Episode 4: Algorithms vs Marketing Awards, and Building Trust with Your Buyer

Episode Transcript

Garrett: Hello, everyone. And welcome to another… We were talking about we numbers or not or we’re just going to say another day. Another episode of the original marketing podcast.

Brady: Technically number four, though.

Garrett: Technically number four. It’s the fourth episode. If we do them in order, should we do more? I feel like-

Brady: We’ll see.

Garrett: People should see how much worse we get. No, how much better we can get over time.

Brady: Yeah. We got pretty tan last week, though. So good thing it’s not on video or else they would definitely know it’s out of order.

Garrett: You look noticeably tanner.

Brady: Yeah. We both went down to Mexico for two different reasons.

Garrett: Yeah. I feel like I was doing the corporate version and you were doing the vacation.

Brady: The surfing and eating version.

Garrett: It was the best food you had.

Brady: I had a sea bass where the cool thing about it was, I usually don’t like the skin on fish. But when they served it was half a fish. So pretty much like a full filet, half a fish and the skin was up. And he’s like,” You have to eat the skin. It’s the best part. They torched it. They seasoned it. It was very crispy.” They turned my least favorite part of fish into my favorite part of fish.

Garrett: Really?

Brady: So to me, it was special.

Garrett: You ever suck the eyes the out of a fish?

Brady: I did not eat the eyes.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah. It’s a thing though. I was watching Alone. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that show.

Brady: No.

Garrett: Big fan. They drop them off in Vancouver Island. But then this one guy gets super hungry and he sucks the eyes out of the fish.

Brady: I was tempted. I got lobster in the lobster town and the eyeball was there. I didn’t eat it, but I did eat a grasshopper from a street vendor.

Garrett: I had a grasshopper too. It was at this restaurant on inaudible. I’m forgetting it. I was on Twitter. They announced the top 75 restaurants in the world. I booked the reservation that night. I think it got sold out. Amazing food, like tasting menu in Mexico, and they put the grasshoppers from Oaxaca on the menu, but they integrated it. Mexican culinary scene is phenomenon.

Brady: I had some Oaxacan cheese on a shrimp taco, it’s insane.

Garrett: Amazing, right?

Brady: It’s insane.

Garrett: It’s Puerto Nuevo is the one that inaudible.

Brady: That’s the lobster town, yeah. I got two lobsters, the tortillas and beans and rice.

Garrett: Con todo.

Brady: Sure.

Garrett: Yeah. With everything.

Brady: Yeah. My buddy was fluent in Spanish, so I didn’t say a thing the whole trip.

Garrett: I love it. My wife was there and then, she just kind of sometimes because she speaks perfect Spanish and she’s from Costa Rica. Her default is English. I’ll just be trying to speak Spanish and she’s talking English. And then, if it gets bad enough, she’ll just step in and the person’s looking at me like,” Really, dude.”

Brady: Like,” Why did you try?”

Garrett: Yeah, we could have just got to this and inaudible.

Brady: I think it’s respectful to try.

Garrett: Yeah. I’m always, I want to work. I feel like if I had a good three weeks in Mexico, I’d be pretty fluent.

Brady: I went for,” foreign language asado taco.”

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: Gracias.

Garrett: Gracias.

Brady: Yeah, I still attempt it. But we’re pulling up to the guard gates at restaurants and he’s talking about the reservation and how many it’s for, and what time. The guard guys are, I’m just blown away by his Spanish. Because he grew up in Ecuador, but he is Spanish. So he just-

Garrett: Ultra white dude speaks perfect Spanish.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I love that.

Brady: It was pretty fun.

Garrett: Dude, that’s epic.

Brady: Yeah, that’s cool.

Garrett: As you were in Mexico, did you ever have mosquito problems where you thought,” Wow, I wish there was leggings for this”?

Brady: No, but I did get them on my hands.

Garrett: Really?

Brady: I still got some bites on my hands. Mosquitoes love me.

Garrett: Wow. Were you ever on TikTok and saw leggings and-

Brady: No, but I see the transition.

Garrett: Oh, yeah. I’m doing the transition for all of our listeners.

Brady: Into advertising jealousy.

Garrett: Yeah. Let’s talk about some ads. Is there any ads that maybe inspired you recently, Brady?

Brady: I wouldn’t even say it’s recent, but just thinking about the segment advertising jealousy, I’m going to say the TikTok leggings.

Garrett: Which I know nothing about, and I still don’t. In the pre show-

Brady: Which I’m surprised because you have the internet.

Garrett: Yeah, in the pre show, I was supposed to know this, but I do not know this. So maybe explain it to me and the audience, please.

Brady: I’ll explain it to you and maybe a couple people out there. But the TikTok leggings, it was a viral thing on TikTok where I don’t even have a TikTok, so it made over to Instagram. It’s essentially these leggings that are cutting away in the material where it makes your ass look big. That’s all it is.

Garrett: How’d you find out about this, Brady?

Brady: My algorithm was hacked. It’s all been reset now.

Garrett: Yeah, it was hacked? What the heck?

Brady: I went in the right hand corner. I said not interested on every single one. I’m clean now. It’s all just dogs.

Garrett: You went through a phase.

Brady: Yeah. Yeah. It was there. It was there. It was tough to hide. But anyway, it just viral. All these videos of the TikTok leggings to the point where it became a product. People wanted to buy them. They searched TikTok inaudible.

Garrett: Wait, time out. I get what you were saying. Who was making the… Yeah, that’s like-

Brady: It started with influencers. The reason why I picked it is because it was a controlled viral product because there’s two guys who made it and it was all planned.

Garrett: The OG TikTok. They essentially made a product that makes your butt look nice.

Brady: Yes.

Garrett: How does it make your butt look nice? Does have it lines? Is it visible or is it still all black traditional…

Brady: They have a, I don’t know if it’s because of there’s a diamond pattern and I think all that is an elastic material.

Garrett: Understood.

Brady: So it just hugs your butt.

Garrett: But is it fundamentally different legging than a Vuori or a Lululemon?

Brady: No. I think it’s the coloring of it. And then getting into the physics of the product, I do think it hugs the undercarriage of your butt and maybe lifts it.

Garrett: Correct. Then they may or may not have, when launching the campaign, chosen women who have big butts regardless and then gave them-

Brady: Yeah, and it’s all about the angles. You can watch videos on how to make your butt look bigger.

Garrett: Oh, it’s a thing?

Brady: In a photo. It’s all angles. I think for guys to make your bicep look bigger, you kind of stand closer to the camera. I can stand right up at the camera and you can’t tell anything. I’ve tried it, but there’s all these poses. It’s crazy.

Garrett: Okay. There’s a whole industry that we don’t know about.

Brady: Yeah. There’s ways to pose, to look different ways. You’ve seen the Instagram versus reality stuff where it’s celebrities, it’s their edited photo versus inaudible.

Garrett: Correct. Yeah, yeah. Like they never have like,” I can’t get rid of my belly fat,” and they never have it.

Brady: Yeah, exactly.

Garrett: I gotcha.

Brady: But anyway, the reason why I like this is because I knew the TikTok leggings were big and I knew it was a product being sold. But I looked into it and it was all controlled. And so these two guys had a full advertising plan. They reached out to five influencers to start. They had a strategy on Google. They had a strategy on obviously Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram.

Garrett: Do you think they had a strategy before? Do you think they created a strategy afterwards once it worked?

Brady: No, they created the product and then shipped it to start. They’re the first ones, I’m sure everyone makes these now. If you go on Amazon, it’s like all these different vendors. I have it in my notes, they made over 2 million in profit in the first two months.

Garrett: What are they calling this? Because they can’t call them TikTok leggings.

Brady: That’s kind of the title, and how I even researched it was TikTok leggings. And there was all these stories about these two guys who were social media marketers, who just had this idea on, you know, because you know how people always say,” You can’t control viral. Viral just happened.” They did. They planned it out.

Garrett: I mean, sex works.

Brady: If we’re being honest.

