Episode 5: Psychology Applied to Marketing, Micro Commitments, and Creativity

Episode Transcript

Garrett: Welcome to another episode of Original Marketing. Brady, how are you doing?

Brady: I’m doing well. How are you?

Garrett: Very, very good. Very, very good. I’m excited to chat a little psychology today.

Brady: Yeah. I love the psychology of marketing. I feel like every segment technically-

Garrett: inaudible.

Brady: …is psychology of marketing, because we just always think about it, but it’s nice to commit it.

Garrett: What’s your background in psychology for our listeners? How many classes in college did you take for psychology?

Brady: Well, you don’t even know this, so you weren’t teeing me up, but I actually started as a psych major.

Garrett: Psych. inaudible.

Brady: No, not psych. I actually did. But then, career development and the actual career path of it, I didn’t really agree with it.

Garrett: So they showed you the starting salary and you quit, or how did it go?

Brady: Yeah. I mean, I flipped from… I was psychology to graphic design to business was my freshman year.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: But in the psychology classes, it was one of my favorite electives, was my psychology class. And then even in business school, it was consumer behavior. That was my favorite class and I think somewhat of a natural ability to think that way. I just remember in the consumer behavior class as people were studying, I kind of-

Garrett: Yeah. What stood out to you the most?

Brady: Just where my-

Garrett: What stood out to you?

Brady: Just it fascinated me really, just buying a truck and how much the kid is involved in, let’s say, the dad’s decision to buy a truck.

Garrett: Or in my case, the car seat. Okay. So I had a GMC 1500, loved the truck, but I didn’t get the massive cab.

Brady: I remember it.

Garrett: You remember the truck?

Brady: Yeah, you couldn’t fit the car seat.

Garrett: I couldn’t fit the car seat in. So when I finally got a car seat, the first thing I did, I tried to put it in the truck. Didn’t fit. I bought a new car within 24 hours, but that’s also me being a weirdo. But the second the car seat didn’t fit, I was like,” The car’s broken.”

Brady: Baby was coming, seat didn’t fit, you turned around a new car.

Garrett: Priorities.

Brady: Yeah. But yeah, I think even going on vacation, the kids’ decision in that, even though the parents are paying for it and booking it. And this is just one example of kids influencing purchases. I mean, it gets into influencer marketing, the consumer behavior of that, social.

Garrett: No. And I think psychology, to your point of what inspired you and got you here, is such a backbone of marketing because I did a video about this, I think, the other day. But what’s so interesting to me is when people are in this kind of field of marketing, it became about last click, first click, dark social, all this random crud that does nothing for your marketing, does nothing for your goals, does nothing really for your revenue. Compared to, what does our audience care about and how do I inspire them from apathy to action? How do I articulate my brand’s message in such a way that people actually want to buy from me? That’s somehow died, Brady.

Brady: Yeah, I know we talk about… I always throw things out to the team and it sounds like some hippie shit, but it’s like, how do you make someone feel like they’re not doing their job if they don’t engage in your ad?

Garrett: inaudible.

Brady: How do you make someone feel like-

Garrett: I do the apathy action inaudible-

Brady: Yeah. And that’s all B2B, but that’s essentially, how do you make someone feel like they’re not the cool person or they’re not living the lifestyle they want to perceive if they don’t buy your product? And that’s all psychology.

Garrett: So when we talk about psychology and in specific, what’s your theory you have for us today? What do you want to break down? What can a marketer listening to us right now learn from you when it comes to psychology and how they can apply it?

Brady: So, today it’s a broad topic and I think my two examples are pretty narrowed down, but it’s around micro- commitments.

Garrett: Micro- commitments.

Brady: So micro- commitments is a psychological principle using marketing to get your ideal customer, your buyer to make micro- commitments before they purchase your product. So, it’s initially just getting them bought into the process.

Garrett: That’s not like a multistep form. Or is that a function of it? But that’s more tactic of it and a little less strategic? Or break that down.

Brady: Yeah. So the multistep form is actually the two examples that popped up when I first looked into it, and the first one was from the Obama campaign.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: So, the-

Garrett: Obama’s out here banging multistep forms?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: All right.

Brady: So his campaign team did a lot of A/ B testing on the donation website.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: And so essentially what it was prior to these tests, it was just kind of one big form to donate to the Obama campaign. And they turned it into a multistep form where it asked you certain questions up front, it guided you through the donation, and their donations increased by 5%, which we’re talking presidential campaigns, it was millions of dollars.

Garrett: They don’t mess around with donations.

Brady: Yeah. And then the other example is from this company called… Random. It’s Rocket Memory. They are niched into post- Ivy League grads, they do memory courses. But more of the classic. They had one form and they tested that, and then they had these questions leading up to the form, which was,” Would you like to receive memory techniques specifically geared to what you’re studying?” And then it’s like,” Yes, please. No thanks.” So, you select that. Probably,” Yes, please,” and then they say,” Which of the following best describes you?” And it says things like,” I’ve noticed my memory has gotten worse with age. I’m a student less than 30 years old. I’m a returning student going back to school,” and so you opt into those. And this is their way of making you commit your time to the process, but they’re also making you feel like what’s coming out of this is now personalized to you and more valuable. And so after those two questions, they then hit them with the first name, last name, email. And this was all through Google Ads, and so their conversion rate went from 5% to 20% just by implementing the micro- commitment. And then my personal life, last example was-

Garrett: I was worried you didn’t have three.

Brady: No, don’t worry. I’m getting around to it out here. I have three. And I fell into a trap when I was in the market for my first house and I was starting to learn about mortgages and rates and do all that research. And I think it was maybe some vestopia site around mortgage rates and it looked like it was going to be a calculator. And so it was all these questions,” What square footage? Where do you live? Your financial…” Not into the details of connecting accounts, but they were asking me questions. And then it said,” See your rate,” and I gave my email and phone number, and essentially it just got sent out to all the lenders pretty much in the US. But they built this micro- commitment multistep funnel like,” Hey, Brady, just understand the rates today, commit to the process,” and that was all leveraged to then send my information to the lenders and they all hit me up.

Garrett: When you think about this concept, Brady, is there something you’ve learned in its practical execution? Like, start with email or stop with email or use first name and last name? If someone wants to apply this and say,” Okay, I want to start using these micro- commitments in my marketing and I want to make an impact, I want similar results,” how should they go about it?

Brady: Yeah, I think where people get away from the strategy is when they just try to push their main product. They just try to get the end user to the finish line. And so it’s such a broad concept, right? I even think of Twitch streamers. They want you to just watch them, then they just want you to follow, and then maybe down the road, once you’re enjoying the content and the ads get annoying, then you subscribe and that’s when they’re making revenue. inaudible-

Garrett: inaudible Patreon?

Brady: The Patreon. Yeah, they have those links as well. So the micro- commitment is just the view, just get people watching, and then hit them with,” Oh, we also have swag and I have a Patreon if you’re enjoying the content.” I think in software, that’s kind of where free trial can come into play is a micro- commitment. Spend your time, see the product, and then we’ll start selling you once you’ve already connected your accounts to the product, you’re kind of already using it-

Garrett: inaudible value. Yeah.

Brady: …it’s already adding value to you and your role. Now, let’s hit you with,” It’s going to cost you 29. 99 monthly for the rest of the year.”

