Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Ryan and Robbie talk Super Bowl Ads & Rented versus Owned Channels for Ecommerce

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

The Super Bowl has come and gone but the CFO's are still counting the dollars on that media bill. Ryan and Robbie break down the best and worse spots during the big game and discuss the merits of spending millions on 30 seconds. Most of this episode focuses on the great debate of building your ecommerce through Amazon - are you renting space that may not be there in 3-4 years? Is Amazon really your friend? Doubtful. A loaded episode. We hope you enjoy it If you enjoy this episode please check out the rest of our episodes on our channel. Please share, review, and subscribe! Radical Podcast is always looking forward to meeting both aspiring, and grounded professionals across the country! Slide Ryan or Radical a DM on Instagram and let's make it happen! @radical_results on Instagram @ryanalford on Instagram www.radical.company 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, on this episode of the Radical Company Podcast, Robbie and I break down the Super Bowl ads, some of our favorites, some of the fails, was it worth $5 million? We talk about brand and the consideration that goes into marketing at this level, and we really loved some of the commercials and really panned the others. Also, the meat of this episode is on rented versus owned, where you sell your products. Do you sell where you're sort of renting time, i.e. Amazon, or on your direct-to-consumer channels? It's a complicated answer depending on where you are, but some really great insights. Hope you'll enjoy this, and do us a favor if you're enjoying the episode or any of the episodes, please leave us a review

on Apple, Google, wherever you're listening. We really appreciate it. Find more at Radical.Company. Hope you enjoy this episode. Hey guys, welcome to the latest episode of the Radical Company podcast, joined by Robbie Fitzwater. Robbie, good to have you today. It's good to be back. I know. Been fun getting into a rhythm of these. I love it. And so we're going to break

down a few different topics today. We're in a time period as far as marketers go that's, you know, feels relevant to talk about a little bit. The Super Bowl was just a few days ago. I think we'd be remiss to not mention at least some of our favorites and takeaways from the event. Turn our backs and ignore it. But I full got to call out the best takeaway from the event. Turn our backs and ignore it. Gotta call out the best takeaway from the event, though, as somebody from Kansas City. It was great. Everything about the Super Bowl was fantastic this year.

I wouldn't call it a curse, but the wait is over. It's been, what, 50 years? 50 years and lots and lots of heartbreak. I was wearing a jersey that I've had since I think I was like seven watching this game in a youth extra-large jersey that had been covered in sad tears, and suddenly it was covered in happy tears. Did that make it a smedium, or was it? If I raised my hands, it went to my nipples. It was great.

But it was normally covered in sad tears in the playoffs, but this year it was covered in happy tears. So it was a good thing. Congratulations on the victory. It was a good game, though. It was a great game. And in classic Chiefs fashion, they made you sweat. Like every game in the playoffs, we were down 10 points or more.

And then suddenly this glorious comeback. And 21 points in the fourth quarter, wasn't it? It was amazing. And teams seemed to really click. Things seemed to work well together. And then suddenly, I think, yeah, Kansas City probably blew up that night. So there was a lot of pent-up emotion.

Is it like what Virginia does when they win? Was it couches on fire? Just couches on fire. It's just people jamming to friends in low places and having a good time. Like, it's not quite couches on fire, but well there, there may have been one or two couches.

I mean, it's Midwest. You gotta get, you gotta do what you gotta do. I love it. So, uh, we'll do a little lightning round as far as the ads go, which is,

you know, a marketing event, probably the largest universal ad event as far as mainstream public goes in evaluating our industry. I mean, how many millions of dollars do you put into an ad that goes into the Super Bowl? Like the ad buy is just astronomical. And plus the creative and the distribution around it on the front end and the back end too. You've got to really be ready to go if you can afford that. And that's really

what I look at now is the integration of the campaign. I don't, you can't convince me. I look, I know it's reaching frequency. I've been preaching brand lately and the importance of that. And that's over time. And so, but now I'm going to talk on the other side of my mouth like us marketers like to do. And if you don't have an integrated campaign, that 5.6 million for 30 seconds is not wasted. Most certainly the reach and the reach alone is there's no other opportunity like it, but you know, the integration across elements, either peppering it at the front end with like what planners did with Mr. Peanut dying and then coming back to life and then kind of all the segues.

