Episode 31: The Pepsi Logo and Events

Episode Transcript

Garrett: Welcome to episode 31.

Brady: Yeah, I think so. We took last week off, man.

Garrett: I know, I know, that’s why I’m like episode 31.

Brady: Yep.

Garrett: Yep. And well, March just closed. You’re a big part of it. Best sales month history of the company.

Brady: Yep.

Garrett: Felt like we could announce that, I don’t know. Felt like a good success story we could talk about.

Brady: It was good, especially March being the end of the quarter for most of our prospects and clients. It can be a really good time to close, but at the same time, a lot of people are distracted by their own-

Garrett: Own internal stuff.

Brady: …internalreporting and so I was pretty proud of everyone.

Garrett: Yeah. The end of the quarter is always great for us, obviously, but it’s been like, I wouldn’t say if you were like what industry would you choose to enter right now, it would be like tech, tech, tech. We did have a bank collapse, and no funding really going on, and I think over 300, 000 tech layoffs. So I mean, it hasn’t exactly been great, but what I thought was interesting is there’s always this narrative around, and I was sharing this on social, but there’s always this narrative around industries being recession- proof. But I don’t think anything is so much recession- proof or if that’s as much of the issue all times as it is market positioning- proof. In other words, in any vertical, what I’ve found is when things get bad, the best companies are usually spending more and taking market share because the little ones who didn’t have product market fit or price market fit or feature market fit, whatever you want to call it, of why they weren’t growing, they usually don’t have a huge cash reserves. They usually don’t have a ton of retention and then all of a sudden, they start getting gobbled up by the big boys. And I think a little bit Directive is getting to that point now where it’s serving the best players in each of the software verticals, and that’s who we were closing in March. We were closing the market leaders in every vertical, and I think that’s what made us have a good March even when I know our peers,, who are agencies servicing tech companies are having a hard time right now. I think it’s primarily because they’re serving the middle and lower parts of the market while we’re serving the upper part of the market and they’re buying, and by the way, our churn, when we’re losing accounts right now, we’re losing the bottom half of accounts due to going in- house. The marketers are fighting for their jobs. They’re taking, like Peter, let’s say, not you Peter, but just Pete.

Brady: Hey Peter.

Garrett: What is the word name? Pete. So Pete’s at some tech company and Pete did Google Ads four years ago and they’re starting to do layoffs. So Pete’s like, ” Whew, let me raise my hand. We don’t need that agency. I can run the ads.” So we have a lot of in- house marketers scoping out their responsibilities, things they would’ve never done when they had budget. Now to keep their job, they’re saying, ” Look, we don’t need this agency, I’ll just do it.” And so as an agency, if you’re not getting out of this world results right now, your budgets are going to cut and people are firing you. But conversely, if you’re servicing larger accounts, they’re actually wanting to grow, so you’re retaining your larger ones and the larger ones are buying. Are you seeing something similar? But that’s kind of my hypothesis on industries.

Brady: Yeah, I mean I think we’re, like you said, recession proof probably might not be the right term, but-

Garrett: We aren’t, no.

Brady: …but at the same time, dealing with software and tech companies like digital is the majority of their growth.

Garrett: Always. Yeah.

Brady: And so at a high level, it’s like you decide to just end as a company or you at least keep the lights on or you get aggressive and you really lean in on digital growth, which that’s our deliverables. And then I do see the Pete scenario where it’s like, ” Hey, let’s take someone in-hous. We’ve got lower expenses here, but at the same time, attribution has gotten to the point where that won’t last that long. If Pete really hasn’t done it for four years.

Garrett: Pete’s had a hard time.

Brady: He dives in and starts managing all these channels and all this money, attribution is now at the point, even in the immature companies where it’s going to stand out like, Hey, this isn’t working we’re wasting money.

Garrett: And I love Pete, and I trust Pete, but what are the chances Pete might just forget to do some of that attribution if things aren’t going so hot? It’s nice to have the third party to blame. It’s nice to have someone fall on the sword and be like, ” What’s all the data? I got to go talk to the CMO at two hours.”

Brady: Yeah, but if it’s not Pete, someone’s doing it.

Garrett: Someone’s doing it.

Brady: Someone is making sure, and it’s probably the CRO or the CFO that it’s tied to revenue.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: And so yeah, it’s just an interesting time where it’s like, yeah, it’s hard to invest money in something, but digital is the growth engine for the majority of our clients-

Garrett: A hundred percent.

Brady: … andour prospects. So that’s where I haven’t seen things slowed down. If anything it’s, we like long- term relationships.

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: Right? We’re not just an in and out type shop. We want to be on their team. We want to grow their company through our channels and our deliverables. And so the only thing that’s tough is the risk.

Garrett: Yeah, but the last-

Brady: But a lot of people are like, oh, ” We don’t know what’s going to happen in two months and we might lose it all..”

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: “Andso we need to be positioned for that.” That’s the only friction I’ve noticed.

Garrett: I think they’re spoiled. I think you’re spoiled. I think right now tech is down bad, bro. I talked to some of our competitors. We did have the best sales month in the history of the freaking company. Can you Google something for me real quick? Silicon Valley Bank collapse. I’m pretty sure this happened in March, Brady, I just want to-

Brady: Oh, this was, yeah, three weeks ago I think.

Garrett: Yeah, Silicon Valley Bank collapse.

Brady: Yeah, March 17th.

Garrett: March 17th. Dude, we still did it during that. That’s what I’m trying to point out to you, is I think that speaks to the size of our pipeline, but to the point of serving the upper market. I called our competitors. They are not, or they were texting me being like, ” Are you guys down right now? Are you struggling right now?” And I think all of us are struggling on retention because when our contracts are coming up for renewal, budgets are getting tightened. That part I know. Nobody else was seeing pipeline, Brady.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Historical. We did something similar last year. Kind of holding steady was more like the positive spin I was getting. Not, we blew it out of the water. Dude, you closed over 2 million dollars more than the previous month.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So I would say-

Brady: Yeah, I definitely think-

Garrett: You get what I’m saying. They were from big accounts that were… Think about the ones that closed that made that up. Those were top leaders in each of massive verticals.

Brady: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean-

Garrett: That’s all Trump for you.

Brady: Even before this, we have our minimums, we have our level of engagement. And so I do agree if we were servicing smaller contracts, minimal hours, oh your budget’s 4K a month, like we got you. You’ll pay us 500 a month to manage it. If we were in that world, I could definitely see that’s an easy budget, it’s just a cut.

Garrett: Bloodbath.

Brady: It’s, oh, we’re only spending 4K on it. But because we’re in the upper market and it’s such a robust engine that is fueling the company.

Garrett: You get almost million spends on all these people. You can’t just like stop investing a million dollars in mass.

Brady: But look, you can tighten it up and get more efficient and effective, but they’re not just cutting that function out of the business.

Garrett: Correct. They’re not saying we can go without advertising. And so we’re at least” surviving”. I’d say on the renewals, they’re trying to figure out if they can do it for cheaper. But for new business… And that’s the smaller ones, I think the smaller ones, and this is the hard part about what we do. There’s frankly two realities. There’s the, we are a powerful agency that can help you get results. That’s one reality. The other reality is we are as good as your product and customer service and sales team. Those are two actual realities, Brady. I would say for the people who have bad product, customer service and sales groups, we’re having a harder time renewing those. And the groups, and regardless of us, and the groups that have good product sales and customer service, we’re renewing those just fine. Does that mean we’re a bad agency? Does that mean we’ve got bad results? Or if you’re on your sixth agency in six years, maybe there is no magic bullet in an agency. And that’s as an agency owner, I’ll tell you right now, we are not omniscient. We are not all powerful. We can’t fix at least that directive, poor product, poor brand, poor sales, poor customer service. We can inform, we help, we can partner, but I don’t feel like we can fix that. And so I would say we keep accounts and we do well on accounts. The truth is that at an agency, you do good on your good accounts and you have a harder time on your hard accounts. I don’t know if there’s any other truth than that.