Garrett: Now, let’s play devil’s advocate for a second on this. I found most people do micro- commitments poorly.

Brady: Yes, I agree with that.

Garrett: So, what I mean by that is I’ve seen most people put themselves above others when designing this process.

Brady: Exactly. Yep.

Garrett: In other words, they essentially call their crappy form micro- commitments, or their horrible buying process a bunch of micro- commitments. But if we’re being really honest, it’s mostly bad marketing and bad sales.

Brady: Yeah. It’s all for the sales team. It’s all questions for the sales team.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: And it’s transparent that it’s that way.

Garrett: It’s transparent that way. I would argue most people I see do some version of micro- commitments, is really doing self- service and not where they’re allowing you to self- serve yourself, but instead serving themselves. So, what’s your take on essentially two competing principles? One of which, is psychological friction. And the other is micro-commitments. Because I know you and I actually believe in both. How do you balance the two concepts of psychological friction? In other words, asking someone to give you more information or more value than you are equitably returning in exchange. That’s where psychological friction comes from. Like,” I want you to do X and you perceive it as worth 100. And then in return you get Y and you see that worth, let’s say, 25.” So, you decide not to complete Y because it has too much friction versus micro- commitments. How do you balance the two?

Brady: So the cool thing is, is you can do both. That’s the secret sauce, is you can get those questions that whether you want it as a marketer or your sales team wants it, you can get those questions out there and answered. It’s how you position them. You need to position them in a way where the person feels like they’re answering it for themselves, so that they have a better experience, so that they get more value. So when you ask someone your company size, sure the sales team has a whole playbook for company sizes. It’s how they route it to the right sales person, the right AE. But you can frame that question to make the person feel like,” If I give them my company size, my free trial is going to be set up perfectly for me. That’s why I’m answering that question.” But to your point, I think most people just throw the questions out there, no use case, no connection to the value to the end user. So then that person now thinks,” Why am I answering all these questions just for them?”

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Right?

Garrett: Yeah, inaudible nuance.

Brady: So, I think you can achieve both. That’s where the beauty of the strategy comes into play, is that level of execution.

Garrett: So, I’m not a fan of multistep forms though these days because… Okay. So, ironically it’s faster for people to just preload all our information, and when you multistep forms, they can’t preload properly. What’s your take on that? Just complete side note. So I think they work worse now because we all have all our personal information saved to whatever web browser we’re using, and then all we got to do is type in that first letter of that first field and then it goes… Everything’s filled out and I can just hit submit.

Brady: Yeah, but that’s all personal information. This is, I think, the information where you’re offering something and the person might feel like,” How are they actually going to deliver that if I just give my personal information?”

Garrett: So, you’re saying micro- commitments go beyond form fields and instead are more about creating a buying experience that the user’s excited about more so than going from seven fields to six fields or six fields to eight fields?

Brady: Yeah. And I think what the cool thing is, is the micro- commitments can then increase the conversion rate on that information that is just vital, right? inaudible formation-

Garrett: Regardless. It’s like the form is just a tactic.

Brady: Because you’ve already committed time. Samsara is a fleet tracking company that does this. They make you select,” Do you have buses? Do you have trucks? Do you have cars?” Okay, I selected that.” What size is your fleet?” Okay, I selected that. And now you feel like you’re committed to the process, so then when they ask you, similar to the mortgage company, your first name, last name, email, and phone number, you’re like,” Well, shoot, I just spent two minutes…” Which sounds stupid, but it’s a long time.

Garrett: People.

Brady: Yeah, people.” I spent two minutes answering all these questions. I feel like I’m going to get something really custom back because of it. I got to submit my information or else I just wasted my time.” So that’s also where the micro- commitment comes into play, is people feel like they’re already invested so that you can then position those high friction personal information- based questions, which you eventually need in the end of the day.

Garrett: And from what I can see, it doesn’t sound like it’s a marketing strategy so much as a revenue strategy. And what I mean by that is, a micro- commitment’s success should not be evaluated based off of Google Ads or form fill conversion rate, but instead probably evaluated by what percent of people who go through the experience show up- down funnel your different life cycle stages. Is my demo attendance rate higher for my micro- conversion audience versus my non- micro- conversion audience? It’s kind of the way I would probably want to see it as a CRO or a CMO.

Brady: Yeah. And people bucket webinars into this category, like a webinar attendance is a micro- commitment.

Garrett: Correct. It is a micro, yeah.

Brady: Right? And the odds of them then attending a demo, depending on the quality of your webinar… This is where people get it wrong. It’s not as simple as a webinar. It’s the quality. It’s the mean of. It’s, how much does that drive that person to want to get a demo? What is your strategy of the webinar content? But it goes all the way to probably test driving a car. Micro- commitment, you’re test driving it, they get you in there, you enjoy the car, that then allows them to sell the car.

Garrett: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, what you’re saying is a micro- commitment is just a tactic within the overarching strategy of buying experience, which makes perfect sense. But when you try to make it the end game, I think to my point earlier, it becomes something that’s negligible to you. When people try to do micro- commits because they heard us do this and they make their buying process crappier by asking a bunch of questions that doesn’t change the user’s outcome, that’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is the user should essentially receive in return for their micro- commitments and increase in, let’s call it, macro value.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Does that make sense?

Brady: Yeah. Brings them closer to the product. Costco samples. But I think something that just came to mind is I think that this is what makes social influencers so powerful, is they are doing the micro- commitment for you. I think that’s why-

Garrett: Because they’re the one’s trying it out.

Brady: They’ve already tried it, they’re wearing it, they’re using it, whatever it is. And so that micro- commitment you’re almost doing vicariously through someone you look up to and inspire to be. And I think I just randomly thought of that.

Garrett: That’s what creates that-

Brady: But I think that’s why social influencers are so powerful. It’s because they’re doing the micro- commitments.

Garrett: I love it.

Brady: What do you got?

Garrett: What do I got?

Brady: Uh-oh.

Garrett: I got everything, Brady.

Brady: You better have three examples.

Garrett: I’ve got a lot of words.

Brady: That’s fair enough.

Garrett: Yeah. I mean, we’ll see.

Brady: inaudible.

Garrett: Maybe not three examples, maybe more.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: So this comes from a new paper published in the European Journal of Marketing from Kansas State University. You probably didn’t miss that. Did you get that one?

Brady: My mail’s been getting lost.

Garrett: It’s probably the mail. Yeah.

Brady: inaudible.

Garrett: So, here’s what they found. They found something that they call the creativity- based facilitation effect.

Brady: We can’t do this show in the afternoon if you’re going to hit me with that.

Garrett: Oh, no, I’ve got it. It’s been well documented by previous research and it shows that creative advertisements are more memorable than regular or less creative ads. That is, creativity facilitates memory.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: Now, pretty interesting, right? I think it’s the business case for creative, right? Because I feel like the more and more advertising has become about analytics and attribution, the less and less, frankly, it’s become about creative. Having really good creative almost somehow makes you legacy or Neanderthal almost, I feel like, these days.

Brady: Yeah. Because the numbers people will then look at it and be like,” How is this connected to that? How is this connected to that?” I think very creative work, it’s more difficult to explain it in that way.

Garrett: Yes. And it becomes difficult to attribute it back to that attribution thing. That’s why creativity, to me, died, is because, where does the creative of an ad show up in a pure analytics environment? It shows up in click- through rate and everything else. So then, essentially the most creative ad is the one that has the best click- through rate, which then kind of bastardizes what creativity’s supposed to be.