If you leverage it, you've got to have a halo. You've got to have a wall of sound, I think, beyond just the spot, which becomes the crescendo of the whole event. Yeah, and you're almost leading up to that big unveil at that point, too. It's like you tease it out as much as you can, and then you want it to either continue

or ideally be able to drive it to another place. And I play ping pong with your other channels. And it's kind of cool to see some of the different brands do that in different ways this year too. One of the biggest things that stood out to me probably was the P and G side of things where they, they brought all of their, all of the major brands, a lot, a few of the major brands under their big brand umbrella together under one individual ad,

which was kind of different and interesting, but it seemed like there was a lot of kind of co-opetition within those larger brand umbrellas. And seeing them kind of put Mr. Clean, the Bounty Man, whatever, the Charmin Bears all together, it was kind of put Mr. Clean, the Bounty Man, whatever, the Charmin Bears all together. It was kind of funny to see. And it seemed like there was that across a few other ads this year, too. Yeah, I definitely noticed some co-branding across things.

And, you know, I think we talked a little bit pre-segment about our favorites. I'm going to ask yours. I told you mine at the beginning, and we'll break it down for the audience. But it was the most, I may be a sucker for emotion. I was sitting there with my wife and I were watching it and my kids were somewhat paying attention and you know, maybe the emotional side and no matter how you feel about technology, but I feel like it covered a lot of basis for me. There's a lot of, of bad talk, bad thoughts, bad feelings for technology, when in fact it does solve a lot of problems and does offer a lot of good in that.

And I thought Google really hit a home run with the memory spot and the Google Assistant and the older man setting the reminders for his what would be assumed deceased wife and ways to remember her. I mean, and I just, you know, my wife and I are sitting there, you know, you're in that moment and I'm like, number one, the production costs were next to nothing. And I'm sure they spent something with their large agency charged them a hundred times too much, but you know, showing the Google line and then showing slideshows too much, but you know, showing the Google line and then

showing slideshows, there was, and you know, a great voiceover, you know, the production value was super low, memorable, memorable though, uh, emotional. Uh, some people argued, well, Oh, you're bringing, you know, you know, it wasn't the raunchy humor of everything else, but I will say the next day it was still the spot that stuck with me the most. I mean, it was, yeah, they've done a good job. Those are powerful. There's not a lot of, it's like, it has to be so well done. It was so well done and so powerful that you can fit it inside this small box.

It's not like a, a monkey jumping out, like jumping out of a plane, spelling out like skywriting something in the air. It's not like shock and awe, but it was really like heart wrenching emotionally. It was really, yeah, I remember that was a, it was one of my favorites too. And I think it ranked number three. There was a, the unofficial Superbowl rankings, but it was like number three. There was the unofficial Super Bowl rankings, but it was like number three. I did like several of the spots. Sometimes they have a good concept,

and I know maybe they go with a 60 or something, and I feel like it kills it. You know, it's like I'm waiting for the punchline or whatever. A little bit too long. A little bit too long, a little bit too far. But I thought Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Jeep. Great, classic, well-produced, well-thought-out, clever. I feel like that speaks to so many different audiences, too.

Groundhog Day is kind of a movie that does kind of cross a lot of different age groups. Yeah. And Bill Murray. There's not a person alive that doesn't just love Bill Murray. Exactly. Nobody's going to walk down the street like, I hate that Bill Murray guy. I can't stand him. Exactly.

It's Bill Murray. So, yeah, it was pretty good. And even if you don't have not seen the movie, something about Bill Murray's demeanor and personality, it's almost kind of like classic Chevy Chase, maybe not current form Chevy Chase, but it just makes you smile a little bit. But seeing him like getting in at a, if you had never even seen the movie, I think there was a little bit of humor just seeing him repeat those things. You kind of got the concept either way. But obviously the tie-in and the non-conformity message that they're trying to say with the newest vehicle, Commandos. Is it the truck? I mean, Gen Xers were losing their minds across the country.

