Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Weekly News Update 2.19.21: Old Spice Digital Studio Barbershop; McDonald's Chicken Sandwich Merchandise; Kit Kat Viral Ad; Reddit and Robinhood Hearing

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Welcome to this week's marketing news from The Radcast! We have some great topics for you today. Host Ryan Alford and producer Reiley Clark break down this week's hottest marketing headlines.Take a look at the headlines we cover below:Old Spice digital content studio and barbershop, opening March 1.McDonald's Crispy Chicken  Sandwich is hitting the fast-food giant's store, as so is new merchandise.Kit Kat's viral  "Take a Break" Ad.The Reddit and Robinhood hearing, was there market manipulation?If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and share the word if you love what we discuss, so we can keep giving you the strategies to achieve radical marketing results! You can follow us on Instagram @the.rad.cast | @radical_results | @ryanalford | If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

you're listening to the latest radcast news update here's ryan and riley hey guys what's up welcome to the latest edition of the radcast it's the friday news edition it is february 19th 2021 and i am joined by my lovely co-host and running mate here on the Radcast, our producer, our extraordinaire, Riley Clark. Hello. How are you today? I'm great. Good.

Hey, it's Friday. I know. You know? It was a long week in the good way. I feel like that sounded bad, but you know what I mean. It's been a long week. It was one of those weeks where you, like, Wednesday felt like a Monday, and it was just one of those weeks. My weeks are rolling by.

I was thinking about this actually driving into work this morning. I was like, I feel like it was two Wednesdays, Fridays ago. I feel like these weeks are just boiling by. It's almost March already. It's like, what happened? Man, I'm going to be like 50 before I'm like man I'm gonna be like 50 before I know it I'm kind of terrifying I know so I was like and it's like you know we've had a couple episodes on the Super Bowl and yeah it just shows you how fast like the news cycle is and everything else it's like doesn't the Super Bowl feel like a month ago like and it was it was

less than two weeks ago Sunday will be two weeks I know I know and it's like oh it was it was less than two weeks ago sunday will be two weeks i know i know and it's like oh it's old news it feels like centuries ago already and i'm like oh my gosh no we just did a part two about it yesterday because that's still relevant it's still relevant to talk about oatly and it's okay to still talk about the super yes and the ads and the effects of them and what it meant and how it happened and it's all good to be talking about so yeah but I feel like I could brag a little bit because yeah I was watching the only ad yeah and you know started to poop who it and then I knew it was marketing brilliance and sure enough validated by Tyler yes at neuro insight that it did have the impact on the brain that I thought it did which is you thought it was you thought was negative

but your subconscious was burying the Oatly brand into your brain like they intended it to do. Oh yeah. No, I thought it was brilliant. I mean, I know we talked about it the last, you know, if you caught the episode last week with Tyler, then you'll hear all about how they even analyze this whole process. And then if you caught the episode that came out yesterday, it was a bonus episode. But basically, Tyler gave us all the details on how the ads actually performed in the Super Bowl. So a super cool episode as far as, you know, they he gave us Pringles, Stella, Oatley, Rocket Mortgage, and it was those four. And he just really dissected, you know, where the brain felt any anxiety, basically the bridge scene and Rocket Mortgage. Rocket Mortgage. And it was those four. And he just really dissected, you know, where the brain felt any anxiety, basically. The bridge scene in Rocket Mortgage.

You know, how that affects the brain. All that kind of stuff. Anyway, super fascinating. Definitely check it out. And definitely, we always promote the video content. If there's ever one that you might want to watch the video on. Oh, yeah. Just to see the brainwave patterns for each one of those commercials.