Brady: Yeah, we’re not on the product engineering team.

Garrett: We try, I will inform on product, I’ll inform on price.

Brady: Yeah, you can influence it.

Garrett: We’ll help with positioning. But if the CEO or the chief product officer’s just like, ” Piss off.” If you’re the most expensive price and you have no customer support line or live chat, I’m already going uphill. And I’ll tell you that when we’re flirting essentially in the sales process. I’d say we’re as transparent and as direct and authentic as you can humanly be. I think that’s our secret to sales is we don’t sell you. We just tell you the truth. And then if you decide to work with us, you’ll work with us. And truthfully, when we work with good accounts, we look very good. We work with hard accounts, we work exceptionally hard, but it’s like squeezing the last drop of juice out of that lemon and sometimes it doesn’t go as well.

Brady: Yeah, I mean it leads all the way to revenue. All those things matter. I mean as the best marketers, we can-

Garrett: Well, we’re holding ourselves accountable to revenue.

Brady: Yeah, we can create pipeline.

Garrett: No, I’d say ,”Look at all the leads, right?”

Brady: Yeah. You could take a product and you can put a mask on it through marketing. Everything digital isn’t the actual product, but once it gets to proof of concept within a sales process, that’s where as marketers, we don’t take control as much.

Garrett: We take a step back. No, and it’s never an excuse. And that’s what I love about marketing and being a consultant, it’s like you can never blame the customer and you can never essentially give up. But as the owner of a marketing agency, not the consultant on the account, what I can tell you is our best accounts that we get to take the most credit for also are just really good marketing groups that have great products, if we’re being honest. And great sales teams and great price. We are not magic workers. We are accelerators of your reality. And if your reality is poor, your acceleration is poor. If your reality is strong, your acceleration is strong. But Brady, all this agency talk gets me a little excited about one of the wildest ads I’ve ever seen. Do you want to see this one?

Brady: Yeah. You were explaining it to me and I still…

Garrett: Well, I’m not even go with that one today.

Brady: Oh, this is different?

Garrett: This is different.

Brady: I know nothing about this.

Garrett: You know nothing. I know. It’s really good that I onboarded you at lunch to something I’m not going to do. But why don’t you click on that first scrub, so you can read it. Oh my god, what a great click. That is exactly what I needed actually. So, I’m going to do some great radio for everyone instead of telling you to read the ad because you can’t see it. I’m going to read it out loud. ” On November 5th and 6th, Honda’s car people saw several of the finest speculative pitches money can buy. In a period of 12 hours, over 300, 000 worth of out- of- pocket dogs and ponies went on display. Two days later, Honda had a new agency.” I don’t know if I’m saying it… Chiat/Day?, I’m going to try it. ” Chiat/ Day lost a$ 4 million account. Needham, Harper, & Steers, won an 8 million plum.” I love that they mentioned the competitor one, too. Yeah, as Mac reported it. I’m guessing that’s something from back in the day when I wasn’t doing this. I’m guessing it’s like an Ad Week. So as Ad Week reported it, ” NHS met the requirements that of a national first full service agency.” And I think they ran this in the New York Times or something like that. ” What’s it like to lose? The classy thing for an agency to do after losing 25% of its business is to play it cool, act like it’s all a momentary inconvenience. That’s a crock. We’re not sophisticated enough to put on a fake smile and walk away from what we’ve done with Honda over the past five years. The truth is we got beat. What’s worse? We got beat playing somebody else’s game. We took a shame face shot at showbiz pitch artistry and somewhere between third and the fifth act, some of the finest advertising ideas you’ll ever see got swamped in a four- hour sea of Madison Avenue buzzwords.” That’s painful as hell. ” Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser. We’re not sure where to credit that quote, but it’s dead center true. We want to go on the record as bad losers. We want you to know we’re mad as hell. Not at Honda, they’re very real gentlemen doing business in our country according to our peculiar customs. Not at Needham. They did what they had to do and did it well, after paying those dues at Continental Airlines, maybe they had one coming.” Geez. ” We’re mad at a system. We’re mad at the way big budgets get relocated. We’re mad about all the instances we see and hear about where advertising becomes a battle of logistics instead of a battle of ideas. Most of all, we’re mad at ourselves for voluntarily participating in an advertising gang bang.” That’s a hell of a word. ” If this reads like sour grapes, you read it wrong. We don’t think we could have changed the outcome. But the scary thing is that we could have changed us. The high cost of learning.” I like how they do little sub bullet points. ” We spent a lot of money on the Honda presentation. We matched the other players, dollar for dollar. Fortunately, we had a lot of money to spend, still do.” Little flex. ” The real pain is emotional, not fiscal. We lost some billings, but we never worried much about billings.” Lie. ” They happen. If the product’s good, the market’s there.” Notice what I said before. ” And Honda’s aside, we added 4 million in 1974. We figured to do as well in 1975. We’ve still got the best account list in town. Quality. We’ve still got the best concentration of talent in town. Head hunters spare your dime. We’ve got money in the bank, we’ve got plenty to do. We’re back to our real business, not show business, advertising business.” Chiat/ Day. So I’m curious. I’m running Directive, I lose on a big account. It doesn’t really ever happen, but no, I’m just kidding. Let’s say we lose on a big account and I do, let’s say the current version of this is a video on it. What’s your take?

Brady: I like it because it’s authentic and it kind of opens the curtain a bit and I think it’s a bold way to go about it. But at the same time, if you don’t do it this way, I think the assumptions of the situation are far worse. And so I think that’s what they did in this article is they’re like, ” Well, if we don’t say anything and we act like nothing’s wrong, that may make us feel good internally. But the external point of view on it is still going to be, oh, they’re going downhill. They’re shit. Their pitch must have been terrible.” All of the top of mind assumptions and perceptions.

Garrett: Well, and they lost the account. It wasn’t just that they didn’t win the pitch. They were essentially under-

Brady: They’re looking to renew.

Garrett: They were under reviewal and they lost to an incumbent on a relationship they’d probably had for a while.

Brady: Yeah. So I think without doing something like this, the natural perception is like” Wow, they must have been doing something really bad to lose that.” Right?

Garrett: Yeah. And I think in that industry, especially back then, everyone probably talks. Our industry, we don’t really know who loses what account right now or gets one. Do you? Like it’s not public knowledge.

Brady: I mean the sales process, I know who-

Garrett: Of course.

Brady: …they’re currently working with, so I have that.

Garrett: But it wouldn’t be so much knowledge that you’d run an ad on the fact that you lost this big account?

Brady: No.

Garrett: But I think it would be if we lost Honda.

Brady: Yeah, I mean this is the stuff we have that client-

Garrett: As AOR, too. That’s a little different too. It’s like running the TV ads for Honda is a pretty big deal.

Brady: Like Winmo, remember that company?

Garrett: Yep. Correct.

Brady: They do this level of announcements for CMOs changing and because that CMO change is happening based on-

Garrett: Everybody knows.

Brady: …that CMOs history, they have a high confidence that they’re going to be changing agencies. It’s that type of news.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: So, I think at that level it happens often and there’s that level media agency for these global brands where it is very public and talked about.

Garrett: Yeah, and Chiat/ Day is not small.

