Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Importance of Consequential Strangers & The Disruption of the Ad Biz

Episode Date: November 28, 2020

Getting kids to eat their vegetables can be frustrating for parents. However there are some techniques that can help sway your kids to at least try to eat some vegetables. This episode begins with a couple of really easy ones. https://psychcentral.com/news/2020/02/21/when-both-parents-eat-veggies-kids-more-likely-to-follow-their-example/154381.html You likely don’t give a lot of thought to how important strangers are to you because, well, they are strangers. However, certain strangers can play a far more important and seemingly mysterious role in your personal and professional success. Melinda Blau, author of the book Consequential Strangers (https://amzn.to/2NdVWKv) joins me to discuss this. Do you or someone in your circle get motion sickness? Ever wonder why that is and the best cure for it? I’ll discuss some interesting findings from a leading researcher on motion sickness that can offer some real relief. http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/how-to-beat-motion-sickness?page=2 How many ad messages do you think you are exposed to every day? The number will astound you. Journalist Ken Auletta, author of the book, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (https://amzn.to/2tL09x8) joins me to explain why the advertising business is in turmoil and the rather serious consequences it can have on you as a consumer. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! https://monday.com One platform, better teamwork - First 2 weeks free! https://bluechew.com First order free! Use promo code; SOMETHING https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! https://www.walgreens.com/topic/promotion/mywalgreens.jsp Shop, Save & Stay Well - Join for free at myWalgreens.com https://deals.dell.com/en-us or 1-800-BUY DELL for the best Black Friday savings available now! https://wondery.com/shows/jacked-rise-of-the-new-jack-sound/ Jacked: Rise of the New Jack Sound the new podcast from Wondery. Listen and subscribe today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future.

Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, if you want you get your podcasts. You can feel close to a consequential stranger. You may not see the person often. You may not be in each other's lives.

You may not invite the person ever to your house for dinner. But when you see him or her, it's a very enjoyable time. Plus, if you get motion sickness when you travel, I have something to tell you that will help you feel a lot better. And advertising, it's everywhere. And the more of it you see, the less effective it becomes. Facebook has done studies that say that if you do a video ad on Facebook, if you don't capture someone's attention in the first few seconds, they will tune out.

In the past two seconds? Oh my God, how do you do that? All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests,

but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. I spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show.

There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

As you might imagine, the majority of the audience for this podcast is American. United States, Canada. And it makes sense. I mean, I'm American. Many of the guests and the other content is all from Americans. There's certainly an American focus to this podcast. But with that said, it is amazing to me how many people listen all over the world. We get reports from our hosting company and we can see where all the

downloads happen. And I think literally or almost literally, every country on the planet, at least somebody is listening to this podcast every month. In fact, last month, the report showed three downloads from Vatican City. So I don't know if the Pope is listening himself, but it's pretty cool not only how big this audience has grown, and it has grown a lot over the past year, but also how vast the audience is from all over the planet.

First up today, here's a sentence that no parent has ever said in the entire history of the world. My child is eating far too many vegetables. So if this is a problem in your house, there are some ways to encourage your kids to eat more veggies. For one thing, if you have a garden or if your child's school has a garden, the children are more inclined to eat the vegetables grown in it. But also, research shows that if parents eat their vegetables, kids will too. The researchers found that dinner is the most important meal at home when it comes to teaching children to eat vegetables.

The families participating in the study often ate dinner together, where kids could see their parents consuming vegetables. Now, not to sound like your mother, but chances are, you and the rest of your family are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. So anything you can do to increase consumption for everyone, the better. And that is something you should know. When you look at where you are in your life today, you got here in large part as a result of the people in your life. Your family, your friends, your colleagues and mentors and other important people helped you get to where

you are today. But what you probably haven't considered are the seemingly unimportant people, the strangers, the casual acquaintances. It turns out that these people have had a huge impact in your life and continue to, and they're worth paying attention to. Melinda Blau has researched this and wrote a book about it called Consequential Strangers. Hi, Melinda. Thanks for being here. So, start by explaining, if you will, exactly how these seemingly inconsequential people