It's the ugliest car ever. It's not attractive. But, I mean, it worked for them. And it was good on them taking a little bit of rugged brand and having some fun with it. Because that's, I mean, you talk about the features and benefits

in some ways while still having fun with it. And kind of showing the emotional side of it. And so I always ask myself, having worked with some of the largest brands in the world, been in New York, done the big ad game, I ask myself now, if a client was consulting with me, would I recommend them if they had the budget to run on the Super Bowl? And I'm evenly split down the middle. I firmly know it is still the media event and the attention that people pay to the commercials

versus what my wife and I do when we're watching TV, which is in our phone, in our head. Attention's gone. And I'm not saying TV advertising is dead. I'm not going to go that far. But attention on TV advertising is way, way less than it used to be. I mean, television advertising, like trying to reach somebody through traditional means doesn't really exist anymore. Like television advertising, when do you watch live TV?

Never. It's sports. News is about the only time. News or sports. And, and like we don't have cable in that we've never thought twice about it but it's like sport live sports are like kind of the last bastion of a lot of that a lot of those ad dollars that used to be spent up on relevant ad buys yeah but even if you do have it now you're taking out your phone as soon as the commercials come on or you're or you're switching to another channel if you even have cable which more and more people don't but the

super bowl like you're attentive you're paying they're an event yeah no commercials like my wife was i could not care care less about super bowl but she would sit down for the commercials she was doing other things she's like hey i want to watch and it's the one time of the year that happens so you can't ignore that. You can't ignore the 40 million people that are watching or in the U.S. or whatever it is, and hundreds worldwide if you have a worldwide product. And I don't know how the syndication goes and all that.

But nonetheless, the media strategic understanding of reach side of me and brand side of me goes you have to take advantage if you have the budget but then the other side and i and i am not the guy that's on linkedin going you could have done 4,324 uh mobile billboards uh yeah okay i'm not that guy either but there is something to be said for the impact that could be made for that budget. Ryan Reynolds giving away cell service bundles for his new company. Other ways to make a splash with that same amount. That's a lot of money.

A lot of goodwill could be done that could be leveraged into something else, but not 3,423 urinal ads. It's going to flash across every urinal in the country for years. But, I don't know, where do you fall on that pendulum? If Toyota comes to you and Robbie, hey Robbie, should we run Super Bowl this year or not? Six million for one spot. It's eyeballs at scale. Eyeballs and attention are really tough.

Can the brand put themselves in a position that they're going to captivate and move an audience? You're going to have a completely lay audience that doesn't know your brand at all. Either you need to position yourself where you really make an impact but you can't be bland you can't do something for everybody i think i would saw it a little bit in some of the ads where groups were taking more of a like more of a positioning stance and really kind of focusing on what they were like who they were Like you saw Amazon try and be a really progressive company. They had Ellen DeGeneres talking about all of the,

in an ad that joked about fake news through time and history. But you see those groups kind of taking a little bit more of a narrow focus and say, this isn't for everybody, but for the people it is for, it's going to knock it out of the park. And I almost think if you could do it in a way that's not spray and pray, where everyone in the country is going to get something kind of average, but if you can get something that isn't for 90% of the people but is for 10% of the people,

then I think that in some ways it does work. Because, I mean, 10% of like a hundred million is still 10 million people. Yeah. And it's hard to reach in the attention. And if you have those deep pockets, you can do, do that kind of work, but you may have to be a little bit more lean on the way you spend your other

ad budget during the year and maybe not paying for TV during the rest of the year too. Yeah. I come, I come down like when I, you know, hold the proverbial fake, uh, BB gun to the head

of where I would go. If you're launching, if you're a new brand that has good investment and you're launching something brand new and it's a mass market product, hard to beat the attention and reach that you get with Super Bowl. I think check the yes. If you're an existing brand launching an all-new feature, benefit, product, check the box yes. If it's just a pure wide mass play and not more targeted leverage

like you just described, I think I fall in the we can probably make a bigger, better splash somehow else by the time you add all the costs, both the media costs, the agency costs, and the creative costs. You're probably talking $10 million. At least $10 million. I think I can do a lot of damage with $10 million outside of that

if it's not product launch new, new brand, new... There's a couple of very specific scenarios where I think it makes a lot of sense. The Doritos fighting, I don't know. So where I think it'll get interesting is I think when larger brands start to pull out of it. I think when they see, hey, we're not seeing the same impact when Doritos pulls from it or when Budweiser pulls from it. I think that's when we'll see some different, some people really questioning,

is it worth it or not? Because I think the's when we'll see some different, some people really questioning is it worth it or not because I think the shoe hasn't necessarily dropped on like, hey, we're pulling out of this completely. And if it hasn't, I missed it. Yeah, good bad on me. But I haven't seen that kind of major exodus from the Super Bowl ads, that kind of mentality of, hey, this is the mass we're going to reach and this is like the crown jewel of advertising.