It's really fascinating. So, look that up on our YouTube channel. can find that anywhere you know search radcast on youtube we'll get to all the episodes or on instagram too it's on instagram yeah igtv we do upload the episodes to igtv which some of you all know about you know some of our viewers are there too so that's been that's been cool it's been good. But yeah, it was fascinating and knowing how the brain works. And it was also great because, you know, all the ad types, and I guess we are ad types as well, you know, they think the ad meter and all these things show like,

oh, how great our ads did, but not so fast, my friend. It doesn't mean that it's resonating in the brain the way that it needs to or that you're getting that resonance that you want uh when the brand is on screen and all those things so really fascinating for us ad geeks but i think it's also if you're out there and you're even marginally in the advertising space it's fascinating to kind of learn and you know tyler was really engaging and just super smart dude so looking forward to future episodes i can see tyler and i getting into a lot of uh fun stuff down the road absolutely um but how's the rest of your week like business wise like anything you want to really great it's been

a really great week for radical business uh a few deals have come in we've gotten super busy um you know i mean business has been good overall but it's been really good this week. And we've got a new gym concept that we're going to be working with. Um, more details to come. We've got a, a really cool, um,

manufacturer of custom iron type things. Yeah. Uh, name to be later, uh, coming on board. There's, there's just a lot of, uh, and then like we got like i don't know 10 like website inputs this week for a lot of people like

you know i'm like stumbling on my what do we call these things forms fills on our website so the website's been really active this week and you know but as always the radcast is brought to you by radical oh our ad agency yes yeah yes shameless plug there obviously uh so uh yes so if you are look ever looking for marketing you know where to find it but oh for sure for sure no but uh the radcast wise i mean we've been having really good episodes obviously we talked about tyler's episode and next week's episode uh we kind of talked about it a little bit as well. But our genre, he's coming on and he's going to be talking about Hello Wolfie and the effects of emojis and emoji data and these companies he's founded. He's a little bit of a serial entrepreneur.

And it's just really cool to hear his perspective on. I mean, if you think about it, it makes total sense, particularly the emoji story. It's like humans have always processed, you know, even since like, you know, higher hydroglyphics or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? I think I even I think I probably said that wrong. But no, you said it right. Is it right? OK. Hydroglyphics.

Yeah. OK. I think hyperglyphics. Are they water? Whatever. Anyway, they're the glyphics. I do think they're hydroglyphics. I think they are.. Hiro. Are they water? Whatever. Anyway, they're the glyphics. I do think they're hydroglyphics. I think they are.

I don't know. I'm having a brain like melt now. No, honestly, me too. It's Friday. It's okay. Anyway, all this to say, but we've always processed through images. And so emojis are doing the exact same thing. I mean, content does better when you see an emoji beside it on Instagram, on social, on

TikTok, because you're reading and then you see an emoji and you see the connection and processes. So it's just really cool to hear that from him. It was. And, you know, he's playing in the small to medium business space for social media. I think he's doing a great thing with giving and leveraging them, leveraging data and tools that businesses that size don't have at a really affordable rate. and tools that businesses that size don't have at a really affordable rate. He's got a really cool, like share investing. There's a name for this terminology. I think we're stumbling on all our names today,

but nonetheless, where you can buy into the company, uh, really cool. So, uh, it was a very fun episode. I really enjoyed our June and just fun guy to be around.

And, you know, it's kind of one of those, sometimes you have these episodes where, you know, it's an interview and you those, sometimes you have these episodes where, you know, it's an interview and you're talking about what they're talking about. But I felt like it was more of a conversation, you know, especially about B2B marketing, the realities of the space,

the technologies, and then the emoji stuff, which is fascinating. Absolutely, yeah. It was fun. Yeah. What, pop culture, anything going on as far as like? Yes. I mean, so I'm not i i think i've said this on previous things i find my i'm an independent as far as uh republican democrat i don't get into

politics much but growing up you know in radio am radio and all that i remember my parents listening to it but rush limbaugh passed away this week and uh which was really sad i mean he's a pioneer of radio which is in our industry it's media you know our industry is built on media and advertising all these things and he's a pioneer in it no matter what you think so sad to learn his passing from lung cancer um i mean just an historic figure absolutely yeah you know i was watching on my lunch break you know again um not a fan either way but donald trump who hasn't been heard of since you know the president election like as far as he hasn't been on any interviews he called in because you know rush is passing or whatever and only to talk about that but again just shows the power and the you know just the prestige and just known that Rush Limbaugh was

and the impact that he had on the medium. He was kind of to the right almost what I think of in the far other sense of Howard Stern. Howard Stern was not a political figure, but just what they both did individually, like one for politics, one for pop culture or salacious news, whatever you want to call it. But just the impact on radio and then satellite radio, you know, both getting huge contracts, making multi-million dollars. I think Rush was somewhere in like $50 million a year.