really have an important role to play in our lives. Let me give you an example. You have a mechanic, and you don't think much about him until your car breaks down. But having that mechanic is a very, very important part of your life. You go to the office, you have many co-workers or your neighbors. You may not have a lot-workers or your neighbors. You may not have a lot of words with your neighbor,

but he or she might tell you about a sale that's going on in town. The thing is that our intimates know what we know, and they think the way we think. Consequential strangers, by definition, are different. So they bring us novelty, new information. Studies have shown that they really matter when we're sick because it's a fresh perspective. It's someone else to rely on than just the family because our families tend to get burnt out when we're sick. And so consequential strangers are important and do matter. So it is what it is. These strangers, these inconsequential people we run into will tell us about a sale or give us new information when we're sick,

that kind of thing. But why is this so important to talk about? What's the big so what here? One of the things is that, you know, when we walk through the world, many of us have so many things to do and so much on our minds, and there are a lot of choices to make every day. You cannot simply depend on your intimates for that information and those choices. It's also a very, very important spiritual act to know that you're not alone in this world,

that there really are people that are connected to you, however tenuous those connections might seem, you really aren't alone. And if you avail yourself, people are like resources for you. And so it maximizes your resources. People who have an awareness of their consequential strangers are more likely to get through difficult times in their lives. awareness of their consequential strangers are more likely to get through difficult times in their lives. They're more likely to hear information earlier than someone who's isolated. And they also tend to live longer.

I mean, there's some wonderful epidemiological research that suggests that people who have broader social networks live longer than people who are isolated. People who are depressed, for example, many of them are depressed because they just don't have people in their lives to talk to. So it's very important to have intimates. That's been established for a long time. But what we're just getting to in science is the realization that it's not just the intimates, it's our so-called weak ties that also matter. But isn't there a progression? Because a lot of the people in your life now started as strangers.

In fact, many of them, by definition, must have at one point been strangers, and then they became maybe acquaintances, and then maybe they became friends. So consequential strangers often don't stay that way. There's a range of consequential strangers. You know, the person who you play golf with on occasion is a consequential stranger. Consequential strangers are people who you usually have one thing in common with, whereas your intimates, you do a lot of different things with, and your lives overlap in a lot of different ways. So, you know, we can't possibly have 500 best friends.

For example, if you think of Facebook, most of the people on Facebook are consequential strangers, and they're very happily, they stay at that level, and that's a good thing. So it's not a matter of like, oh my God, I can't handle all these people in my life. They are already in your life. I'm just saying, pay attention to them. You will end up getting more information, more support, and more companionship than you realized before. So what you're saying, I think, is that we don't take these relationships with

these consequential strangers too seriously, because by their nature, they're strangers, so we don't give them a whole lot of thought, but maybe we should. Right, that is exactly my point. And consequential strangers are usually different from us, and we can learn something from them. I don't mean just the information. We can learn something about the differences. It's a different perspective. So if you, for example, you have a problem and you mull it over with your family, if you take that problem to someone else, he or she may suddenly have a totally different slant on it

and say, did you consider this or did you consider that? And that's what consequential strangers are good for. You know, we often tend to either think of relationships as either close or not close, but you can feel close to a consequential stranger. You may not see the person often. You may not be in each other's lives. You may not invite the person ever to your house for dinner. But when you see him or her,

it's a very enjoyable time. And he's always in your life. You know that he's there if you need him. And it seems like I was saying earlier that most close friends pretty much had to start off as consequential strangers. Absolutely. You know, there's a progression. You go from stranger to consequential stranger to friend to best friend to soulmate. You know, there's a continuum of relationships, and relationships are very fluid. They don't stay the same, and if your circumstances change,

your consequential strangers often change. For example, I moved up to Northampton, Massachusetts out of Manhattan many years ago. And when I first got there, I was totally at sea. I didn't realize why, but I suddenly found out that what it was is that I lost all my consequential strangers. The green grocer who knew that I liked Concord grapes and told me when it was in season, people who I'd run into on the street and have a 10-minute conversation with and really enjoy those 10 minutes, none of those people were there anymore.

