Right About Now with Ryan Alford - News Update: Empathy in marketing; Walmart's new Black Friday sale; #SendNoods; Halloween's impact on candy companies

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

Weekly News Update for the week of October 16, 2020.What's up?! - It's Friday! Here's the weekly news update from THE RADCAST:Bringing empathy into marketing: the strategy more businesses should be usingWalmart's new Black Friday sale: How they are conducting Black Friday in a Covid-19 world.Kraft's campaign on National Noodle Day: #SendNoodsWhat's halloween going to look like for candy companies?Follow along for more radical happenings in the business and marketing world... visit us at theradcast.com | @the.rad.cast | @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. 

Hey guys, Ryan Offord, your host of the Radcast. Before we get to today's episode, just wanted to drop a quick note. If you've been enjoying our podcast and want to work with us directly, either with Radical or if you'd like for me to be consulting on your business from a marketing perspective, we'd love to help you and you can reach me directly by text message at 803-855-1832. Again, that's 803-855-1832. Text me. We'll get back in touch with you. We'd love to work with you and help your business in any way that we can. You can learn more about Radical at radical.company online. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and we'll talk to you soon. You're listening to the latest Radcast News Update.

Here's Ryan and Riley. Hey, guys. What's up? It's Ryan Alford and Riley Clark. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's our weekly news update here in the second week of October. I think officially October 15th. We're in the middle of October.

That's great. Officially. Moving by fast, like we said before. And so we've got quite a few updates. But what's up, Riley? You know, just hanging out this week. Again, just lots of, I mean, it sounds chill, but I feel like

we've been very busy. There's a lot going on. We have a recording later today for our episodes coming out on Tuesday, so that's exciting. And then as far as just things that are going on around here, we are having a new launch of some merchandise that one of our stores were doing here. Just practicing what we're preaching, e-commerce series. We're getting that expanded a little bit, so that's exciting.

Yeah, e-commerce series has been good. I enjoyed our episode on released tuesday you need to talk about our perspective a little bit more and that was good getting some good feedback on that yeah but it's been good like uh you know on a personal note um we're in the middle of baseball and soccer season oh yeah my four-year-old who's been playing soccer um scored three goals in his scrimmage last night. And two weeks ago, he was crying and wouldn't go on the field. Hey, we love progress.

Now he's playing and playing well. That's awesome. I'm excited about that. Yeah, for sure. He would run over and give me high fives after every goal. You just encourage it at that point, right? Hey, we all need it. We had run out of offers.

It was like, okay, we'll give you some candy. Okay, we'll give you a remote control car. Will you buy me a full-size Gravedigger remote control car? Okay, yes, whatever it takes. Just keep going, buddy. Keep playing. You got it. Now he likes it.

That's so cute. That's so cute. Happy about that. Happy about Clemson kind of wearing out the hurricanes. Oh, good. Yeah. Downgraded to a tropical depression. I'm stealing the headlines from one of the articles I wrote.

That's hilarious. That's hilarious. I love that. That's hilarious. It was not even a contest. But, you know, the number one Tigers staying number one. Right, right, right. No, I'm hopeful for WV this weekend.

We had a bye week last week. Or we were off last week. But I'm excited for this week to play Kansas. Yeah, and I am excited. I know you mentioned the merchandise stuff. It is our way. We run a merchandise store, T-shirts and sweatshirts and stuff like that. It's been local-based around kind of this notion of the local hustle.

But we're expanding it, and there will be some more news on that. But we kind of use it as a platform. One, we do some things giving back locally, but also as a way for us to live, breathe, and run an e-commerce store, since we do that for clients, it's a great way for us to learn and test certain things that we might use for clients in a less pressure environment for us. And so it's been good. We've had great response. We design all the stuff in-house uh run the store so excited about the uh the change or the pivot in some of

the things that we're going to be doing some of the messaging and stuff so more news on that but it's been fun um getting to uh have a vested interest yeah in in it not that you don't have it in your client stuff but like when you're like you have to run it yourself every day you it puts you in your the shoes of your clients too. And so it's been a great practice for us. And more news on that. Here is the Radcast News. We have a couple headlines this week.