You don't realize it to be on radio still, you know, like salary and so it's crazy the number so we have a future no just yes podcasting but he still had 15 million listeners like a day or something or a week or something and so again still just a huge impact to like the the medium and the impact that he's had uh his wife did a really lovely kind of sign off for him like the day he died i think it was wednesday um and i don't know so that that kind of just resonated with me because i remember riding in the car as a kid and like my mom or dad like having him on that that voice kind of stuck in my head and it was less about the politics or even what he was talking about but kind of just brought back memories for me and the impact of like am radio back in the day and how fast things have changed and yeah now here we are in an audio

medium ourselves so you know there's parallels but uh sad sad day but um you know so that that kind of hit me this week yeah well i mean it's interesting is when you think about like millions and billions, I'll transition a little bit. It's interesting when you think about just the concept of billions versus millions. And Jeff Bezos is now, again, the richest man in the world. He passed Elon Musk. I think it was over the last day. They're like teeter-tottery back and forth. I know.

I know. It's like now it's a competition. It's like, you know, what's Tesla going to do next? It's going to put, you know, Elon Musk back at number one. But it's just it's funny to see that he, you know, passed him again. But in other kind of pop culture-ish kind of news, I've been reading about this, but there are these people on Instagram like Instagram thieves and they like have figured out like how to break into celebrities really nice houses and things like that based on Instagram geotags based on things that they see in the pictures of these celebrities apartments

and they're able to identify where their apartments at in the space on the geotag all this stuff there are certain things about the apartment they can hack into. I just think that's bizarre that now people are using that to then break in and steal. I mean, it doesn't surprise me. I mean, nothing surprises me anymore. But like, you know, you share all this personal data and information in your house. And then they tie it back to the time of day when you're most like, how often are you posting stories at restaurants or where you go out? You know, and they can probably figure out like the days and the times you're likely to be gone.

They know that you have some priceless vase. Oh, it's totally unnerving. Yeah. But it's like, but it's a reminder of the realities of what's going on. You know, like there's always going to be someone using the information that's being put out there in nefarious ways. You know, you want everybody, you know, when you're not, when you're not criminally minded, which I don't think either one of us are, like you don't think about it in that way. Either one of us are like you don't think about it in that way. But criminals, all they do is process this through a lens of how I can manipulate, manipulate or take advantage of it or steal or whatever.

And so it's not surprising, but it is sad. Yeah, I we did this last week. And I want to ask you again if because, you know, for us in Greenville, the weather, it's a little dreary, a a little rainy and it's just going to continue to be like this over the weekend and obviously the rest of the united states is experiencing weird ass cold front and texas texas is i'm it's crazy to me but um if you if wine pairing we did this last week and i liked i liked that we did this so let's continue this a little bit so so let's set the mood a little bit it's cold and it's raining outside and it's just, you're not leaving your, you're not leaving your house. What,

what wine, what wine are you going to drink to warm yourself up with a fire? Potentially your dog. Potentially. I don't even know that you have a dog. Do you even have a dog? No dogs. No dog.

We have four boys. You don't need a dog. We don't need a dog. You don't need a dog. Well, need a dog you don't need a dog well it's just one more thing to have to keep up with it's less about that our children are animals they might be but at times but you know you know my first thought is like a nice bourbon you know but uh being a wine drinker and i do do drink bourbon, but some of the listeners out there, we'll do a bourbon tasting one time, you know, like on air.

I'll give some bourbon tips as well. But we'll stick to the wine. It has to be red. So, like, I'm sorry. I'm a rosé. I don't drink a ton of white, but I do like rosé. We'll do rosé at some point. But, like, it's got to be red when it's cold out.

