Episode 8: In-Game Purchases, The Lego Brand And Tesla’s Marketing

Episode Transcript

Garrett: All right. Welcome everyone to episode eight of Original Marketing. We are very excited to be with you today. We got a couple awesome segments, some good conversation lined up for you, and excited to be here. Now, Brady and I got lunch in prepped for this. And we came into the podcast room and all our best content is always when the mics aren’t running, I’ve found.

Brady: Yeah. That happens.

Garrett: But Brady was telling me that he believes…

Brady: Uh- oh, what did I say?

Garrett: And my wife believes this too, vehemently, that the advertisers are listening to us.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I can’t buy it.

Brady: Well, what’s crazy is-

Garrett: Don’t you think there’d be some massive lawsuit for this big news story?

Brady: And I’ve Googled it. I’ve done some research and was nothing out there. But I did watch a guy’s YouTube video where he doesn’t own any pets and he didn’t do any browsing around pet food, anything, and he just had conversations with his wife around his devices. And then he was getting display ads for pet food in toys. So that was the closest thing I’ve seen to proof, and then I’ve obviously had crazy examples.

Garrett: So what happened today? This is about how it came up.

Brady: Yeah. Garrett’s telling me I need to get healthier and more fit.

Garrett: It’s a little bit, frankly true. We were talking about it.

Brady: At a high level. Anyways, so I hop on… I was actually looking for videos for commercials, prepping for this, and my YouTube ad was some health protein, caffeine type powder and the example’s a guy surfing. And we talked about how I’ve been surfing a little bit.

Garrett: Yeah. The premise of the stories we’re both in our 30s, I’ve got three kids under three, and my body finally went through that change where you’re you don’t work out, you notice you actually start gaining weight, you’re getting a little lethargic, you’re losing energy, you pull a muscle, you can’t recover. Brady, he’s a perfect human specimen. And so I’m just trying to warn him that if you get injured-

Brady: As I drink my Diet Coke.

Garrett: But if you get injured right now, it’s going to be a lot harder to recover if you don’t proactively start investing some money in your health. And we did that whole conversation. He comes in the office, and he surfs, we’re talking about surfing, he gets a surfing ad now.

Brady: Yeah. It was like a surfing, but it was a protein powder, get healthier type ad.

Garrett: Here’s my take on it. Now, it’s completely unsubstantiated and completely magical, but that’s what’s beautiful about running a podcast and having a YouTube show, is it’s says hot takes. So here’s my hot take. Apps on your phone are listening to you and then they sell that data to the ad platforms. But I think the ad platforms have washed their hands of it, so I don’t think YouTube’s listening. But I do that YouTube buys data from someone who might be listening. But I don’t know if you are allowed to have an app on the Apple store if you’re listening to people. I don’t know it, I think that’s against the law. That’s where I’m getting stuck.

Brady: Yeah. All the Facebook stuff, that was a big thing, was the sharing data between apps and Facebook and ads and tapping into that, as a business you can’t do it anymore. I don’t know.

Garrett: But people are convinced of this. They’ll be talking about YETI coolers and-

Brady: Dude. No, I’ve talked about Frisbee golf at lunch. It was a work lunch. We were talking about Frisbee golf and I got an Instagram ad for Frisbee golf.

Garrett: I know, but is that just because of recency bias? In other words-

Brady: I don’t think so. I use that as an example.

Garrett: Because you’re a persona. Look at you. You could play some serious Frisbee golf, you could-

Brady: Back in the day. Sure.

Garrett: You look like a guy who plays Frisbee golf.

Brady: I had a whole set. I had the offset.

Garrett: Yes, this is what I’m talking about.

Brady: Overhead throw.

Garrett: What if you’re just the ICP, baby, and it’s totally random?

Brady: No. That was the only time I’ve ever seen… Well, it goes against the whole recency bias thing. Maybe I do see it, I just don’t notice it.

Garrett: That’s my point. People are like, Oh my God. I’m talking about insurance.

Brady: I’ll send you the YouTube video, because I thought it was a good example.

Garrett: Oh, actually Riley can put the YouTube video Brady’s referring to into the show.

Brady: Yeah. Check the link.

Garrett: Right now.

Brady: In the description.

Garrett: Riley’s our new producer.

Brady: Well, now I have to find it.

Garrett: So everybody can say hi to Riley. Well, it’s kind of hard for you to say hi. But he’s here and he’s going to be on camera in the future and he’s essentially going to be bringing all of the show to life. And that’s going to be awesome. I think y’all are going to get a lot more value out of us maybe talking about advertising we love, if you could see the ad, so that’s the angle.

Brady: Helpful.

Garrett: Helpful.

Brady: Y’all have great imaginations, we know.

Garrett: Hey, we’re going to send him everything we talk about today, so it’ll kind of be like a B version of the future. And in the future, we’re going to have an A version show for y’all to tune into, relax, enjoy yourself, and hopefully be inspired by marketing and fall more in love with it. That’s really what we want to do.

Brady: That’s the goal. So you don’t think they’re listening, just to wrap this one?

Garrett: No, I don’t think they’re listening. There’s too much risk for them. I can just imagine Good morning America and it would be that big of a story that you’d have Michael… Is Michael Shanahan? Who’s the ex- NFL guy?

Brady: I don’t know.

Garrett: Yeah, whatever. But you’re going to have every morning show talking about this, every nightlife show, every Instagram account, F Jerry, everybody is going to be talking about this if it went… Because everybody believes this.

Brady: Even the that one YouTube video I keep referring to, I’m surprised there’s not more like that.

Garrett: Maybe because it’s not real?

Brady: Or because they take it all down because it is real.

Garrett: I don’t know. I would just say if Facebook, Apple or Google, the big three, were listening to us, you would’ve every Congress member, Senate member, news channel, Instagram account, everybody would be going crazy.

Brady: I don’t know, you give access to your microphone and when you do that, you think it’s because, well-

Garrett: When do you have extra time out though?

Brady: No, because it makes stories and stuff. If you’re filming yourself to post and you want your sound on it, that requires access to the microphone, so that’s why I think-

Garrett: During active use, I don’t think they’re tap… What you would be essentially saying-

Brady: But people are actively using it as you’re talking.

Garrett: I know, but what you would be saying, is that Google, Facebook… And who’s the other one?

Brady: Google, Facebook…

Garrett: There’s Meta.

Brady: Yeah, Meta, because Instagram’s a big one. TikTok.

Garrett: TikTok. You’re telling me that they all have the world’s largest wiretapping surveillance conspiracy in the history of America and the world and we just unknowingly are going about it like plebes?

Brady: Yeah, because we don’t swipe up. That’s the whole thing, they say just because you lock your phone, you don’t close your apps. You have to swipe up to close your apps.

Garrett: Closing apps is BS. You know what inaudible, it hurts your battery. I do it-

Brady: To close the app?

Garrett: Yeah. So I’m addicted to swiping up too because I think it saves battery. But I’ve heard it actually hurts battery.

Brady: I’m just saying the whole while in use, could technically maybe be if the app is still open. I believe it. Isn’t Amazon buying Roomba so they can get square footage data in homes? Wasn’t that a thing?

Garrett: I don’t think so because they could just buy the square footage data from the MLS. I don’t know why you need the Roomba.

Brady: Yeah. I don’t know why.

Garrett: Yeah. You could just… There’s always-

Brady: Why the Roomba data would be better than-

Garrett: Yeah. There’s already floor plan data that they could acquire and they already have, I’m sure.

Brady: That’s interesting.

Garrett: On the MLS, API, you could do the same thing. I don’t know. I get what you’re saying but we digress. We have a show today.

Brady: That wasn’t a segment?

Garrett: It kind of was.

Brady: I’m going to look more into it.