One of the ones we'll get to is bringing empathy into marketing. And this is a strategy more businesses should be using for a lot of reasons. But first, why do you think it's something that businesses should start being way more mindful of versus just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell? Well, this is kind of like as much as people try. When COVID first hit, it was like every commercial was kind of the same. It was like, we know how you feel. And it's so sad.

And things are, you know, very depressing music and all that. Finally, we got out of that. That was Brandt's trying to be like what I'd call faux empathetic. And now you're seeing more of it as it relates to just the reality of the times. And, you know, this article calls out one guy. It's called the market market tunist that's m-a-r-k-e-t-o-o-n-i-s-t market tunist he's a cartoonist that writes um in the marketing space but kind of does it through the lens of empathy for marketers and brands and things like that. And it's, they're hilarious. Like, you know, he, it's all tongue in cheek and, but it, it, it highlights the reality

that if you can, you actually, if you start from a place of empathy, it actually might allow you to introduce humor into your marketing, which always plays well. And so, and now I think we've transitioned. There's always that it's just too soon to laugh. But I think we're at this stage where people need to laugh. They need to lighten up. And it's like how can empathy now is making things lighter for people in your messaging and realizing that you're not

diminishing the impact and which has been great right but at a certain point we all need a release valve you know from the and i think that's the biggest thing going on now between the election and between covid and everything else everything is just so hypercharged. I think the brands that can figure out how to leverage empathy, understanding the moment, transitioning into humor, can really start to break through with their messaging and not just be pandering to, oh, you know, we know times are tough. And all that's true. It is true, for sure.

But it doesn't come across as real. Right. And so, like, I'm going to read one of these marketoonists. Sure, sure. Shows a business guy talking to his boss, like, at a brand that said, or like the message that they were going to put on the recording on their dial-in line. Okay. It says, due to COVID, hold times may be long.

Our selection may be limited. Our fees may be long. Our selection may be limited. Our fees may be excessive. Orders may be delayed. Our service may be bad. And then his boss is a woman and there's a picture of her and she goes, but wasn't that all true before COVID as well? And he goes, we're all in this together. I love that. I love that. I love that. And so it's like, you know. Good for him.

Yeah. No, I mean that. He makes fun of, you know, brands and companies and the discussions that they're having and like, all right, you need to do better before COVID. And anyway. It shouldn't be necessarily an excuse like, you know, that kind of route, which that's actually really funny. And the other one is there's all these marketers sitting around a boardroom table. And a woman goes, our consumers drive a BMW. They like John Mayer.

They watch Ozark. They love rescue dogs. And they hate having their personal data used for psychographic profiling. And another one at the end of the table, well, but what model of Volkswagen do they drive? The notion that marketers aren't really listening to the fact that they don't want to be psychographically profiled. Exactly. And the guy at the end of the table goes in one ear and out the other. Exactly.

It's funny. Now. It's funny. Marketoonist.com, go check it out. And definitely deploy empathy and humor in marketing, and you'll win. I think this is a great segue, actually, to another article, another headline we have for this week. I don't necessarily know that this went great for them per se but crafts um send nudes campaign that they had this is hilarious i think this is hilarious because my opinion on this is like regardless of all these angry moms that are like you're sexualizing macaroni and cheese like my thing is is the audience for macaroni and cheese

is bigger than just children. It's also college students and it's also like other, like older people. And I don't, it's not just kids, you know? And so this was hilarious to me. Like, I feel like this was absolutely, you know, in these strange times, people are in need of extra comfort. This is exactly what their, their CMO had said. And it was just like, you know, these strange times people are in need of extra comfort this is exactly what their their cmo had said and it was just like you know this is a nice way to just let people know you're thinking about them send them a box of mac and cheese like it's national noodle day i know send nudes i think it's hilarious i this is like p this is uh the overkill of the politically correct environment we're in. Don't get me wrong.