So when you move to a new town or an new office or you get divorced, your life situation changes. You need to replenish your supply of consequential strangers. I'm speaking with Melinda Blau, and the name of her book is Consequential Strangers. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets

new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple,

or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to something you should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI,

discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your

podcasts. So Melinda, I'm wondering if you can go backwards. Can you go from consequential stranger to friend and then go back to being a consequential stranger or not? I would say once you're a good friend, I don't think you can, because when you share certain intimacies, you can't. I think it depends on what the relationship was before. I had a funny experience with my college roommate when I was talking about this book years ago, and I first was planning to write it. And I referred to her as a consequential stranger, and she said to me, Hey, I knew your mother and father. I knew who you dated. I lived with you. How could I ever be a consequential stranger? And she was right.

In that case, of course, you can't go backwards, even if the person is out of your life right now. But there do seem to be people in my life that are inconsequential strangers. There is no consequence to the relationship. I'm thinking like when I walk my dog down the street and there's the neighbors down there and we wave to each other because we all know we live on the same street, but there's never anything more than that. And there likely never will be anything more than that. Those relationships are really just baloney. I mean, there's nothing there.

I mean, I say hi to them, they say hi to me as if we care, but we really don't care. There's no relationship, and there never will be. It seems very phony. Well, listen, every relationship is different, and I don't think it really is phony. I think that when you live in a town or you live on a street you live in a building and there are people that you pass by every day and you may not know what they do you may not know their name um you're all part of what just by circumstance you're part of the same quote community and it's

it's a nice thing to actually know that person's name. You don't have to share a lot of time with the person, but say, hi, Mac, how are you doing today? I don't think it's phony. I think it's about connecting and courtesy and feeling that you're part of something bigger as opposed to, you know, most of us go about our day and we're very focused on what we have to do,

and it doesn't take a lot of time to be nice to people. And I'm telling you that it makes you feel better. I've had people where I've tried an experiment with a friend who is chronically depressed, and I said to her, try to go through the next week and just don't even speak to people if it doesn't feel right. But at least smile at them and nod hello. And she did that, and she really felt better after that week.

And this is somebody who was chronically depressed. Well, it's kind of nice to hear that it's okay for people to have people who are just in the periphery, that you never really pull them into your circle of friends, and that's fine. That's right. In fact, I say in the book, I have the line, it's not an insult to call someone a consequential stranger. And it's not. It's saying, I have these people in my life

who come in and out of my life, they're there for a very, very small purpose, they may not have a huge effect on my life who come in and out of my life, they're there for a very, very small purpose. They may not have huge effect on my life, but some of them do. I mean, sometimes you don't know how a consequential stranger is going to affect your life. So, for example, you might go to a Christmas party every year, and you know the hostess, and you've met some of her friends. So friends of friends are consequential strangers, and you've met some of her friends. So friends of friends are consequential strangers. And you have small talk at the party. Now, you might label that small talk phony, but it's social grease.

Let's put it that way. And you go home, and months later you realize that you have to go to India. And suddenly you remember that Sally's friend's husband does business in India. So you call up Sally and say, could you give me your friend's husband's telephone number? And because he met you at one point, he's very happy to give you telephone numbers

of people in Mumbai. And that's how, when you're aware of those connections, as I say, you have all these resources at your fingertips, which if you're not aware, you don't even realize it. You think of yourself as I'm in this little tunnel with me and my loved ones and the people I work with and, you know, I go and I come and that's it. But we're really attached to many more people than we realize. So perhaps if you snapped your fingers and all of your consequential strangers disappeared, you'd really notice it, but unless you did that, you don't notice the role they play and how important they can be.

That's right. Really, before I even read the term consequential strangers, I experienced that loss when I moved up to Massachusetts, and I had no consequential strangers. I experienced that loss when I moved up to Massachusetts, and I had no consequential strangers. And for lack of a better word, I called them acquaintances, and I went on an acquaintanceship campaign. And I decided I didn't need good friends. I just needed to be able to walk down the street and recognize somebody, to walk into a store and have them know something that I liked, or, you know, to be able to call up a doctor, to ask my neighbor, look, I'm going to be out of my house for two weeks.