Brady: Yeah. And it’s measuring memory versus initial action off the ad. And I think that’s where the gap is.

Garrett: Correct. And so let’s dive into this a little bit and I got something teed up for you.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: But they essentially found that it extends the understanding by investigating the impact of creativity on regular ads and competitive advertising. The study says impairment effects of creative ads on brand recall for other ads examines whether creative ads impair the memorability of regular ads to determine whether a creativity- based impairment effect exists. Which is crazy and we don’t even have to try to figure that out. I think we should just go to the next point. And they have three points.

Brady: Nice.

Garrett: Yeah. You like that, right?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So they say for the study, three experiments were conducted. The first tested creativity- based impairment effects in brand recall. In other words, how did, essentially, creativity impair or hurt your ability to remember an ad? Experiment two replicated and validated the impairment effect and recall using a different presentation order of ads. And in the final experiment, effects of creative ads on competing versus non- competing brands were examined. And so essentially, the results found that creative ads impaired the brand recall of regular ads. In other words, if you did really good advertising, your bad advertising became worse.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: Which I love.

Brady: Yeah. It just creates that contrast.

Garrett: Yeah. It’s like a,” Oh wow, that was a really good one. Who was that one? I don’t remember.”

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So if you also put that in a competitive landscape, right? Here, I’ll bring it. And creative ads were recalled earlier on top- of- mind recall positions. In other words, to me, what’s so cool about that is, think about the way ads are delivered today on TV. Are ads ever delivered in isolation or are they delivered in a sequence where your brain is then competing for memory?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Right? Think about a commercial break. How many commercials are in a commercial break?

Brady: I’d probably say it depends on streaming, but 6 to 10.

Garrett: And you could theoretically remember some of those more than others.

Brady: Oh, of course. Yeah.

Garrett: Regardless almost even of the initial brand starting point, is kind of what they’re looking at. Now, this research makes an important theoretical contribution as the first to explore impairment effects in the context of creative advertising. In doing so, it offers important managerial insights for regular and competitive advertising. Then they’re going to look in the future at different memory of it all and everything else of how it could affect it. But what I thought was so cool was this little part here. Creative ads impaired the recall of competing brands more than non- competing brands. So if, let’s say, Downy and Tide. Are they the same company? They might as well be these days.

Brady: Sure.

Garrett: I think P&G owns everything.

Brady: I’m sure. Yeah.

Garrett: Yeah. But let’s say you have two different detergent brands. The creative one is good enough that you forget-

Brady: Yeah, pushes them out.

Garrett: …the competitor, which I thought was so interesting because it essentially, to me, is proposing the theory of zero sum. So the way zero sum kind of works is, essentially if someone wins, someone loses. And my whole take on business is usually you can have two winners. But in advertising, what they are literally saying is, if you’ve got two ads, if one is more creative than the other… They don’t break down how they measure creativity, so we can do some reading.

Brady: Yeah, I was kind of curious about that.

Garrett: I know, I know. I was-

Brady: How do you define it even?

Garrett: And I’m sure it’s in there. You guys can read the study. It’s a paper. It’s the European Journal of Marketing talking about creativity- based facilitation effect. So, dive into it. Check out the paper for yourself.

Brady: I’m sure they weren’t off, right?

Garrett: Yeah. But the cool part to me was far more that marketing can be zero sum. In other words, your marketing can be so good and other people so bad in comparison, that they forget about the competitor. And that’s kind of exciting.

Brady: Yeah. I mean, I know we talked about my love for the,” Don’t become your parents,” Progressive commercials. And I know there’s the Allstate danger guy. But I can’t even tell you what GEICO’s doing right now.

Garrett: It’s a frog, right? Or no. Frog. Oh, it’s a lizard?

Brady: He’s a gecko.

Garrett: A gecko.

Brady: I know there’s the gecko. But I don’t know what their campaign theme is right now. And I think that’s because of my obsession with the,” Don’t become your parents.”

Garrett: It gets worse.

Brady: Right.

Garrett: Is The General still Shaq?

Brady: Oh, I don’t know. Is The General still around?

Garrett: You don’t really care though, right? Because your brand is essentially, due to advertising, the way you would now buy insurance. And by the way, you haven’t brought up State Farm.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I think State Farm’s just like an old Patrick Mahomes commercial at this point.

Brady: Yeah, I got the jingle in my head.

Garrett: How’s it go?

Brady: Is it… Is that State Farm? No?

Garrett: We’ll give you the line.

Brady: I don’t know the line. I think it’s a-

Garrett: Well, how does it go again? I’m going to try to come with the line.

Brady: No, that’s Farmers.” We are Farmers…”

Garrett: Yeah, there it is.

Brady: Kind of slaps.

Garrett: Yeah. So, Farmers we remember.

Brady: But my point is, is I know the jokes of the,” Don’t become your parents.” I think they’re funny and I can’t think of-

Garrett: The others because it literally impairs you-

Brady: The other ones outside of the classic jingles that are just ingrained in our brains.

Garrett: Because our brain must have essentially so much space for useless information.

Brady: That’s not to say I have nothing of other insurance, but I definitely am not tracking what those companies are doing as much as… Even though I probably see them just as much.

Garrett: Yeah, you’re creatively impaired.

Brady: Wow. Brainwashed like the rest of them.

Garrett: Brainwashed by marketing and advertising.

Brady: inaudible.

Garrett: It’s a powerful field. I think when you look at the study, the study is based off of essentially receiving ads within a set environment. So what I mean by that is a lot of times when directive is advertising, you’re not also seeing other ads from other performance marketing shops. But I would say cybersecurity is a good example of this. When I fly into SF back in the day I couldn’t not see CrowdStrike everywhere. And at the time we were doing all the marketing and advertising for SentinelOne. Both were competing, both were trying to take market share, both were aiming, I think, for IPO at the time. But frankly, CrowdStrike was doing a better job of asserting themselves as the bigger, more dominant player with their creativity, with their ad placements, and with the way they were doing offline. Now, we weren’t responsible for offline. We only had essentially the Google Ads business at the time.

Brady: They were digital out of home.

Garrett: Yeah, but think about the Google Ads business. Do you believe that if you were maybe the third spot, but had the best copy, you could beat whoever had the highest click- through rate in the first spot?

Brady: Yeah, I would argue you could. I think that there is probably a difference between the intent- based channels and then your TV, more audience- based targeting when it comes to creativity.

Garrett: Yeah. Because TV commercials aren’t ranked for you top to bottom, if that makes sense. They don’t work in the top- to- bottom manner. They kind of work more left to right. If you think about a commercial, you don’t think a commercial, like this top six, you don’t rank all six each break. But when you’re doing an intent channel, you read the page from top to bottom and you perceive its importance or value from kind of top to bottom. That’s why the first spot on Google has inaudible highest click- through rate. That’s why the Google search organic top spot is highest click- through rate regardless of what they’re saying. Because your brain works hierarchically. So, it’s kind of interesting to think about.

Brady: Yeah, you got to balance the intent alignment with your creativity. But same thing goes for the TV. I’m sure they have to balance their creativity with just the product alignment, right? You can’t get overly creative to where you don’t even know what you’re advertising for.