And everybody, like if you had a Super Bowl ad as an ad agency, that's a big win there for you. So I don't think we're going to see that in the next five years or so, but I think people are going to start questioning it soon and start really trying to differentiate, is this going to be worth it, Is this not going to be worth it? You know where it gets interesting? When it's addressable TV at scale.

So every TV is addressable. When basic cable, basic all television is addressable, it gets pretty interesting. You know, like that's obviously capable now, but if the Super Bowl, you know, when the cable channels get addressable, it gets pretty interesting. You know, like that's obviously capable now, but if the Super Bowl, you know, when the cable channels get addressable, which is coming with, I think it's called ATSC 3.0 or something like that, it's coming to where every box, every cable box is addressable. It gets a little wacky then with the buys potentially

for how you might can buy the spots to the, to the more targeted. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. If you can, if you can make it direct response, suddenly you have every mark.

It's every mark, every television marketers dream. Yeah. I mean, it's, that's the hardest part. It's like the John Wanamaker, like I'm wasting half my advertising.

I just don't want to have. And yeah, like that's where you can finally start to bridge that gap and like that's I really love digital advertising for that reason because a lot of its measurable and a lot of its trackable but again to your point the brand side it's hard to quantify all the time and if you can reach a large group yeah it's just it's there's no perfect answer and that with this one and i think it's kind of exciting to see it continue to evolve the curveball for me sockney where the hell was that

like what i like sockney is like a small like almost niche shoe brand yeah and suddenly they have a super bowl ad i was like did they get acquired by somebody yeah and that's right just randomly throwing cash at it maybe yeah i don't know you bought by a media company yeah but it was kind of kind of funny to see a few of the curveballs in there, too. Yeah, there was. And then I think about back to Little Caesars announcing delivery, but it was early on, and then I almost just remembered it as we were talking about those commercials.

I'm like, did that resonate? Because it was early on. I think they had one spot, maybe two, but I think it was just one. And that was early on in the Super Bowl. And I mean, not everybody's paid in, not everybody's glued to attention. I guess maybe they're... And when do you place an ad in the Super Bowl?

Do you want it to be early or late? That's what people toil over. The big brands are like, all right, you've got people, I can see them in the room with the whiteboard, and they are toiling over what time. They've got data scientists in the room going, there's exactly 3.4% less attention at the 30-second mark versus the four-hour mark. I mean, I can see it. Doug in Kentucky is on his fourth beer.

He will not remember any of this. Yeah, exactly. By then, you have the perfect memory and buzz going at the two-hour and ten-minute mark. And we're going to put the Bud Light commercial there. It's going to feel nostalgic and powerful. Yeah, it's a weird beast. Honestly, the television side of things was kind of before a lot of my time in marketing. So I don't know what that world was like beforehand.

So it's a different beast. It was another world. I have had feet on both sides of it, but another story for another day. So let's jump into the main event today. So today we wanted to dive into owned versus rented land in terms of marketing, which seems like a, it's a ever evolving relevant topic

because it's, we play with these things every day, but, and on any given platform, if the service is free, your eyeballs are the, your eyeballs are the product. A little bit different on amazon but um this is really reigns true for social and now it's coming into the

retail space on e-commerce and with amazon becoming the juggernaut that it really is yeah um but i guess wanted to kind of dive in and talk a lot of people that have been in marketing for a while now at everybody's had the experience on social where suddenly Facebook was introduced 2005 when people could start really getting on it at scale. It was, again, introduced 2004 with just a small niche group of college students. 2007 or so is when it really became a mass medium and the algorithm started really kind of kicking in. really became a mass medium and the algorithm started really kind of kicking in. Edge rank updates really kind of threw marketers for a spin in 2008 and 2009 when it was kind of the wild, wild west. But a lot of people that have lived through that, you kind of understand where it's going

in a lot of ways and you can kind of look through it. But thinking about kind of what's next for some of those platforms and then kind of what it's like on Amazon also. Yeah, and I get this. It's probably the most common question I get asked with e-commerce brands is how much is too much on Amazon, or if it's a new brand, do we go in the Amazon route? And, you know, it's not an easy one to answer.