Garrett: That’s our introduction for y’all, is just, I don’t think they’re listening, brady does.

Brady: Yeah. Last time I checked there’s nothing out there definitive about it.

Garrett: That’s what I told my wife. I said, ” If you believe it so much, prove it to me.” And then everybody kind of just gives up.

Brady: Yeah, but you can’t prove that it’s not happening.

Garrett: I know. And then they go, the next day, they take their phone and, ” Look, I’ve never even searched or thought about this,” and they show it to you. And then you’re like, ” I don’t know what to say either because I do believe you that you weren’t Googling Purafina dog food and now all you’re doing is getting Purafina dog food.”

Brady: I’m just going to see what I have right now.

Garrett: I’m going to do a scroll, you do a scroll, and let’s see if any of the stuff we talked about-

Brady: I’m going to get to add for social listening. I got a golf polo after saying I am wearing a polo under my sweatshirt. That’s brilliant.

Garrett: I’m looking right now. I am not seeing… I’m seeing mostly ads that are irrelevant or re- targeted. I went to Best Buy, I saw Best Buy ad.

Brady: I’m getting this random-

Garrett: Sharktoberfest. Don’t know why that.

Brady: Vesta board, brighten your day. It’s all these squares and you can write a sign on it, probably because we’re talking about the podcast room and decorating.

Garrett: I’m telling you, man, there’s nothing on here I didn’t get anything inaudible.

Brady: We were talking about the podcast room and decorating. I’m two for two. Let me see what my third ad is real quick.

Garrett: You’re probably literally just-

Brady: Truly Seltzers.

Garrett: They just know you, dude. I’m just telling you, you’re a persona type that fits these brands.

Brady: Yeah. The Truly Seltzer is just my demographic.

Garrett: That is the definition of inaudible.

Brady: We were talking smoothies for breakfast at lunch. Truly Seltzer, close enough.

Garrett: See, now this is the problem with it. This is definitely the problem.

Brady: No, those are all stretches. But the Frisbee golf has always stood out to me as one example. Just because that ad was so random.

Garrett: I do think it was that random, and it was so random it stood out to you. I don’t know if there’s-

Brady: And the other one is when we were having a debate around Tapatio vs Cholula at lunch and I got a Tapatio ad that day.

Garrett: Of course you did. You’re a dude who puts Tapatio on things.

Brady: No, but I’ve never gotten that ad before.

Garrett: I just think it’s coincadink.

Brady: That I’m aware of. I’m with you. You see a new car, you then see it all over the road.

Garrett: I’ve been noticing the GCMs everywhere.

Brady: Yeah. You just bought one and now you see it everywhere. And there’s been the same amount this whole time.

Garrett: There’s heavy duty trucks all over the place, I never even noticed one in my life. That’s what I think it’s a recency bias.

Brady: I know. I noticed the price of diesel today for the first time because I knew you bought that truck.

Garrett: Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to say, dude. Our brains have limited capacity.

Brady: I know.

Garrett: And we get focused on something and then we all just blame it on a conspiracy.

Brady: And it just blends in with the people listening and it’s just tough to decipher.

Garrett: 1000%. Now, you inaudible-

Brady: We’re both just going to ditch work and grind on this research.

Garrett: Company’s going to crap, we haven’t grown in a while,

Brady: But we will find out if-

Garrett: The world’s burning around us, clients are unhappy, but we come back to inaudible.

Brady: It’s not competitive.

Garrett: They’re listening. Oh man. All right. So today we’re going to do advertising jealousy.

Brady: Yep.

Garrett: So Brady, what’s been making you jealous? What’s been inspiring you? What kind of marketing, advertising, just what’s really stood out to you lately?

Brady: Yeah. So I think I’m on this theme of higher level examples, but it is what stood out. And so today I want talk-

Garrett: Wait. So you just didn’t do any research and you’re-

Brady: No, I do research around it. I look into the market, the revenue around it. I have data on my phone.

Garrett: All right. Bring it out for me.

Brady: I want to talk about in- game purchases.

Garrett: Okay. Are we talking Fortnite? Or are we talking…

Brady: Yeah. Fortnite’s a good example of it.

Garrett: Mobile apps? Because there’s different types there.

Brady: Yeah. I would say mobile apps and Fortnite bucking it all together because Farmville’s big, or used to be.

Garrett: Correct. I want to hear one more clarifier, is this off games you don’t purchase or you do purchase?

Brady: So these are-

Garrett: Or does it not matter to you?

Brady: It’s more the in- game. So it’s not like the purchase of the game itself.

Garrett: Because some games, they’ll have complete in- game only monetization strategy.

Brady: Yeah. They’re free to play, like Fall Guys, Apex Legends, Fortnite. But you buy these skins, if you don’t know what a skin is, it’s pretty much a costume.

Garrett: It’s so weird to me too, by the way, because it doesn’t affect performance at all. Somehow it’s a billion dollar industry.

Brady: So there were games that you were paying to win, is what the gaming the world was calling it, pay to win.

Garrett: I liked those games.

Brady: But the market was just really shitting on that concept. So I think those Activisions and EAs have taken that away from the model because of how much the gaming market disliked it.

Garrett: Oh, my friend, not true.

Brady: Which games?

Garrett: I’m hardcore FIFA Ultimate Team player. I’ve been playing for almost five years-

Brady: So what do you pay for to do better?

Garrett: I established my club in 2018. Are you kidding me? I’m running a full on club with the mobile app. Right now I’m not, I’m in between seasons, but the new season’s about to launch and I… Okay. Here’s what’s crazy. How do I say this? I have enough disposable income that I can spend it on the game and it doesn’t affect my life. My team stink, Brady. And I am not spending a small amount of money unfortunately on these games.

Brady: So that means it’s not pay to win?

Garrett: It is, but I’m not-

Brady: So why does your game still stink?

Garrett: Because I’ll tell you, when I show up-

Brady: Your team.

Garrett: I’ve got a good team and I’m spending hundreds of dollars a month, I’m going to be honest with you. I Have a good team. I’m spending hundreds of dollars a month. I’m a C, bro.

Brady: Because people are paying more.

Garrett: Oh, I have a look at these teams because there’s a… Okay. So you don’t what it’s about-

Brady: Give me an example. What do you pay for?

Garrett: Oh, it’s a full livestock market.

Brady: Are you buying cleats or are you buying players?

Garrett: No. I’m buying players in a transfer market.

Brady: For real money?

Garrett: And their values go up and down in the season, dude. It’s a live stock market that I am playing. Oh, you would get addicted. Yeah. You would like this.

Brady: No, I’m going to stay away from that?

Garrett: No, no, no. So this is a live market and then all every game the player ratings change. So if you get a guy and he starts playing poorly, his values go down, as they introduce new players or cards to the game, you have to time up, you’re buying, you’re selling. I can buy low, sell high. It’s a real stock market that I’m actively running like my own football club on my phone, 24/7.

Brady: So could you make money on it?

Garrett: You can’t sell your team. No. There’s no way to make money.

Brady: So you purchase a player because they’re doing well. So they’re expensive-

Garrett: But I can’t buy the player. This is where it gets unique. I can buy the packs and more expensive packs have higher likelihoods-

Brady: Higher chances of…

Garrett: So it’s a gambling and it’s team management all on your phone and on the Xbox, and I’m fully hooked.

Brady: But you can’t, once you buy it, you can’t flip it? You can’t sell…

Garrett: No, I can sell the players but I can’t sell my club. I’m sure there’s a black market for it so you could.

Brady: Can you make your own pack and then put that pack on the market and then…?