Garrett: Or have no offer. We talked about that in previous shows where you have this really hilarious, awesome ad, but then they don’t send you anywhere or ask you to do anything. So you have to still capitalize or create leverage on your creativity for it to essentially be monetized or valued I think is a good way of explaining that.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: The lottery, Brady. Do you know anything about the lottery?

Brady: I know I haven’t won it.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: And I know the IRS wins.

Garrett: The IRS most definitely wins the lottery. Now, for the audience, I’m going to tell you right now I don’t know anything about the lottery. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a lottery ticket.

Brady: Have you done a raffle, back- to- school night back in the day?

Garrett: Oh, let me tell you.

Brady: Cake walk? Raffle?

Garrett: I got a story for you, Brady.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: I may or may not be competitive. I don’t think the audience could tell that.

Brady: Yeah, I don’t think you are.

Garrett: Not competitive at all.

Brady: But you can try to convince me.

Garrett: Yeah. I’ve been acting like it for nine years, is every once in a while I put my competitive act on. But I have a 4th of July party on my street and they have a raffle. Now, I have a tendency-

Brady: How are you getting competitive with a raffle?

Garrett: Well, because I don’t ever win the raffle.

Brady: Okay.

Garrett: And I was asking how many tickets everybody was buying and they were only buying one or two. And I think I bought 200 tickets and I won all the prizes-

Brady: You won it all. Oh man, I was hoping you didn’t win.

Garrett: And I won almost every prize that you could win at this raffle. I just kept going up. It was bad.

Brady: I mean, what was the perception?

Garrett: Oh, it did not go well for me.

Brady: It wasn’t good, right?

Garrett: No, they clapped at the first couple. Then disdain set in. They were not happy about it and I was almost too embarrassed.

Brady: Yeah. What are you winning anyway?

Garrett: I was winning beach chair… Nothing I wanted. I threw everything away, I think, eventually.

Brady: You didn’t give it away?

Garrett: I’d never won a raffle before.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: It was the 4th of July, I was having a good time, and the lady came by with the tickets. And I had a couple drinks, I was having fun, and I was just like,” How many you got?” And she threw out some crazy number and I was like,” Sold,” and then I just bought… I thought everybody was kind of doing this. So I was in my house, I came out to the block party, I got out there, saw the ticket lady and I was like,” Heck yeah, let’s get a bunch of raffles.” I completely overspent.

Brady: Yeah, the roll looked pretty thin.

Garrett: Oh, it was a huge roll, dude. It was this big thing and I was like,” Okay, everybody’s going to be buying these tickets.” And I told Myra, my wife, I was like,” Babe, we’re winning this year.” And so I went hard, and then no one else bought.

Brady: Oh my God.

Garrett: So, here’s where it got bad. They’re like,” Before the raffle, please make sure you submit your tickets.” And I was the last person to go up-

Brady: Put it in the bowl or whatever?

Garrett: Yeah. And there was nothing in the bowl, and then they made me rip off every one of them and I was there for 10 minutes just individually ripping off the raffle tickets and putting them in the bowl. It was horrible. It was-

Brady: Well, where’d the money go? Was it a break even, this is just to pay off the prizes or… Usually raffles sponsor something, right? So, there’s a margin on-

Garrett: Oh, I’m not that good of a person, I don’t think, Brady, sometimes. I was blinded by my own desire to win. I didn’t know where the money was going. I actually don’t know where any of it went or what it was for. I just knew there was a raffle and I wanted to win and that’s what happened.

Brady: Damn. Well, that’s pretty much the lottery.

Garrett: Okay. So when we talk about the lottery, I’ve never tried to win that one. I feel like there’s a lot worse odds than my neighborhood raffle because I did pretty good at that one.

Brady: Mm- hmm. You just have to buy way more tickets.

Garrett: So, how would you market the lottery different knowing what you know? So tell me what you think you know about the lottery and I’ll tell you what I think I know, and then we’ll figure out how we inaudible it.

Brady: Yeah. So to me, when I think of the lottery, which I’ll separate from scratchers because there are really great scratcher commercials, like when Pac- Man came out. It was a really cool commercial for it.

Garrett: Really?

Brady: Anyway.

Garrett: What kind of TV are you watching that you get the lotteries? Because this is part of my strategy.

Brady: Yeah. No. Family Feud. Family Feud.

Garrett: Wait.

Brady: I’m a-

Garrett: Are you a huge Steve Harvey guy?

Brady: I mean, I enjoy the concept of Family Feud and I have fallen in love with Steve Harvey. He’s hilarious.

Garrett: inaudible the best.

Brady: His Instagram is just a fashion show. It’s like him and his wife walking out of their hotel in Paris.

Garrett: He always has cigar, right?

Brady: Oh yeah.

Garrett: He always looks way too cool.

Brady: He’s in a crazy tracksuit with a cigar. He’s a funny guy.

Garrett: Should we get some Steve Harvey swag? He has a mustache too, right? A fake mustache inaudible-

Brady: Dude, I shaved my mustache last night.

Garrett: I did notice you on camera.

Brady: Last night. You saw it on camera?

Garrett: Yeah. I think you had it on Friday.

Brady: Thank you.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah. I saw it.

Brady: That’s cool.

Garrett: I zoomed in and I saw it.

Brady: Oh, I had the lighting right and everything. No, I hadn’t shaved it for two weeks and I was really feeling it. But we have a wedding this weekend and-

Garrett: So, you think Steve Harvey’s charm is the mustache or do you think it’s just his overall demeanor?

Brady: I mean, he just is this character to where he can say a lot of things that I think still… They wouldn’t fly, but he’s still doing it on Family Feud, which is kind of funny because family.

Garrett: Family.

Brady: Oh yeah, I just think he’s funny. And I like the game. I really like the game.

Garrett: It’s pretty good. It’s so funny to see people guess.

Brady: It’s just a nice kick back, you listen to a couple questions, you do your guesses-

Garrett: And I just want to remind everyone in the audience, this is our intellect. Brady and I, we’re not Jeopardy guys. So, I just want to know this is who you’re-

Brady: No, that’s way too easy.

Garrett: This is who you’re listening to, okay? So take all of our advice with a little grain of salt. We’re much more Family Feud kind of people.

Brady: Yeah. Anyway, that’s where I see my Medicare commercials and maybe some lottery commercials.

Garrett: Okay. So, that’s where you get your lottery commercials?

Brady: Yeah, where I’ve only-

Garrett: And we’re going to focus on the lottery because scratchers are different.

Brady: Yeah, scratchers are different. So the way I think of the lottery is you pay… What is it?$ 2 maybe for the Mega, a dollar for the normal? That’s just a guess. But anyway.

Garrett: So you pay a small monetary amount-

Brady: You pay that money for a ticket and that money goes into the pot.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: And then I don’t know if they still do it this way, but once the pot or the time date is there, they roll the balls, it’s randomly selected, and if you have those numbers on your ticket, you take home half the pot and the IRS, government, takes home the rest.

Garrett: Isn’t it 60… Is it 55/45?

Brady: I don’t know. I saw a bunch of memes about this because there was a recently huge one, right?

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Yeah. Was it over a billion?

Garrett: That’s why we’re talking about it.

Brady: Oh, really?

Garrett: Yeah, yeah.

Brady: Nice.

Garrett: Remember, it’s marketing and culture, so this is a relevant event-

Brady: Yeah, yeah. Sounds like relevant stuff.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go.