Brady: No.

Garrett: I don’t know who they are now or if they even exist as this. Now, personally, I didn’t really understand it because they said, ” We took a shamed face shot at showbiz pitch artistry and somewhere between the third and fifth act, some of the finest advertising ideas you’ll ever see got swamped in a four- hour sea of Madison Avenue bud words. And that’s painful as hell.” In other words, it sounds like Honda created some type of RFP process and they were doing all this stuff. I don’t get it. So let’s say you look at it, right? I always do everything. I think there’s two ways to look at things. You can look at things for when you think you’re too important. I remember one of our competitors posting something on LinkedIn where there was like, ” We did layoffs.” All this stuff. It’s like why’d you post that? Nobody should know that. It doesn’t help you competitively. And then they talk about these things and I’m always whenever I think about what I’m articulating, I try to put it through how my audience will read it. So let’s say you’re Toyota, right? Because you now no longer have Honda, so you could probably work with Toyota. I wouldn’t say I’m more likely to hire Chiat/ Day after reading this than before. That’s my only criticism in the sense that they lost. But they lost, they said, for being something they’re not. I didn’t really-

Brady: Yeah. So I think they hope Toyota’s perception is like, ” Okay, that’s terrible for them. But it sounds like this could also be terrible for Honda. It sounds like they made a mistake, they could have done something and they’re equipped to do something that would’ve kept them, but they’ve, for whatever distraction, didn’t do so. Maybe we can get what they should have done in this moment.” So they kind of try to frame it that way where it’s like, ” We could have kept Honda, we have all the talent to do so. We have everything to do so. We just made a mistake.” And it sounds like they were maybe distracted by this other agency and did things where they now regret doing it. Whether it be the RFP or just knowing what they were pitching and trying to align with it, or maybe just thinking they will impress Honda by doing this one thing. That’s what that section said to me. It was like, ” We could have kept it. We have all the talent to crush it. We just got distracted and made a mistake.”

Garrett: What’s interesting is show biz pitch artistry and pitching. Ain’t a pitch always show biz baby?

Brady: Well that’s where I-

Garrett: That’s so-

Brady: … have tosee this in video form to know. What are they talking about there?

Garrett: Yes. Like who thinks their ideas are that good? No offense, Chiat/Day.

Brady: Did they hire an actress to do the pitch and that didn’t go well versus having their strategy team and market team do it like they used to?

Garrett: It’s just a weird quote.

Brady: I don’t get it.

Garrett: It’s like, baby, well, this is show business. I’m not in advertising, I’m in show business too. What are you talking about? It’s winning the pitch.

Brady: Yeah. I have no clue what that actually means to them.

Garrett: Well, I just think it’s kind of arrogant to think the client just has to see the right idea and then I’ll win the pitch. I don’t know. For me, I’ve known it’s never been about ideas. It’s about relationship, confidence in execution, trust and some type of emotional feeling about a firm is way more important than like, ” Oh, we could use Betty Crocker.” Or whatever their-

Brady: I just think it could have been something else. I think our version of showbiz within pitching is maybe what they-

Garrett: Like to do.

Brady: …would’ve done if they could have done it again and they did this category of showbiz that-

Garrett: Well, yeah, we’ve never spent 300K on a pitch and this is in 1974. Can you search$300, 000 adjusted for 1974 inflation? I’m curious if we can figure this out. There we go.

Brady: 1. 8 mil.

Garrett: See that Scarlet? 1. 8. We ain’t ever dropped 1. 8 on a pitch. So I think that is a little… I like showbiz. I don’t know if I like 1. 8 million dollar showbiz. What would you? Brady, hype case, let’s sidebar, little tangent. How do you spend 1. 8 million on a pitch? Did they make their own? How many Hondas did they make for the pitch? Because they spent-

Brady: Yeah, I’m trying, because that 4 million in 1974 adjusted, that was roughly 12X. So that adjustment’s what, 48 million? Which isn’t-

Garrett: That’s a pretty big account.

Brady: Well that was just talking about their earnings in 1974 in general.

Garrett: Correct. Yeah.

Brady: They’re like, ” We’re so good. We made 4 million. So that’s adjusted to 48 million.”

Garrett: I’m just saying. Oh, Chiat/Day they did the 1984 commercial. That’s pretty dope.

Brady: Yeah, we covered that.

Garrett: We did. But you got, I don’t know. If I were to take that whole ad out. I don’t really know what they’re saying is my point. They didn’t say anything.

Brady: I think they’re just trying to control perception. They felt like-

Garrett: No, I know they are.

Brady: …if they don’t say something then everyone’s going to say what they don’t want.

Garrett: I know, but what did they say? That’s where I’m stuck.

Brady: I think they said that they could have kept Honda but they made a mistake and got distracted and pitched the wrong way.

Garrett: Why were they even put up for a reviewal? Do you see?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Because I don’t think they just had one- year contracts back then. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think the Honda account was a one- year contract

Brady: And it says they saw several pitches. So they might just have these seasons where they have to-

Garrett: No, they were up for reviewal. So they had a two days and onsite. Everybody flew out, and they did their pitches. Right? It was kind of like, you’ve see Mad Men where they walk in and out of the door like, “All right, good luck. They just saw the best thing we’ve ever done.” Right? So I guess what I’m saying is your Chiat/Day, I’m Toyota, I read this, what do I think about them on the positive? Not like what happened? Because you’re saying they want to control the narrative. I completely agree. That is exactly what they’re doing here. And I love that they did that. That’s why I love this, conceptually. My issue is when you control something, it needs to go from Chiat/ Day lost the account because they didn’t have good ideas, is I guess what they’re inferring. But Chiat/Day is like, ha ha ha, they did not lose because somewhere between the third and the fifth act, some of the finest advertising ideas you’ll ever see got swamped in a four- hour sea of Madison Avenue buzzwords. So they just sent the wrong pitch team?

Brady: Well, it almost sounds like their frustration was the other pitches were bullshit, but Honda ate it. Maybe that’s what that line is saying.

Garrett: Yeah. I don’t know. Do you see what I’m saying?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Because they’re like, ” Look, we had the best ideas.” So am I supposed to read that and just be like, I guess if I want ideas go to Chiat/ Day?

Brady: And so maybe Toyota thinks like, ” Damn, Honda really screwed up.” And that’s what makes sense to them.

Garrett: I think there’s a better way to write that though.

Brady: It makes them stay relevant?

Garrett: Is where I get stuck on this whole thing. It sounds like it was written in anger and emotion, not logic and strategy.

Brady: Well that’s where I actually thought if this reads sour grapes, you read it wrong. I kind of like where they dropped that.

Garrett: I do too.

Brady: I thought that was smart.

Garrett: Well, yeah, they’re world- class copywriters, don’t get me wrong. And they’re way better at writing than we are these days. This was what they did for a living. This is their art. I just don’t know what I now think about Chiat/ Day., That’s the only problem I have with it is I don’t know what you want me to think about you, the outcome of this ad. And I don’t think you know. I don’t think either of us know what they want us to think about them.

Brady: In my mind it’s like if I was Toyota, I would think it’s worth giving them a shot.

Garrett: I guess they’re not going under? I guess maybe that’s what they’re saying. Maybe the narrative was Chiat/ Day’s going to be out of business.

Brady: Yeah, we took a bullet but we didn’t die.