It's the elephant in the room doesn't sound big enough. No, no, it's... It's the, I don't know, the elephant in the closet. I don't know. You can imagine an elephant in your, much less in your room, but in your closet. You know, it's like suffocating you. And is that the

is that the there's because again there's so much ambiguity here still now and it's this it's the elephant that's suffocating you but is that elephant propping up your business at this point how much your business is going to be reliant on amazon and is it going to be something where you try and ramp up quickly on Amazon and then try and transition over to a Shopify and owning as much of that as possible? Or is it going to be something where you start with your own audience and then start to gradually let that Amazon drip start? And I mean, from the brand perspective, can't think of I can think of a few like a like anchor a few brands who have really made it big on Amazon and really

kind of ventured out from there and for every other brand that that's done well and kind of been shot from there I'm sorry I'm it's not you're not coming to mind right now so yeah that that's I'm. I have a hard time thinking of the brands that have been successful getting 80% of their business on Amazon and then becoming this hero in D2C. This household name. But you see these D2C unicorns popping up

and doing really well. And then maybe adding part of their business to Amazon after that. Like Everybody Loves Away or Casper or any of those large businesses really well and then maybe adding part of their business to amazon after that yeah like um like everybody loves a way or a casper or any of those large businesses that are doing really well and kind of innovative things i guess casper's casper's got some heat lately um their valuation's a little bit high but there's some there's some really innovative things going on there and they can really drive lifetime value of a customer

because it's so, you have somebody who's purchasing, you understand what their behaviors are, and the more niche you are, the better you're going to be able to really foster a relationship with that brand. Yeah, and I usually answer that question with it's complicated. You know, it really is almost how you're funded as a company and how, what your goals are. It's very specific to that. If you are, if you have a great product and a very limited budget and you don't have funding or you're not trying to get funding,

you know, it's hard not to get on the Amazon drug to get some revenue coming in the door. It is certainly the easier way to faster sales amongst whether it's DTC or on your own with less budget. Cause though you have to, you know, Amazon's got their hand in every bucket now from the ads to the product percentage that they make on the revenue to storage and warehousing. We'll get into some of those things. But it's still easier to get started there to start growing scale in volume because everyone's shopping there. And so if you have to have immediate, fast revenue to fill the coffers, it's hard to tell someone not to consider that as the realm. But if you've got the backing, the funding,

or multiple partners to get the ad marketing content machine rolling for your D2C brand, then I like to say do as little as possible on Amazon. You know? I mean, I think the less you can get dependent on it, the better it seems like. It's almost like your margins are going to get cut. You know your margins are going to get cut down gradually as time goes on. Like Amazon right now, today is probably the most profitable Amazon is ever going to be

for your business. And like, it's just going to go down from here because I mean ad inventory is gonna stay the same and or maybe go up with a little bit more a few more people on Amazon but the prices are gonna go up and the costs and the level of competition in the market is consistently going up with dropshippers from China jumping into the mix you have people that want to fight you for a listing, and you're always playing a pricing war. There's so many little small things that are so hard to manage at scale that it's really, I mean, unless you really want to invest the time, effort, and

blood, sweat, and tears to really focus on it, it's a lot to handle for a business. There are even pieces of individual businesses that are kind of almost side projects that are focused just directly on Amazon. Like if you have a larger brand, some people that I know out of Northwest Arkansas and who work for California offices of large companies are in, they basically work with individual lines

of products that are made specifically for Amazon that are kind of like child brands of a larger CPG. So everybody's kind of starting to figure out how they want to dance with the devil, but there's no real perfect answer to it yet. Because do you want to give them a few of your products that you may not sell anywhere else? Do you want to make a line specifically for Amazon? Or do you want to just toss everything else on Amazon? And I think I was telling you about this before when I needed to get some new running shorts. I love, I have a pair of running shorts,

like these kind of plain Jane running shorts I've used for years from Roadrunner Sports. Again, I don't, haven't shopped local for those and I feel bad for it in some cases, but they're, they're easy. They're fat. They're easy. Why don't you buy local, man? They're easy.

