Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Weekly News Update 11.06.20: Brown-Forman's Cheers to the Host; Starbucks push for mobile engagement; Etsy's emotional marketing strategies; This week's social media news breakdown and more!

Starting point is 00:00:00 It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now? You're listening to the latest Radcast News Update. Here's Ryan and Riley. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast News. I'm joined by the lovely Riley Clark. Hey guys. So, what's up Riley? Oh, nothing much. Just, you know, hanging out. It's been a good week. Election week has been a lot, but it's been a good week apart from that.

Starting point is 00:00:51 We have a lot of upcoming fun stuff. And I'm excited because we're starting a new thing on the Radcast, AdGab. And that's something that you and Josh Hill, our in-house digital media manager, you guys are talking about really tactical advertising things, getting really nitty gritty into, you know, just really, again, just the technical aspects of advertising. Yeah, I love that, like as a blend, you know, we have the podcast and we have guests on. Right. And it always has a marketing spin to it, you know, no matter what. But it's somewhat informational on the person and their background and, you know, no matter what. But it's somewhat informational on the person and their background and, you know, maybe what they're doing in marketing, but isn't always applicable or

Starting point is 00:01:31 tactical. And then we have the news segments where we're kind of bringing the latest news like we are today. This feels like filling in the gap of tactical stuff that can kind of play off of it. And, you know, who doesn't want to gab a little? I know. And it's fun. Like you guys have fun with it. And, um, so it's Wednesdays, uh, in the afternoon around two 30 issues when it will go live. You know, I'm not going to bank that every Wednesday we actually hit the live button. We do run a, we do. We reserve the right to adjust days as needed. Yes, yes. But that will be a weekly thing, and I'm looking forward to more of those with you and Josh.

Starting point is 00:02:13 So that will be obviously exciting. And then on Tuesday, we have another upcoming episode, and that will release again at noon. And that is with James Gregson, the digital creative director at Lego. And that was so cool to have him on. He was excellent. That was a really good conversation with you guys. It was. It was really neat to hear.

Starting point is 00:02:35 You know, we have a lot of big brands on. We've been spoiled with our guests. But to have a creative director directly from Lego, we may or may not have spilled details on Lego Movie 3. You'll have to listen to find out if said details came out. But hearing his perspective, just across marketing, but across how they build content, how they think about content for their social media channels, his perspective on leadership and a lot of other things. So it's always interesting, I think, no matter if you work for a small, medium, or large business, to hear the perspective of a brand giant like Lego, how they're doing it, some of their struggles,

Starting point is 00:03:17 some of the realities of marketing for them. And so James was great. We had a great discussion, and I'm excited for everyone to hear that episode. For sure, for sure. I liked the conversation. It was really good, and I liked his, you know, how he brought up being a storyteller as well. I thought it was something Matt Arden also said, which I felt like was a kind of similar kind of career, you know, niche, so to speak. But I liked the storytelling aspect, and I think he clearly does very well at it. Yes. so to speak but I like the storytelling aspect and I think he he clearly does very well at it yes and ironically uh Nash was playing uh with his Legos might have been last night before they're all over the floor I uh joked with James about tripping over them or you know feeling them in

Starting point is 00:03:56 my feet my wife doesn't think I ever look down when I'm walking which is partially true right I think I had one stuck in my foot this morning getting out of the house. So, you know, in a good thing. But, hey, I just like getting – I love Legos, but not for me. I wasn't like a – but getting the kids away from digital devices and building and using their brains for things more than, you know, how they can defeat some new game or something, which I don't mind a little of too,

Starting point is 00:04:24 they can you know defeat some new game or something which which i don't mind a little of too but it just seems like a more uh escape from all the digital platforms and and youtube and everything else that they get into right no growing up it was big for my brother and i it was really big it was a huge part of our relationship i was a gi joe transformers like you know other imagination things but yeah um and i think i may have had my lego moment but i just don't remember as much as our kids have all had it right right yeah no but that's happening and then um as far as you know locally we're having um our gbl hustle pop up on thursday next thursday that's the 12th, um, from 10 to three here. So if you're, if you're in the Greenville area, make sure you come by, um, camaraderie. Uh, we'll have a pop