Garrett: Yeah. Like right there. I mean they spent… Think about that. A quarter of the ad is one way to look at it, right? A full right column. To say, ” Fortunately we had a lot of money to spend. Still do.” I mean they spent a quarter of it to say we ain’t broke. ” We lost some billings, but we’re never worried about billings.” They say that, by the way. If you meet an ad agency, not more worried about billings than anything else, you’ve met a liar. But that’s just a fact. ” And then Honda aside, we added 4 million in 1974.” So that actually isn’t saying what I thought it was saying. They’re not saying they added 4 million to Honda. They’re saying they lost the$ 4 million account on the very beginning. Chiat/ Day lost a 4 million account and they replaced it with 4 million dollars in other accounts in 1974. So that’s actually what they’re saying. Oh my gosh. They’re not saying, ” We’re Chiat/ Day, come with us.” They’re saying, ” We lost Honda, but we’re not dead. That’s actually what they’re saying. Because I’ve been trying to figure out this whole time of why you’d get Toyota. Cause my brain all obviously goes, I lost Honda, I got to get Toyota. That’s how my brain works. Their brain was like, we lost Honda, and then probably what happened is people were like, ” Are you guys still going to be around in six months now you don’t have the Honda account?” And it sounds like they ran an ad to say, ” We’re good even though we lost this.”

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Which I guess would be different. We aren’t living in 1974 in this world. But it does appear to me that they’re literally saying, ” Yeah, we lost. There it is. That’s what actually happened.” So read it on the first paragraph. What’s it like to lose?

Brady: Yeah, 25%.

Garrett: Now I’m getting it. That’s what they did here. So that’s the purpose of it. The classy thing for an agency to do after losing 25% of its business is to play. Yes. They lost such a high concentration of an account that everybody thought Chiat/ Day wasn’t going to survive. And this is what it was actually about. They lost, but they’re not dead. Not essentially, ” Toyota, you should hire us. We’re the best. It was, ” We got caught up in the game. We lost 25% of our business. But we’ve got plenty of money in the bank, the best talent in the game. We don’t do show business, we do advertising.” Now I get it a little more. Sorry. Sometimes it’s hard to actually know what the heck they’re doing. If you’re not alive back then.

Brady: Yeah. It’s the copy, the way it’s written.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: I’m not sure how this scene looked back then-

Garrett: Without the context, yeah.

Brady: Maybe when you lose a quarter of revenue, the standard thing that happens is you just bleed out as an agency and you’re done in the inaudible next five years and everyone who keeps you afloat, they fail with you kind of thing.

Garrett: We’ve never lost 25% of revenue, bro.

Brady: No, I don’t know what that would-

Garrett: Yeah. If we lost 25% of revenue on one account, I’d take out an ad, too. So now I think I’m actually getting what they did. And imagine, I don’t know if Chiat/Day was publicly traded at this time. So imagine if they have publicly shared financials, too. And everyone-

Brady: Yes, this could be investor communication.

Garrett: Could be investor relations.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: It could be stock control narrative on price. But yeah, very interesting.

Brady: That was cool to read through.

Garrett: I know. Something a little different for today’s show. It was a little ad for the ad agency.

Brady: So you think this was newspaper?

Garrett: I would imagine.

Brady: Or maybe a-

Garrett: Giant plane. No, I’m just kidding.

Brady: Yeah. A magazine?

Garrett: It’s just drifted out like a-

Brady: A big banner?

Garrett: A Sees Candy-

Brady: Blimp.

Garrett: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s got to probably be like the New York Times, I’d guess. It would be like where you put something like this. But, man, imagine 25% of the business on one pitch. I’d probably take out an ad, too. They did a good job of not blaming Honda, but they also were like, this industry can suck, essentially. That’s the part I didn’t get. I wish they saw the angle that was like why they’re the best except other than their using the word gang bang, which I thought was funny. I do think they could have written this in such a way where I didn’t know what Chiat/ Day was the best at, but yeah that’s cool.

Brady: Yeah. I wonder if the other 75% was split up amongst a handful of accounts or if they have another big one that’s 25% as well?

Garrett: Yeah, that’s up right now, too. Yeah. I bet you they have a couple of high concentration. Back then, it was a lot more like that.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: But what do you got for us today?

Brady: Mine is very new school compared to that. It’s a very recent ad.

Garrett: Well, I tried to buy these.

Brady: What happened?

Garrett: What the heck?

Brady: Are they out of stock?

Garrett: Well, no. Myra, my wife, I was texting her being like, because I think this is on me. I washed my Air Pod Pros. I didn’t take them out of my pocket.

Brady: Nice. Were they clean? Did you get all the earwax out?

Garrett: I didn’t.

Brady: Didn’t play music?

Garrett: Yeah, really I did. Nope. They play, the microphone’s not working so well.

Brady: Oh, okay.

Garrett: So Scarlet was out of town, vacation lifestyle. And I wanted new headphones and I had this trip coming up on a Friday and I was just slammed. So I texted Myra because I knew she was going to be by the Apple Store and I was like, ” Hey, could you swing in babe and grab me the new Air Pod Pros?” She said, ” There are no new Air Pod Pros, just the ones you already had or generation three on the Air Pods.” So now I am really confused.

Brady: Yeah, we can look. We’ll go to the site after to see.

Garrett: All right. All right. All right.

Brady: Because usually they would say Air Pod Pro 2s.

Garrett: Correct. Exactly. And this is from two weeks ago. I have the Air Pod Pro, so I don’t know if now they’re just running ads for Air Pod Pro?

Brady: Yeah, well we’ll look into it, because I’m not sure there is a new, new Air Pod Pro.

Garrett: I know because I saw this ad, I don’t know if it was this ad, but I saw an ad for the Air Pods Pro. Advertising works on me. It works great on me. That’s why I DM’ed her and I was like, ” Hey babe, the mic’s not working. Can you get me the new Air Pod Pros when you’re by the Apple store?” And she sent me the whole diagram. They don’t have them. All this stuff. And I was like, huh? I’m like, I swear I saw an ad. Unbeknownst to me, you’re bringing me the ad.

Brady: Sorry, Myra. I didn’t know about this situation.

Garrett: Yeah. Literally, this is just what happened to me literally on Thursday. That’s why I’m like, what the heck? All right. So let’s see it. I want to see. This is some funny, this is great content. I want to see how they did their marketing, too. Okay.

Air Pod Ad: (singing). Head’s up. Thank you. Enjoy. Guys! Yeah!

Garrett: Wait, go back really quick. I think I saw it. Just two seconds, a little more.

Brady: Is this the substitute X?

Speaker 5: Right. Hit play, at the very bottom.

Brady: Compared to Air Pod Pro first gen. So there is a second gen.

Garrett: Baby girl.

Brady: I’m so sorry.

Garrett: Brady! How could you?

Brady: In the fine, fine print, it says, ” Release 2024.” I’m kidding.

Garrett: Oh.

Brady: So outside of your personal situation around the Air Pods-

Garrett: I knew they had it.

Brady: I blame the Apple worker who told her there’s not a new one.

Garrett: I agree. They do say second generation. Okay.

Brady: I thought the ad was brilliant.

Garrett: It is brilliant.

Brady: It’s such an awesome visual representation of the noise cancellation. Just the way it was so simple, but obviously the budget on it. It was well produced.

Garrett: Bigger budget.

Brady: It was entertaining. Even the science experiment volcano. Just, I love the details.

Garrett: I love how they humanize the experience of their product. I think I’ve shown on this show even, the very first Air Pods where the person’s dancing and everything?

Brady: Yeah. With the chord?

Garrett: And then they get rid of the chord and then they’re dancing and you’re like, ” Oh, that’s sick.” Are we ever doing all of these things at once? No, but it feels exceptionally human and relatable while being completely out of this world. Like a guy’s on a jackhammer floating to start.