Garrett: No. It’s all EA’s world, I’m just living in it. And then wait until drop the packs. I put a couple hundred bucks down, I opened a bunch of packs, it’s super fun, and then I build my team. But I might buy, let’s say, I put$ 100 down on packs, I might only get one player that’s good enough to be on my bench. The rest of them, I’m selling on the transfer market. And so I’m having to buy players, sell players, build up my coins, then try to sell my whole club to buy the new guy. So I’m very familiar with this world you’re talking about.

Brady: And so the coins you use to buy these packs, could you technically grind out certain modes in the game and get those coins?

Garrett: Yes you could. So the other way people… So I essentially like games that allow me to use maybe what my advantage is compared to a 12 year old.

Brady: Yeah. But in the hours it takes to get those coins versus your hourly rate-

Garrett: They have the hours a.nd I have the money and so I can use money, they can use hours. Both parties can build their clubs. The guys who have money and put the hours in, their teams are nutty. It’s like if you play Fortnite in your world and a game you know… What game do you play?

Brady: Apex.

Garrett: Okay. It’s like if you could play Apex, but somebody was spending two grand a month on all their guns and they could essentially-

Brady: 10 more bullets because they paid for it kind of thing?

Garrett: Yes. That’s what I’m doing. So it ain’t apples to apples in this game. It’s apples and oranges and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But I love it.

Brady: But technically, you don’t have to pay to get that, it just speeds up the time.

Garrett: No, you could actually be good at the game. I know I’m not good. I know I don’t have enough time, so I make up for my lack of talent by spending more money on packs.

Brady: See, that’s what I’m jealous of. They got you paying.

Garrett: Oh, dude, gladly. inaudible, I call it my golf budget, because I don’t golf anymore. And the amount of money you spend on golf, I spend on FIFA Ultimate Team.

Brady: Yeah. That’s funny. I fell into it. It was a couple months ago I was playing Fall Guys.

Garrett: That’s the one where you jump around and you have to-

Brady: It’s kind of like Squid Games.

Garrett: But it’s crappy graphics, but people still love it.

Brady: It’s different graphics. They’re pretty good.

Garrett: You go in for a timeout-

Brady: It’s these floppy bean guys.

Garrett: I know. And they jump on the stands.

Brady: Yeah. And there’s obstacle courses and the last one standing moves on to the next round. But there’s all these costumes, the skins is what they’re called. And I was a little drunk and it was 1:00 AM and I was waiting for someone to download the game. So I was shopping the store and I dropped seven bucks for headphones in a fanny pack.

Garrett: But it didn’t affect your performance?

Brady: No.

Garrett: See, that’s different.

Brady: Well, I was pretty confident because the fanny pack looked cool.

Garrett: Imagine how much money you could pay though if you could jump higher in Fall Guys or something for only 100 bucks.

Brady: See, I don’t know if I’d play that game.

Garrett: If you really loved it?

Brady: Yeah, maybe.

Garrett: If it had a transfer market where you could then sell-

Brady: Yeah. If I was that passion about it like you’re super passionate about soccer, and it’s a very robust, sophisticated game about owning your own club.

Garrett: I think it’s the biggest money maker game in the world. And then all it changes every week. So if City has a good game, Manchester City is my favorite team, I watch all their games, if they have a good game on Wednesday, they’re going to release a special card for whoever scored the most goals or something. And then I got to have that card because now it’s the best card of the game. So you try to open all the packs, you never get the card. It’s like going to Vegas, but it’s on your phone. It’s Dangerous, Brady.

Brady: Yeah. No, I’ve seen there’s CSGO, it’s Counter- Strike, it’s a similar thing. There’s packages of guns and there’s rare ones in it and people are paying money to open up these boxes.

Garrett: And nobody shows the same way, but you can buy the players in MLB Show it’ll be show. So I could buy the coins. I can’t buy coins in FIFA, I can buy packs, which I can then sell for coins. In MLB Show, you could buy the coins, so I wanted Mike Trout, so I put 100 bucks in it and I bought Mike Trout.

Brady: Damn.

Garrett: But tell me, what makes you interested. Why are you jealous of it as an advertising concept? I’m missing that part.

Brady: Yeah. So it reminds me of influencer marketing a little bit. So I was mainly focusing on the aesthetic purchases, less the performance side. And so there’s, I mean I’m not a kid, I’m 30 years old and I still did it for Fall Guys. But these kids, that’s how they’re hanging out with their friends. They’re showing up in the form of these characters and they’re playing these games together and they’re paying money to almost show off.

Garrett: Yeah. It’s their hobby.

Brady: What they look like in a video game.

Garrett: Well, it’s just like when you show off your new cleats, when you’re a 12 year old, you buy new cleats. These kids are buying new skins. Right?

Brady: Yeah. But everyone’s talking like NFTs just came out of nowhere. This is the original NFT, they’re just not unique, anyone can buy them. I’m sure they would do, “This is a one out of 10 skin for”-

Garrett: inaudible free person that just was losing their mind with you saying that.

Brady: Yeah. Comparing NFT. I’m sure they’re completely different, whatever. But no, they’re digital assets.

Garrett: Yeah, they are.

Brady: Digital assets with-

Garrett: That anyone can own.

Brady: With a lot of people would say there is no use case, but technically there is. But yeah, Fortnite, one of the stats was their revenue… And this is a free to play game. So you can play Fortnite for free with no advantage if you pay or not-

Garrett: Download it from the app store for free.

Brady: Yep. 2021 they made almost 6 billion. All from people buying these in- game aesthetics.

Garrett: Okay. 2018, I did not do what I’m doing in 2022. So I didn’t use to spend very much in the game, but it was all my money and I was disciplined. Do you feel like this is an issue for the broader society? And I guess I’m trying to see where’s your angle with this? Because I know it’s cool and they make a bunch of money, but what’s the marketing and add angle in your mind? Is how they’re driving the purchases? Is it why? I want you to break that down for me.

Brady: I just think it’s a fascinating marketplace. The market cap is insane. The value of the market’s only growing. The in- game purchases and revenue, the projections for 2025 are in the tens, hundreds of billions. And so the marketplace itself is all digital, yet it’s becoming as large as just normal fashion.

Garrett: And no cost of entry. It’s literally, if you already have the platform, like the Xbox or a computer… Because you play these games on your computer too. Correct?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So at this point almost everybody has… And you can play on the phone some of them too I believe. Right?

Brady: Yeah. A lot of it, the growth of Fortnite or Fall Guy, mobile is becoming very large. I was looking at those revenue statistics. So I think for me it’s thinking about supply chain and actually manufacturing goods. Sure, you do need a developer to develop these aesthetics in a game to purchase. It is a-

Garrett: And they do promos with Travis Scott too. Right? That’s where I think it gets clever.

Brady: Yeah. Marshmello did a live concert in Fortnite where you go into a certain spot in the game.

Garrett: Can you buy the head? Because if you could by the head…

Brady: I think you could. You can buy that skin. I think Dragon Ball Z was a recent promo they’ve done. Marvel, you could play the end game.

Garrett: I love the brand crossovers. So I find a lot of mid- market, B- tier players doing this really well. Igloo did this where they would partner with Star Wars and they would do Star Wars- themed coolers. Igloo can’t be YETI, but they can be something YETI’s not willing to be. So I think that’s a lot of what you’re saying, is to drive these, they’re doing a lot of partnerships, plugging into broader society, bringing in these stars, like a Travis Scott or a Marshmello.

Brady: Yeah. Who do you think pays who? Do you think it’s mutual? Travis Scott, there was a Spider- Man one, I think, and Fortnite, so you could use a web around the game.

Garrett: Oh, Travis Scott got paid, baby. You know he doesn’t perform for free. So he would’ve charged probably whatever his Coachella fee is or something like that I imagine. I don’t know how much he charges, but he probably made over a million bucks on that, because Fortnite probably made a billion.