Garrett: That’s like Kim K. and Ray J, I’ve just found out apparently planned that whole thing. Did you know that?

Brady: I did not know that.

Garrett: But essentially, it’s the same playbook to a certain extent of sex, but it has no startup class. So essentially they could just make five versions of the product or the product five time, like one version, give it to five people. If each of them has millions of followers and they post it, then I guess you could just have some… How do they ramp production?

Brady: They didn’t get into that, but it went into even their pricing. They landed on buy one, get one free for 34.99. They did a handful of pricing tests initially. It was just cool because it was just a couple marketers.

Garrett: Just two marketers.

Brady: Just two marketers. It wasn’t anyone getting lucky. They totally planned it. The leggings were probably super cheap to produce. In terms of the manufacturing, it’s one of those things where I’m sure they could get ahead on orders and just get more made. I think this was pre supply chain issues. I think even today maybe it could get out of hand. But I thought it was really cool how controlled it was and I didn’t know that. I thought it just kind of happened on TikTok first and then, these people started making the leggings.

Garrett: So in their strategy, why did it go viral with those five influencers? Because you could theoretically create the same product, send it to five influencers and fail. Was it because they already had deep relationships with these influencers? It was due to their expertise in the industry? Why do you think virality occurred? Because you’re right, people say,” I’m going to make something go viral.” I mean, you could even bring up a Mr. Misogynistic in your tape. He who talks about how he controlled everything and,” I went viral,” and in his defense, he did, I guess. I can’t not see him, it appears. It does seem like there is this way to game the game, and some people do it. Now I’ve found the people who do it traditionally are saying what you’re not allowed to say, and that’s how they game it. In this case, the booty that you’re not allowed to booty, I guess, I don’t know. It’s butt ads. Do you feel like that it’s cheating because they’re selling how your butt looks bigger? And could we recreate this differently?

Brady: Yeah. I think a lot of it is because it’s a product worn by the influencers. I think a lot of controlled viral going wrong is like when you and I make a video or an ad, and we try to make it go viral. And then that one video has to go viral versus this. What went viral was women buying these leggings and posting it online. I think maybe one thing that they didn’t plan that I’m not sure how often it happens, but I’m curious because the influencers first posted it and then likely other workout influencers who felt comfortable posting photos like that bought them for their own content. What I’m curious about is how many people bought the leggings just to wear them in the privacy of their own homes, just to look in the mirror with them on, because they’re not that expensive.

Garrett: You have a crazy mind, Brady.

Brady: They’re seeing it all online. I bet people did it. There’s so many people, like I don’t know anyone-

Garrett: Do people buy clothes just for themselves? Maybe. I’m not inaudible.

Brady: It’s just one of those things where I think it could have been the case. I don’t know anyone in my personal-

Garrett: Did your butt look good when you put these on?

Brady: I’d have to go back to the inaudible and stuff. I haven’t tried them myself.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Brady: But it’s got to be one of those things where there’s, because I don’t know anyone in my personal network where they posted TikTok leggings on their Instagram. That’s just not how they do their social inaudible.

Garrett: I’m pulling these up up right now. I want to see what you’re talking about.

Brady: There’s a market who’s willing to post about it so they buy it. They put them on, they do their angles, they post it, they get their likes. But it seemed like one of those products where I bet there are people who bought it just to see if their butt looks the same as they see online, and whether they keep them or throw them away, I don’t know. But they’re at that price point where I found-

Garrett: The before and afters are wild on this. They were.

Brady: Yeah. No, it’s a crazy product. I thought it was so cool that they planned it all and rolled it out this way and it just came across.

Garrett: If we’re not selling butt leggings though, is there any things we could apply to our… You know what I’m saying? Because I feel like it’s easy for Kim K to go viral if she does a sex tape. It’s easy for butt leggings to go viral if it’s flat butt, not flat butt. You know what I mean?

Brady: Yeah. No, it reminds me of the Power Balance bands. I don’t know if you remember those from high school.

Garrett: I know, but I can’t go RLSAs, no RLSAs, and then it goes viral. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You can’t be like no attribution. Nothing goes viral like sex. But there is something to be learned about how they planned it. How do we take a non- viral product and get something out of it similar, do you think?

Brady: The Power Balance just comes to mind because it’s not the sex sells, but it’s just such an accessible product. It’s supposed to make you more flexible and a better athlete, and those things went crazy back.

Garrett: Are you talking about the ones where you go to the mall and they’re put this bracelet on?

Brady: It’s pretty much a rubber bracelet like the Live Strong bracelet with a piece of holographic plastic in it. Their marketing scheme was they actually went to my high school when I was doing track and tried to sell it to the team. They would have you stand there and point your hands out.

Garrett: Correct, I remember.

Brady: And they’d have you twist. And then, they would say,” Point your finger as far as you can twist and remember that spot.” Then you would put the Power Balance bracelet on and you would run the same stretch again and you’d be able to go further. The only reason why you could go further is because you just warmed up your body with the first stretch.

Garrett: What about the one, too, where they have you hold your hand out and they push it down your hand and without the power band, your hand falls, and then when you put the thing on, you can hold them?

Brady: Yeah, because you expect it coming. They just tapped into this.

Garrett: You think it’s all fake.

Brady: It was all fake. Those people I think were in Orange County. They made millions.

Garrett: Okay. But I’m going to pull off the commonalities that I’m trying to get out of you and I’m going to try to pull them out of myself.

Brady: Okay, yeah. I’m not doing them. I know I’m not doing them. My mind just wasn’t connected.

Garrett: No, no. I know. It was not that easy to go from butt leggings to power bands, to drift. Everyone here is the best.

Brady: Yeah, okay. So like, SaaS product are just a non-

Garrett: Non- sex easy gimmicky product. I think the big takeaway in all of this is that the results are believable and they’re in your face. Remember when we used to go to gas stations and they would be like,” Here’s your normal wax. Try this new wax.” All of a sudden your car is just like-

Brady: Yes. So sham, wow.

Garrett: Correct. It’s all the before and after. Think about it. Before you couldn’t look that far. Put the power band. After, you can look further. Before, your butt’s flat. After, your butt’s perfect. You don’t want to work out, change your diet or do anything hard to attain results, try these leggings on. So essentially to me, the virality of the product is not the virality of the campaign. The virality of the product is selling something we all know is fake in a way that’s believable. What do you think about it?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: We all know sex tapes are fake. We all know that leggings are fake. We all know that the power band is fake. But we don’t want to believe it. We want to believe that it’s real. In other words, we want to believe that we could wear some simple bracelet and our life gets better. We want to believe that the best way to fix our butt that we don’t love is to put some new pants on. That’s the easy thing. To me, what they’re selling in this virality of the products, because there a certain virality of the product. Remember, it’s still a demonstration of the product first and foremost. You could send the same influencers, five leggings and if they don’t look as different before and after, it’s not going to go viral. So the product does have to have this virality in its own description. And I think for us trying to find the virality of our own products, as we’re thinking about this it’s, what do we have on our product that’s too good to be true, but is true? Because that’s what it’s like. It’s the thing in our life that’s too good to be true, that is also actually true. Your butt does look better when you put the Tiktok leggings on. It does. It’s too going to be true that your butt looks nice by buying better pants, but your butt does look nicer when you buy those leggings. I think that’s the part we have to find in our own services or offerings.

Brady: Yeah, it’s your market marketing for you. I think that’s what makes it viral. What was the recent company who did the commercial or ad where it was just a bunch of clips from their demos and the reactions of the market?

Garrett: I think you said that was metadata.

Brady: Was it metadata?

Garrett: I think that’s what you said. I don’t remember.

Brady: Okay. I think relevant to B2B software and even with what we do, it’s getting your from a demo the reactions of your market and making an ad out of it, I’d say is very similar to the TikTok leggings.

Garrett: The campaign you want to do for directive, because it’s two door horn a little bit. Toot- toot! People love our proposals. We do more free work than anybody.