Brady: Yeah. And then he was on the ground. And she was ordering food, so that’s when you would want to hear another person.

Garrett: Yeah. Correct.

Brady: Like, oh, is this what you want? And this is how much it is.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: But the concept is so simple.

Garrett: But she didn’t take one out of her ear. I thought that was brilliant. So I go back, I want to show this scene.

Brady: Well, she just pinches it to turn on and off.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what I do on mine. Do you have these?

Brady: I just have the first generation.

Garrett: Yeah, me too.

Brady: I can’t imagine two times better than the first.

Garrett: I know, because the first one’s pretty dope.

Brady: Yeah. I wouldn’t say the first one I was having a hard time with.

Brady: Yeah. I mean, on an airplane is when I use them. And if you do-

Garrett: Well, I use mine every day. I legitimately use mine all day, every day.

Brady: See, I use my cord at work just because I see everyone’s like headphones jump to another. I have another mic. So my mic on my wired headphones, when I wear something like this, it rubs on it and I can’t hear it. So I don’t really-

Garrett: But watch this. I love this part when she applies. I just want to show this again because she orders, oh wait, do they show both ears? Can we go back? I want to see if they show both ears. I think that’s interesting to me because that’s also trying to show them changing human behavior. Because currently it would be disrespectful to a certain extent to have both Air Pods in and order.

Brady: Yeah. Because people don’t know you can hear kind of thing?

Garrett: Yeah. And it’s not usually considered a sign of respect to talk to someone. Imagine, so this is me being old head. Right? But imagine talking to a 12- year old right now and you’re trying to have a conversation with them and they keep both their headphones in. That’d piss me off. Wouldn’t that piss you off or am I crazy?

Brady: I mean, I-

Garrett: Imagine talking to your nephew right now. Your nephew comes over and you’re trying to have a serious conversation with you and they kept both headphones in.

Brady: I mean, if I could hear them playing music, then yeah. But if they’re talking to me.

Garrett: You wouldn’t care if someone’s talking to you with both head… Come on.

Brady: No.

Garrett: You wouldn’t mind?

Brady: As long as I know I am what they’re attended to.

Garrett: How would you know?

Brady: Because of just the level of conversation. I may say that because I do it whenever I’m mowing my lawn, I have my Air Pods in. And if my neighbor comes over to talk, I just pause the music, open up the noise cancellation. I talk to him.

Garrett: You don’t take one out?

Brady: I don’t take it out.

Garrett: You keep both in?

Brady: I mean, he knows. I hear what he’s saying and I’m talking back. I’m not like-

Garrett: Scarlet’s face. She’s shaking her… Am I crazy with this?

Scarlet: No. Preston has them and I make him take them out.

Brady: I’m not dancing and being like, yeah, whatever.

Garrett: Yes! See?

Brady: I can hear better.

Garrett: So, you’re with your wife, if you have both headphones in and she’s trying to tell you something.

Brady: I mean, I guess that never happens.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: But I even think-

Garrett: Scarlet’s like, no way. I make him take them… Yeah, that’s what I’m saying..

Brady: I love when you- So when you turn off the noise cancellation, I think it amplifies sound.

Garrett: I absolutely love the Brady speak.

Brady: So I can hear better.

Garrett: That is so Brady.

Brady: It’s like a hearing aid.

Garrett: If you don’t know Brady Cramm, that to me is the perfect Brady Cramm moment.

Brady: I have bad hearing, so my wife probably likes it. She’s like, “Oh, you can hear better with Air Pods.”

Garrett: I love Brady, he’s my favorite.

Brady: Have you noticed that? You can hear subtle sounds?

Garrett: I don’t know if that’s true, but I have some-

Brady: If you have the noise canceling off, because it sends audio through the headphone.

Garrett: Oh, yes. I needed a good Brady moment. That’s the ultimate Brady Cramm. I can hear better this way. I’m helping the world.

Brady: I’m a sales guy. What do you mean? Right? I’m a stubborn sales guy.

Garrett: You know what is? I love you, man. That is so you. I thought this was shocking to me. This to me was changing human behavior.

Brady: So she has it in her right ear here.

Garrett: Yeah, and let’s just see.

Brady: And then when she’s ordering, you can’t see her right ear.

Garrett: That’s what-

Brady: But then it shows in the left ear.

Garrett: So, is that what’s happening? I just want to confirm that real quick. I thought-

Brady: Oh, nevermind. Yeah. So that’s her left ear now.

Garrett: Left ear. They don’t visibly-

Brady: She doesn’t take it out.

Garrett: They don’t? What? Dang. Okay. So I’m not crazy though, Scarlet.

Scarlet: No, you’re not.

Garrett: Peter, if someone’s talking to you with the headphones on, do you feel like take your headphones off or are you-

Peter: It hasn’t come up, but it would probably annoyed me, I’m guessing.

Garrett: Brady’s like… Brady’s face.

Brady: I mean over ears, sure.

Garrett: But not in ear.

Brady: As long as I pause my music and I turn off noise cancellation.

Garrett: Trust me. That is what they are saying. I think it’s brilliant for Apple. That’s why I wanted to call it out. I was like, did she just order without taking her Air Pods out? Because to me, I will do it. If I’m on a call with somebody, let’s say I get don’t lunch and I’m trying to run to Bodhi Leaf and I’m on a call and I’m always on a call. I am literally always on a call. And so I go in and I’ll tell the person I’m talking to, ” One second, I’ve got to order, I’m going to put you on mute and then I’ll take out the headphones,, order and I’ll put them back in. I think sometimes I’ve had them in, because I couldn’t mute. The person was talking and I’m like, ” I just want the normal.” And they’re like, ” Do you want the normal?” I only go to one spot and I was like this and they just do the normal thing. But I feel horrible in this moment. That’s just like my brain… But this is how I’m wired though. But that, I can imagine new generation, like generation X or whatever, to me, definition of headphones, ordering who they’re targeting, normal behavior. And they probably think I’m crazy, man, yelling at clouds. You’re one with the people, bro.

Brady: Yeah. You can hear better and don’t they-

Garrett: Was this a wild take?

Brady: They can disconnect when you take them out.

Garrett: Yeah. You never know. You don’t want to lose one of them trying to put it in your pocket.

Brady: For me, it’s all about the engagement, right?

Scarlet: I’m want to test your theory.

Brady: If they know you’re listening and you’re not like dancing because oh, he’s still listening to music and he’s ordering coffee. But as long as you’re attentive and you’re holding the conversation, who cares What’s in your ears?

Garrett: Your boyfriend and her fiance’s going to have this now. And just be like, as a clip, ” Look honey, you can hear better.”

Brady: Yep, I got you. Preston, keep them in.

Garrett: Keep them in. Dang. I love how Scarlet’s face, when you said it was like, she was literally like, ” What?” My dad would’ve slapped them out of my ears and been like, ” Boy, get those out of your ears.” If he was trying to talk to me and I was like, “What?”

Brady: Because see, yeah, if you’re like that.

Garrett: If you did a little crap like-

Brady: If he’s trying to talk to you, and you’re like, ” Yeah, I hear you. Even better now that these are still in.”

Garrett: With the headphones? I don’t think my dad would’ve played that at all.

Brady: I’m just trying to think. Maybe when we’re on an airplane would be the only time that would happen. And I’m pretty sure I would just pause the music, open it up and say, ” What’s up? What do you need?”

Garrett: All right. All right.

Brady: And then go back to it.

Garrett: I love it. Now you’re going to be thinking about it.

Brady: When you take them out, you drop them, it rolls down the aisle.