Brady: Yeah. I’m just thinking maybe even the movie promotions. So they had Thanos in the game. Is Marvel paying Fortnite for that type of promotion or is Fortnite paying Marvel?

Garrett: Now, that one’s interesting. So if we think about it, did McDonald’s pay Travis Scott or Travis Scott pay McDonald’s? McDonald’s paid Travis Scott.

Brady: Yeah. 100%.

Garrett: But who’s the big boy when it’s two corporations like that? Maybe they do a 50/ 50 split, maybe it’s a co- marketing. So it could be more like classical co- marketing, like the B2B space, or they share the lead list. Essentially if you could share all the people… If you got the emails of everyone who bought the skins that were Marvel- related, then you could send them an email the night before the movie went live. You see what I’m saying? I could come with some ideas here, where I could make it work for both parties on a co- marketing type thing.

Brady: Yeah. It’s got to be co- marketing, a bit more mutual.

Garrett: I think on those. Because I don’t know who pays, Marvel or the… That’s a weird… I don’t know. Because Dodge pays to be the truck, let’s say, in the Marvel movie, but I don’t know if Marvel pays Fortnite or… Because who’s monetizing it? Technically Fortnite is monetizing it directly, and then Marvel is indirect monetization.

Brady: Yeah. It’s exposure to the new movie.

Garrett: Yeah. So I don’t know.

Brady: I think Audi is the Marvel one. Right? The new electric Audis are in the new Marvel movies.

Garrett: Like the E-tron or whatever that is. Yeah.

Brady: And totally, that’s Audi paying for that product placement. Heineken and James Bond.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: But yeah, I think my fascination was just how large this market is becoming. The fact that it’s all digital, so it’s a net new platform where money’s being spent. I think these kids are asking for these things for Christmas and their birthdays. They’re becoming gifts.

Garrett: Well, they are. You can just buy them a Xbox gift card and then they can buy it on their Xbox. That’s what people do for me now, because they know I like to buy my packs. So they might get me an Xbox gift card.

Brady: “Don’t give me real soccer ball.”

Garrett: Yeah. “I want packs.”

Brady: “Give me Xbox credit.”

Garrett: Exactly. I can’t kick it for crap anyway these days. My Achilles is gone, my calf is gone, it’s brutal out here. Now, mine is ironically a little bit, not necessarily like that, but it’s a Lego ad. So I absolutely love the way Lego does their ads. So I’m going to send this to Riley and Riley’s going to pull it up for you guys right now. But I’ll just talk through it as y’all can see it. So essentially, what you’ve got is a Lego where it’s got a piece on top and y’all can see the piece right there, and it’s got a piece across, and the shadow on the ground is a plane. And it’s obviously a Lego and it’s not a plane, but it shows you… It cues up your imagination. And so the reason I love this ad so much is, and I talk about this a lot when I speak at conferences and stuff, is this concept of emotion. As marketers, I think we have one core thing we’re trying to do. We are trying to essentially get someone from apathy to action. Every one of our biggest competitor is apathy. It’s not who we think our in- market competition is, it’s apathy. And we’re trying to get humans to do something to take an action, whether it’s to fill out a form, schedule a meeting, become curious, open up some of their mental capacity. We are trying to get them to do something with our marketing. And I think the best way to get someone to do something is to evoke emotion. So we kind of have, at Directive, an emotional matrix, and I’m going to have Riley pull us up for you all so you can see it. This is our emotional matrix. But to me, Lego’s done a phenomenal job of understanding that imagination, that childhood building. It’s like there’s a little bit of an engineer almost in all of us where we like to put things together.

Brady: Well even as a parent seeing that ad, it just makes that connection between, these are two simple… Two bricks are using that ad and it just gets your mind to think about, ” Oh, this could get my kid into aviation and using their imagination.”

Garrett: Yeah. It’s that childish imagination.

Brady: Maybe they’ll want to be a pilot one day. It almost connects it to a career path. And at least for me, when I saw the ad.

Garrett: 100%.

Brady: Yet it’s so simple.

Garrett: Well I’m also like an idiot. So I bought this, I like Porsches, so I bought this Porsche Lego thing. Lego is serious. I didn’t know I was such an idiot.

Brady: Some of them are tough.

Garrett: I haven’t had Legos in over 20 years, 25 years maybe. And so I saw the car and I didn’t really think of it and I tried to get it from my son, who’s two.

Brady: He’s like, ” No thanks.”

Garrett: I can’t even do it. And I thought I could do it in an hour a night, just like a quick puzzle. No. These Lego toys are a commitment.

Brady: Yeah. Something like that, like a car one or…

Garrett: Like a Storm.

Brady: The Millennium Falcon, I think, is the hardest one.

Garrett: Yeah. It probably would take you, what, how many hours? 25 hours.

Brady: I don’t even know hour- wise. I think people spend a month on that stuff.

Garrett: Yeah. It’s insane. And then my problem is I get all the way down to the sheet, in the instructions… By the way Lego, because they’re a global company, doesn’t use any words on their instructions. Brilliant for margins, so they don’t have to recreate their-

Brady: Yeah. The translations.

Garrett: No translations. It’s all done like that. But I can’t tell you how many times I think I’ve done it right and I look back and I misplaced a piece or something.

Brady: Oh, when you skip a step and it was 20 steps ago. That’s game over.

Garrett: Bro, I am always redoing. This car is never going to be built. I think I could build a real Porsche before I could build a Lego one. It’s really serious stuff. But what I love about the ad and about their branding, to your point earlier around the in- game apps, is they don’t make you feel that way. Look at this, Brady, look how simple this ad is. That makes you think you could just build a plane with Legos as a child and you could imagine you’re on a plane.

Brady: Yeah. You can start anywhere.

Garrett: I built a Boeing 737 in 30 minutes is what it makes you think. Now, trust me, Legos have massive amounts of psychological friction. But I never realized that, because they do such a good job in their marketing and branding, that you think it’s so easy, ” Kids do it, anyone can do this.” But they have adult Legos and they have child Legos. And they’ve monetized it through cross= promotion, partnerships, like Disney. All the Disney stuff is in Legos, all the car stuff is in Legos. All the different verticals.

Brady: Yeah. Star Wars, Legos, those movies are popping. They have video games about it.

Garrett: Yeah. They’ve got video games, they got movies. Lego has done such a good job of inserting themselves into society and doing it in a way where it doesn’t feel expensive. So Brady, what about Lego? I don’t know. Do you have a lot of exposure to Lego?

Brady: Yes.

Garrett: Okay. So what about it stands out to you? Because if you think about, it’s such a fascinating concept. This ad is so simple, but I think the fact that they’re making it simple is the magic, because Legos aren’t simple. And that’s why I love the ad. It makes you think, ” Oh, this is fun and creative,” and, ” I’m going to do this, it’ll be fun date night.” And then you open up the box and it’s a little intense, but you’ve already bought the box. So what’s your take on that?

Brady: Well, I think the ad shows there’s… It shows the most basic level of what Legos can be. Like for me, my Legos is a big part of my life.

Garrett: Okay. Mine too. Did you have the… I had a Lego table growing up, like a little table I would sit at.

Brady: Yeah. I just had a bucket in my bedroom floor and I would spend hours building Legos.

Garrett: That’s cool. My dad knows old, really… When you’re little, you know those plastic tables you can get?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: He put a wood cover on top of it and then it had a Lego top.

Brady: Oh, the mat that you could stick pieces on?

Garrett: Yeah. So the whole table was a Lego board, and I just grew up doing those. But I was a kid.

Brady: I think I’m handy around the house because of Legos.

Garrett: Really?

Brady: Yeah. I’m confident fixing a sink, installing things. I honestly think because of Legos. And that transferred over to, I would build my own bike jumps in the garage and do all stuff.