Brady: Yeah. And they don’t know it until they get it, right? That’s the gap.

Garrett: They never know how good the proposal is in our marketing. What’s getting them is the gift card. But ironically, the proposal is straight fire and it takes a ton of hours. We put a ton of effort into it. It’s all custom. It’s literally a full, it’s a free strategy, essentially like a multi- tens of thousands of dollars strategy free of charge. But we haven’t figured out how to take that magic moment that happens post marketing and use it to our advantage pre- sales in our marketing. And you’re right. That could be something that is too good to be true and easy. Imagine if you only had to show up for a 45- minute call and you got a full strategy for free of charge and you didn’t have to hire the agency. That’d be pretty nice.

Brady: Yeah. But I think the challenge would be if the TikTok leggings try to sell without the videos and without that social proof. I think that using us as an example, because we have it all on- going recordings. We record every proposal. We get live feedback, people talk about it, they show their excitement. They show they didn’t expect it, but the market doesn’t see that.

Garrett: Well, yeah and we can’t say how great our proposal is if you take that example. We would need, in our case, maybe a Dave Gerhardt or someone who’s got an audience on LinkedIn to us talk about how great this proposal was and then share it. I think someone in B2B who’s done this well is a marketer for hire. A marketer for hire sells essentially upscale Fiverr or upscale Upwork. And they’re selling$ 300 an hour marketing consultants as freelancers, as a platform like Upwork for high- end marketing talent. But they grow through an influencer marketing campaign for B2B, which I thought’s really interesting. If we took that same campaign, think about what makes other things viral, the virality of it wasn’t the two dudes, which actually would’ve been funny if they did before and afters, but essentially it was the influencers that did that.

Brady: Yeah. Yeah. I actually had an idea driving the other day for Gong. It’s along these lines of like a viral campaign.

Garrett: Whoa, whoa. Gong? The big sales unicorn that recently hired a directive, that one?

Brady: Yeah. Yeah, that one.

Garrett: I wasn’t sure if I heard it right.

Brady: I kind of have an in to talk to them about it, that we’ll talk about on the podcast. It just happened the other day, but I was thinking of viral campaigns. And so, you know how Spotify does the end of year wrap up?

Garrett: Yes.

Brady: They tell you your top five artists, top five songs and people post that on Instagram. I was thinking Gong can use their data and give each user of Gong percentage of time on calls. How many hours on average in a week talking about certain topics like-

Garrett: Like the notifications I get on my iPhone that’s time spent on screen and it breaks off-

Brady: Exactly.

Garrett: Something like that.

Brady: But giving people who use Gong their personal stats and doing it in a way where they can post it on LinkedIn.

Garrett: And it shows your progress. Maybe you’re now allowing people to talk longer or you’re hitting better requests.

Brady: Yeah, using their themes and tags to show improvement. Like if I got it, it’d be like,” Brady, in 2022, you spend X amount of hours on calls.” That would be a fun, really cool image to post on my LinkedIn. And now everyone sees it’s Gong and how does Gong have this stayed, and they look into it. I think that could be-

Garrett: Damn, Brady. You got some fire today.

Brady: Well, a little car ride and Golden Spoon does things.

Garrett: You love your Golden Spoon.

Brady: My wife loves Golden Spoon.

Garrett: You don’t like Golden Spoon at all?

Brady: I like it. I’m just not a huge dessert guy. Her timing of when she’s ready for dessert is probably two hours before mine.

Garrett: So it’s like a 5: 00 PM Golden Spoon or something.

Brady: Yeah. It’s like you eat dinner and then, dessert. And for me it’s like, I kind of need a gap because I fill myself up. I don’t have that control to save it. I’ve been working on it, though. I did that in Mexico. I made sure I wouldn’t stuff myself because I knew we’re out to dinner, I’d have to have dessert.

Garrett: Yeah. Get a churro or something.

Brady: But anyway, that that’s the viral idea for Gong.

Garrett: I love it. I love it. I think it’s such a cool concept. You’re talking about virality, and you’re right. We pretend there’s no way to go viral. Let’s be honest. Having a viral product or something that’s sex related probably helps. However, I think there are principles from their campaign that we can all apply, and make our campaigns go further.

Brady: Yeah. No, the whole sex thing is, it’s interesting how that is just an easy route like the Shake Weight. I don’t know if you remember that.

Garrett: Oh, I remember that.

Brady: The Shake Weight blew up.

Garrett: The Shake Weight-

Brady: I don’t know if they expected it. If they have those inaudible.

Garrett: I think they inaudible. I think they expected it.

Brady: That was like, what, the’90s or early 2000s. There was all those crazy workouts, and that one just happened to-

Garrett: Brady, there’s been a lot of things going on for a lot of centuries.

Brady: inaudible. I don’t know. That one’s hilarious.

Garrett: Now, mine that got me inspired is terrible for radio/ podcast. But I’m going to tell you about it.

Brady: I watched it, too. We can work together in creating the visual.

Garrett: Okay. So if y’all don’t know, we aren’t doing a YouTube show yet necessarily of this podcast. And sometimes in this segment, we’re going to show you clips from our imaginary YouTube channel. It doesn’t exist yet. Subscribe likely five stars. If y’all can really support us, we’re going to have a YouTube channel very soon. Now what we’re looking at here is a car ad. It’s for the Ford Raptor, but they’re releasing a Baja or even racier version of the race truck known as the Raptor and it’s Raptor R. The way they introduce it is a campaign called Scary Fast, because it is scary fast. Then, they just ran with the scary theme and I absolutely love it. If you’re listening to this right now, feel free to pause or check it out. It’s the Ford Raptor R Scary Fast video ad. What I love about the ad is it creates emotion for the car because I believe cars should have an emotional connection. I believe products, services, you should sell emotion first. I think a big part of directive success is, I’m a very emotional human and when I’m on these sales calls, I try to create an energy, a feeling, something that you get when you’re a part of a conversation with myself, where you walk away fired up, ready to go. But what I found is, it’s hard to sometimes recreate that energy that you could sometimes get from a conversation with a certain type of human in an ad. And what I felt was so cool about the Ford ad was they didn’t focus on features. They didn’t like, if you think about a Ram ad or a Tundra ad, it’s always like,” The tailgate opens in 36 different ways.”

Brady: Yeah. They had features that aren’t even features of the car like they had the cab glowing.

Garrett: Oh, yeah. The whole thing was inaudible.

Brady: They made it fit like the Scary Movie theme.

Garrett: But you got an emotional connection to the car. Because I think there’s another way to do that same ad where you’re just like,” Oh, was that for Ford?” Now, this was very clearly a car ad that was in a Scary Movie theme that didn’t focus on features but instead focused on you literally creating a desire for you to want to buy the car. That make sense?

Brady: Yeah. I liked how realistic, well, I say realistic. It was a crazy production. A lot of-

Garrett: It’s like Mad Max, a little Halloween.

Brady: inaudible but they did this one clip where it does a jump across a blood moon. And it was a legit jump. That was an actual dirt job that a Ford Raptor R can do. They didn’t go over the top and make them jump over a canyon.

Garrett: No, it was real.

Brady: It made it real. It made you actually think like,” Oh, I could go in the desert and I could do that jump in this truck.”

Garrett: Yeah. If you break it down, what they did, the production was real. The post production was fake. And then the whole thing focused on the theme, which was Scary Fast and you walked away going,” Holy, crud. That truck is sick.”

Brady: Yeah, and it was memorable. I don’t know if that’s part of the plan like movie previews are built to be memorable. That’s how the movies make money is they make previews that make you remember the preview.

Garrett: It’s a preview for the car.

Brady: And go watch the movie. Who remembers car commercials? So they kind of took the movie preview technique because it’s memorable, and now you’re remembering the car commercial.

Garrett: No, it’s so good. At the end they showed you, I remember 700 horsepower. I was like, 700 is sick.

Brady: Yeah, 36- inch tires.

Garrett: 37.

Brady: I thought it was 36.