Garrett: Oh, yeah. You don’t want to do that. Yeah.

Brady: Falls into the washer.

Garrett: Even when the cart person comes by, I’m always like, I take one out to make sure I can hear them.

Brady: Yeah, I might do that. I don’t know.

Garrett: I love it. I love it. I love Brady. He’s like-

Brady: I got to make sure them. inaudible.

Garrett: Go to their website, will you, Scarlet? Because I want to really see, okay. They’re really, I’m not crazy. All right.

Brady: Yeah, they’re out.

Garrett: Yep. And they’re available. Yep. Right there at the store. Yep. That would’ve been good. I need these. These people can’t hear me right now when I’m on the mics. I can hear the music fine, but I think when they got washed, the noise canceling, and I do a lot where it’s noisy, it’s not being able to tell the difference between my voice and the background noise is what I think’s happening. How much are they?

Brady: $250.

Garrett: That’s so affordable for how often you… This product, have you seen how much money they make on the Air Pod Pros? Have you seen that graph?

Brady: No.

Garrett: Okay. Do Air Pods versus Tech Company graph. Look at that right there.

Brady: Oh, they just segment out the Air Pod business unit.

Garrett: This is going to blow your mind. Look how big.

Brady: Damn.

Garrett: Like, dude, Air Pods alone-

Brady: That’s insane.

Garrett: …is bigger than Uber, adobe, Nvidia, Spotify, Square, Shopify. Air Pods.

Brady: That’s pretty badass.

Garrett: That is pretty crazy, right?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: What a great product.

Brady: I mean, I love the product and that’s why I love the ad.

Garrett: I tried to be a Beats guy for a little while.

Brady: Yeah. I think you were telling me about it.

Garrett: I think, they didn’t fit right.

Brady: I don’t know. I mean, I love that ad because it’s one of the products where I always tell people, ” Oh, I love my Air Pod Pros when I’m on a plane, when I go to the driving range-

Garrett: Yep. Having conversations.

Brady: I love them. And so I felt like that ad represented almost my personal pitch.

Garrett: It is your personal pitch. That is why you like them.

Brady: Yeah. And just the whole concept of all the noise floating up when you have it on, then dropping down and-

Garrett: They missed a key value prop, though.

Brady: You can hear better?

Garrett: You can hear better. If that’s true that would be an insane value prop. And then if five years from now, everybody’s walking around with headphones in Brady, I’m going to lose it. And I’m going to think of this moment.

Brady: Well, I was thinking, because I’ve just noticed it subtly, and for me it’s like I hear noises in the house that are far away, but it sounds close. Just the way that technology works. So I think Apple, they should have settings if they don’t already to have it somewhat of a hearing aid where you could choose the amp. Because right now it just is what it is.

Garrett: I love Brady Cramm.

Brady: They use the mic, I think to then have the audio go through the headphone because the plug itself is noise canceling.

Garrett: Well, if it was a hearing aid value prop to that product, I would pay extra money for Air Pods Pros. Imagine just like all the snoops in around the world.

Brady: You could eavesdrop with it.

Garrett: Yeah, dude, they start-

Brady: That’s kind of cool.

Garrett: The double tap is to put it in the listening mode. There it is. Listening. That would be pretty crazy.

Brady: So that could be an additional feature where it seems like they have the tech built in. They just don’t have the settings.

Garrett: I love it. I love it. So we got some topics to discuss today. Scarlet was getting some together for us. The internet was going crazy over this, huh, Scarlet?

Scarlet: Yeah.

Garrett: Why?

Scarlet: They think that the designer was crazy when he was inventing the new logo.

Garrett: What if it wasn’t a he?

Scarlet: He, she, they.

Garrett: I can’t like, I don’t even know. Why does this always happen though when they do this design stuff? They always are… So everybody hates on the design stuff of how you sell a million dollar logo. But I think it’s just because they’re not selling million dollar logos. Let’s see the graphics. Can we see the graphics?

Brady: So, this is actually covering the last logo.

Garrett: Oh, this-

Brady: So the last logo is where they spent I think a million dollars on the pitch and the design of it, and it was all about the gravitational pull in the design itself.

Garrett: I kind of freaking love it. I’m not going to-

Brady: I mean, I just love that an agency was able to sell this for a million bucks.

Garrett: Well, I don’t know if they sold this for a million dollars. They sold a logo redesign for a million dollars.

Brady: Yeah, and this was a part of the process.

Garrett: If you want to know, why didn’t we pay a million dollars? Well, for magnetic dynamics.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: As an ex- Fiver-

Brady: The Pepsi universe.

Garrett: …goat, I think I can say that I was pretty good at Fiver when I was doing Fiver. I could have done this with five bucks. And that’s why you need the gravitational pull. So wait, I like that they connect it to the aisle like Pepsi-

Brady: Aisle 60 degree, Pepsi aisle 30 degrees.

Garrett: So are they saying you see it-

Brady: The angle you see the can?

Garrett: …in the aisle? So attraction theory, establishment of a gravitational pull to shift from a transactional experience to an invitational expression is so good. Can you search attraction theory for me? I want to see if that’s even remotely true or if they just made up their own theories because that makes me respect them even more.

Brady: You might be able to find this whole pitch deck.

Garrett: Do you think so?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Oh, give me just a quick write up, a definition.

Brady: Reward theory of attraction.

Garrett: Yeah, like that. Right. There we go. It’s social psychology. The theory of attraction describes why we feel attraction to certain people and how we choose friends. It can help us understand how people connect with others in online communities. It can also provide some insights in the traits of effective… Oh, it’s a Social Media Today. Okay, great. Well I don’t think it totally has to do with gravitational pulls and Pepsi logos. But what an application of a theory, Brady. I mean for you making your little comment about your Air Pods help you hear better. This is on a whole other level.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: This is Brady Cramm at its finest. Could you do a deck like this? I don’t even know how to. I don’t know if I could do one.

Brady: I mean you’d have to staff like a physicist team.

Garrett: Because what’s the light you have? At some points I feel like they’re kind of just screwing with me.

Brady: Yeah, this is-

Garrett: What’s this about?

Brady: The universe expands exponentially.

Garrett: Wait, okay. Okay. Sorry. So some of this just-

Brady: One light year, a million miles per hour.

Garrett: The ultimate. You know how they say that our industry is all BS? This is what people are referring to. Because I have never done any of this. So when they did the Pepsi Galaxy, I kind of thought they’d have maybe different flavors within the galaxy and all the different types of Pepsi flavors connected. Wait, what’s this? Energy?

Brady: Well, it’s almost like, it’s not like this is a brand new logo, like this logo compared to the previous one for this deck. They almost did it reversed where it’s like, okay, let’s take the basic logo and let’s try to apply as much crazy shit to it as possible and make it the pitch. Because it’s not like they did all this physics, math, and universe studying, and then it spit out this logo that no one’s ever seen.

Garrett: Well, I feel like they kind of… There it is. The Pepsi logo design doc is still utterly unbelievable, I think. Okay. So is…

Brady: Oh yeah, they did all these expressions to it as well.

Garrett: These guys. Is this Chiat data? Who’s group is this? Let me see. No down. Let me see if it’ll… Right. A new logo. Arnell group. They thought it was a hoax. Oh, there’s our boy Jaren. We’re right on this. Dude. No, this is real. The gravitational pull. I mean, as client though, they just eat this up. In Arnell’s group’s defense, showing the world and how it ties to the Pepsi logo.

Brady: Man, if you’re going to go against Coca- Cola, you got to bring in gravitational pulls into your logo design.