Garrett: Because Lego come with instructions and the pieces are available. So it’s the same way, you can go to Home Depot, you can watch a YouTube video and it’s real- life Legos. It’s crazy.

Brady: I’m sure a lot of engineers probably have Legos as a childhood and a big part of it. But I’m excited to have kids. I don’t care what gender, I think Legos are just such a vital part of development.

Garrett: Oh, are you kidding me? If we can get more women in STEM, if we can get more people in STEM, it’s going to be awesome. But from the marketing angle of it, Brady, do you think they should keep it so simple? Because I was a little thrown off, I’m not going to lie to you. Because when I got the Porsche, I genuinely thought it was going to be simple. I thought I could do with my kid, I could not.

Brady: Well, what’s the age on the box? 10 plus?

Garrett: I didn’t even think about it. That’s what I’m saying. I’m so brainwashed from being a little kid last time I did Legos, that I just… I didn’t realize I had a box of Legos though. And I was always just building things with the Legos.

Brady: I would get kits as a kid and I’d build it, but then I would scrap it and I just had tons of pieces and I would build custom robots and jets. I actually, I have a pretty good story. Not too much of a tangent.

Garrett: No. Have you listened to this podcast before? This entire podcast is a tangent.

Brady: It’s a good story though. I apologize to my mom in advance for this one. But I built this robot as a kid. And I spent so much time on it, I was so proud of it. And I came home from school one day and it was shattered on the floor. And I was young, I was maybe eight, nine years old and I still remember this. And my mom told me that the cleaning lady, she was doing dusting, she knocked over and she felt terrible about it. And I loved our cleaning lady so I got over it. And I was 18 and I was in France with my family and I was able to drink there and I was telling my family all my high school stories. Just opening up, I just put everything out there.

Garrett: Oh Brady got a little bob, was…

Brady: No, it was a moment.

Garrett: Little tipsy, we’re having… We’re just getting a little… We’re in Europe, family’s talking.

Brady: My sister is telling him about the B plus she got once, I was telling him about the parties. And my mom was like, ” I kind of have a story.”

Garrett: Oh no.

Brady: She broke the Lego robot and she blamed it on the cleaning lady. Because I mom is the last person to do something like that.

Garrett: So you thought. What happened to your trust in society in that moment?

Brady: It was one of the funniest moments of my life. It was one of the most enjoyable moments. But that is how you can kind of now understand just how much I cared about these Legos, is it drove my mom to put the cleaning lady under the bus because she could not.

Garrett: Did they even market to you as a kid? Or how did you like the Legos, did you find them in store? Was it due to the placement? Would you go to Toys” R” Us, would you be at Target? What was the marketing, if you can remember your childhood at all, is there any part of marketing as a child that stood out to you? Because it’s an interesting thing. How do you market the children ethically, because it’s a children’s product? Or how do you convince parents that it’s good for their children? You know what I mean?

Brady: Yeah. I’m trying to remember if a new kit was advertised on Nickelodeon or anything like that. But I do remember being in the Target aisle, even there’s a Lego store at the mall. And it was a gift because they’re expensive. I don’t know how much the Porsche one was, but a big kit is over$ 100. And I think it was still expensive back then in the’90s.

Garrett: Oh I’m sure.

Brady: But I went to Legoland, and so just even them having a theme park. And the way Legoland is decorated, is everything’s built out of Legos and I just thought-

Garrett: You got your driver’s license. Remember that?

Brady: Yeah. They actually had stop lights, which is kind of cool.

Garrett: So who pays, Porsche or Lego do you think? To go back to our earlier conversation. You get what I’m saying? Because Lego needs it to sell to Porsche’s audience, and Porsche needs it to sell in the Lego’s audience to a certain extent. Right?

Brady: Yeah. I don’t know if Porsche just gives them the rights or…

Garrett: They probably sell them the rights. They don’t give it. I don’t think Porsche just-

Brady: That’s what I’m wondering because it’s good for Porsche, it’s also good for Lego. Yeah.

Garrett: Yeah. We got to do some research. Riley, maybe you could tell us next week on our show. We’ll start it off with, who pays, Porsche or Lego on the partnership? All right.

Brady: Yeah. I don’t know.

Garrett: Okay. Now, I want to talk about market this.

Brady: Yeah. Were redoing this week?

Garrett: Are you ready for it?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Tesla.

Brady: They don’t do marketing.

Garrett: Not yet.

Brady: That’s the point.

Garrett: Elon, if you’re watching, buckle up, baby. You might know engineering.

Brady: There’s actually concept ads out there that Elon has reacted to.

Garrett: And what did he think?

Brady: There’s an article, ” Elon loved this ad.” but he still doesn’t do ads. He puts all of his R& D in engineering-

Garrett: Let’s stop with this, ” He doesn’t do ads,” because-

Brady: He has a referral program. Well, actually he ended it. He only does it for-

Garrett: So before we say Tesla doesn’t do ads and everybody hates on Elon for his social following. I’m just going to do real quick for the audience, I’m going to do a little live search. We’ll pull this up for you all so you can see it too. Elon Musk followers, when everybody acts he isn’t the greatest marketer of our generation. Okay. He has 104 million followers as a CEO of a space company and a car brand. I don’t think the CEO or Ford or General Motors has 104 million followers, yet they’re running ads all day. So before we act like Elon doesn’t do advertising, he does, let’s say, personal branding. He’s on the biggest podcast in the world. He might as well just be a media celebrity. That’s what he’s doing for his marketing. So Elon and Tesla does marketing, but they do it ironically as founder- driven marketing for a billion dollar company.

Brady: Yeah. Because he does the keynote. Right? Similar to Apple. That’s a huge ad, is the keynote itself.

Garrett: Yeah, but Tim Cook isn’t going on Joe Rogan?

Brady: No.

Garrett: Zuck was on Joe Rogan, I haven’t had the chance to watch it.

Brady: I haven’t seen that one.

Garrett: I’m curious just about the interview. Not because I like Joe Rogan, because I like to see what Mark Zuckerberg thinks like.

Brady: Was it in the metaverse?

Garrett: No, this is a real life interview.

Brady: Oh, wow. Crazy.

Garrett: But my point being here is, Tesla we’re going to do marketing for, because Tesla doesn’t do marketing, necessarily, unless you count putting a Tesla in space not as marketing. This is my point. They do some of the best marketing, the best part of their marketing is that they don’t do marketing, but they don’t do from what I can tell true paid ads.

Brady: Yeah. They’re not doing Super Bowl commercials, they’re not doing…

Garrett: So I think what we could come up with, Brady, for them, is maybe a more consistent Tesla- driven PR strategy.

Brady: Tesla- driven. I see what you did there. I like it.

Garrett: That fits within their ethos. So what I mean by that, and we talked about this before, here’s my first concept. Okay. You ready?

Brady: Mm- hmm.

Garrett: Close your eyes. Early February. Football’s in the air. Super bowl’s going. Super Bowl week’s crazy with the media. Couple things we can do. We can take the star quarterback for the starting team, make sure they show up to the game in a new Model S Plaid. You know how they have them all driving in?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: And we can make sure we let the media know, so they see us driving in into the Tesla. There’s one Super Bowl spot, it’s not a TV commercial, but you’re going to get a ton of impressions and views on it. Other idea, Goodyear Blimp. Heard of it?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Hanging from the Goodyear Blimp is a Tesla that’s going around the Super Bowl. Also, not traditional advertising would fit within their ethos of, ” We don’t do ads like all the other truck brands.” You’ve already put a Tesla in space, why not In the atmosphere? So that’s kind of my angle I would take as CMO of Tesla, is more about social adver… Not social and paid social, but gorilla marketing almost style, but for Tesla. And I think it would fit their ethos.

