes does that for me. She'll put on like a fake little focus group and she's only 10, but she's been and she knows and she always serves snacks. So that's like, okay. She knows what she's been and she knows and she always serves snacks. So that's like, okay.

She knows what she's doing. Last thing before I let you go, Devorah. I mean, all this has me kind of in this mind of the, the per is the purchase funnel data. I mean, we have the purchase funnel and the purchase cycle, like whatever you want to call it, it's still there. Right? I mean, you still have to get awareness and then intent and consideration and like in some way, shape or fashion, even if it's always moving. I'm very ornery about the purchase cycle. I got to tell you. And the reason I'm ornery is because yeah, it still exists.

You still have to get from A to B to C to D. But it doesn't happen in this neat, tidy little order. So when we do path to purchase studies, and we do quite a number of them, I try to break it to clients. I'm like, I'm not going to give you your nice little neat little thing. And oftentimes they're like, but I want the graphic

that shows the one thing to the next. So sometimes I give in and I'll give them their little path to purchase tunnel. But what you have to know is that whole huge other things, galaxies of things are happening outside of that. And so the way that we like to kind of envision it is almost like as if there's a room full of balloons and that is everyone's sort of attention and engagement. And some of those balloons rise and fall, some of them are bigger, some of them.

And that's kind of how I like to think about it rather than like a neat little tidy thing because our research shows that less than 5% and it's actually less than 1% ever do things in the same order in the same way. There's too many things. There's trillions of combinations. I like that. That crystallized something for me thinking about the influence, like a certain stage or a certain tactic might be considered a consideration tactic, but its influence might

be greater depending on the person. Am I hearing that right? Yeah, absolutely. Devorah, you're a smart lady. Thank you. It's been fun to be with you. Hey, it's fun. Fire in the zoo.

Influencing shopper decisions and her TEDxs are blowing up. You got to go check them out. She's smart. She's teaching brands what they need to do and more importantly, you got to go check them out. She's teaching brands what they need to do and more importantly what not to do. It's complex at the end of the day. That's what I think we need to take away. It's attainable to know, but you have to clear your mind. I consider myself a bastion of willingness to change, but it's just there's a lot of complexity, a lot of different influence, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming.

I feel like that's what you crystallized today, either with your brilliance or just at least crystallizing it in my head. I really appreciate it, DeFora. DeFora Maldonado Thanks so much, Ryan. Great to be here. Ryan Levy Where can everybody keep up with you, what you're doing, books, et cetera? Yeah, we've got a Substack, Alter Agents, you can find us on Substack.

That's kind of where we're writing right now. We shared a little bit about what it was like because we're here in Los Angeles after the fires and we're not super consistent, but there's a fair bit on there. Actually, there's some really great research we did in August and then repeated in after the inauguration on consumer sentiment. And so I'll just leave you with a quarter of Americans are like insanely depressed and down in the dumps right now. And so not a super happy topic, but I think very interesting to look at in terms of sentiment right now. And it did not change.

It just flipped a little bit. Conservatives are a little happier now and liberals are a little less happy, but essentially the same number of people are pretty darn sad. That's not positive, but we need to be aware of it. You can't put your head in the sand. I think brands and companies can go a long way by avoiding the divisiveness and maybe just being a little more positive. Yeah. I mean, and we actually give some recommendations for that.

It's like, yeah, maybe do visuals and maybe partner with publications that are a little more positive, maybe host a 5K or a puppy adoption thing. I don't know. Yeah. People do love dogs and they're animals. Whatever they are. If I was a brand with money to spend, I'd be hosting puppy parties right now. Ah, I like it.

Okay. Puppy parties it is. Puppy parties for the win. Devorah, thank you so much for coming on Thanks so much. Take care. Hey guys, you know to find us Ryan is right comm you'll find highlight clips all of the episodes and our YouTube links and of course where to find our guests her amazing books and Information on everything that they're up to we appreciate you for making us number one. We'll see you next time on Right About Now. This has been Right About Now with Ryan Ulford,

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