They're cheap. And I apologize in advance to my friends at Run-In. They're a great place, but they fit well. They're easy and they're cheap. I was ordering them off, like was at Roadrunner, um, Roadrunner sports and was basically had them in my cart ready to go and then my, in my head, I'm like, oh yeah, we have an Amazon cart that needs to be, we need to pull the trigger on. I like being that, being, being the great shopper I am, I looked over and, and, and

kicked the tires on there and ended up actually buying them from Amazon as ashamed as I am to admit it it was easier and it's kind of crazy because it was about three dollars more we'll pay that and just ease of use because it's prime you're gonna have in two days and it's already added on to my existing order so it didn't necessarily come from the same place but the fulfillment was just really easy and the process was smooth and simple. Didn't have to mess around with a credit card or anything. So you almost have to create that irrational connection between your brand and the end user

to overcome the ease of use at this point. And do you wanna be there and making it easy for them to kind of take a little bit more hit from your business or do you wanna to be there and making it easy for them to kind of take a little bit more hit from your business? Or do you want to like really kind of double down on that relationship? Yeah, exactly. I'm still struggling with it a little bit myself. And again, like I said, a little bit ashamed, but it's.

And that's why you have to build a brand. If you are going to fight the giant, you've got to either have a highly differentiated product that only you sell and you have no competitors, or you've got to start with brand. And, you know, you think of the stories of Tom's Shoes or other brands that have a story and a purpose. And, you know, you use the social channels that are out there and you start leveraging that to start to build your D2C name and know that it's going to take time.

Because my problem with Amazon, and look, we buy on Amazon, but my problem as consulting with a company or a brand is it's a race to the bottom. And it's like if you race to the bottom, you'll win every time. It's not a sustainable strategy. By its nature, it's not. I mean, they're going to take a higher and higher percentage of every transaction there consistently.

And then you're fighting other people who are killing you on price already there too so you're really shooting yourselves in the foot and honestly it's it's you're trying to take a product and make it a commodity suddenly and when you play that game everybody loses like you said but in the direct-to-consumer space you can really kind of take yourself away from that commodity space and really kind of elevate your elevate your that commodity space and really kind of elevate your presence and elevate your brand. And I think that's where the long-term play is and owning that relationship more so. And you still do have to battle Google with different inboxes,

with the inbox, your promotions folder, and your newsletter folder. Like you're always going to have something like that where it's trying to take a little bit of money back and it's still rented land to some extent with a Gmail. I think the biggest thing is it's no different than your investment portfolio. You need great distribution of wealth and assets. And it's the same thing with your sales, your distribution channels, your approaches. I think getting heavy in any one area makes you vulnerable. If you've got all your stocks, if you've got all your money in high aggressive stocks, stock market crashes, you're in trouble. Put it in Bitcoin and ride to the moon. That wasn't a good idea?

I've got a great story, a quick story on Bitcoin. I bought something somewhere not to be named. It might have been like some nootropic or something. It was not illegal, by the way, but it was not whatever. But it took Bitcoin to buy it. This was like 10 years ago. And I had to buy like, it was hard to buy Bitcoin in 1999 or 2009. It wasn't as readily available as it is now.

People think, oh, it's been around forever. No, it hasn't. So anyway, it was like 2009, 2010. I had to buy like five Bitcoins. At the time, they were like $200 a piece or $150. It's like $600 and the product I bought was only like $175. It was something weird, the way I had to be done. I had like four or 3.5 random, 3.5 random Bitcoin sitting in. I just happened to have bought them from one of the reputable places that was still around. And you know, when it spiked like a couple of years ago or whatever,

like $20,000 or so, I had like $20,000 sitting there in Bitcoin or, or more like, I think I, what it was, the value of it was, and I sold it as soon as it hit, like what the highest thing was.