Brady: I see what you did there. It was a big one. Cool. But anyway. All the memes on Instagram from the financial pages I follow, it’s all just joking about how much money the government made.

Garrett: So, the reason I think we should maybe market the lottery different is I think the government’s making money off of people that maybe shouldn’t be buying a ton of lottery tickets.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: To me, if you don’t have a ton of money, obviously winning a life- changing amount of money means a lot to you. It’s kind of hard though maybe to process the odds of winning because it’s a little different, to go back to my raffle story of me competing with my 12 neighbors, all of which were taking it for fun and then I accidentally bought the whole roll, is very different than how most people, I would argue, treat the lottery. Most people who treat the lottery might not be the highest income families.

Brady: Yeah, no one can walk in and buy a trillion Mega.

Garrett: Tickets.

Brady: Tickets.

Garrett: Correct. And if you did, you’d-

Brady: It’s kind of what you did on your block party.

Garrett: Correct. But you can’t do that in real life.

Brady: No.

Garrett: So if you were in charge of marketing the lottery, what would you do different?

Brady: Well, I’d have to-

Garrett: Who do you want to market to? Let’s talk about our audience first, Brady. Let’s build a campaign today. So, we are now the CMO of the lottery. And who do you want your audience to be?

Brady: I mean, everyone in America pretty much.

Garrett: Okay. Have you ever seen a marketer successfully market to everyone?

Brady: No, but it’s a lottery.

Garrett: I think that’s how we got here. We’re trying to do a new lottery.

Brady: inaudible selling the American dream.

Garrett: Okay. So before we get to audience, maybe we start… Oh, I think we need the audience first, Brady. I don’t think we can go to value prop and messaging until we have audience. So you still think every American should be the audience, or is there a type of American you want? Because they’re going after a type of American too right now. I wouldn’t say they’re going after you, Brady.

Brady: I bought two of the Mega Millions. Well, Lindsay wanted me to and she wanted a Slurpee from 7- eleven.

Garrett: So, you still got two of them?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: And the marketing came from third parties or directly from the lottery?

Brady: It was just Lindsay grew up that way-

Garrett: inaudible.

Brady: …kind of the thing you do. Coworkers used to split tickets back in the day.

Garrett: Okay. So, I might have a biased viewpoint. Maybe a lot more people than I think are buying lottery tickets.

Brady: I think that’s how they advertise, is they go after the people who actually think,” Oh my gosh, this is what I need to change my life. And if I do this every…” I don’t know if it’s weekly or whatever. But,” If I do it every time, it’s going to hit one day.” And they actually believe that dream. There’s the coworkers who that’s just a casual thing to have something to talk about.

Garrett: Yeah. Let’s grab some lottery tickets after lunch.

Brady: Let’s all buy in together. I’m collecting the money. We go to the gas station, we get it at lunch, and we have a thing to talk about during the work week.

Garrett: Yo, share the pot. Yeah.

Brady: You probably have the super wealthy people who don’t need it to change your lifestyle, but let me throw my hat in the ring kind of thing. I honestly think that that’s a inaudible-

Garrett: Couldn’t hurt to have more.

Brady: …strategy, is to advertise to the masses.

Garrett: I like that. So we normally do niche advertising, but I’m going to take you up for it, Brady. So, every American is our audience. What about immigrants that aren’t American yet?

Brady: I don’t know if they-

Garrett: Are they allowed to buy lottery tickets?

Brady: I don’t know if they’d be able to collect the winnings.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: So, it’d be-

Garrett: So, we’re just going to focus on Americans. And we don’t know the laws, so we’re just going to focus on Americans. So, you’re an American and you’re in the continental United States.

Brady: Mm- hmm.

Garrett: So, what’s the message? What are you selling, Brady? Because you’re not selling the ticket, right? You’re selling the job to be done. Do you run a campaign that shows someone after winning and how amazing their life became? Because what I find it very interesting about the marketing in the lottery-

Brady: Yeah, I don’t think they do that.

Garrett: No, they don’t. They don’t. But hey, we’re going to do it better than they have. That’s kind of my point.

Brady: I think they should do that though.

Garrett: Well, I think everybody’s understanding of it is your life somehow gets worse if you win in their heart of hearts.

Brady: There’s some documentaries about that. Yeah.

Garrett: Correct. That’s what I’m saying. There’s some negative marketing out there.

Brady: Yeah. But it also gets you to think of the odds. If you sell the outcome too much, now you’re thinking of the odds, when they kind of just sell the experience.

Garrett: What about a campaign like this, Brady. Let me just pitch you a campaign. I’m here. What’s 45% of a billion?

Brady: Come on.

Garrett: So what you could do is you could lean into the tax angle and still be like,” Who doesn’t want$ 550 million?,” or something.

Brady: Yeah, it’s 450 million, right?

Garrett: Something like that. We’re also not-

Brady: I almost said 45 million.

Garrett: We don’t watch Jeopardy and we’re not good at math.

Brady: Well, it’s also… What time is it? It’s almost 3:00, right?

Garrett: It’s almost 3:00, yeah. Brains stop working at 9: 00 AM, so this is tough for us.

Brady: I’m only halfway through my Diet Coke.

Garrett: Are you a Diet Coke guy now?

Brady: I’m a monster. I’m not a-

Garrett: You’re a Monster Energy guy?

Brady: No, I’m a Diet Coke monster.

Garrett: Oh, you are?

Brady: Yes.

Garrett: You’re a fiend?

Brady: Yes.

Garrett: Wait, when did you develop this new addiction?

Brady: Lindsay. Yeah, my wife drinks them and I took a couple sips-

Garrett: Because I knew you were a cold brew fiend.

Brady: Yeah, I’m a coffee guy. But it’s similar. It’s an acquired taste and it’s very refreshing and it has the caffeine.

Garrett: When I have the aftertaste, to me, that’s the taste of cancer. I don’t know what the flavor… You know what I’m talking about, right? That little aftertaste you get on a diet. To me. I heard that diet stuff gives you cancer and I can’t forget that.

Brady: Yeah, I need a sip. We’re talking about it too much.

Garrett: inaudible-

Brady: That sounds delicious.

Garrett: Now, I think you could lean into the tax angle on the lottery in the sense that you could-

Brady: Promote what they would do with the money?

Garrett: No, no. Nobody cares about what the government does.

Brady: How you lean into the tax angle.

Garrett: Even after taxes, it’s a heck of a lot of money.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So a lot of people are like,” Oh yeah, but you get taxed on all of it. You got to pay all…” It’s like if you win the Family Feud, they’re like,” Oh. Well, yeah. You know you got to pay taxes on the car?”

Brady: Yeah, you actually take the cash over the car. You can make… yeah.

Garrett: They right. They always do that thing. So, what if you leaned into the tax angle? Do you think that would get people talking about it?

Brady: I think that’s still the minority who goes there though.

Garrett: Well, remember, it’s not about getting people to go to buy lottery tickets in my mind. Because I think people who buy lottery tickets are already buying lottery tickets.

Brady: Oh. So, how do you open up-

Garrett: Correct. I’m doing the marketing for the lottery. I think if you sell an addictive product, you don’t need to essentially keep your current customers.

Brady: Mm- hmm.