Garrett: Run the tape. Let us know on the comments.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I’m saying 37. You’re going 36?

Brady: I don’t know.

Garrett: You have to stay confident, Brady.

Brady: How much torque?

Garrett: It was 634?

Brady: I don’t even know how torque was, so I can’t even guess. It was like inaudible.

Garrett: It’s usually less than the horsepower.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: But 700 horsepower, I remember that because it was an even number and it was at the very end. It was a two minute ad and then at 150, they hit me with 700 horsepower. And that was the moment I wanted. Think about how they do, to your point a trailer. It’s like a two- minute trailer and at the end, they give you the cast, right, and you’re like,” Oh, I do love those actors,” or actresses or those people. In this case, it’s like, they hit you with the stuff at the end but it didn’t focus on the features, which I loved. It focused on the emotion and making me want the car. And at the end, it told me the specs. But it had specs and emotion, no features. How do we apply that, Brady? How do we do emotion and specs instead of feature? Because I think that’s what every buyer wants. They want to buy something that they love and they feel emotionally connected to, but they do need the specs.

Brady: Yeah. I want to say they were showing the features just through it ripping through the desert.

Garrett: No, they’re showing outcomes. Those are outcomes, right? Remember, it’s different.

Brady: But they still do that with the double tailgate, right? They’re actually doing something with the double tailgate. So it was similar to that. It’s just that truck is built to rip through the desert. So that’s what they were doing the whole time.

Garrett: Instead of demoing like,” Look how many plumbing pipes you can fit in here.”

Brady: Yeah, and not backing up the trailer with those, I don’t even know how they work, but the cameras that’s somehow wrapped around the trailer so you can see behind it. They’ll show someone actually backing up a trailer. This one, they just showed the truck ripping through the desert because that is what it’s built to do even though 90% of the people who probably buy that truck, it will not touch dirt.

Garrett: Just like the other 90% never back up a trailer.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Right? If you think about, it’s so funny. But wouldn’t you rather sell essentially in this case, I guess they’re selling emotion.

Brady: Yeah, totally. The outcome, the emotion didn’t get into-

Garrett: They had the snake that comes and turns into the shifting handle.

Brady: Yeah. Yeah, they didn’t talk about towing capacity, even though you can tow with it.

Garrett: Obviously.

Brady: You can do all those things. It was just an off- road monster.

Garrett: Blazing through the desert.

Brady: It was a little scary for me, though. I’m not going to lie. When the hand hit the mirror-

Garrett: Yeah, watch out for that hand.

Brady: I didn’t like that. I don’t like scary movies.

Garrett: What’s your least favorite scary movie?

Brady: I don’t watch them.

Garrett: You never watched any of them?

Brady: I started The Babadook once in college and I left.

Garrett: Babadook?

Brady: Babadook.

Garrett: I don’t like scary movies.

Brady: Yeah, it’s a horror movie.

Garrett: I don’t know why I asked that question.

Brady: Some kid was reading this childhood story called the Babadook, and this thing is a monster came to life. It was at a friend’s apartment, I left.

Garrett: Is this a child’s movie or is this actually scary?

Brady: No, this is a legit scary movie. It was so eerie and scary, I went home. I was like,” Okay, I’m not doing this.”

Garrett: I think a part of the reason why I like, yeah, I don’t like scary movies.

Brady: It wasn’t too scary.

Garrett: No, of course.

Brady: Yeah, I wasn’t going to-

Garrett: It’s still to sell cars.

Brady: It was pushing it a little bit, but it wasn’t scary.

Garrett: It did, though. At least, it delivered on the theme. You know what I’m saying?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Do you think part of the reason why I liked it and that it’ll work is because of how committed they were to something different?

Brady: Oh, yeah. It was so different.

Garrett: It wasn’t like any other car ad I’ve seen-

Brady: Yeah, no, like I said, it made you remember a car ad.

Garrett: Yeah. I haven’t seen a good car ad in so long and I love cars. That’s why I was just like,” Finally.” You know what I mean? Like,” Finally, someone made a good car ad.”

Brady: Yeah. I’m curious if they were inspired by the Nacho fries commercials.

Garrett: Okay. Break this down for me.

Brady: Talk about Nacho Fries. They did a whole action movie segment. I think it was for the Super Bowl.

Garrett: Not just for the corny joke where they hand it to people,” Nacho fries,” and they take it back?

Brady: No, it wasn’t like a normal, fast food commercial talking about the$ 5 deal and making it all look way better than it is. They had a full action movie as their commercial for the Nacho Fries. There was some secret agent. I forget it. But I’m curious if whoever created this commercial was inspired by the Nacho Fries movie.

Garrett: And it reminded you a little bit of that.

Brady: Yeah. That’s the first thing I thought of is what other companies have I seen do a movie preview, even though it’s not for a movie and talk about Nacho Fries?

Garrett: See, it reminded me more of the Apple AirPod ads in the sense that they made me feel, because was all about this guy breakdancing through New York City or whatever with his AirPods, and it’s a sick commercial. If you haven’t seen it, it’s amazing. But it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re noise canceling. But then he takes ears out, you hear all the noise. So it’s such a clever way-

Brady: To show the features.

Garrett: Correct. I felt like I was wearing the AirPods. I felt like I was driving the truck. I noticed in the truck ad, there’s this really cool thing, I think we should think about where, when you look into the truck, you can see the driver’s wearing a helmet and the visor’s down. But when they get inside the truck and they show the driver, you can see their eyes and it makes you feel like it’s your eyes. By showing the eyes, it connected you to the ad in a way that you wouldn’t have got. The visor was down on the driver’s helmet.

Brady: Yeah. It would’ve been too anonymous and who’s this professional stuntman kind of thing?

Garrett: Correct. Correct. There’s these little moments that I think make certain ads great. That Apple one was just, the post production, the filming, just the way it was done. But it didn’t focus on how many DBs that, I think that’s the word for the audio files listening right now, you probably just had a cringing heart attack, but whatever the features were of AirPods had nothing to do and everything was, imagine a life without cords, essentially. And that was so cool.

Brady: Yeah. No, I agree. There were a lot of details in that truck commercial that, like I said, just made it realistic. It made it even myself feel like I could do that in the desert.

Garrett: And who doesn’t like a cactus that catches fire? There’s some things that were just appealing too like-

Brady: Yeah. And that was like the eeriness on a scary movie. It was almost like a multiverse. It reminded me of Stranger Things. There’s the upside down and normal life.

Garrett: It did have a certain feel like-

Brady: You had the cactus on fire in the normal. Then on fire, and then normals like,” What world am I in?” The truck handled-

Garrett: Anything.

Brady: Yeah. It did have Stranger Things vibes. I think even at the end they had it in big red letters.

Garrett: It totally, it was-

Brady: Which is fine. I’m not knocking all these comparisons on Nacho Fries and Stranger Things. I think it’s smart.

Garrett: No, it’s beautiful. And you got to be inspired and pull off of, I think, popular culture and resonate with it, which is a great transition to marketing and culture.

Brady: Let’s do it.

Garrett: So award shows. What do you think about award shows essentially paying for your own fame?

Brady: In advertisement or in general? Are we talking O- scores, Grammys? What are we…

Garrett: Wait, what did you call them?

Brady: O- scores. I don’t know.

Garrett: I love that.

Brady: Like a score, O- scores.

Garrett: Yeah, it’s new. That’s a new one.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: We would do great at that one.

Brady: I think so.

Garrett: No, what I’m saying is award shows. I feel like our culture was really big on award shows, advertising. There’s Cannes. I’m probably saying it wrong and be like,” Did you win any awards at Cannes last year?” But I think it’s Cannes. I’m not sure. I think it’s Cannes. You could tell how good I am at advertising or how little I-

Brady: Doesn’t search engine land have…

Garrett: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. US search awards, search engine, inaudible awards. They’ve got search engine journal award. Everybody’s got an award because it’s a great way to make money. Now my question to you is, our award shows relevant anymore, number one. And do you think they really influence buying? They influence behavior. Okay. I’ll give you the frame of reference. If you hear that a show, a movie or a show, movies are Emmys?