Starting point is 00:05:11 up. We'll have some vendors. We have a food truck, so it's going to be a good time. So we already have your lunch covered basically is what we're saying. So make sure you come by. That'll be super fun. Yeah. And you know, this is our expression of design and different things for the company. It's also a way for us to test both retail and e-commerce initiatives for clients because we have our own sub-brand. Right. Actually, more exciting news on that. I don't want to give that away just yet, but we're having a bigger, even broader release with our merchandising brand. That'll be coming up.

Starting point is 00:05:46 But this is a great way for our team to have kind of hands-on. It's not that, like, I think we're very vested in our client business, but this gives us a live, real-world, almost like lab for testing, designs, e-commerce, seeing what works, what drives engagement. Yeah, you can tinker with things and figure out exactly to your point. And we can play with that more than, you know, like when we're doing client business, we're kind of doing the X and O's of what works. And so by having this lab to kind of explore different things or maybe try things

Starting point is 00:06:18 because it's our own brand, I think it just makes us better marketers. For sure, for sure. Okay, news time. Ready? Yep. So here's Riley with the news. Here is the Radcast News. Okay, so the Spirits Company, Brown Foreman,

Starting point is 00:06:37 unveiled a relaunch of its Cheers to the Host website. This offers food and drink recipes along with other entertaining ideas. And I think the bigger idea, as we all understand from a COVID world, is to bring the party inside, right? You know, how can you host a better party? What are the better, you know, things to make your interior design more aesthetically pleasing for a party atmosphere, whatever. You know, what were your opinions on this? I think this is a really cool and good concept for sure. I think this is brilliant on multiple levels. One, it's very timely with COVID and, but it's not a negative COVID. It's more leaning into the, to the positive aspects of the closeness of the home. But what it's doing is empowering people rather than the

Starting point is 00:07:21 negative side of it. So it's cheers to the host.com. It's a total like brand play, but brand content play for a foreman, a Brown foreman spirits. And so they, they make Jack Daniels, Woodford reserve, uh, Corbell, uh, champagne or champagne like object as I'll call it, you know, it's a sparkling wine. But anyway, it's brilliant for them because it's less about, Hey, buy our products and buy our wine and buy our liquor and our spirits. And it tastes great and all that. It's about the customer. It's about the old, the end user, the host, the people that will be how they in empowering them and giving them ways to be

Starting point is 00:08:04 a better host. It's a brilliant spin because it's timely, and it just makes total sense from a content play for them. I love any time a brand can take a natural pivot into something that empowers their consumer without being overly, overtly salesy. But it builds in perfectly because they become the better host because they give them these recipes. They tell them music.

Starting point is 00:08:30 They have integrations with even like Uber for like, hey, you drank at my party. You need to get an Uber home. There's a lot of integrations on the site. And then the fact that obviously the payoff is you make all these drinks, you do all these things, you use our product to make them. And so love it. And bringing in the pinterest board too i think that's perfect i'm a big pinterest user so i love that part of it too i think that's awesome yep and so uh big big ups on this and i know they had some agency help so uh love this probably yes um another news today um starbucks has launched a new holiday campaign which includes

Starting point is 00:09:09 um a way to bring it limits in-person contact right so they're trying to target people to use more their mobile app um they're really pushing that and that's kind of the i would say the new spin on this kind of advertising i mean i I feel like Starbucks has always pushed people to use their mobile app, right? You know, you get your Starbucks rewards or whatever. But I think this is like a bigger push to solely using just, you know, contact lists. Here's my phone. I ordered. Scan what you need to, you know, and go on with your day and have your nice cup of coffee.