Brady: Yeah. But do you think there’s going to be a time for them to have TV commercials? Because their market share, Q1 versus Q2, Tesla EV global market share drop nine points. I think they were 75 and they dropped to 66.

Garrett: You got new players like Rivian, you got the other one.

Brady: Well, Ford and even Hyundai.

Garrett: Then you have the big boys, the Audis, the Fords, they’re all…

Brady: But knowing that, 75 just in Q1 of 2022, that’s huge market share. Why would you have to advertise? So I’m just curious if the market share is going to force advertisement upon Elon… Because right now, he just says, ” I put all that in R&D and innovation, that’s where I put that money.” But I mean with the market share they’ve had, it’s not as competitive.

Garrett: So the business case would be that they would’ve to prove either incremental increase sales online… It’s all incrementality at this point if you’re Tesla. ” Because I’m already getting X amount of revenue, you have to get me Y amount.” And that still has to be, let’s say three X and gross margin costs of good sold of the increase. So I would’ve to say, ” Okay, I’d have to get what, 10% more revenue by running ads.” I don’t know, in Tesla’s defense, if advertising would drive that outcome for them, doing TV ads. Doing a traditional Tesla driving down the street. And could you make the argument that that would lower the value of Tesla if you started? Because I think Tesla has a different problem. I think Teslas were cool until last year. And I think they took so much market share than having a Tesla is having a Camry. Having a Model 3 is like having a Toyota Camry.

Brady: Yeah. But I think they’re equipped with features that can make it cool to the mass market.

Garrett: Yeah. 0 to 60 under four seconds.

Brady: I’m even thinking, you know the dog feature?

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: That’s a great commercial, is setting your car to dog mode when it’s 110 degrees outside.

Garrett: Okay. I like that, so that’s like UVP marketing.

Brady: I know a lot of people know about that feature unless you’re big on YouTube and you-

Garrett: And I used to have a Tesla, I sold it, but I did have one for almost three years. It’s a great car.

Brady: Because I’m thinking what you see commercial- wise, Samsung versus Apple versus Google.

Garrett: But does anyone buy Apple phone or a Samsung phone because of those ads anymore?

Brady: I think so. I think even Apple Watch, the emotional ads about the people who were getting lost at sea, but because they had GPS and Apple Watch, they got rescued.

Garrett: I know, but some purchases to me are different than others. In B2B, you don’t have massive brands, so direct response works really well, because I’m looking for an ERP software and I might have heard of NetSuite, I might have heard of, let’s say, Sage, but then I discover a third and fourth one I didn’t know about. So I think you could make the argument that maybe my mother could go online and search” electric sedan” and discover Lucid. I would argue my mom does not know Lucid, but I would argue she does know Tesla. So if she’d want electric sedan, Tesla would already be in her consideration but Lucid won’t. So that’s why I’m saying, as the market leader with 75% market share, dipping to 70, you’re going to go to 60, going to go to… But the market’s going to triple. It’s just going to be… They’re going to have more market cap, less market share because the electric vehicle market’s going to go. But I think you could do feature- driven, like you said, I think we could do feature driven marketing for Tesla, and I think we could stay in the, ” We don’t do ads,” type thing. But what if we could figure out if we partnered with a more partnership type stuff. So maybe we partnered with the number one dog shelter in America and it was, ” People don’t love Teslas, dogs do.” And so you could do talking dogs and all the dogs talking about how hard it was back in the day when we had these other cars and now my life’s better because I get a Tesla, so it’s like the dog bought the Tesla. You could do clever…

Brady: Yeah. Someone picking up dogs off the streets and the Tesla’s full of dogs and whenever they go into get them water and food, it turns into dog mode and they’re all just chilling in the car literally.

Garrett: Correct. And then there’s another dog and it’s got some emergency first responder breaking the windshield. And the dog’s calling 911 because they’re stuck in the car and there’s no dog mode and they’re trying to press it and they’re in one of their competitors trying to press the dog mode. It’s not working, the dog’s struggling. You could do some serious-

Brady: And the Ring commercials, I think there’s a lot of videos around the cameras and what the Tesla cameras capture, whether it’s an accident or something like that. So similar to Ring ads, how they show live footage.

Garrett: So that would be people who don’t want an electric car but don’t understand that electric… Tesla is more than an electric vehicle-

Brady: Yeah. It’s more than an EV.

Garrett: It’s the technological experience. My favorite part of the Tesla was the over- air- updates. Every other car gets old. One of the biggest reasons you upgrade an older car… You have an older Lexus right now.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: One of the biggest reasons, if I were you I would upgrade… Do you have Apple CarPlay?

Brady: No. I wish I did.

Garrett: Yeah. That sucks.

Brady: I’ve looked into how to… I have a screen so I want to see if I can get a USB plugin of CarPlay.

Garrett: I don’t think it works like that.

Brady: It probably doesn’t.

Garrett: No. And so my point being is, my Tesla, autopilot gets better. I bought more horsepower. That was so cool. I could buy features or inaudible going to give them to me for free. I got 20% more battery life or something for free.

Brady: Just because of software updates.

Garrett: Yeah. That part is really special.

Brady: But you weren’t paying for seat warmers like BMW.

Garrett: Yeah they did do that weird nickel and dimey thing. But you get what I’m saying, Tesla did pioneers, features- as- a- service. But they also give you a lot of them for free. And what’s fun as an owner, I like subscribe to the beta ones because I want to get them early. And it’s little Christmas morning when you get your little notification, ” New update for the Tesla.” But imagine the ad you can run, Brady, where someone wakes up in the morning and they look at their phone and it’s, ” Tesla update ready.” You hit install and your car is a transformer, and it transforms in 15 minutes into a completely different vehicle and it never becomes old. And it shows maybe a three year time lapse of someone owning a Prius and then someone owning a Tesla, and then how over three years their driving experience completely changes in the Tesla and the Prius stays the same. You could do so much to, I think, educate the broader market.

Brady: Yeah. I think they need to advertise the nuances to stay competitive. But I just don’t think they’ve had to in the past, so I totally get Elon’s plan. And that was a campaign in itself, saying he doesn’t do campaigns, but looking at the market share, the global market share of BVs, I do think-

Garrett: So you think we can monetize that to the medium? Could we monetize it on programmatic, on crappy TV? Or can we go with real media buy for Super Bowl? We don’t have to do a blimp. We could buy a commercial that was the dog’s all loving dog mode in the Tesla. Do you think?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Because I do agree that the features could drive revenue. I think you could drive incremental revenue for… You know when you find out that In and Out has a secret menu for the first time and then you have to go in and order animal- style because you-

Brady: I heard a Five Guys hack the other day. Insane. You want to go into it just real quick?

Garrett: Brady, you’re going to anyway, so inaudible.

Brady: Yeah. I’m going to anyway, whether it’s on the podcast or not. Anyway, so Five Guys, if you get a cheeseburger it comes as In and Out terms, a double- double, that’s just the standard cheeseburger. And so you get a Five Guys cheeseburger, you have the toppings on the side and you order an extra bun for free and you can make two cheeseburgers, single patty cheeseburgers out of it.

Garrett: That’s hilariously cheap. And I did something like that when I was broke starting this company.

Brady: Dude, Five Guys is super expensive. You got to fight back a little bit.

Garrett: I was too poor to have a vanilla latte while I worked. I was living on$ 12 a day when I started the business. And what I would do, is I would get what’s called a caffe misto and add in vanilla. I’ll never forget the and caffe misto then the Fresh and Easy expired food. I lived off of caffe mistos with vanilla and expired food out of Fresh and Easy. Because they had food that went bad that day or the day before, it’s within 24 hours of expired, and that’s how I survived. I was buying lobster bisque for a $1. 75 that was going to expire in two hours if I didn’t eat it.