Garrett: I don’t know a lot of casinos that are trying to get their top slot players running ads to those people. I think they’re usually running ads to people who haven’t played the slots yet so that they can hook them.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Right? In other words, if I’m running the lottery, I’m trying to get more people to play the lottery, not get the same people to play more often. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but that’s kind where my brain goes.

Brady: Yeah. Big tobacco flavored vapes, they’re not trying to get my grandma to stop with the cigarettes. They’re trying to-

Garrett: Correct. I don’t think the tobacco companies are trying to get smokers to smoke more of their cigarettes as much as they’re trying to get people who don’t smoke, the youth, to start smoking.

Brady: Mm- hmm. Even though they would say otherwise.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So what I’m trying to say is if I’m the lottery, my premise of doing the marketing for the lottery is, how do I get the people who aren’t currently playing the lottery, right? And I can look at all my data. We say every American could, but we’re over- indexing on these types, right? How do we get the rest of them? Because I’m sure what the brief would probably look like. Right? So, we got a brief for the lottery. So for you, what’s the campaign angle? Do you want to take the American dream? Do you want to maybe do some nostalgic 1940s, like America going to war ads? I saw some really… It’s so good when they show for God and country type ads. How do we get people to play the lottery? What’s the angle you’re going to take?

Brady: That’s a tough one. Even personally for me, my mind would actually be around having a plan for that money and understanding on the government side of things.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: Because I always joke about speeding. It’s like,” Hey, if I get caught, I’m donating to my city. I love my city. So be it. Give more money to the department.”

Garrett: Do you know how much of your speeding ticket goes to the city?

Brady: No, it’s more of a joke. It’s like I’m willing to give back-

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: …to my community if they use the money well.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Right? And so it would be-

Garrett: And that’s what governments do. Any time you give them money, they use it exceptionally well.

Brady: Yeah. They use it very, very well.

Garrett: No waste and it’s perfect allocation. Yeah.

Brady: So, it would be interesting to commercialize the business plan for those funds.

Garrett: Ooh.

Brady: Where is it going? What impact? Similar to when you donate to a charity.

Garrett: Like a nonprofit where they show-

Brady: Yeah, a nonprofit, a charity. That’s how they market.

Garrett: …95% goes the executive team, 5% goes to the people who need it. I was kidding.

Brady: No, serious.

Garrett: But that’s kind of what you-

Brady: No. That’s, yeah, very similar.

Garrett: You’re trying to break down that perception.

Brady: Yeah. It’s exactly what I’m thinking of, is the nonprofit and donation. And that’s just personal to me, which I-

Garrett: Correct. That’s very altruistic though.

Brady: That would be a new demographic. I think I’m similar to other people.” So I think that would get a segment is,” Okay, cool. Let me give this money. I know it’s going to do this.”

Garrett: So, wait. Timeout though.

Brady: “There’sa chance I make whatever the-“

Garrett: Are you telling me I can segment my ads to the American people? I can maybe run different messages?

Brady: Well, yeah, that’s where I was… If that’s possible.

Garrett: So, inaudible-

Brady: I also don’t know where are the laws. It’s almost like alcohol commercials, you can’t show anyone drinking the alcohol. What kind of regulations are around the lottery?

Garrett: It’s always just a really crappy stock image and someone partying with balls bouncing in the air, I feel like. You know what I’m talking about?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: When you’re driving on the freeway and you see a lotto, like the SuperLotto or whatever they call it. The Mega, I think you’re calling… That’s what they always do. But yeah, I would argue that’s fine if you could segment it to people who don’t need the money. So if you took your wealthiest part of the country who were Democrats, and then ran that campaign to them, I think it would work. I think if you ran it to a bunch of conservatives who didn’t have a lot of money, I don’t know if they would be inspired to give more of their money to the government.

Brady: No. It would have to be segmented. That’s a message where you can’t show it to everyone.

Garrett: No, you could not.

Brady: Because that could get people who are already bought in, like you said, the addicts already doing the lottery whenever it’s open, that could get them to stop.

Garrett: Now, we could run into problems with the government running hyper- targeted ads to during certain inaudible of its population.

Brady: For the lottery?

Garrett: So, let’s stay-

Brady: For gambling?

Garrett: Let’s stay a little bit, like one step above Cambridge Analytica, if that makes sense?

Brady: Yeah. So, what’s the ad that anyone could see-

Garrett: For anyone. You said every American’s your audience. And if I can’t segment it because you gave me something that only works if you inaudible-

Brady: Yes. No, I agree. I agree.

Garrett: And you trust the government.

Brady: You would lose the interest of some of your market.

Garrett: I would argue the vast majority is low income, conservative, would be where I would say the lottery index is. Just guessing.

Brady: Yeah. Then I think you sell the dream, you sell the chances, you sell that there’s no way you can get it if you don’t buy a ticket. And I think that’s kind of what they’re already doing, is they don’t sell too much the winning because then you think about the odds of winning.

Garrett: So, the American dream’s a lie unless you win the lottery? Is that the ad? Because I want to get to the ethos of it. I think we can do this together live on the show. Because if you’re saying that, what you’re saying is the American lie is a dream, the only way you’ll ever have the life you dream of is by winning the lottery.

Brady: No, it’s like the super dream, the hyper dream. It’s not just the general American dream. Not trying to replace the start your own-

Garrett: Well, the American dream’s a super dream now.

Brady: Start your own business kind of thing.

Garrett: How many people can buy houses? How many people have a nucleus of a family still together? I mean, the old American dream is pretty much dead. What’s the new American dream? What could we inaudible? Because that’s the old American dream. What’s the new American dream? If we think about it like a tobacco company, we want to hook the next generation of Americans on the lottery. You get a million TikTok followers if you win? But you know what I’m saying? What’s the angle we take to win the youth over to the lottery and learn from big tobacco? What a weird statement to say.

Brady: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think there’s too much of a new American dream. I think it’s financial independence and the handful of routes we have to get there in America.

Garrett: How does-

Brady: More than other countries.

Garrett: I love that. So let me give you an angle, Brady. How could you get closer to that without winning? Because that, to me, is interesting. What if losing had value? Because everybody loses except for one person.

Brady: So, you’re buying a ticket still?

Garrett: Yeah, you’re still buying a ticket. But how could I see buying a ticket as a win even if I lose? Because to me, that gets really creative. How could we position it, right? So, Brady, how could you position buying a ticket as a good thing regardless of winning?

Brady: I mean, that’s where-

Garrett: Where the money goes?

Brady: …along the lines of where the money goes, we may be bringing in nonprofits and charities.

Garrett: Ooh.

Brady: Right?

Garrett: I like that.

Brady: To 10% goes to that no matter what.

Garrett: inaudible.

Brady: And then obviously, you’re going to be taxed on it, but because we-

Garrett: Kind of like the BOGO model of a TOMS shoes or something, like this is the impact revenue on the environment or the community. I like that.

Brady: And maybe that’s a tax deduction the end of the year, is you can write off your lottery tickets?

Garrett: No, I think that’s an altruistic kind of utopic angle, right? How could the lottery affect global warming?

Brady: Mm- hmm.

Garrett: How could the lottery affect impoverished communities, right? So, I think we could take the here’s where the money goes angle you brought up earlier. But then people are self- centered, right? They’re very self- centered. So, what do they personally get even if they lose from just going through the experience? Fun?

Brady: Yeah. Fun, a talking point, right? It’s social.