Brady: I have no idea.

Garrett: No shows are Emmys, movies or Oscars, I believe.

Brady: Something like that. No. I think that’s right. They have one for Broadway, too.

Garrett: Which I don’t care about.

Brady: And there’s a country music one.

Garrett: Which I do care about.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: But those are the country music awards, the CMAs. Now, if you find out some movie won an Oscar, are you more likely to see it, Brady?

Brady: I think over time that has changed for me because that’s what I wanted to talk about. I feel like even the entertainment award shows are becoming less relevant and it’s so obvious that it’s an inner circle thing.

Garrett: Staged or fake?

Brady: I think it’s staged. I think it’s-

Garrett: No, no. The Chris Rock, the slap.

Brady: Oh I think it was real. I’ve looked a lot into it. There’s these things with Scientology. If you get disrespected, you have to go up and slap the person or else people in the Scientology community will slap you.

Garrett: Whoa.

Brady: I think that… I’m just spending some time online.

Garrett: You were spending some time online.

Brady: inaudible. I’m checking things out. I’m not spitting facts right now.

Garrett: For all those who aren’t aware, every other episodes were a conspiracy podcast and we’re going to be going deep into these things.

Brady: I read some things that entertained me. I like to get to the point where I stopped my research because I actually want to believe that there’s some crazy shit out there like that. I think it was real.

Garrett: You think it was real?

Brady: I think it was real. Because they’re still dealing with it. Chris Rock hasn’t even met with him yet.

Garrett: Well, he issued a big apology that got a lot of retweets.

Brady: Yeah, I know. There’s that part of it on like, how long if it was staged-

Garrett: Because it was finally done, and then he brought it back. Isn’t that brilliant?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Because he cared so much. He had to wait until no one cared about it and then, issues his apology so he could get his media cycle again.

Brady: Yeah. It’s like the Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Beyonce should have won moment. How much of that was-

Garrett: I don’t think Kanye does anything scripted.

Brady: …Kanye controlling his own fame whether it’s conscious or not.

Garrett: Oh, that’s a thousand percent conscious.

Brady: But I do not think Chris Rock saw that coming.

Garrett: I don’t either. I believe it was completely real, but my point being, if it wasn’t for that slap the Oscars as a live viewing event and an actual show is irrelevant. It’s gone. It’s not a part of society anymore.

Brady: Yeah, I totally agree. I think it’s because for music, I can explore my own music. I can find what I want to listen to. For movies, too. I know every movie coming out. I can make my decision. Personally, I don’t care who wins an award or should I see it because they won this or that.

Garrett: The algorithms are more important than award shows and it’s inaudible.

Brady: Yeah, because they’re stronger, I trust them more. I think back in the day in the’90s and maybe 2000s, you would sit down with the family, watch the award show, and maybe plan your next blockbuster movie rental because of it.

Garrett: But you’re right, though. The algorithms are more important than the award show. When I log into Netflix, I just look what’s trending now or what’s recommended for me. When I go into Apple Music or Spotify, it’s all about the algorithm knowing what I like and just giving it to me, not me going,” What does my favorite critic think?” And” Oh, what does Pitchfork give this album?” Or” What did Rotten Tomatoes say?” Now I still like peer reviews and I like to combine peer reviews with the critic reviews just to dump on the critics, sometimes I feel like.

Brady: Oh yeah, I still look at Rotten Tomatoes. I have to see Paddington 2. It got a 100%.

Garrett: Did you see Paddington 1?

Brady: Yes.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: And I don’t know how Paddington 2 achieved 100%.

Garrett: Because was Paddington 1…

Brady: It was all right.

Garrett: Yeah. It sounds like it’s Paddington.

Brady: Yeah, it’s a good movie. You should watch with your kids.

Garrett: It’s a movie about the stuffed animal that’s in the other movie, right? Or is that the same movie? The Mark Wahlberg one?

Brady: No. That’s like a raunchy comedy.

Garrett: See, that’s what I’m thinking of. That’s the same bear, though, no?

Brady: No.

Garrett: Oh, I thought…

Brady: It’s a kids movie.

Garrett: Oh, got it. Got it. I thought that bear was…

Brady: Anyway, I like Rotten Tomatoes. But I think that’s all that has replaced maybe what these awards shows used to be is there’s just different authoritative ways to like,”Because it’s trending on Netflix, I trust it.”” I want to watch it because Rotten Tomatoes says it’s this.”” I want to watch it because I see the ads on TV, because I see things on social media,” where maybe there’s just less of that to where people be like,” Oh, it’s because I saw it in the Emmys,” or the Oscars.

Garrett: Let’s put it into a bucket, though. Welcome to my sick and messed up mind.

Brady: Here we go.

Garrett: Yeah, I know. Here we go. Buckle up, folks. I think there’s two ways of looking at it. I want to hear what you think about these two ways of looking it as we translate this into marketing. Social proof and discovery. The award show was used to probably be a little bit of both. Here is essentially movies that you didn’t even know came out or movies that won awards that you might want to watch. In other words, you discover a new artist at a music show. You discover a new song, you discover a new album, you discover a new movie, a new show. What’s the one with the Korean director?

Brady: Parasite?

Garrett: I never watched it. I would never watch that.

Brady: inaudible award shows and won X amount, and yeah.

Garrett: It’s a perfect example of a movie, by the way, I still haven’t watched, but I know I will eventually watch. Ironically probably when it goes to Netflix, is trending number one, and then I will probably watch it ironically or it gets re- released to HBO Max. But there’s social proof and discovery.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Now marketers and agencies still use award shows, I would argue mostly for social proof because I don’t think a lot of clients are like,” I wonder who won this latest award show.” But they’ve been almost replaced in marketing by peer reviews. In other words, the Rotten Tomatoes, how Rotten Tomatoes replaced critics Capterra, and G2, and Gartner are trying to replace Kon to a certain extent, right, because it’s now not just for SaaS, but it’s also professional services. All these industries are getting their own third party review site, peer reviewed kind of criteria. What do you think the future is? Even the cars, we go back to that. Remember, it used to be JD Power? And everybody knew inaudible just bought the awards. But you can’t buy your awards, is that better for us as customers, you think?

Brady: Yeah, I’m even throwing Shark Tank into this mix. Shark Tank is a huge ad for any company on it.

Garrett: It’s social proof of discoverability.

Brady: In terms of the discoverability. I always think about how anyone investing in the shark side, they just got the biggest ad in the world for this product and now, they’re going to invest. So they already know something’s coming.

Garrett: Yeah, they essentially have traction.

Brady: But that’s all discoverability through entertainment. There’s product placement and movies like Marvel movies, I think it’s Audi, electric cars, things like that is a way to discover things. We have the award shows. I just don’t think it’s a big enough… It’s just not the most powerful platform.

Garrett: You have a new client and they want to enter, what would be, let’s say for a software company, there is the Gartner report. At the end of the day, that’s kind of like their award and you pay for it just like you pay for… By the way, for those of you who don’t know, you have to pay, what’s called an award submission. So you pay to submit. If you submit enough awards, I found that you win. In other words, one year I only did one award submission. I didn’t win the next year, I did 10. In other words, I became a big enough customer that they’re like,” Well, this guy won this year. Let’s make sure he buys 10 awards next year. We got to let him win at least one of these 10.” I kind of figured out how to win awards. You enter a bunch of submissions. It’s really nothing to do with much else.

Brady: Yeah. I think the difference is, and this even goes for the entertainment ones, it’s just you with your peers and not your market. I think that’s why they’re not that powerful. Even our awards, when we submit, it’s other agencies on those Zoom inaudible.

Garrett: Yeah. The Oscars isn’t a bunch of people watching. It’s a bunch of celebrities clapping for each other.