Starting point is 00:09:41 Another one. Brilliant. have your nice cup of coffee. Another one brilliant and plays into, again, you're playing into the reality of COVID and the pandemic, and then you're spinning it into a positive and the convenience for the customer. And it's brilliant because, you know, and the tagline is, let me hang it on here. It's festive as a tap away, download the app today. So you're driving apps, app downloads, right? You're getting more people. Download the app today. So you're driving apps, app downloads. Right. You're getting more people to order ahead of time. So you're getting more perceived or you know ahead of time how to prepare the drink.

Starting point is 00:10:14 So you're preparing your store better because you don't have people waiting in line. So it's convenient for them, convenient for your store employees. And then you're driving brand, which is playing into the overall experience that you get when you go to a Starbucks, because it's going to be, if you can get people pre-ordering, they know what to expect. They show up, they come through the drive-thru, it's already made. And so there's so many things that benefit both Starbucks and the customer while also playing into the mindset of contactless and everything else. So again, another brilliant campaign. No, I agree. Similar to that, Etsy is

Starting point is 00:10:53 targeting a little different. It's not that I would say they're different, right? I mean, Etsy has always been that kind of really interesting, kind of almost eclectic kind of, you know, platform to get really interesting products, whether it'sic kind of, you know, platform to get really interesting products, whether it's, you know, really cool vintage looking, you know, peacock chair of some kind or, you know, something like that, or, you know, obviously their face masks and that kind of thing. But I think, you know, their CMO was talking about, they're really trying to get more of a powerful power of a meaningful gift versus just like, you know, and it's not that this isn't to bash on Amazon at all, but it's like, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:30 you're not getting that cheaper quality, you know, just immediate return. It's more thoughtful. It's more thought provoking. I mean, anytime I ever go on Etsy, it's like, you know, who are you shopping for? You know, and then it breaks down already down already. And there's just really interesting things, and you feel like they're coming from, whether it's from an ethical source, or it's things are, whatever, it's vegan, or it's good for the environment, or whatever it is. I think they've pushed that really well there.

Starting point is 00:11:56 And you can't beat that. I don't know. There's a lot of insights here. One, their sales were up in the third quarter like 160% roughly, give or take. So people have been feeding into this. It's e-commerce too. So like every other e-commerce brand and or portal or platform, it's on the up. And it is true. There's so much, I don't want to say garbage, but just chintzy stuff that just is not quality.

Starting point is 00:12:32 Right. And I think people struggle with wanting to give a quality, meaningful gift. And customers or receivers of the gift wanting something, that I think this fills a really good gap, especially now. I think everybody are just trying to be more thoughtful and it falls into that for me. While also you'll see Etsy's up there advertising 150%. So I like companies that are seeing a sales increase and they lean into it with more marketing. Yes, that sounds self-sovereign as an ad agency, but it's true. Like lean into that growth and spend and increase. Like, let's pour gas on the fire.

Starting point is 00:13:08 And so you're going to see those thoughtful stories. I know they're doing a big social push, a television push, so you're going to see that. It's still, you know, small compared. I think they did roughly $400 million to $500 million in revenue, which sounds huge. But compared to Amazon, you huge, but compared to like, but compared to an Amazon, you know, or something like that, it's like, you know, and it's a different total niche platform.

Starting point is 00:13:36 But you know, I don't know that Amazon's shaking in their boots yet, but I really like that, you know, the CMO was just talking about some of the campaign elements and some of the ways that they're kind of leaning into that notion of thoughtfulness in the gift giving. And I also like it because ultimately it's empowering small businesses. Because you think about everyone that's on Etsy or 90% of it, it's small individual crafters or retailers. And so great opportunity to kind of leverage that growth. Right. Especially without having to build your own platform. Like at a certain point it makes sense and we encourage our clients to do that because you own the customer relationship more directly.