Brady: Oh my gosh. I did the Chipotle hack the other day, the college one where you get the tortilla on the side of a bowl. So you can get a tortilla on the side for a bowl for free and I pretty much made a full burrito and I had more than half of my bowl left for lunch the next day.

Garrett: So is that more food or cheaper?

Brady: You legit get two meals out of it. So you make enough to fill the tortilla for a burrito and that was my dinner-

Garrett: I know how much you make, Brady. You don’t need to be doing this.

Brady: And then I microwave the rest of the bowl for lunch.

Garrett: I know that you make enough to not be splitting burritos at this point in your life, bro. I’m a little worried.

Brady: It was a little worried. It was more convenience of having lunch already there the next day than it was the expense.

Garrett: But I’m a little worried about this.

Brady: But it was a nice win. Dude, if you feel poor-

Garrett: You’re buy too many skins.

Brady: Yeah. The Fall Guy skin was my first… Because I’ve been that guy, I’ve never paid for these free games.

Garrett: And did you talk crap on it.

Brady: I don’t talk crap, I’ve just enjoyed that I get to play this game I love and I haven’t even paid for it. I paid for the Xbox, obviously, but I never paid for a game. And that was my first time giving back, was I bought-

Garrett: Giving back. I love that. You’re almost like you’re inaudible.

Brady: The headphones and the fanny pack.

Garrett: You gave back.

Brady: I gave back.

Garrett: Yeah. You felt bad for these game publishers.

Brady: They’ve been giving me so much entertainment. It’s just like Twitch, sometimes I subscribe now. I’m like, ” Dude, you’ve entertained me.”

Garrett: Yep. No, that’s true. If you feel like someone’s earned your business. Now, where the heck… Dude, you got me working overtime here.

Brady: You were going into the In and Out hack.

Garrett: Oh, yeah. The secret menu and Tesla. So we think we can do what audio ads do, can we run podcasts? I think the podcast ads could be big.

Brady: That would be fun to get-

Garrett: I think a podcast would crush for Tesla.

Brady: A creative, maybe a hyper- creative approach on how do you advertise automotive through audio, specially cars that don’t make sounds?

Garrett: I think I hear it. Elon does it himself.

Brady: That’d be cool.

Garrett: Yep. And he essentially does ad read himself. We write all the copy for him. Elon does the ad read and I think that would crush as a unit. And what would we have him talk about? I don’t want to just take all the ideas. So what would you have Elon talk about if Elon was doing a podcast ad for Tesla?

Brady: Well, it could be funny to make it almost a very standard car ad, but then it comes across as Elon’s too cheap to hire a voice actor for it so he read it.

Garrett: Have you ever listened to Elon?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Has he ever made you laugh?

Brady: Yes.

Garrett: Non…

Brady: No. I know what you’re saying.

Garrett: You know what I’m saying? He makes you laugh because of the way his brain works, not because of his comedic timing.

Brady: For a lack of better way, laughing at him, not with him. Even though I feel like I don’t laugh at him in that way, but that’s the best way I could explain it.

Garrett: You laugh out of almost your own insecurity because your brain could’ve never gone there, if that makes sense.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: But I don’t know if that inspires you to buy from him. So I feel like what could inspire you to buy from him, is if he did an ad of all the product releases he was super passionate about that were coming in live updates. So you see what I’m saying?

Brady: Yeah. I just don’t know. Is this going after… Is this aligning too much with the people who already love Elon or is this going to open them up to that market that was maybe going to go with the new Hyundai?

Garrett: Well, I don’t know why someone would buy an electric Hyundai over a Model 3, in all transparency. I would start with that. Because you have no Chargers. Teslas charges everywhere.

Brady: Which is a good ad. Just the ground covered.

Garrett: Once again, it’s a feature. And it’s a competitive advantage. Because going through Kettleman City, if y’all have never gone through Kettleman City, if you’re ever driving, I think it’s off the five and you’re going up through Central California, there’s… In Kettleman City, they’ve got a full Tesla cafe. You go in, you get a coffee, they got world- class lounge area and these supercharges-

Brady: It’s 15 minutes. Right?

Garrett: I think it’s 20. Around-

Brady: That’s why they have the coffee and everything.

Garrett: Yeah. But I actually liked doing the… See, I think there’s an angle where you can take what people think as a negative. It’s like, “Oh, you got to stop every 300 miles.” I loved it because I drove from here to Texas twice in my Tesla and every two and a half hours I got a break. And I never once waited on my charge. I’d go in, use the restroom, maybe eat some food, buy a snack, came back, I was off to the races.

Brady: Yeah. It’s all perception of that time. People don’t like waiting or don’t not like waiting, they don’t like waiting with nothing to do.

Garrett: Yeah. But it felt kind of nice on a long trip to get a little bit of a break.

Brady: And I’m sure, I know you maybe did some solo trips to Texas, but family time can happen.

Garrett: No, I did family trips. Both of them were family trips, that’s why I loved it.

Brady: So after Tesla charging, family time can happen.

Garrett: Yeah. The kids all got out, we stretched our legs, we walked around, and I thought it was great. So yeah, I think we could do this. I just think the Elon on the podcast ad… You’re right, if you talked only about updates, you would probably appeal too much-

Brady: To fanboys already.

Garrett: To fanboys who already like that. I think if you tried to do satire, it wouldn’t hit right. You could do something slightly funny. You go like, ” Hey, I’m Elon Musk. I told my team we don’t do any ads, so this doesn’t count. But I wanted to give you all three reasons why you might want to think about going to one of our dealerships.”

Brady: Yeah. How does he transition out of being known for not doing ads to doing ads?

Garrett: I know, that’s what’s hard. But if he did the ad, it would work in audio format, because he’s such a cult character, that I think him delivering the ad, but I don’t know, the angle that angle’s tough.

Brady: Well, he is very transparent. He’s the first person to go back on, ” Hey this was a bad idea and now we’re doing it this way.”

Garrett: That’s what it should be. It should be an anti- ad. ” Hey my name’s Elon Musk. I’m only doing this right now because I lost a bet with the ad team. They told me X, Y or Z, and they said if I lost I had to do this ad. So hey, buy my cars or don’t, I don’t really care, but I have to do this ad.” Now that-

Brady: Yeah. He needs to have a moment where he tells a market why he’s doing it, he can’t just go back on his…

Garrett: Yeah. And I think you could do it, like he lost a bet.

Brady: Yeah. Or it’s a part of the overarching plan, they can make Tesla even better if they sell more and with these competitors coming out.

Garrett: “So if you want better Teslas, buy more of my cars. I’m trying not to do more of these ads, but thank you.” And I think that ad would crush. The media would cover it. Everyone would talk about it.

Brady: Yeah. But I still don’t know if the key buyer… I think that’s where the features come into play, is-

Garrett: Yeah, I agree. I don’t know if you can do a vo… I guess you could. You can do a voiceover actor and just do a features ad. I don’t think Elon could do that kind of thing. But you could do a voiceover actor, voice actor, and you could talk about dogs on one ad and you can do the whole sequence.

Brady: Because I think you’re competing against brand loyalty. I think that’s a big thing in cars.

Garrett: Are people loyal to Hyundai though?

Brady: Yeah. I think so.

Garrett: I know people are loyal to Honda and Toyota. I just didn’t know if they’re super loyal to Kia in Hyundai yet. You know what I mean? These up and comers. I think they’re Korean brands, so maybe if you’re Korean.

Brady: Yeah. I think a lot of Koreans like to buy Korean cars and then same-

Garrett: Could you just exclude Koreans then and just not even try to get the Koreans? Or could you only target Koreans and then go after it?

Brady: Yeah. But there’s still the Japanese, German, and then the American auto makers. I think there’s a lot of brand loyalty in almost every market.