Garrett: Gravitational pull. I love this. Just flexing on them in the most wild. This is why we’re doing one of, if we’re being honest, the most simple logos the world has ever seen.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: So back to the tweet, the original tweet there.

Brady: I mean, I kind of like the facial expression.

Garrett: I did too.

Brady: How you can play with the logo.

Garrett: Will you click that real quick? I want to see has Pepsi changed their logo. I just want to see, is that March 28th?

Brady: Yeah, so the one on the right’s the new logo, but the old one is being brought up because of how much money was spent on it and now Pepsi’s admitting it needs to change. So that’s why the old one-

Garrett: Yeah, click on the logos through the years too. Real quick, Scarlet, so I can see them all. Sorry, it’s just easier for me to see what we’re looking at. Okay.

Brady: So we’re pretty much going back to 1987.

Garrett: 1997. Oh, they’re making fun of the Arnell group from 2008 who came up with the gravitational pull.

Brady: Well, they’re kind of making fun of Pepsi because they spent so much money on that version and they’re changing it.

Garrett: Does the word Pepsi look weird in black font or am I just crazy for that? Read it out loud in your brain. Just really just look at the letters and look at it different. That kind of, it does look a little different to me. What do you like most, Brady? Which one’s your favorite logo for Pepsi and why? Other than gravitational pull?

Brady: So my favorite logo, I guess, first question, I kind of like the’98 to 2007. Just, I like that era and I feel like soda in my life fit into that era.

Garrett: That was a big time for you.

Brady: That was a big soda time for me.

Garrett: That was a very big soda time for you. What are you? A little seven- year- old Brady running around? Were you a Pepsi guy or Coca- Cola guy?

Brady: Whatever I get my hands on.

Garrett: Oh, you’re just a sugar guy.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: All right.

Brady: Back to schooler to be specific.

Garrett: Okay.

Brady: So I like that one, but that’s more personal to me.

Garrett: It does feel like the nineties in a logo, doesn’t it?

Brady: Yeah. And the graphics behind it. I don’t mind the last logo they did. I like this one because a part of the process of developing it is they asked people to draw the Pepsi logo and a lot of people included Pepsi in the logo. In the previous two versions, the name Pepsi was separated from the logo.

Garrett: Understood.

Brady: So I liked how they just simply did market research this time to see how does the market perceive our brand?

Garrett: In’98-

Brady: And let’s align with that.

Garrett: … 2007, it looks like itwas separate as well, correct? inaudible the old.

Brady: Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett: They could have had them separate.

Brady: And then the old, old ones didn’t even have the-

Garrett: The two marks?

Brady: Yeah. The yin and yang kind of thing going on.

Garrett: Well, social media is a big reason why we have the circular marks that are separate from the names today, but I think it’s also a gap. So in other words, they did a lot of the logo mark being separate from the logo words for social purposes. So if you notice all of our profiles, if you’re running a corporate account. So, go to Pepsi Twitter on a separate tab real quick. I’ll show you what I mean by this. Why this is valuable, too.

Brady: I mean, I don’t mind it.

Garrett: So what the heck? You guys need an update app? I mean, come on, Pepsi.

Brady: That’s pretty wild.

Garrett: That’s just-

Brady: That’s insane.

Garrett: That’s kind of pathetic. I’m going to be honest, Pepsi, what the heck are you doing?

Brady: With all this buzz going on?

Garrett: Yes! It’s enough for us to bring it up on our-

Brady: Even if they weren’t officially ready to release it, because it’s not on the cans yet-

Garrett: Let’s go to their website. Let’s just make sure we’re what we’re talking about.

Brady: At least flip it digitally.

Garrett: Pepsi website. Yeah, like pepsi. com or something. Where’s the new logo, Brady?

Brady: I don’t think this was April Fools.

Garrett: Are we getting duped right now? Brady, I swear to God. Did you just dupe us on our show?

Brady: No, let’s look it up.

Garrett: No, Pepsi reveals… Okay. Wait, click on that adage report real quick.

Brady: Because there were April Fool’s things with like UPS made a soda can and-

Garrett: Yeah, that’s just such-

Brady: I knew their April Fools.

Garrett: Nothing is stupider than April. To me, nothing is less funny than like, ” Got you.” But maybe that’s just me. It’s like puns. It’s to me the lowest form of copywriting. This fall. Okay, so it’s not, what the heck, why do you? I guess you release it but then won’t give it to us is a weird… I guess, it’s a product. You have to produce the product?

Brady: Yeah. Until it’s on the cans in the market, they won’t change it on the site.

Garrett: Yeah, I guess. Sorry, just digitally, I thought you were going to lead us forward. Dude, if you’re an agency and let’s say you have all their creative, you know how good it is for your billings to get them to do a new website-

Brady: Everything.

Garrett: …new product shots. I mean, I, new commercials. That is brilliant. We should start redoing logos for clients because if we start redoing logos we got to fix all the ad campaigns.

Brady: There’s so many applications.

Garrett: These hours don’t just fall off trees.

Brady: inaudible there’s that mango one floating around

Garrett: To my point about agencies knowing billings. I’m like, oh my God, this is genius. So I did notice something cool. So, can we go back to the Pepsi? Yeah. Are there increments of logos lasting? Lasting less. So their initial logo, yeah, they changed pretty quick.

Brady: ’98to’04.

Garrett: But that’s normal, right?

Brady: ’05to ’49 is a while.

Garrett: Right? So you got 44.

Brady: Then you have 36 years.

Garrett: 36.

Brady: Then you have 10.

Garrett: 10.

Brady: Then you have nine.

Garrett: Nine.

Brady: Then another long sprint.

Garrett: What the hell, my math is so bad. How many?

Brady: How many? 16?

Garrett: Six?

Brady: No, it’s 14.

Garrett: 14. Yeah. I was curious about that. I kind of like the top right two the most. I like the logo and the name combined. I think it’s really important for social. If we go back to that Pepsi on Twitter real quick that I’ll show you guys on Noah. The other tab. Right there. That to me is why you need to have the name in the logo. I think that’s a huge miss for them. Like watch, click on it. Imagine if that’s everybody.

Brady: Yeah. Gas station. For some reason their logo is so tied to the gas station feel.

Garrett: Or a feather. It looks like a feather that’s falling.

Brady: Well it’s actually the gravitational pull of the Pepsi universe.

Garrett: Oh yeah. The smiles being yanked.

Brady: I don’t know how you don’t see that.

Garrett: Into the top right corner.

Brady: Or feel it.

Garrett: I kind of feel it now as you mention it.

Brady: I’m almost getting pulled out of my chair, just looking at it.

Garrett: Yeah, magnetically.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I do understand what you’re saying there. Yeah. I mean I know why people are freaking out, but they weren’t freaking about the new logo. They were freaking out more about-

Brady: They were freaking out that they-

Garrett: Spent a billion dollars.

Brady: Are admitting that-

Garrett: It was BS.

Brady: They should change it after probably showing off that investment and bragging about the new design and how it’s developed and owning that.

Garrett: Let’s look at Coca-Cola’s logo over the years? Do they have their name in there? I’m curious about that.

Brady: Let’s see?

Garrett: Yeah, it is. Vote for the ads.

Brady: Oh, the C’s connect in-

Garrett: No, I’m just kidding. All right, let’s just look at it there. That’s fine. So what’s their mark then? Can you go to the Coca- Cola Twitter? I just want to see if their profile images.

Brady: Oh yeah. That’s the circle.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah. Because it’s just, I’m not like a logo guy, so it’s like lettering.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: World of Coca- Cola I think. Is that not it?

Peter: No, I think it’s the GB one. Coca- Cola GB. Standing for Global.