If you see anything strange, could you call me? I couldn't do that when I first got to Northampton because I had no consequential strangers. You know, as you just said that, I mean, that is like the perfect example of a consequential stranger that matters. When you walk into your, whatever, your favorite coffee shop or your favorite restaurant or your favorite store and the person knows you by name, there's something nice about that. It doesn't mean it's on its way to a friendship. It's just nice to have a person know who you are and maybe what you like, and that's it. But because no one of these consequential strangers makes that big a difference in your life, we kind of don't think much about them. Right. No one has. As far as I know, no, there's no lay book about this. There are some professional books that have been written about sociability in public places.

You know, so they talk about things like cafes and ballparks and places. Sociologists have looked at those kind of places where people socialize in public. And the truth is, consequential strangers are mostly in public. They are public friends, many of them that you will never, ever invite to your home. And the interesting thing is that one of the things that happened to me writing this book is that I stopped trying to categorize relationships. There's no way to say, this is an X kind of consequential stranger

as opposed to a Y kind of consequential stranger because, as you say, the relationships change. And the other thing is that sometimes you can have a consequential stranger, and this happened to me this past summer. I met a woman who, she was friends of friends. I had never talked to her. And at the time I met her, she had stage 4 bone cancer. She was always smiling, and I couldn't understand why.

And we started having conversations on the beach. And I was astounded at how much she could tell me and she said to me at one point she said you know i can't talk this way with my intimates because i know i'm going to die and when i say that they think i'm being morbid but i can say it to you and by the same token i i was um more relaxed talking to her about her treatment and what she was going through than a close friend who's going through cancer because I had this emotional knot in my stomach every time I talked to my friend. And by the end of the six weeks, I really felt like, this may sound strange, I really felt like I loved this woman. We had shared a very,

very deep emotional bond, but we were still consequential strangers. We really weren't in each other's lives, and yet it was a very, very meaningful relationship for me. I learned a lot, and it was very emotionally satisfying as well. So we can't really categorize relationships as either or, you know, either they're emotional and intimate or not. You know, I've read and talked to people about this idea that when you look at the things that have happened in your life, so much of it is the result of happenstance, right place at the right time, chance encounter with someone. And what you're talking about is a big part of this, that so much of the opportunities that present themselves to us

are the result of people we don't really know. It's not the friend that gives us a job. It's a friend of a friend that gives us a job, or something opens up because you meet somebody on the train or the plane or the bus or whatever. Exactly. And we have much, much research that really shows that that's true. You talk about jobs. In 1973, a sociologist named Mark Granovetter first talked about what he called the strength of weak ties.

And Granovetter was the first to show, by interviewing people who had recently gotten jobs, and this is people at all levels, managers, workers, rank-and-file people. And when he was interviewing them, at that time, the conventional wisdom was you get a job through connections. It's who you know. But everybody assumed that the who you know meant you know your father your your great uncle pete people who had a vested interest in helping you get a job but every time he interviewed people um all the the workers kept saying to him when he

said so i guess you got this through a friend and they'd say no not a friend an acquaintance and when he heard it enough times, he started looking at that and he realized that these weak ties were really where the information and the job opportunities lay, not in the intimate circles. And since then, many, many studies have been done to show the strength of weak ties. So you're absolutely right. It's not so much chance encounters. We think it's chance encounters, but really it's part of this broader social network that

we forget we're part of. Right, because these people are so easy to overlook and forget, but you've pointed out quite clearly that they do matter, that they have a real role to play in your life and not one to ignore. Melinda Blau has been my guest. Her book is called Consequential Strangers, and you will find a link to her book in the show notes. Thank you, Melinda. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney.

There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice.

Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

You are bombarded every day by advertising. It is everywhere. It's on your phone, TV, radio, podcasts, billboards, bus benches, shopping carts, everywhere. Why is it really that effective? Something has changed. And in fact, the changes in the advertising industry are so profound, the whole industry is in turmoil. And that affects all of us because advertising is the fuel for a lot of businesses. And advertising subsidizes things like TV, radio, podcasts. And if it all stops working, then what?