Garrett: I buy German cars a lot of times because I’m German, or I’ll buy American cars because I’m American. I agree with that. You buy from your national. I don’t think there’s a lot of non- French people driving Renault or Renault. You know what I mean?

Brady: Yeah. So I think as all of these automakers are now having EVs, I think it’s Elon up against a lot of that brand loyalty.

Garrett: That should’ve been around for 100 years.

Brady: And he has the affordable car too, so it’s not like he’s sitting in this market where its-

Garrett: More affordable, faster, longer range. His interiors are bad.

Brady: The tech is insane.

Garrett: The tech is insane. The interiors are genuinely bad. It’s mis-

Brady: What do you mean by that? The actual material of the seats?

Garrett: Yeah. And it’s so tech forward that there’s no dash, there’s no anything. And then you get in a car and you have a speedo and you have a head up display and you have a nice armrest and you’ve got better seat. I didn’t realize how cheap my Model 3 was until I bought a BMW afterwards. And I also didn’t realize how bad BMW’s tech is, so there is some give or take. But the seats in a BMW and the actual comfort and just driving, exponentially different. The handling, it’s a race car. Tesla’s a sedan that they made go really fast.

Brady: So when you said speedo, were you talking about speedometer?

Garrett: Yeah. Okay. I just had to go back there. Yeah. No. Sorry. I just did a car guy turn, my bad.

Brady: Oh yeah, I heard it as, ” Yeah. When you get in with your speedo, the leather just sucks.” I was like, ” What?”

Garrett: You’ve never felt the BMW leather on your butt cheeks? Or when you get into one of those there’s a speedo?

Brady: No. That’s honestly the first way I process that and then I caught on.

Garrett: So we’re Tesla, we can do some shock ads at first. I think we got to warm-

Brady: I think he has a freedom to.

Garrett: Yeah. I think we got to do some shock ads though. I think we got to warm ourselves up, couple sponsorship, partnership ads, Bose has the headphones. We could have a couple players drive up and Teslas start there. Do a little bit like a blimp, put the Tesla on it. And then we’d start there and then we could slowly start to introduce audio ads, maybe some TV ads. And I agree, focus on features-.

Brady: Yeah. Standard features. I think similar to how Apple does their feature marketing.

Garrett: Apple does their feature- based marketing-

Brady: Each commercial is usually around one feature.

Garrett: What a great case study for them to follow too. You don’t want to be Apple. Apple already has the most market share. And I would argue, if people could buy a fall and they’d buy an Apple except for the random-

Brady: I think their marketing is their market share, it’s why they have it.

Garrett: And then it’s their product. Their product is their marketing, just like Apple. And so you need to bring the lesser known parts of the product to life. But I don’t know if you want to be a lifestyle, because Apple does lifestyle. I don’t know if Tesla can do lifestyle.

Brady: Yeah. Would you consider the dog commercial a lifestyle ad?

Garrett: I would not consider the dog… The dogs could be a lifestyle ad. I don’t think dogs are innately a lifestyle ad. I think, let’s pause for a second and ask ourselves, which car manufacturer has successfully used lifestyle to grow their market share outside of the luxury manufacturers? I don’t think anyone buys a Ford for the lifestyle. inaudible with a GMC inaudible. Those guys are all selling features, for the most part. But it’s all off their newer models. See, Tesla doesn’t do new models. The Model 3 I bought is the same Model 3 you would buy today, and it’s been like three years. So they have insane margins, because if you think about it then a GMC or a Ford, how long do they live, a frame, that goes, what, three years? Maybe four or five. And then they have a new body frame and they got to update the interiors. So I just bought a GMC truck. It’s a heavy duty. The heavy duty doesn’t have the new interior this year, but the half ton does. The 1500 has the new interior, it’s great tech. Mine doesn’t have it, but I got the big engine. So I went with the engine, not the tech. But you see what I’m saying? I don’t know if… What lifestyle would you be, you’re just a nerd? You see what I’m saying? That’s the hard part about being a Tesla person.

Brady: I think the lifestyle can maybe pull them into different markets. I don’t know the demographic makeup, but I think Tesla is known the tech guy car.

Garrett: Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m saying. So you’re going to lean more into that?

Brady: Well, I think maybe the dog would be a lifestyle ad, but it opens it up to, ” Oh, yeah”-

Garrett: Some woman is driving the Tesla, she drops her kids off at maybe preschool and then she has her dog with her in the car. She goes to get a smoothie and the dog’s still in the car.

Brady: And now she gets leaving the car and not have to worry about-

Garrett: Because it shows you take the kids out, but then dogs are different kind of thing. And you have the dog in there, you put it in dog mode and it shows her living her life with dog. That could sell. You’re right. There is some lifestyle features where I know my wife would love to be able to take her dog with her and put her car in dog mode and then go get it. Do something, for example.

Brady: So I’m thinking I would still say that’s lifestyle, but it’s more lifestyle not to lean into the current demographic they have. It’s opened them up to-

Garrett: No, but it’s lifestyle different, it’s call functional lifestyle. Because if they give you this functional lifestyle, I think you could really crush it. Autopilot, you can’t tell the truth about autopilot, but if they could show how many emails you could send-

Brady: Find the off- market gloves that you Velcro onto the steering wheel.

Garrett: They could show the amount of work you get done in your Tesla with autopilot, but it’s more functional. I think the car’s very functional. You could show how the roof racks are only, I think, $ 100. And you could show what you can do with a roof rack on a Tesla, because most people don’t put roof racks on theirs. I did, loved it, let me surf whenever I wanted. So that’s where I’m kind of… You’re right. I think functional lifestyle focused on lesser known features. And then also showing all the charging stations, bringing the charging network to life. And then you could do it… You know the Verizon commercial where they show the other guys and they show the lack of coverage? I think you could literally copy that Verizon ad that we’ve seen 100 times with all the lights around the globe, and you do that with Chargers.

Brady: Yeah. Family trying to plan a trip and the dad’s like, ” No, we can’t make it there. No, we can’t make it there.” And then the Tesla dad’s like, ” We can go anywhere,” kind of thing.

Garrett: Ooh, I love it.

Brady: The kids are all stoked, ” Oh, I want to go to Yosemite. We can’t make it.”

Garrett: I think we could take market share of this ad campaign. I really do.

Brady: Yeah. And I think it could all align with the values of why Elon’s not doing ads.

Garrett: And I think we could have beacons set up and I think we could incrementally see foot traffic and sales. Because he’s never done advertising, so you could literally just go period over period. And there’s no new models launching, not a ton of new features lately.

Brady: Yeah. And he just dropped nine points in global market share, so I think it’s now the time for it.

Garrett: Elon, the time is now.

Brady: Yeah. Time is yesterday.

Garrett: I love it. Well, we talked in- app purchases, we talked Legos, and we talked Tesla.

Brady: I want to go do Legos. Send me your Porsche kit. I’ll go finish it up.

Garrett: I know. I think you need to finish it.

Brady: Bring it to the podcast next week. I’ll get that done for you.

Garrett: No, it’s like this badge of honor, you know you can’t not finish it yourself, but you also know you’re not going to do it for another five years. But hey, this has been amazing. Thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. Leave us some great reviews on Podcasts, like and subscribe, ring the bell for the YouTube channel. And you’re going to get a YouTube episode this week and next week we’re going to have everything fully going. We’re piloting this, we’re testing it out. Leave some comments though, because Riley’s working really hard on it and love to keep the audience engaged. And if you have any questions, maybe you guys got some ideas like, ” Hey, do a market this for this company,” or, ” Here’s some ads that made us jealous.” We’re always down to crowdsource, so get involved.

Brady: Yeah. Love to hear your thoughts.

Garrett: Thanks.

Brady: See you next week.