Brady: Yeah. It’s not the marketers at Fortune 500 SaaS companies watching them. It’s our peers AKA our competition in this space. I think that’s also where it’s less powerful. But you can get the badge and you can use it as social proof, so there is that aspect. I’ve never had a prospect ask us like,” Hey, what awards have you won?” It’s more case studies and results.

Garrett: Think of an award show that is still relevant that we all love, and they do it exceptionally well for everybody else. And that’s the MLB All- Star game. No, the all star game for baseball. They still sell out the stadiums. It means absolutely nothing.

Brady: What kind of awards do they give like Rookie of the Year? That’s at the end, right?

Garrett: Winning the All- Star, well, because their award show is integrated to their product. The All- Star game, I mean, you’re an All- Star. That’s an award as a player. Think about it. That’s like winning Marketer of the Year, but then you don’t get to see the Marketer of the Year do a live marketing campaign. Is there a way for us to leverage awards as a marketer? Because I feel like back in the day, if you were an agency and you won a bunch of awards, you slap it on your hero shot and your conversion rate may or may not go up. Probably does, because that’s social proof. I would argue now, it’s almost negligible because people don’t really care that much. Remember if you’re in the Fortune 5000 or what is it, Inc. 5000?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Yeah, Inc. 5000. Everybody would put that on there. Now, I feel like if you put the Inc. 5000 on your website, you’re saying that you’re small, not that you’re big. It’s actually saying the opposite thing in my mind. Do you feel like awards can be leveraged at all? If you got a new account, let’s say Gong, right? Gong, obviously is a market leader has this ton of stuff. Are you going to put their G2 reviews and their Capterra stuff everywhere? Or you feel like that cheapness them?

Brady: I think there’s definitely a place for that.

Garrett: So it’s peer reviews.

Brady: Yeah, it’s peer reviews. It’s similar to Amazon products when you buy it. You’re looking for high stars and high volume of reviews. I think there’s definitely a time and place for that.

Garrett: What about the big Gartner study that everybody hates to do, but knows they have to?

Brady: To get on the quadrant, like the study?

Garrett: Yeah, exactly. They have Gartner Peer Insights, which is different though than the Magic Quadrant. The Magic Quadrant in Gartner is very much a pay to play for people who have big budgets to a certain extent. But we know from our campaigns, it’s the highest performing things. So while you’re saying award shows aren’t that relevant, yet the Magic Quadrant’s just a big, old award show.

Brady: Yeah, I just think it’s perceived differently. I think it has a bigger reach. I think because it’s visual, it has that type of ranking. It goes further than just like we won this in 2020 because they do have those badges. Beyond being in a certain place in the quadrant, they do say sales software, highest growth, 2021.

Garrett: Or top leader for last three quarters in customer service.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: But it’s not peer. I want to be clear here. It’s not peer like Capterra, G2, or even Gartner Peer Insights. This is a award show that, now here’s I guess a question on the Gartner one for the B2B listeners, does it provide discovery, you think? In other words, do you think buyers go directly to Gartner or do you believe buyers go to Google, go to the brands and then, discover Gartner?

Brady: It’s got to be both.

Garrett: It’s got to be a little bit of both, right?

Brady: I don’t know the ratio on average, but it’s a mix of both. I think even badges, it’s worth A& B testing. But it’s like, what’s the award for books?

Garrett: A New York Times Bestseller.

Brady: Yeah, a New York Times Bestseller. I’m sure that little silver star, whatever it is on a book helps with moving those books off the shelf.

Garrett: Exponentially, it’s social proof, but it’s not discovery. Is it like, do you go to New York Times search best sellers by category? I don’t think so. I think you go to Amazon. What I would argue is Gartner is probably overpriced because of the amount of discovery it drives, but still critically important because of the social proof it creates and the leverage you get on your conversion rates by funnel stage. Because if you can integrate it as a sales asset, as well as a marketing asset, you get a higher conversion rate on marketing, higher close rate on sales. And then the buyer feels good because it’s an insurance policy they can take to their boss.” Look, I hired the number one in person on the Magic Quadrant. They’ve got to be good.”

Brady: Yeah, so I think the benefit is after the fact. Even for our industry award shows, even the Emmys, it’s like an Emmy nominated.

Garrett: It’s the insurance part, because we don’t want to recommend… It’s insurance. That’s the third piece of it. It’s discovery, social proof, insurance. Remember think about if you’re dating a girl or something, and it’s maybe your first date and you don’t want to mess up the movie. You’re trying to pick it like,” How do I get the right movie?” But you don’t want to watch when you’ve already seen because you don’t want to be bored. So you got to choose a movie, but you don’t want to be somebody who has bad movie tastes. Or imagine you’re in a car for the first time on a first date and you’re like,” Which song do I play?”

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Right? I feel like there’s an insurance piece to this where we’re like,” Oh, look. This one just won an Oscar. Let’s watch this one.” Because it’s like,” I’m not the one who chose it to be an Oscar.”

Brady: It’s an obvious choice. Anyone would’ve chosen this.

Garrett: Correct. There’s an insurance part where when we choose things that have won awards, we feel like we’re de- risking ourself to a certain extent also.

Brady: Yeah. I think you get a marketing asset in the end of the day when you go through that song and dance of awards. I think the discoverability is the weakest part.

Garrett: Yeah, I would agree.

Brady: Even the entertainment ones.

Garrett: I think it used to be the biggest part.

Brady: I think it used to be big, especially in entertainment. I don’t know about our type of ad shows. I think it’s just always been peers and competitors. I think discoverability is getting weak over time. But the strength of that insurance, the strength of that marketing asset, I think actors, directors even leverage it probably to get their next gig. And to pitch their next project is on, Emmy award, Emmy nominated.

Garrett: Well, if you win an All- Star, let’s go to an All- Star game as a baseball player, you’re going to have a higher salary contract. If you win an Oscar as an actor, you can ask for more money, I would imagine in your next movie.

Brady: Yeah, it’s a piece of the game.

Garrett: It’s a piece of the game. It has value. Now, let’s talk about how do you value it. In your mind, Brady, I come up to you and I say,” Hey, Brady.” You’re a CFO, by the way, Brady.

Brady: Okay. Cool.

Garrett: Congratulations.“

Brady: Good luck directive.

Garrett: Yeah. I know, right? We’re taking a weird spin of events, but I like this. So Brady, you’re now CFO and I come to you as head of marketing and I say,” I want to do a$100, 000 investment into Kon next year.” And you say,” How are you going to evaluate my business case?” What would make an award show worth a$ 100,000 to Brady? How would you think about signing off on that or even pitching that? Even if we reverse roles, you come to me, how would you pitch me on why I should spend a$100, 000 on Kon?

Brady: So now I’m pitching you or I’m getting-

Garrett: Yeah, I swapped it.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: I swapped. I think this will be more effective for us.

Brady: Okay. I kind of have some mixed answers.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah. For our audience and for you, Brady and me, I’m the CFO. You’re pitching me a$ 100,000 investment.

Brady: I like the CFO title. I had a really good way to bite back right at the end.

Garrett: I know, I know. I’m sure you do.

Brady: I’ll do a little bit of both.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: It would have to be modeling out the impact of being there and winning. So just going through the process, what is the impact of that?

Garrett: What’s your baseline? Is this attending versus win?

Brady: Yeah. So what’s like the viewership of the award show? What’s the ICP demographic of the award show? How similar is that to our outbound SCR team that performs at this rate?

Garrett: Are we going to get a list of all the attendees?

Brady: Yeah. Are we going to get a list? What’s marketing’s plan to then leverage that list? I would want to see the roadmap post attending from just being there versus winning. And then I would ask, if I were the CFO, what are the odds of us winning? I think that’s where it gets tough. Because I’m sure the marketer would get so passionate about like,” Oh, if we win, I can do all this.” And then they get hit with,” What are the odds of us winning?” I think that’s where it’s such a risky investment because it’s winning or not winning that completely controls, I think, the extent of the impact versus sponsoring a conference 400K and you know where your booth is going to be, you know you get the biggest one, you know you’re right in the center with the really cool wraparound banner. You know what you’re getting. Investing that much in awards, if you don’t win a single one, the impact of it’s probably way less than if you win them all.