You need, it's just the warm. You need, like, you know, i still like mine maybe you know just a little bit below root temperature uh some people like it like almost chilled their reds but like at this time of year you kind of want it right around room temperature yeah but i am gonna go i couldn't go too far without like some of my favorites and you know austin hope being you know one of my buddies and, you know, Austin Hope being, you know, one of my buddies and one of the fastest growing wineries in America, Adiposa Robles. He actually has a, they probably have 10 or 12 labels, you know, brands under their stuff. They have like Troublemaker Wine, which you've probably seen, Liberty School, which you've seen. All good wines.

But their Triana Cabernet which is actually um one they've made for a while um the the austin hope label cabernet which is good a little pricier but triana cabernet is a little bit more um approachable in cost it's a cabernet and it's in everything that austin does he has really studied tannins, which is, just to keep it simple, we're not going to do a full wine episode here. When you're drinking wine, kind of that kick in the back after you're drinking a glass of red, that little bit of oomph at the back, that's either smooth or sometimes might feel a little green or a little bit.

That's the tannins in the wine. And he has kind of mastered smooth tannins he spent his career like how to how to get the best flavor why because what's happened what typically happens with cabernet and the big red wines is they have to have that tannic structure to age and it also plays into the flavor profile so sometimes you'll have these delicious wines yeah but those tannins just kind of stick to the back of your mouth and like kind of kick your ass a little bit yeah he's mastered making big robust wines that have very approachable tannins and triana is very much in that realm so you're sitting on the couch you're reading your book

you've got a fire next to you because your power's out you know which is possible triana cabernet 1999 ish mike can find it a little less might be a little bit more very approachable 20 bottle cabernet tastes like a 60 bottle let me tell you right now you can't find many 50 bottles it tastes as good as triana cabernet that's t-r-e-a-n-n-a triana cabernet is your cold weather wine tip of the week. Can you find that at pretty much any grocery store? It can be found. Or wine and liquor store. Wine or liquor store, you'll find it.

It's very much available. Oh, cool, cool, cool. It may not be in every Publix or Harris Teeter, but I've definitely seen it in many grocery stores and definitely a lot of wine stores. So if you see it on a wine list when you're out, so maybe you hear this tip, but you see it on a wine list when you're out so maybe you've heard this tip but you're the one you see it on a wine list get it it'll be more affordable than most of the other ones and they're better than most of them that you're

gonna see like $80 bottles and we're like uh get the tray on after like 45 on the wine list thank me later i love that awesome awesome awesome cool well here's riley with the news here is the radcast news okay so to start out this week old spice is creating a digital content studio kind of barbershop vibe deal and i think this is really cool this is a procter and gamble um an agency involvement and it's starting march 1st in columbus ohio they are they have transformed this barbershop into very specialty old spice products branding merchandise super cool little space but did you did you you read about this a little bit yep love this um it tugged on my heartstrings because, you know, I've kind of built an agency.

Look, we are an ad agency, so in many ways. But we've built almost like a lab structure with what we've done with like GVL Hustle, our GVL brand locally. Building an e-commerce kind of lab. We do merchandise. We build an e-commerce store. But it wasn't really to make profit. It was to learn. Right. merchandise we built an e-commerce store and yeah but it wasn't really to make profit it was to learn right and you look old spice is a brand is a you know bathroom you know yeah hair cosmetic all those things so the barbershop and it's takes definitely taken the turn if you've watched their

advertising the last 10 years the turn towards uh you know that manly approach which plays in perfectly you know with the notion of old school barbershop and kind of a man's man you know whatever so the thought of building kind of a lab to showcase products to do things and content which is i love like you could build they can bring to life the content the environment of what that is it It was a brilliant play. I love this. It goes with everything that's right with how you build and develop content in an organic way. So hats off to Old Spice. I love this.