Garrett: So what about the lottery makes it fun, in your mind?

Brady: I think just being a part of the odds. For me, I like scratchers.

Garrett: Those are way better odds. The lottery has some of the worst odds ever.

Brady: Better odds. It’s a better experience too. You’re actually scratching things off. You don’t just have this receipt, thin, orange piece of paper that you check the numbers. But I think that’s the experience too. I’ve never even done this. But I guess when they announce it, you probably grab your ticket and you cross- reference the numbers on the screen or in the newspaper or you heard on the radio and you look at your ticket. I think it’s that adrenaline and rush when the first number matches and then the rest don’t, but that first number did.

Garrett: You got me going inaudible.

Brady: And the dopamine, right?

Garrett: No, I love that. So, I was breaking down casinos while you’re talking in my head. And I think the key to this campaign is participation.

Brady: Mm- hmm.

Garrett: If you think about it, a lot of the worst odds in Vegas have high levels of participation. Think about how you participate. When you play blackjack, do you have to check each time?

Brady: What do you mean? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Garrett: You’re very inaudible-

Brady: Check or hit.

Garrett: So, essentially-

Brady: Or you mean hit or hold? Where do you use check?

Garrett: Well, playing blackjack is fun even if you don’t win because you are playing the game.

Brady: Yeah. But we check… That’s poker, right?

Garrett: Well, you inaudible-

Brady: Check the cards or you hold and you hit in blackjack. So, that’s why I was thrown off. Just one-

Garrett: Yeah. So, you can check. You put your hand… That’s hitting? Yeah, I guess inaudible-

Brady: Yeah, that’s hitting. Checking is when you’re just saying,” Hey, I’m cool with the bet on the table in poker.” So, you check.

Garrett: Correct. Which would be essentially waving your hand in blackjack would be stay or hold inaudible.

Brady: Something.

Garrett: Correct. But you participate. Craps, you throw the dice. Roulette, you pick a number or a color. There’s this participation factor. In other words, playing, gambling is fun because of the participation, not just the winning. You also get a free drink brought to you. It smells nice. You’re in Vegas. It’s an experience. You’re participating. So, how could we make the ticket feel like participation? For example, what if on every ticket there was a live drop? You know how they drop a sneakers app on Nike or something? What if we allowed the lottery to have a very high participation factor? I think one of the reasons you like the scratchers is there’s a higher level of participation, if you think about it, in a scratcher compared to a lottery ticket.

Brady: Yeah. And they’re actually bridging it. I don’t know if it’s for the lotto ticket, but they’re bridging it to mobile, online. And so on scratchers, you can go to the website, enter the code for your second chance. And that gets you into then the online environment.

Garrett: Well, yeah, because think about trading cards. Trading cards, you get to keep the cards. What if previous lotto tickets could still have value?

Brady: Mm- hmm.

Garrett: Now, all of a sudden you’re participating in a game bigger than you.

Brady: Yeah, it’s got a stick- on tattoo on the back kind of thing.

Garrett: Correct. Now, you’re participating all the time, so now we get to sell how fun it is to play the lottery, not how much money you could win. Because I think if you sell the fun of the lottery, I think the average human knows the odds aren’t great but they like to gamble. As humans, we like to gamble. So you still have that, but I think there’s a lot of people who maybe don’t participate in the lottery because they don’t see what’s fun about losing.

Brady: Mm- hmm.

Garrett: And I think a lot of people could find some fun and participate.

Brady: Yeah. Yeah, I can even see a commercial with just a bunch of different demographics and their reaction to winning and losing. So a group of people at the bar and they lost and they’re all like,” Dang it.” And then one person alone on the couch and they won maybe a small amount and their celebration. And you can kind of just show the experience win or lose inaudible-

Garrett: But everybody’s having excitement.

Brady: Yeah, it’s excitement.

Garrett: Oh, you remember that meme they do where they change the screen that’s in that bar and everybody goes nuts?

Brady: Yeah, yeah.

Garrett: Imagine if-

Brady: The DVD logo, right?

Garrett: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The DVD, yeah.

Brady: That’s what the Coinbase commercial was based on, right?

Garrett: I think so.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: But if you did that same thing, then you start to recreate it’s fun win or lose. Sports isn’t fun because your team wins. Cheering on your team is what’s fun. If you had a way to cheer on your number… Imagine if they had the world’s largest horse race. You know those horse races with the mechanical horses that go back and forth? And what if you could have all 1 million numbers… Let’s say there was a million lottery tickets sold. What if all 1 million thought they were winning for a second? If you play Daily Fantasy and you get this moment only in the first quarter of the very first 10 NFL game, but you’re in first out of 25, 000, it’s the best feeling in the world. You know you’re not going to finish in first. But any way that you could recreate that, I think we could crush marketing the lottery.

Brady: Yeah. Even a way to QR code on the ticket and it opens up a digital experience on when the numbers are being read and your odds fluctuate as numbers get read.

Garrett: Yes. Now, we’re talking.

Brady: And I think the commercial would be showing not just the winning and losing, but them waiting for the numbers, right? So it’s a family watching, it’s a group of friends, it’s someone alone. Because that’s what it is. It is the experience. It’s just being a part of the odds. That’s what it is.

Garrett: And I love that you shared with others. I would argue that most people don’t buy lottery tickets, maybe I’m wrong here, but in complete isolation. Because everything you said was with some coworkers, your wife. By the way, you said your wife earlier. So to me, if there’s a kind of communal element to it… Imagine if there was the world’s craziest community of all the lottery people. Imagine if you built the lottery community. Imagine being the moderator of the community forum for all the people who purchased a lottery ticket.

Brady: Yeah. But there’s also the dangers of bringing other people into the decision. Obviously, I don’t agree with buying the ticket. My wife wants to, she’s going to win that one all day, so we still do it.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: But when she brings me in on it, I’m like,” Let me just get you a Slurpee.” I’m not going to get them-

Garrett: Why’d you feel icky about the lottery? What made you feel icky about it? Because that little ick, that’s what we got to get rid of.

Brady: It wasn’t icky. You see me in Vegas, I’m hitting the slot machine in the airport. It’s not like she could knock me for the same logic, right?

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Or lack of.

Garrett: So, what’s-

Brady: It’s just the odds are so low. I’m not going to win.

Garrett: Have the odds ever been stated?

Brady: No, but I think the higher the money, the lower the odds. So everyone’s hyped when the odds are the worst, which is the beauty of the lottery, is it gets so hyped when the odds are the worst.

Garrett: That is so true. Imagine if you applied that to sports-

Brady: I’m trying to get that$ 1 million Mega Million jackpot. That means not a lot of people are in there.

Garrett: There are little sports betters though. They only bet underdogs. The odds are too good. And you’re like,” Yeah, but there’s a reason why,” if that makes sense.

Brady: Yeah. Well, that’s a higher profit if they do win.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: So in that, the odds are low, but if they do win, it’s a big pop. And so if they do it, they’re all hedging bets, right?

Garrett: Correct. They can design their strategy. Do you think people try to do similar strategies with the lottery?

Brady: Probably how they… I think the lottery’s just so simple.

Garrett: inaudible buy five scratchers and one lottery ticket.

Brady: It’s so simple. I think my grandpa, when he passed away and we went through his house, he had some crazy… He was an engineer, so he had some crazy lottery-

Garrett: Formula?