Starting point is 00:14:11 But what a great avenue to take advantage of for smaller businesses. Well, that's what I was just about to say. I mean, like if you are a smaller business and you're not necessarily on Etsy or necessarily doing something with Etsy, like where your products are at, what is something they could take away from this for their own spin on making something more meaningful? You know what I mean? Like Black Friday is coming up, like Cyber Monday is coming up too. I mean, I think people still have a reasonable amount of time, more or less, you know, to get something, you know, meaningful together. But what would be, I know that we didn't necessarily talk about this pre-show, but I'll put you on the spot a little bit, I guess, but you know, like what would be something that you would be like, you know, small business, this is something you should take away from this to

Starting point is 00:14:52 then bring into your own store, whether that's on your own website or your, you know, your own brick and mortar for people to do curbside. How do you keep that meaningful aspect still there, especially this holiday season when everything's just so... I use one word, customization. So, you know, no matter who you are or what you're doing, small, medium business, if you give people a way to customize the experience or the gift or the purchase, no different. I almost think of this, you know, we dabble in some print-on-demand type scenarios where, you know, we'll take and personalize certain things from a merchandise perspective. Right.

Starting point is 00:15:29 And so any way that you can add customization and personalization into it, even if you're not an Etsy natural, but I think that's where my mind goes for how small business takes advantage of it. And, you know, I still am bringing it back even to, you know, the previous article with Starbucks. You know, I've been really leaning into this for local small businesses. Anything that you can do to provide that concierge just tighter experience knowing the COVID situation to making it easy and frictionless for people to shop with you either online or offline. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And then our last bit of news is just breaking down some social media platforms, things that are going on. So LinkedIn engagement has seen a huge increase in the third quarter this year,

Starting point is 00:16:19 722 million users. Big number. Almost a billion people. I know. That's. Big number. Almost a billion people. I know, that's a big number. Yes. But I mean, you know, Facebook bringing more shopping platforms, making that system a lot easier. Snapchat creating more tools.

Starting point is 00:16:37 That way, you know, leveraging like the tools they have, you know, using the camera more, you know, you're able to scan products, especially for food products. You can get the nutrition information, find know, you're able to scan products, especially for food products, so you can get the nutrition information, find other things about the product, see what they're about, really. I think this is really, really good use of just the tools that are already on our phones and our devices, and then still bringing in customer engagement and just people engagement, really, especially Snapchat. I mean, that's so cool. I'm going to start where you started, which is LinkedIn. No, I just broke everything down.

Starting point is 00:17:09 I liked it, but I'll start from the top. LinkedIn engagements has gone through the roof with people staying home, getting more engaged with the platform, more people posting, more people commenting. You've seen the growth there. I think it's somewhere around 31% year over year of sessions on the platform, which doesn't surprise me at all. You've got more people on there. Ad revenue is up 16%.

Starting point is 00:17:34 It doesn't surprise me. I'm going to love on LinkedIn and hate on them at the same time a little bit. Having used their ad platform, it needs to improve. It needs to get better. It's better than it was, but it's still a little wonky. And so LinkedIn, let's keep improving the ad platform. Facebook is best in class in that. Obviously, they've been doing it longer, but I'd like to see their ad platform continue to evolve and grow. It's still a wonderful place when you can target directly the customer or the decision maker that you need for B2B, especially when you need to

Starting point is 00:18:06 target HR managers and you don't want to have waste in your advertising. On LinkedIn, you can go right at the specific target of who you need, more even directly than you can on consumer. Like in consumer, you still book it into audiences unless you're doing like one-to-one marketing. LinkedIn's still amazing for that ability to go one-to-one for the decision maker that you need. So ad platform needs to improve, but I will say that there's a ton more engagement on the platform. It's gotten pretty crowded.

Starting point is 00:18:35 I've even noticed some of the engagement on my stuff has gone down. I don't know what the algorithm is. So I think there's just more people and more volume. And so the only negative with that is I see a lot of people kind of juice in the system. Like they do these overly dramatic posts. Like everybody's posting like reposts of videos of like someone that's something that's real emotional. And so it gets all this engagement. And it's like it's purely a play for engagement.