I have children. I don't want—I'm not—child trafficking and all—I get it. It's sensitive and all this. But if we can't have fun with things a little bit, it's just—this is like cancel culture 101 for me. And I'm sure someone's going to message me and go, you know, it's just, this is like cancel culture 101 for me. And I'm sure someone's going to message me and go, you know, it's serious stuff. And it is serious stuff. But we have to sort of be able to, there's no delineation anymore of, okay, this is humor. It's for humor's sake.

But there's serious things going on. So let's just, let's all So let's take everything really serious. I get there are some people that that's how they cope or whatever. That's their personalities, and that's totally fine. But I also feel like there are a lot of people that this is just funny. I don't know. I feel like this is actually way more harmless than it was coming across. And for them to have done it on National Noodle Day, it's still in the middle of a pandemic.

Send nudes. Someone feels better. Box of mac and cheese. I don't know. I feel like a missed opportunity happened. They say no press is bad press. So, you know, I don't know how they're viewing it. That's true. But I thought it was brilliant. And I think that, you know, again, back to breaking through in a COVID environment where everyone's doing a lot of the types of the same stuff and, you know, Kraft, you know, is brave enough to run a campaign like this, you know, and I, I can't pretend to know, you know, if you're the CEO of craft or, you know, whatever level this raised up to,

you know, the pressure that might've come and, you know, not wanting to alienate some level, but good grief. Like what a, what a, what a buzzkill for a great promo.

I guess it didn't run for a few days, but I know, I think it's hilarious. You know, I don't know. Hashtag send nudes. S-E-N-D-N-O-O-D-S. Noodles. Nudes.

Let's get this trending. I know. I know. I know. We'll bring it back. In terms of holiday stuff, these last two articles about Black Friday sales and then obviously about Halloween. But Walmart, I think this is a really interesting tactic. They're doing Black Friday sales, but they're doing three different types of sales.

It's starting online and then the sale will be in the store a few days later. What do you think, like what is your initial takeaway from that kind of strategy obviously they're a huge company so it's different than a small business doing something like this but i think you've got a few things at play here you know if like as much as i don't like for episodes to be to say the word covid 27 times but i'm going to say it number 28 you have look it's probably not a good idea for 10 000 people to be in the store at the same time right so it makes a ton of sense to split it up these these retailers whether they're walmart or mom and pop brick and mortar rely on black i mean this is it's called

black friday because it's when most retailers get in the black. They actually have a year that makes money. And some, the big guys are having great years. They got into the black a lot longer, a lot earlier in the year. The mom and pops are strongly still. But this is all about how do you split up your traffic, especially in stores. They still want to get in-store business. They still need that. And how do you accommodate a pandemic that's going on and you don't want 10,000 people on top of each other and you've got crowd control?

So how do you split this up? And look, you've got the trend of online already there. And so it makes a ton of sense because you already have Cyber Monday. It's kind of become its own thing right after Black Friday. And so this is a way just to, again, get started a little bit earlier, maybe break up the crowds a bit,

both online and in-store. It makes sense. I think you're going to see other retailers fall. Walmart being a leader in the space, you're going to see other retailers and other stores do the same things. Unfortunately, I think the mom and pops, they're going to struggle even more, I think, during this period.

Ones that don't have an e-commerce strategy. If you're only a brick and mortar and you're trying to make hay for Black Friday this year, it's going to be a rough year. Because you're still going to have some amount of social distancing. You're not going to have the traffic in the stores that you did before. Right, because you have to limit how many people can come into the store. And so you need to, if you haven't already, you need to start your e-commerce strategy or be building it.

Or find ways, you know, the one other tip that I might would give was find ways to leverage store pickup. Good point. give was find ways to leverage store pickup or even if you don't have an e-commerce store set up, have extra people on the phones that week and have an outside cart set up where you'll, hey, call, they can call, you can call the store and blast it on your social media channels. You know, if you're looking for a product, a product, we'll concierge this for you. And so how can you up that? And if you have an e-com store, then you just need to leverage that.