Ken Oletta is a journalist and author, and his latest book is called Frenemies, The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business and Everything Else. Hi, Ken. So explain how the ad business is changing and what it means and why it's important to people. The most used device we have today is no longer our desktop or our laptop. It's our mobile phone. The mobile phone is as personal to us as our wallet or our purse. We don't lend it to someone.

And an ad on a mobile phone feels like an interruption. So advertisers say, well, God, what I have to do is figure out something that doesn't feel like an interruption. And actually, you know, the more I know about you, and I have all this data, I know, you know, what you read, what you watch, what you purchase, what time you wake up, what you eat, et cetera. So the more I can use that information to send personalized messages to you that maybe you will find useful about sales or about a discount we can offer you, maybe that will replace the ad. And you say, well, that's interesting. So, Ken, you're walking down the street. We know you bought at Barney's a sport jacket two months ago.

If you walk into Barney's, which is only two blocks away from you, and I know that because I can locate you on your GPS, if you go into that Barney's today, we'll give you 20% off on that sport jacket. So the question is, how will I respond to that? Will Ken say, hey, that's great, that's a real discount, that's a service to me? Or will Ken say, how the hell do you know so much about me? What about my privacy? And that's a fundamental question in the future, privacy. From the consumer point of view, though, I don't know how people respond to that message from Barney's. I find them annoying because usually they come right after I've left Barney's and I was just there. Why didn't you give me the deal 20 minutes ago? And then for the next five days, I see advertising is good, but it's easy to cross the

line. And then people just hate it. And there's this whole movement of how do we block the ads? Let's fast forward over the commercials. Let's get rid of this. And you look at the data, 20% of people have a cell phone in the U.S. block ads. They use an ad blocker. And in Western Europe, it's one third of people who use an ad blocker. Or you look Europe, it's one-third of people who use an ad blocker. Or you look at, you mentioned skipping the ads, 55% of the people who record programs skip the ads when they watch those programs. I mean, that's stunning. So people are basically voting how they feel about advertising with that in that. And so they're empowered to actually kill the ads. But when they kill the ads,

they kill more than just the ads. Sure, because if they're not watching the commercials that are basically supporting those TV shows, those TV shows will go away. Absolutely right. And then you look at something like things that accustom us to watch things without ads, like Netflix. Netflix has no ads. It not only has no ads, but it changes the way we view television. For instance, I don't have to wait until 9 o'clock to watch a show, as the network wants me to do. I can watch it when I want.

By the way, I can watch as much as I want. I don't have to wait a week to watch the second episode. And third, I can watch it without commercial interruption. And so it trains a whole generation of people to think of television in a very different way and television without advertising. And that's what Amazon does, not just Netflix. And that's what Apple TV is doing and YouTube does. And that becomes a big deal.

Now, they're a subscription model, and people can do that, but in part they do that by relying less on cable. So people do the skinny bundle of cable and decrease the amount of money they spend on cable and put a little more into the Netflix. It does seem, though, and I don't know what the statistics are, that I'm bombarded by far more advertising messages today than I used to be.

So I get the sense that everything is fine because these advertisers keep spending money to come at me so it must be working. But they're frantic. They're basically just throwing stuff up against the wall and seeing what sticks. And a lot of those ads are just ineffective.

I mean, you're bombarded by roughly 5,000 ad messages a day. And the proliferation of different platforms means that there are many more places where those ads can appear, but you pay much less attention to them. I mean Facebook has done studies that say that if you do a video ad on Facebook, if you don't capture someone's attention in the first two seconds, they will tune out. And two seconds? Oh my god, how do you do that? But it seems right, doesn't it? If you're the viewer, you think you got two seconds and I'm moving on. Yeah, and in fact, increasingly we do move on, and we're annoyed by those interruptions. And we get more and more annoyed.