Yeah, I love it too. I think it's super cool. And you see this more. I mean, brands are trying to create ways just for organic social media content because it's huge. It's this power. Social media campaigns people posting tagging you whatever oh i'm at the you know columbus old spice barber shop old spice like it's just the thing it's the thing to do we saw this in sweden with the mcdonald's barber

shop they did the golden m haircut it's something similar to that effect and it's just it's going to be big and you know i'm looking forward to the follow-up about it the thing i like about it the most is it's got legs that plays in with their brand like sometimes you know like we've talked about a few of these experiential things where it's you know the dunkin donuts thing like in vegas fun right cool extension but you know like long term like this isn't like it's a one-off right this to me is this is becomes an all the time content play it's somewhere that people stop it's not gonna go away it's always kind of related to their brand it has longevity yes and so I like this a ton more than just the one offs that are kind of gimmicky yeah I agree I

agree and I do think it brings in the barbershop culture that I think it's coming back in a lot of ways because i think sometimes you know i think this is just a good thing for guys i feel like guys you know need this or i mean maybe even girls need it too but i just i think this is a really good thing for the brand of old spice and you know looking forward to seeing where it goes um speaking of mcdonald's they are dropping a new chicken sandwich. It's a crispy chicken sandwich, but it's interesting because they are doing a chicken drop.com and it's like this merchandise kind of deal as well. But it's,

it's interesting. I feel like they're playing on this idea of like having cool, like a cool drip, you know, cool style, whatever, but also having like a really good crispy chicken sandwich, which I'm now really curious to

go try well it is so interesting how the chicken sandwich has become like the mecca of trial you had uh you know of course you know being in south carolina one of the originals the chick-fil-a sandwich kind of being the pillar of chick-fil- chicken sandwiches but then you had popeyes who comes out with the chicken and they had a huge there were lines for months at the Popeye's for chicken sandwiches. Like it was supposedly as good as the Chick-fil-A. It had like homemade pickles. It is a damn good chicken sandwich, by the way. And actually, you know who actually always makes a pretty damn good chicken sandwich?

I had it for the first time. Church's Chicken, we actually ate at. I've never eaten at a church's chicken and i don't know why because it was a damn good chicken sandwich i've never i've never been to a church's chicken i'm telling you the chicken sandwich was delicious back to mcdonald's i don't know why shameless plug for all the other quick but i think we should do on the one of the future episodes we're going to do a chicken sandwich sampling, you know, one of each. Okay.

We'll line them up. I'll have Chick-fil-A's. I'll have Chick-fil-A's and let you know. We're going to do a live radcast rendition of the best chicken sandwich. So, look, I don't know what it is about chicken sandwiches, but I have to think that McDonald's is pulling off of that on some level, the how do we get in this chicken sandwich game. And then, you know, to add

their little bit of spice to it, so to speak, they do updating their merchandise, which has kind of an old school look. Retro look, which is kind of in. And so, you know, it's cool. I don't know how many people buy merchandise from McDonald's. I don't know.

But if it looks cool, maybe people will you know that's the thing you got mcdonald's i mean yeah my kids love mcdonald's you know if there was a hamburger mask i might buy it you know really you know like halloween no i mean that's true that's true it's basically what we're doing with josh here you know lto burger basically made him burger boy yeah exactly so uh no it's cool but and i i kind of want to taste it though it's kind of making me hungry i know i'm like you know it's ready for lunch yet already i'm like starving um no but the other news we have is kit kat which you've seen this campaign

if you're on twitter you have seen this you have seen this because this is so simple because you already know the tagline when you see it you know this is for kitkat because it has a calendar and then it's just two kitkats and then it go back to your calendar because you know it was so familiar i saw it i did not see it like in my feed or anything i admittedly saw this on like the news uh you know feed that we get like online going on to an article but as soon as i saw the picture i mean i got it completely i thought it was brilliant because you look just like you would like on your calendar on your smartphone or something like that that whole bar look and then the kid cat fit in perfect you didn't have to say tagline exactly i love the simplicity of this it's like