Garrett: When you win, I say,” Yes, you win. Now we got to do it again next year.” How do I know if it was worth it even after I won?

Brady: Yeah. I think that’s where connecting the dots like if you did get a list of attendees, how did that outreach go? How many responses did we get clients from it?

Garrett: We upload that to sales force at a campaign called Award Show list. We see who from the award show if they’re ever close in the next 12 months.

Brady: I’ll find touchpoint invisible, something like that. You’d have to be very sophisticated I’d say in marketing ops.

Garrett: To really pull this off.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: It sounds like, too. And I don’t want to assume this, but it sounds like what you’re saying, too, is that there’s more work post event than there is pre event if you want to do award shows as a marketer.

Brady: I think so. I think showing up or submitting, attending the event, they do. Ideally winning, if you just check out from there, I think the impact is minimal.

Garrett: Well, because it’s only your peers at the event that you inaudible.

Brady: That’s right, yeah.

Garrett: It’s not your audience. At this point, the only people that know you’re good is other execs that are mad that you won instead of them, that work at other agencies pretty much.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: And then you can see the shortlist. Essentially, even if you get shortlisted, people are like,” Oh, that’s interesting.” But it’s not like every director of DemandGen and software is patiently waiting for US search awards to drop so they can choose who they’re going to hire next. So really what happens, it’s not submitting an award or winning an award that makes award shows relevant even in any scenario. It’s what you do afterwards. In other words, it’s like,” Oh, you make an All- Star game? That’s great.” What’d you do after the All- Star break?” Oh, you won an award? Cool.” How did that fuel your growth? But I think you’re right. It’s just an asset. It’s just a piece of a puzzle. And the question is how much leverage can you get off of that asset?

Brady: Yeah, I think that’s the question is how powerful, especially in our space, I think in entertainment when it’s almost like if someone chose to not say Emmy- award winning actress in a movie preview, even though it was. They say it every single time. I’m sure it makes an impact. I don’t know about in the ad world, how much that matters because of the commitment in the engagement. I think there’s so many other things that control the decision like the audits and the pitch, and the strategy and the plan. It’s not like you could have a terrible pitch and then say,” But we won this award two years ago,” and they’d be like,” Oh, it’s definitely worth it now.” I just think there’s way more variables in our space that are way more powerful than winning an award.

Garrett: Well, and the way they do a lot of professional awards. I get an email every day about submitting to be a top rising CEO. All I do is pay for it, essentially. I pay for a plaque and then, they send it to me.

Brady: Yeah, and no one’s ever asked me. I’m on maybe a thousand sales calls a year. Never been asked.

Garrett: What awards are on recently?

Brady: Yeah, they ask a lot of questions.

Garrett: Awards has never come up.

Brady: Never, ever question. I think it’s like, how powerful is it when you push it? Because no one’s asking for it so then, you have to push it. But I think the fact that no one asks just shows how much they don’t care.

Garrett: I bet you, it’s not that different for a software sales person where they’re like,” Where are you on the triangle,” or the quadrant?

Brady: Yeah. I mean for-

Garrett: It’s a marketing question. I don’t know if it’s a sales question, though. In other words, I think we do it in our evaluation when we’re doing our self- evaluation, I think we look at it. I would argue if I were looking at a website and they had all these Gartner awards, I would’ve a subconscious boost. I was like,”Oh, this is the best company.”

Brady: For sure. Yeah, I think that’s where it’s like.

Garrett: It’s all in the subconscious, though, and I think it’s pre- form fill. It’s part of the-

Brady: And reviews versus awards. I know what you’re talking about those Gartner badges, where-

Garrett: You need to see them.

Brady: …it almost seems like they hand them out like candy. My favorite is when you go to a site and they have a two by two, 12 of them total, just a stack of all these badges, which almost make them seem less valuable because they got so many.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah.” How’d you get so many of this?”

Brady: It’s like they just, like I said, hand them out like candy.

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: But no, I mean that’s I think worth testing. I think that it’s strong enough to where you A& B test the client” over those two badges” on a landing page, above the fold, and see what does better. I definitely think they are big enough that to be a hypothesis and see how it goes.

Garrett: Yeah. No, I love that. I think the same thing goes for Yelp. Any business where you can essentially leverage what other people are saying about you, it’s better. I think the question is, is the award show worth it? I think that’s going to be for each of you listening to figure out for yourself. But I think what, Brady pointed out was critically important. What you do after winning the award is exponentially more important than what you do before.

Brady: Yeah. I think going back to the CFO question, just creating the gap to start with so here’s the cost. And then, the CFO or the CRO should be able to help you with,” Here’s what we would need to happen.”

Garrett: Correct. That’s like our budget inaudible.

Brady: And that creates the gap.

Garrett: Yep.

Brady: And then you have fun trying to close that gap.

Garrett: Yeah, you would’ve to get us three proposals out of this and then, one deal at 150K for this to be worth it. Do you think you can get that?

Brady: Yeah. And it could be a 100, it could be a 1000. I think starting with just knowing what the gap is and then seeing how difficult it is to-

Garrett: Accomplish.

Brady: …close that gap in a strategy, in a forecast, in a plan.

Garrett: I love it.

Brady: Because you got to pay upfront for those.

Garrett: They might die, though. So 10 years from now, Brady, is the Oscars, the Emmys bigger or smaller in 10 years?

Brady: Smaller.

Garrett: Is it gone altogether?

Brady: Maybe.

Garrett: I could see it in 10 years.

Brady: Like what was Ricky Gervais’ hosting where he just-

Garrett: Well, I mean, if you let Ricky Gervais host any-

Brady: What was that? It was an award ceremony. I think that was one of the last hurrahs where it was so entertaining.

Garrett: Well, yeah. I mean the whole Ricky Gervais playbook is say what you’re not supposed to say and watching it go viral.

Brady: Yeah. He knew it was his last time hosting and it was just a roast on whatever academy it was.

Garrett: Yeah. But you see, Seth, or Steph, sorry. Apologies to all my Curry fans out there.

Brady: Isn’t there Seth Curry?

Garrett: He was so corny and lame, dude with the jokes and everybody tried to be like,”Look how funny Steph is.” Like I remember when Drake did the ESPYs. That had me laughing. Because Drake’s what called, what’s sort of, yeah, a professional entertainer. Steph is what’s called a basketball player. He’s not as funny.

Brady: He’s on Holey Moley.

Garrett: What’s Holey Moley?

Brady: It’s his own game show. It’s like Wipe Out in mini golf, anyway.

Garrett: Yeah. That seems more like his type of humor than the ESPYs, right, than taking shots at people and making jokes. Steph’s kind of like, Mr. Likable.

Brady: Yeah, he’s not a roaster.

Garrett: Correct. But I’m saying, SNL’s dying. I mean all these nostalgic ways that we used to consume media are dying. The old guard is almost gone. Late night shows, who’s the new late night? Stewart’s gone. Letterman’s gone.

Brady: Yeah, it’s weird.

Garrett: That’s what I’m trying to say. Part of what I’m trying to explain is like ESPYs, Emmys, Oscars, they’re all part of old media. It was all cable news. These are the seven or 12 or whatever channels old people had back in the day. And this is all you can watch. There’s no internet. Now, I’d rather just be on my phone and see the top five clips from any of them.

Brady: Yeah. Because that nothing gets to the dopamine going like Instagram Reels.

Garrett: No, nothing gets it. And then, I don’t have to watch all the commercials or the boring parts. Think about it. I never even knew the Oscars were going on until all of a sudden I saw a slap of Will Smith. If I’m the Oscars, I would actually be pissed because that to me was the last hurrah. Nothing can ever be greater. They were already dying. This was a slight resurrection. I mean, imagine how boring next year’s going to be when no one gets slapped on stage.