I mean, I spent many, many years in the radio business before doing the podcast, and one of the big complaints about radio has always been there's so many commercials. And when I was a disc jockey back in my day, you know, maybe you would play four commercials in a row. I now hear 10, 12 commercials nonstop, back-to-back, in a row. That's crazy. And if you're spoiled, having watched Netflix or Amazon or YouTube, where you don't have to watch commercials,

you say, my God, I can't stand them. Actually, it makes you more angry with the commercials because you've been spoiled by the fact that you don't have to watch them in other places. And it's a real problem. And so what do they do? Then the advertisers, the agencies and the clients, they say, well, wait, we have to do different things. Hey, what if we did six-second commercials instead of 30-second or one-minute commercials? And think about that.

So let's say you take a two-minute block, an advertising block of two minutes that normally would be four commercials, four 30-minute, 30-second commercials or two one-minute commercials. But let's say you take that two-minute block and you do each six-second ad, so you have 20 ads within two minutes. Would you like to be the seventh or eighth six-second ad? I mean, sandwiched in between that? It's kind of another pipe dream. It ain't going to happen. It ain't going to work. You talked earlier about your Barneys example and asked the question, and I'd like to know what the answer is if you know it, and that is generally when people get those messages that, hey, if you go in today, you'll get 20% off because we know where you are

and we know where you like to shop, do people generally like that or do people generally find that intrusive? I don't think we know enough yet. I think this is something that is just coming online now and in a much more aggressive way than has in the past because in part because of the desperation the advertisers are desperate to figure out what the hell will work here and and they don't quite know, so they're literally trying lots of different things. They're trying to figure out how do we entice you to pay attention to us and not feel like we're intruding or interrupting you. And they're going to try lots of different things

in that regard, including, you know, basically the equivalent of a discount, you know, 20% sounds pretty good. It sounds like a lot. On the other hand, if you just bought a sport jacket, why don't you buy another one, even with the 20% discount? Right. Well, but that's the coupon mentality always, you know, when you go to the grocery store and you buy 10 frozen dinners, you walk out of the store with a coupon for more frozen dinner. Well, I just bought 10. I don't need a coupon for more frozen. And you're giving me a coupon as I'm leaving the store. I don't need it. You know, then what if they say, instead of that frozen dinner coupon or the sport jacket coupon, what if they say, how about a free ticket to a Paul Simon concert?

I mean, there are things, or how about, you know, we'll give you free this for a month or something. They're going to try lots of different things that they haven't tried yet to try and corral you to buy their product. And is this on its way to a new norm, or is this frantic, let's try everything, just going to keep continuing? I think it will keep continuing. Basically, if you think about it,

they're kids throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. And throw more spaghetti. Let's just see what sticks. We don't know what works. This is a new world, and we're trying to figure it out. And so we'll experiment. The truth is, they should. That's what they have to do. I'm sure there are people, and I've heard this discussed, it's often with people that have been in the advertising business for a long time, that say, despite all this noise, you know what? Direct mail is still very effective for a lot of businesses. And that's very old school.

It couldn't be more old school. And yet, a lot of people continue to use direct mail. Oh, there's no question about that. You know, the truth is, if advertising, people argue about how big advertising marketing is. It's between a $1 trillion worldwide to $2 trillion worldwide industry. But only about a quarter of that money is spent on actual advertising as we think of traditional ads. Most of it is spent on what's called marketing. Direct mail is marketing. Public relations is marketing. Design is marketing. Coupons is marketing. So increasingly, the bet

is that you could reach people not through traditional 30-second or intrusive ads, but other kinds of marketing devices. Now, most people, when they get a direct mail, throw it in the garbage. It doesn't feel personal, but it'll be done now through instant messages, for instance. And of course, they have data on you that will be more personalized to you, so maybe, maybe it will gain your attention. Well, one of the vagaries of advertising that I've always noticed is everybody's definition of success is different. You know, when Coca-Cola runs a commercial, it's not that they're expecting and going to measure how many people run out and buy a Coke in the next 10 minutes. But companies that advertise on podcasts, a lot of them are direct response advertisers that use promo codes.

That's exactly what success is going to be determined by. But ultimately, the ultimate measure of success is whether your product is selling or not. And the assumption is that marketing or advertising will help determine. The assumption is that that's an investment, not an expense. So where does this leave us? I mean, is this just a spectator sport and we'll watch what happens? Or what are the ramifications of all of this? Well, first of all, the consumer is in the driver's seat.