Starting point is 00:18:59 I'm not sure what the end game is there. It's the only thing that's kind of driving me crazy. But again, lots of opportunity there, a great place to be sharing your content. It's definitely moving towards more of the middle. You've got B2B and you've got consumer, which is Instagram, Facebook, and those platforms. LinkedIn's coming more towards the middle

Starting point is 00:19:17 because you're definitely seeing more content that before it would just be pure business sales or talking about business and all that. You're seeing more people talk about their personal lives. And I think that's the marriage also of people being at home and everything like that. So you're seeing a little bit of that intersection of, yes, I'm a business person doing business things, but the humanity of my life and the things that are going on, you're seeing a convergence of that content, which is cool.

Starting point is 00:19:48 I don't know where the happy medium and all that is, you know, you want to keep it as a business platform, but well, that's what I was just about to ask. Like, at what point do you feel like those videos that are like triggering the emotional, you know, that kind of thing? Like at what point is that like probably not a LinkedIn thing versus it could be appropriate for LinkedIn? Because obviously there's tons of social media platforms, right? And so it's not that you shouldn't post one thing on this and nothing on this platform. But when does it become overbearing in the sense of, okay, this is also supposed to be a business networking kind of ordeal?

Starting point is 00:20:19 I don't know. We're getting close to it already. I don't know the perfect answer to that. I don't mind some of it, but then it's like, okay. Sometimes it's just really, they're trying to be non-transparent, but it's transparent to me that it's just a play for clicks and likes and vanity metrics.

Starting point is 00:20:37 But I don't know what that is. But I do think I like that it's becoming more human as a platform and less robotic as, here's my brochure and here's our company and this really boring corporate video. Yeah, that was a good voice. That was a good little AI voice. But I have a second career potentially in corporate video talk here.

Starting point is 00:20:59 Here we are at the hospital talking about our new beds, whatever. Whatever it is. whatever it is, whatever it is. So you're seeing, you know, back to another trend. I talked about that democratization of content, people being more, more, more comfortable sharing content that's less polished and produced. I love that. But at the same time, I don't need to watch you eat fruity pebbles and like, you know,

Starting point is 00:21:22 like just getting ready to crush today's business. Damn, having my fruity pebbles. I'm like,, like just getting ready. I'm going to crush today's business. I'm having my fruity pebbles. I'm like, okay, that's good and all. That's nice, yeah. You know, anyway, I don't know where the happy medium comes in. Right. And then, you know, the social shopping we've talked about a lot, the proliferation of that, the marriage of there's been demand there

Starting point is 00:21:41 for brands that have been doing it and wanting to do it but small to medium business has been more painful because the platforms haven't caught up right so i think everything that's transitioning there is is positive i think the live streaming with your products is interesting from a small business so smart yeah that's going to be huge um you know speaking of this we're live streaming on facebook this episode like we didn't forget about you like i want to we should be streaming on Facebook this episode like we didn't forget about you we should be able to lift this up I'll buy your Radcast coffee mug

Starting point is 00:22:10 I lift it up and it's ding it shows so you know if you do want one you know where to find us exactly let me know cool anything else for this week no that's it yeah, that's it. Yeah, no, that's it.

Starting point is 00:22:27 I know. So I hope everyone has been enjoying the episodes. You know where to find us, but do us a favor. Like, share, spread the news, subscribe, give us some good reviews. That's it for this week, and we'll see you next time. See you guys. Yo, guys, what's up? Ryan Alford here.

Starting point is 00:22:44 Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate appreciate it but do us a favor if you've been enjoying the radcast you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else we'd really appreciate it and go leave us a review at apple or spotify do us a solid tell more people leave us some reviews and hey here's the best news of all if you want to work with me, if you want to get your business kicking ass, and you want Radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 864-729-3680. Don't wait another minute. Let's get your business going. 864-729-3680. We'll see you next time.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Weekly News Update 11.06.20: Brown-Forman's Cheers to the Host; Starbucks push for mobile engagement; Etsy's emotional marketing strategies; This week's social media news breakdown and more!

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