Brady: …manual algorithm.

Garrett: I’ve heard people don’t ever try to buy lottery tickets from big corporations because essentially you need the feel good story of some inaudible.

Brady: Yeah. Let’s pull over to this random gas station in the middle of the desert because the odds are-

Garrett: Better.

Brady: Better there.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Yeah, I’ve heard all of it.

Garrett: Dude, I think it’s just a crazy concept. And where do they market the lottery right now? So, how do we distribute our message? So, what’s our message? We get nailed down our campaign. We’re going to focus on participation. We’re going to focus on even if you lose-

Brady: Yeah, feel good, just being a part of the odds.

Garrett: …the benefits it creates for the community, how it helps global warming and the environment. I feel like we can tie all that in to one story.

Brady: Yeah. Like you said, if it’s not segmented, I don’t know if we can go into what the government does with that money. But I do think it’s just selling being a part of it, selling being a part of the odds. You’re never going to win if you don’t join.

Garrett: FOMO. So, the primary thing is FOMO.

Brady: Make it casual. I mean set up well with how much it costs. It doesn’t cost a lot. And so really the$2 it costs to buy a ticket and now you get to enjoy that time with your coworkers talking about it on a Friday afternoon, you’re kind of selling that.

Garrett: I love it. And I think we can do some things where we maybe keep your historical tickets. We’re going to call back all of… We’re going to do a micro lottery based off of all the numbers pulled in 2012. Whoever still has that ticket… If not, it’ll go to 2013. It’ll roll over. I think there’s ways inaudible-

Brady: Yeah, the QR codes, the apps with notifications when it’s being read. I definitely think there’s some cool ways to-

Garrett: To better engage.

Brady: To bring it beyond the thin yellow piece of paper.

Garrett: Do you know where we can legally distribute this? Because I’ve seen the lottery on the 55, the freeway with… They’ve got a billboard for it. I’ve seen that before.

Brady: Yeah, they do TV.

Garrett: Okay. So we got TV, we got billboards. I haven’t seen an Instagram ad.

Brady: I don’t know if it states specific.

Garrett: Have I? Maybe I have.

Brady: I may have.

Garrett: I think I might have recently. That’s why I’m like,” Oh-“

Brady: Only for scratchers though. I’ve seen really cool high production ads for when, like I said, the new Pac- Man scratcher came out inaudible-

Garrett: What made you love the campaign?

Brady: Well, I already enjoyed just doing scratchers as a fun thing to do.

Garrett: Can you scratch the inaudible?

Brady: No, I don’t-

Garrett: Why don’t they make the lottery a scratcher?

Brady: I don’t know.

Garrett: Because that would just make you participate.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Right? For you, it would be more fun.

Brady: It probably costs too much.

Garrett: It would be more fun for you though.

Brady: It’s probably expensive.

Garrett: You think it’s more expensive?

Brady: Yeah. It’s a lotto.

Garrett: inaudible.

Brady: Yeah. But yeah, I’ve seen the scratcher ads and whenever they have a new theme… I think they had a Tetris one too. And so for me, I love video games. I love the classic video games. I already enjoy just spontaneously telling my wife like,” Hey, I’m going to go grab you a Slurpee and get some tickets and we’re going to scratch them while watching Family Feud.”

Garrett: Oh, sounds like a great night.

Brady: Believe it or not, I’m 30 years old.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah. No, no. 30 inaudible-

Brady: So, for all the listeners-

Garrett: Going on 85.

Brady: …I’m probably one of the only 30- year- olds that’s watching Family Feud getting scratchers. But yeah, that’s a fun, random, spontaneous night. I love… I shouldn’t say it like that. A lot of passion just came out. I was about to say,” I love gambling.”

Garrett: inaudible.

Brady: I don’t gamble that much.

Garrett: No, you don’t. But I think you like the-

Brady: But I enjoy it. It’s-

Garrett: Yeah, the energy.

Brady: It’s because I don’t do it.

Garrett: Right.

Brady: It’s just fun when I do it.

Garrett: Yeah, when you splurge a little.

Brady: And I’ve made it well enough in life to where I don’t feel guilty about buying$ 20 worth of scratchers on a random Tuesday. It’s just fun.

Garrett: inaudible. I know what I’m doing by the way, I think, on my drive home. I got to get a Slurpee and some scratchers. Now, you’ve inspired inaudible.

Brady: Dude, it’s… The wife loves a Slurpee. She enjoys the scratchers too.

Garrett: If nothing good has come out of this podcast, I think we’ve just reinvigorated people’s loves for scratchers.

Brady: Yeah. I mean, I know what I’m doing tonight.

Garrett: I love it. I love it. In closing, sounds like the way we would go about the lottery is we’d have to figure out some type of emotion that we could tap in that every American shares. We don’t inaudible how to break down how the government spends the money, but we could do a simple, simple concept, like 2% of the money goes to the homeless or 2% goes to the environment or something like that or 1% or… Let’s not think the government’s going to get over inaudible generous all of a sudden. But we could come up with some kind of utopic good that you’re doing by buying the ticket that could appeal to everyone. So we come up with the least controversial thing that everyone could be like,” Yeah, I do think human trafficking’s bad. I’ll give 1% to that.” And so I think we can come up with a couple things that we could maybe anchor it to. So even if you lose, you feel like you contributed. And then I think people should participate. I know you said scratchers could be expensive, but I think the process of scratching a number off. And maybe even what if you could have some micro winners in the lottery? What if every 100 tickets you won a dollar or$ 2? So it could be maybe some micro dopamine that we could give back to people. The scratchers, you don’t win the good scratcher usually. You usually win the bad version of the scratcher prize, right?

Brady: Mm-hmm.

Garrett: Or you buy a scratcher for five bucks, you might win six bucks or something. But that’s on your 100th ticket.

Brady: Yeah. The last thing is just going through my head now. Once we get going on these-

Garrett: I know.

Brady: But it’s being adaptable to just the culture.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Because the one thing I’m thinking about is, why was this one so big? And we’re talking about potential recessions. So if we’re talking successful ad campaigns, just kind of taking a step back, we can kind of track that. Campaign aside, I don’t think it’s an ad that got the one point whatever billion it got to the other week. It’s the culture, it’s the recession potential going on.

Garrett: The macro impact, Brady.

Brady: So thinking of that, then how do we take that and bring that to advertisement?

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: I think that’s how we create something powerful. And I don’t know if that’s just-

Garrett: No.

Brady: …accelerating what’s already going on that’s driving the lottery and bringing it to advertisement. But I think the style of ad changes dependent on just where we are as a country.

Garrett: No, I agree. I think that’s a good, I think, note for all marketers, is whatever campaign you’re running right now still exists within the macro economy. And I think understanding where we’re at as a country, where the world’s at is important when you think about the message you’re trying to communicate and who you’re communicating it to.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So, no, man, this has been fun. We are now fully explored the lottery.

Brady: Yeah, interesting. Going to go buy some tickets.

Garrett: I know. So if you’re listening today, hopefully you’ll buy some tickets, waste your… I mean, contribute your money to a financially sound-

Brady: To the government.

Garrett: To the government, yeah. And thanks to everybody. As always, like, leave five stars, review us, subscribe, and whatever else you can do to help us out is always great. So, thanks everybody. And that’s another episode of Original Marketing.

Brady: See you next week.