Exactly. Buy online, pick up in store. Or if you're local, just you've got to find ways to kind of concierge it and find ways to remove friction that COVID is applying. All this is is more friction to the buying process. That's another layer. And so what Walmart's done is they're trying to remove that friction. They're trying to spread it out over time, the sales versus all on that one day or the Wednesday and Thursday of because I don't even think they're going to be open.

A lot of these retailers are canceling the Thanksgiving Day opening. Yeah. And so just truly going back to Black Friday, which I commend, drives me crazy. The people that take half their Thanksgiving with family and they're worried about getting to Best Buy or whatever. I know, I know. I know. That transition of giving and getting flips so quickly at Thanksgiving. But yeah, the last article kind of goes into this a little bit. I know a lot of candy companies are kind of like, you know, what's about to happen

with Halloween. The new normal challenges, you know, versus the old way of doing, you know, Halloween, like this is something that a lot of companies are, you know, concerned about. A lot of people don't know if they're even going to meet that, you know, initial target that they always hit every year for Halloween. You know, because a lot of the other thing is people could be celebrating in a very different way that actually might require more candy, you know, or everyone's like, oh no, we're just not going to do Halloween this year at all. And then it's just no candy, you know, or everyone's like, oh, no, we're just not going to do Halloween this year at all. And then it's just no candy, you know, no, nothing.

No one's buying anything. Yeah. Candy sales had been up in general. Go surprise, you know, none of the surprises, all the candy, you know, we've all been stuck at home or a lot of us and the candy sales are up and food sales are up, you know, no, no, no kidding. Yeah. So are elastic pants.

Yeah. Elastic pants and somehow Peloton bikes. Exactly. You can't outwork the diet, but I'll tell you that from personal experience. producing it sounds like more candy with they're actually less halloween or less seasonal in hopes that of having a longer shelf life and and which makes sense they've been preparing for this but it'll be interesting to see uh where the sales numbers come out at because you know it's just not a good idea kids aren't i don't know what the percent's going to be that number one most of the houses probably aren't going to allow it for the kids that are doing it.

I don't know if anyone's come out and said that Halloween is officially canceled per se. I feel like neighborhoods. Neighborhood trick-or-treating. Yeah, neighborhood watches probably aren't going to have things anymore. They're probably going to send out alerts, those kinds of things that are saying, oh, probably limited to Halloween, or you're probably not going to see cars parked miles down the neighborhoods. But no, I think it'll be interesting. I think what's interesting that's happening here is all of these brands,

even the last news that we talked about with Walmart, it's forcing an agility and a rethink for these brands for how to market smarter, how to package smarter, how to navigate and execute. And I think that's going to serve these brands well down the road because as much as we like to think things change quickly, some things don't. And they've relied on Halloween forever for certain percentages of their sales. So if they can maximize in a pandemic, in a season that may or may not happen, the traditional trick or treat season, it's going to kind of put a medal of honor on them a little bit of navigating through this.

We'll see how many presidents and CMOs make it through some of these large retailers. I think the uncertainty in everything is what's killing everyone mentally, like the unknown. What's the other shoe going to drop and all of those things? Or not even knowing if a new strategy is actually going to work. Or, you know, if it's going to have the effect they want it to have before Halloween, which is in two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. And it'd be interesting to see the online sales of candy, like after all this is said and done for the season.

sales of candy, like after all this is said and done for the season, are more, you know, you see less people going to the stores, more people buying online on any other category. I'll be interested to watch the numbers on candy over the Halloween sales if it is in fact falls in that same vein. I imagine it does on some level. But there's going to be an impact they're not that there will be some kind of decline there has to be absolutely when 300 million kids aren't trick-or-treating you know or how many ever million that will change things probably not the entire population of the u.s but uh right though i have seen some of the

trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood look like grown men. So, you know, maybe it is. They're growing these teenagers up big these days. I know, I know, I know. We'll definitely follow up in a couple weeks to see how that plays out. But that's our news for this week. And then an episode release on Tuesday at noon Eastern time. And, yeah.

Great. We yeah. Great. We appreciate everyone listening. You can follow along at theradcast.com and we'll talk to you next time. See you next time. To listen to full episodes or to contact us, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow our host at

Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.