And I was like, after taxes, still a nice $15,000 cash out. Yeah, I think you're one of the three people in the country that actually made that work. Yeah, I saw a lot of frenzy around that and saw a lot of people that kind of just, they weren't as excited when it crashed the next month. That December 2018, I believe, was just crazy. I'm going through some technical.

I don't think that's actually happening on the audio line. It's not happening on the audio? It's just what we hear. Okay, I'm just going to keep talking. But yeah, it's. Anyway, that was my Bitcoin, my random Bitcoin story. Diversifying your sales portfolio like you would your own investments

and it's kind of I guess it's a good point it's like looking at your risk profile as you would an investor and are you 85 and want to retire soon or are you 23 and and are like you don't even worry about health insurance you're just ready ready to ready to go because you're in invincible so it's kind of looking at your individual business, assessing how you approach that risk and approach those issues. But, yeah, I'm a believer in building on owned land as much as possible. Yeah. And, you know, some of the clients come to us

and they have 70% of their business on Amazon. And, you know, the first strategy, like number one on the deck, is how we start you owning this on your property as fast as possible. Get them back over. And just so many products on Amazon you purchase, they have the little cards like, hey, if there's a customer service issue, let us know. We want to be the first to know. And I swear, they're almost praying for it. Because if they can have a customer service issue, let us know. We want to be the first to know. And I swear, they're almost praying for it

because if they can have a customer service issue, they suddenly have a touchpoint with their brand. And it's almost a good thing because maybe you can bring that person over and say, hey, we'll give you 10% less next time just to come and purchase from us as opposed to Amazon. That 10% is going to be 5% more than they were giving to Amazon last time.

And if you're listening and you're just getting started, just so you understand if you don't know, Amazon owns the customer, period. You cannot contact them. You have no relationship with them. This is Amazon's customer that just happens to be doing you a favor by allowing you to pay them from 15% to 35%

of the revenue to sell your product. Now, I have not, look, they've built the scale. They've built the monster. They've built the machine. I'm a cap. I believe in capitalism. I don't have a problem per se, but it's just reality. So just be ready for it. And again, you're, you're dancing with the devil and like, it's like every marketer on Facebook in 2009, like, why are they taking away all my reach? I earned that reach. Those are my, those are my followers. They're not when they not. When you don't own the platform, they own the platform. And those are not your community the same way it would be if you had an email list that you could reach out to, or if you had your own fulfillment. It's a lot hairier and a lot stickier to deal with on that

end, but it's a more sustainable strategy in the long run because amazon's going to gradually take more and more of your business and what if amazon wants to take away your like if you have a replenishable product they're snatching up those like crazy on amazon everyone's on basics is coming out with new products all the time yeah so how do you kind of beat that how do you kind of either outmaneuver that dragon or how do you beat that dragon and honestly like it's really difficult because because at scale you're not going to be able to do it like you're going to have to find a way to get off that off that wagon eventually because you're just going to be eroding your eroding your business eroding your brand and eroding

what long-term possibility could be there it's's no different, and I had the LinkedIn post yesterday, about branding over time versus sales in the short term. And activity, and it's proven over time, there's countless studies with billions of dollars that you can't, everyone listening can't necessarily see my hands up, I'm holding charts, that building brand over time, the activities to do that, assuming you have a solid foundation of a brand and a great message, but with that assumption, over time, the speed and rate with that happen,

which is slower, outpaces sales activation and lower funnel activity, driving activity. And I would call Amazon for an e-commerce brand would fall into that. Hey, you can get some spikes early on. those first few months, those first half a year. You can totally get some rewards to the receptors when your revenue. And again, depending on your situation, that can be important.

But building your brand over time is going to outpace what you can do on that rented land. Yeah. So it's just that little serotonin hit. Every time you get a sale on Amazon, it's like a little bit, a little hit, a little hit. But you've got to eventually start to kind of do it on your own. It can be a little bit of training wheels in the front end where you can get a little bit of mojo going ideally, and then transition off of that as fast as you can because once you're riding a bike you don't hopefully you

don't need the training wheels and hopefully you don't need that little sidecar sidecar kind of following along next to you but it's it's a fascinating space because how much how much of the world's transactions are going on on amazon and how much how much of every e-commerce dollar do they are they getting a portion of I would be willing to place a bet. I'm going to look this data point up. I should have before the podcast. The valuation of a company or brand that has 70% of their sales direct to consumer versus a similar size company with 70% of their sales on Amazon.