simple design high concept though and sometimes pictures tell a thousand words exactly that's all you need and so and you know what else was brilliant this was a entry by someone uh that wasn't even on the roster of agencies for kit kat someone entered it sam i forget his last name but yeah yeah he entered it as a as a entry i think maybe someone had had creative entries for ideas or something so i love that i hope he got paid well after the fact i'm sure he did with how much it's blown up i mean i'm sure he's getting business from it otherwise oh for sure good for anyone out there hey don't be afraid to give it away because it will come back eventually i've built my career on that oh yeah and. And, uh, and other news. So

yesterday there, there was a hearing and we need to get the details on it, but it hasn't been fully released yet as to what happened with Robin hood, but the, uh, the Reddit and Robin hood hearing to see if there was in fact market manipulation, because a lot of the hedge funds, you probably know this a lot better in a deeper way than I'm going to explain it. So maybe I should just let you take it away. I don't know how it's going to play out, but essentially, you know, for everyone,

we even had this, I think, on a couple of news episodes where GameStop stock was essentially, there was a group of thread on reddit where people were talking about all right let's go buy reddit let's show the man because a lot of people had shorted the stock were essentially saying it was worthless and uh and the guys on reddit were like all right we're gonna fight the man so we're gonna go have everyone buy it which drove the price up because i mean it just shows the power they had millions of people like or users that were following this article so even if they were buying you know 20 30 dollars worth you're talking about 30 40 50 million dollars in movement so that drove the stock price up and then it kind of got momentum

and went to like 300 400 when true value of that stock was in the single digits exactly exactly and I think it's come back down now but robin hood's essentially shut down your ability to buy or sell it for a period there when it went up and that was just the biggest stink in the world i was gonna say but what is your opinion on that because i think that goes i know we talked about this a little bit but it's continuing it's a continuing story and it's so relevant but it goes so against any way, shape, or form the brand of what Robinhood is supposed to be. And as well, it goes against the whole system of just free market, right? Oh, it totally does.

And their claim, and this will all play out, was that it was more about their liability not just because they say again not saying i believe any of this but it's using what they're saying that they have to make sure there's not manipulation happening if they keep the market open they keep allowing it and there is something nefarious happening they could, their risk or liability is potentially, I think it's more complex than I just described, but I think on its surface it's related to that. So they have to do their due diligence,

and in doing their due diligence, they take it down and it looks very bad and they run a really bad Super Bowl commercial. Oh, that was so bad. So I don't know. I'd really like to know, like you're probably never going to hear this, but, you know, what their valuation, you know,

they're a private company now, but they're actually going public this year. But I'd like to know how many, what their user base went, what there was before all this and what it is now and the money in it. I'd be surprised if it went down. The money? No, Robinhood users. Oh. oh because i mean if if they're gonna like basically shut you off from being able to invest stock i mean i'm sure there's total jump shit there was a lot i mean i still have it i don't even invest but i i moved i moved some stuff

from it to another i still use it a little bit but I moved about half of it into another app. So it's like, this is bad optics and just bad precedent. You got to figure it out, but it just shows you, hey, the man isn't always in control. Sometimes the people can rise up. So I think you're going to see more of that, by the way, across stocks. There's been a couple I think they've tried to pop off they haven't gotten as popular i think you're seeing a lot of this with like crypto and stuff like that oh yeah i love me some crypto now oh yeah it kind of drives me crazy watching it go up and down but i just kind of i've turned it off now i'm like i don't even want

to i'm gonna check back in in a year i think i think uh i think it's here for at least that long I don't know about five years but you make some money in a year but you never know I'm sure people didn't think digital money was gonna be a thing

Vimo you know I'm sure people thought that was gonna go away sooner or later but here we are right in the thick of it

cool well it was a good week and as always RIP Rush Limbaugh and so but yeah

looking forward to everything that's coming up, and I hope everyone's enjoyed it. You know where to find us, theradcast.com, at the.rad.cast on Instagram, and we'll see you next time. See you. Have a great weekend. Yo, guys, what's up? Ryan Alford here.

Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it but do us a favor if you've been enjoying the radcast you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else 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 directly 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