Brady: And how much revenue did they make off of that? It was all other companies.

Garrett: Oh, yeah.

Brady: Re- posting it and making the revenue.

Garrett: Yeah. Where is the money even?

Brady: No one went to their DVR and went to that moment again.

Garrett: Yeah. I guess you can always charge Mark Wahlberg a$ 1000 for a ticket, but I don’t know if that’s really why it was successful. It was successful because it was culturally relevant. And even our industry, when I do our award show night and we have 150 people and 12 show up, I think it just shows you how little everyone frankly cares about award shows.

Brady: Yeah. So can they adapt to newer formats of content? Like SNL, should they have a better Instagram page and a TikTok page? Because it’s funny you brought that up because I’ve tried to watch SNL.

Garrett: It’s tough now.

Brady: I’m like, is it me? Is it SNL? I used to love Mad TV growing up.

Garrett: Oh, yeah. I love a good writing room-

Brady: I used to really like SNL.

Garrett: …like a good skit or a well done written skit as well.

Brady: I don’t know. I’m just having a hard time. Are the comedians worse? Is it me? I think it’s just because my entertainment is now social media. Even on YouTube, I watch clips of Andrew Schultz stand up. I don’t even watch the whole standup. I watch a two minute clip of him roasting someone in the audience and that’s my entertainment, I move on.

Garrett: And I think the talent that comes out of old media is not as good anymore because the best talent doesn’t need them. In other words, to me, if you’re a talent, the only reason you give a percent or something or you get a paycheck instead of earning your own money, is because you’re not that good.

Brady: You can be your own brand on social.

Garrett: Now, you can get your own audience. Essentially, before you had to work for the network because they had the audience.

Brady: The discoverability.

Garrett: They had discoverability. That was my point earlier. If you think about it, discoverability, social proof, insurance. Those are the three drivers of award shows. If you get rid of discoverability and all you have left is social proof and insurance, it’s lost its soul because it’s no longer something that people want to tune into. It’s simply something that the companies or individuals buy for leverage, and it’s all fake. It was real before because it was an entertainment. You could be proud of what you won. I think now, the way culture’s going, it’s hard that it’s not really how it works anymore. I feel like, we went from having Will Ferrell come out of SNL to Pete Davidson. Think about the comedic talent that you used to get out of SNL because if you were truly the best comedian, that had the biggest audience. So every artist wants a bigger kind of audience. At the end of the day, every artist is to a certain extent, I can say this about myself, we all want attention. We all want people to care about what we have to create or produce or say. And now if the network can’t give that to you and you’ve got to sign off your soul in the sense of creative freedom, they’re going to have final say on anything you produce and you’re going to have to give them a cut of everything. Why would the best people do it the old media way? I think old media’s going to be gone, man.

Brady: Yeah, no. Even for my photography, I entered a contest because my grandpa wanted me to for Westways Magazine.

Garrett: I love it.

Brady: I got third place. I had to pay money up front. Fortunately, I won. We got some stuff out of it, but it was nothing like just posting on my Instagram.

Garrett: Did you get any job offers from being third place?

Brady: No. But I get way more reach just on my Instagram than I did going through this more old school, if you want your photography scene, if you win it’s now in the Westways Magazine.

Garrett: However, if a big social media account like the top five largest photography account did a competition and charged you, that you would do in a heartbeat.

Brady: No, I’ve been posted on Sony’s Instagram and I got-

Garrett: Subtle flex.

Brady: But it is funny. It was a different audience. It was a little flexer. I had this lady Jeannie hit me up on Facebook because she saw my photo in the magazine. And so I sent her the file and she printed it out like this size. I know no one can see it. It’s probably, what, five feet.

Garrett: I love you how you said it, this size inaudible.

Brady: Yeah, there’s a painting behind that.

Garrett: Here’s a bad radio beat. Explain the whole-

Brady: Yeah, it’s like a four foot by six foot painting.

Garrett: It’s got buildings. It’s got a bridge back there.

Brady: Yeah, it’s the London Bridge, I believe. Anyway, this lady prints it out just gigantic and it was because of the magazine. She was never going to find me on Instagram. It was a unique reach, but it was nothing close to what social media can do.

Garrett: I guess her age discover was over 40.

Brady: Oh Jeannie Byrd, I think she’s 65, 70. Maybe even older.

Garrett: That’s also the audience I would argue of the award shows. It’s not for the next generation anymore.

Brady: Which I mean not to be too dark about it, but that is dying out literally.

Garrett: Yeah, literally.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: We love Jeannie.

Brady: I know you mentioned those shows are dying out. I think their demographic is as well. But they’re even growing. Like Jeannie hit me up on Facebook. So yes, she found me through the Westways Magazine, but she hit me up on Facebook and sent a message.

Garrett: She can’t do carrier pigeon and so that was really her only option. But if you think about it, I agree. I don’t think the concept of award shows is going anywhere. I just think the current medium and format you’re asking is gone. I think it’s just going to recreate itself into something.

Brady: Yeah, SNL should. I don’t know if they have an Instagram, but I’m curious how the Emmys could be done on Instagram.

Garrett: But live isn’t working either though.

Brady: Not even live, but through more digestible clips and just owning it.

Garrett: But that’s why House Party died. It wasn’t a House Party. It was the latest app that tried to get really big but then, it was codependent on you being on it at the same time as everyone else.

Brady: Oh it was like Zoom for-

Garrett: Yeah. Yeah. I think it was called House Party. What was it House Party?

Brady: I think I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, it was like a group live.

Garrett: Yeah, it was a group being a live room. And then, Twitter Spaces kind of copied it and then, everybody else kind of copied it. My point being here is live is hard. I don’t think anyone does live that well other than sports. Because sports, you have to see it live. Think about even the way streaming is going. It’s not usually episode by episode anymore. They drop all 10 and you can binge them. Everything is on demand. Live? Think about the last live non- sports event. It would only be the award shows. It’s pretty much all that’s left. That and shows once again for an older generation, Good Morning, America or whatever that is. But people don’t consume non- sports content live anymore like they used to. And so to me, an award show would have to somehow take all that into account. I don’t know what the future of them looks like, though. It’s hard for me to imagine an award show in a completely different body. You know what I mean?

Brady: Yeah, and for it to be parallel to what it used to be. I think Emmys could somehow have ongoing year- round content that feature actors inaudible.

Garrett: Yeah, but we’d rather get it from Spotify year end review like you were talking about earlier. I would rather just go through just thing about discovery. What’s the best way to discover a new song now? People just have their Spotify year end review and be like,” Oh, I forgot. I haven’t listened to this band in forever.” And then, you kind of go back. I feel like there’s so many other ways we discover it now or we go on a Pitchfork, or we go on a Rotten Tomatoes. We’re losing a lot of reasons why they exist and it’s just a crazy to see that transition now they’re a little bit older.

Brady: Yeah, Do they post reaction videos of someone watching a movie? And that’s their content to get that movie out there is someone else’s reaction to it.

Garrett: It might be. I just think we as marketers need to be constantly evolving and I’m excited to see what the next version of social proof, discovery, and insurance looks like.

Brady: Yeah. No, it’s good because I know we joked about like Emmys, all these things dying out. We could fall into the same trap if we kept doing what we do today. What works today isn’t going to work in the next decade.

Garrett: Oh, no.

Brady: It’s good to learn from that.

Garrett: Got to stay fresh.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Got to stay fresh. Well, this has been an amazing episode. Brady. It’s fun to hang out and connect and chat again. I know we were off for a couple weeks. Y’all know that because we’re going to upload them all at one time. But it’s nice to be back in the studio.

Brady: You do this every day.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah. We do this every day.

Brady: Every day.

Garrett: But, nice to be back in the studio. We’re going to be keeping it consistent. Show’s going to be officially launching soon, which is once again, a completely irrelevant statement for you listening right now. But thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to like, five stars, subscribe, unsubscribe, resubscribe. Maybe it helps us and tell all your friends and family. Thanks.

Brady: See you.