What is the valuation difference between those two companies? I would love to know. I bet it's 10X. No, no, it has to be because like if you're looking at it from a, from an investor standpoint, there's so much volatility in Amazon where you don't have any, like they talk about like investor side, they talk about how do you build a moat? How do you build a moat around your business and where, and your positioning? You have no moat. They dug up your moat and your business is on top of the back of their truck. You're driving around in the back of the Amazon truck. If you have a moat around your business, you can kind of defend your position to some extent for a hopefully,

ideally consistent period of time. It's never going to be, it's never going to be perfect, but if, if you can really do that, that's a differentiated position for you. But it's from the investor standpoint, I imagine even more than 10 X cause investment valuations are, are astronomical right now. So it's, it's like 50 X.

So yeah, it may be, it's probably a good way to look at it. And it's probably a good way to position it for those groups out there thinking about, yeah, maybe it's probably a good way to look at it. It's probably a good way to position it for those groups out there thinking about, hey, do I need to be spending more time on Amazon or do I need to be spending more time building my brand? Because if you can position it in a way and kind of everybody thinks Amazon's exciting and sexy because everybody, a lot of people are making a lot of money right now. It is kind of like that Bitcoin craze at one point where a lot of people are making a lot of money right now. It is kind of like that Bitcoin craze at one point where a lot of people are making a lot of cash. But if you look at it from a really shrewd lens,

it may not be as exciting and sexy as it really seems right now because everybody's kind of jumping on that train. Yeah, and that bandwagon gets heavy. The bandwagon gets really heavy. It gets real heavy and it turns over. When billions and billions and billions, like, yeah, I can't even imagine how many products are on Amazon right now.

And if you watch college football this season, when the Boomer Sooner wagon ran onto the field and turned over, luckily no one was hurt. I wouldn't bring this up. But that bandwagon flips. That's what you're like. And hopefully you're on the side where you're going to land on somebody next to you as opposed to the side where somebody's going to land on you.

Yeah, exactly. Can we say this? We talked about the titles, rented versus owned. I think we can chalk up Amazon as a frenemy. It's hard to hate them completely, and I do not, by the way. But I'm also smart enough as a marketer and as a strategist for the brands that we work with

to know that it is not the long-term solution for your brand. You have to look at it with a grain of salt. It's just like we need to put all of our ducks in the same basket. We've got to build a good TikTok audience. Put your ducks, distribute your attention, distribute your focus,

and don't put all your eggs in that one basket because that basket could change. Amazon's probably that group that, again, this probably will not be the last time we talk about Amazon. No, I don't think it will. I think it's going to be continually the elephant in the room for a long period of time. It's going to be a pretty heavy topic. We're both involved in the FedEx e-commerce event coming up March 25th.

Get more details. You can reach out to us on that event being put on by FedEx here in Greenville, South Carolina. So we're both part of that. I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty big topic. It's going to be one of my line items in the speech that I'm working on. And I'm going to get in the pulpit a little bit there and fire a brimstone and own some Amazon. I mean, yeah. And I'm sure you're going to be in very good company there with the FedEx group. I know they're not as pleased with Amazon right now. No.

After the holiday, after the kind of getting poo-pooed on by Amazon during the holidays. But it's a, yeah, it's a different beast. And we've got to kind of understand what it's doing, how it's impacting the economy. And yeah, like we talked about Super Bowl ads too earlier. There was a reason they use AWS so many times in the Super Bowl. You heard AWS half a dozen times or a dozen times. AWS is going to be its own company soon. Amazon's just getting bigger and bigger.

And they're either going to be shirking from antitrust legislation or trying to make AWS its own thing. Fascinating. We live in very interesting times. It is. Robbie, enjoyed it as always. Ryan, it's always a pleasure. Again, look forward to doing this again soon. I know. Well, I hope everyone

enjoyed it and I hope everyone has a great rest of the week depending on when you listen to this. But please follow along at Radical.Company. You can link to all of our podcasts there. Please subscribe and like the podcast. Robbie and I would really appreciate it. Give it some love.

Give it some love. And until next time. We the ones We the ones We the ones