I mean, the ultimate frenemy, which is one of the reasons I use that as the title of my book, is the consumer who basically is empowered to say, I accept or I reject your advertising. And so the advertiser needs the consumer who basically is empowered to say, I accept or I reject your advertising. And so the advertiser needs the consumer, and yet the consumer is the biggest competitor. So that's why the consumer is a frenemy. How that shakes out, this is a jump ball question. I mean, for instance, one of the basic questions is, will the consumers say that you have too much data on me and I worry about my privacy, and therefore will government respond by saying we have to intrude and pass some legislation to protect privacy the way they have recently in Western Europe? The 28 nations of Western Europe got together and said people have to opt in to allow companies to use their cookies.

In the U.S., you have to opt out in order to prevent people from using the data that's contained in your cookies. And if they change it and made the rule here the way it is in Western Europe, that would profoundly affect advertising. If, for instance, the government weighs in and says, hey, wait a second, we think that Amazon and Google and Facebook and Apple have too much power. They're monopolies. And we have to pursue them as potential monopolies the way we pursued Microsoft in 2000 and brought them to an antitrust trial. So government is the 800-pound gorilla here,

which potentially could decide to become much more aggressive or not. And in part, that depends on how the public feels. If the public is not concerned about their privacy, as for instance, many Facebook users were not over the years. It does seem to me, I mean, it's just my experience, that, you know, again, going back to your Barney's example, that'd be nice if that was, you know, one of five advertisements I saw all day. But, you know, there are so many websites I go to where I get a couple of pop-ups, 16 banner ads, and yeah, maybe that cool Barney's thing is in there, but it just becomes another annoyance because there's just so much of it.

No question. There's advertising fatigue. And advertisers know that, but they have a hard time acting on it because they're so reliant on advertising and so anxious that advertising may not work, that they have to try it in new ways, and therefore besiege you even more with ads. Don't you think that part of this is, you know, it wasn't all that long ago that if you were going to advertise, it was, you know, direct mail, newspapers, radio, TV, and probably one or two things I'm not thinking of. Now there are so many possibilities.

We could try Facebook. We could try Google. We could try Google. We could try banner ads. We could try that there's no rule books thrown out, and so nobody knows what to do. We can try ads on the sidewalk. Yeah, I've seen those. On buildings. I mean, novelty becomes real important when you're convinced that your business is being threatened,

you say, what can we do in a new way that maybe will have an impact? And so different ways of advertising, including on the street know, a real possibility. And on the other hand, if everywhere you turn, you're bombarded by an ad, the danger is that you turn off the public. Well, it is so important, not only for people in the ad business, but for all of us, because the role of advertising is changing, The effectiveness of advertising is changing. The method is changing. So there's a lot at stake here. Ken Oletta has been my guest.

He is author of the book, Frenemies, the Epic Disruption of the Ad Business and Everything Else. And there is a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Ken. Thank you, Mike.

Why do some people get motion sickness? Well, mostly it has to do with sensory mismatch, says Robert Stern, a professor of psychology at Penn State, who has studied motion sickness for many, many years. Normally, about a million times a day, the vestibular system, which is the body system that helps regulate balance and motion, and the vision system,

send corresponding signals to the brain. But when those signals don't match, you get motion sickness. For example, if you're in the backseat of your car, your body is feeling the bumps and the acceleration and the turns that the car is making, but your eyes don't see them. All they see is the back of the front seat, which doesn't move in relationship to the person and always remains the same distance away.

And this is why the driver almost never gets motion sickness, because he is seeing what he is feeling. Aside from the standard medications, Dr. Stern recommends that you sit in the front seat if possible and look out the window so you see what you're feeling and you feel what you're seeing. Also, it's important not to travel on an empty stomach. Any small, low-fat meal should help. Fat is very bad because fat and grease, that helps bring about changes in the body that can contribute to the development of nausea.

And that is something you should know. Reviews are always appreciated. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can probably leave a review on iTunes or Stitcher or TuneIn. Wherever you listen. Just take a moment and review this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers.

Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine wherever podcasts are available.