Garrett: I thought that’d be a great brand.

Brady: They have the Coca- Cola Co. Diet Coke.

Peter: Yeah, I was right.

Garrett: Peter, GB ain’t global baby, that’s great brand.

Peter: That’s great brand.

Garrett: Let’s see. Coke. Maybe just search Coke. Maybe it’s Coke. Wait. I think I was right. Go to the Coca- Cola, The World of Coca- Cola. Yeah, it’s got to be that one. Yeah. There it is. Yeah, that’s it. Or no? Is that for their-

Brady: So they have, look at their-

Garrett: Oh that’s their physical.

Brady: The Coca- Cola Co is up there in the recommended.

Garrett: Oh my gosh. We can’t even find their Twitter. Coca- Cola right?

Brady: Here, go back and then-

Garrett: That’s it.

Scarlet: You think this is the one?

Garrett: No, that’s it. Yeah. Coca- Cola. So they just used their letter, I guess as their word mark maybe is the way you’d call it. I don’t know. I’m not a logo guy. That one’s so classy and timeless, dude. When you keep changing your logo all the time, it makes me feel like… So they haven’t changed it since 2007.

Brady: I mean-

Garrett: I like it though, because they’re more like a whole comp, but so is Pepsi to a certain extent. You know what I mean?

Brady: Yeah. They haven’t changed it much since 1900. 1905 is pretty dang similar from the-

Garrett: I mean even 1890 isn’t that different, Dude.

Brady: The little teardrop at the top of the C.

Garrett: They had that weird, oh my gosh, they did coke for two years in the eighties with everybody else and then they changed it. That must have literally been when the cocaine boom was happening and they got negatively attached to cocaine.

Brady: It’s Co- Coke?

Garrett: Yeah. Co- Coke. Wait, did they double write it instead of Coca- Cola? They tried to be Coke- Coke?

Brady: Don’t know if that’s two versions of what they had there or if it was called Coke- Coke in 1985 for two years.

Garrett: What the heck? I got to learn that at some point. I’m going to figure that out tonight on YouTube on my own. Sorry guys. We won’t put you through that torture, but Coke- Coke. Oh, and then they went Coca- Cola Coke and then they just got rid of the Coke.

Scarlet: But didn’t they change their recipe a little?

Garrett: Well they had coke I think at one point.

Brady: Like they had cocaine in-

Garrett: Yeah.

Scarlet: Yeah.

Garrett: In their cola.

Scarlet: Yeah.

Garrett: It was cocaine cola.

Scarlet: So they wanted off inaudible.

Garrett: That’s how they got us all hooked. But yeah, I mean very, very interesting to see the two logo marks. And Pepsi to me is just a completely… I like the new logo better though, than the old one.

Brady: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s very similar to, like you said, the top right one from the eighties.

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: The font’s pretty different. But yeah, I like what they did. I like how they had people draw their logo and they essentially just couldn’t shy away from that. I like the usage in social media and having the name in the logo versus trying to figure out how to have it separate.

Garrett: I like the old colors though from’87 to’97. Those to me are some epic colors. That would work in today’s branding market, too. That would pop.

Brady: Yeah. It’s kind of like a matte finish to it, a bit.

Garrett: Yeah, it’s flat and that baby blue. I just feel like it’s kind of hot. I feel like that would play right now. It’s got two blues on it, I don’t know. Looks sweet to me.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: But oh, what other topics you got for us, Scarlet?

Scarlet: The next one-

Garrett: That freaking Pepsi.

Scarlet: I’m sorry. I have so many tabs.

Brady: Maybe I’ll switch to Pepsi now that they have a new logo.

Garrett: Events?

Scarlet: Yeah, events.

Garrett: This is David Rain. Guy was saying that essentially everybody’s… well, this is what I love. I love when you got to study by any road. So the first thing they reference is a stat by any road and then it says an experience management firm. I’m like, yeah baby. That’s what I’m talking about. They’ve learned something from the pharmaceutical brands, but essentially doing your own studies is great for marketing.

Brady: Yep.

Garrett: Is great for marketing. So they’re just doing their own study. If you go down, it says a separate survey found 83% of marketers plan to continue or increase spending on experiential marketing this year. I’m going to call it events. Let’s just say events.

Brady: Yeah. That’s where when I hear experiential marketing, I’m thinking VR, AR, immersive experiences to show off your brand.

Garrett: Yeah. Let me show you a good example of experiential marketing. We’re all on the same page. Go to Spectacles, Vendor. So this is an example. So if you click there. That’s experiential marketing where you can experience a product and they’ll tell a bunch of journalists or publicists we’re going to put a vetting machine in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and we want to see… If you go down. Up a little more. Sorry. So, through pop- up vending machines called Snap Bots that appear in surprising locations for one day only. That’s experiential marketing.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I think that still works. Can B2B do experiential marketing? And then we’ll get to events, but we’ll stay on experiential for a second. Can B2B do this that well? Give me an example. Come on, let’s come up with one. I don’t know if I want to market this, but let’s say Calendly. Okay, I’ll do one for Calendly, a client of ours. We could look at their Google ads account, do some day partying and some location analysis. Figure out what time of day and what locations in the world are their highest converting areas. And then we could release at that exact area of time, whatever, a giant calendar and crossed off through as say goodbye to scheduling meetings or something. And then it would just have a robot that moved. I don’t know. But you get my point. You could do a big old calendar in the middle of the Times Square and you could automate it going and it’ll show this will, I don’t know. Do you think that works? Do you think we need to do that? I mean it gets coverage. That’s the great part about experiential marketing. Business insider will do a whole article on it.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Do you think we need it? To me it’s a part of your brand budget. I don’t know.

Brady: I’m trying to think.

Garrett: I know I stretch your little imagination right there.

Brady: I mean Calendly is a good example because it’s a pretty broad use case. You could have QR codes that drop a random meeting on your calendar.

Garrett: Okay, we’re trying to reengage Sumo Logic right now. Again, let’s say Sumo Logic, what would be a campaign for them?

Brady: An experiential campaign?

Garrett: Yeah. See, that’s like it’s harder. Yeah.

Brady: I mean they have some type of hackathon.

Garrett: It’s not really end consumer facing. It’s got to be end customer facing.

Brady: Free credits? That’s what their customers are looking for.

Garrett: I got one. Ready? Sumo Logic. We build a giant telescope for the case of observability. And then we could essentially, when you look through the telescope, you don’t see anything. Instead, you see all the different solutions for the product.

Brady: Yeah, you could have like-

Garrett: I’m just saying there’s one option there. RSA, big tech conference, we put a huge telescope and no booth. We do a huge telescope instead. And when you look through it, can see all the different product features or something.

Brady: Yeah. You can do an escape room with a black light and you can see all the writing and all the hints using the black light.

Garrett: Hopefully that’s all you see.

Brady: Like finding a parallel.

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: Yeah. I guess you could play on just the product and get very vague with it and find metaphors to experience the product. Like the telescope.

Garrett: That’s what I’m saying, telescope for observability. That would be experiential campaign.

Brady: And you try to find certain things and you get points for finding it and tie that to application log monitoring.

Garrett: I think the hard part with experiential marketing is how much it costs. Do you know how much effort it would be to design that vending machine and still manufacture it? It has to look that sexy and cool or else it doesn’t work.

Brady: Yeah, I mean that’s where that first article with the stat. Now that covid ending and 85% of marketers are doing events and 70 something percent think they’re doing experiential again, it doesn’t say, do they think it’s going to work? It just says they’re doing it. But it’s like, is it because they feel like they have to be there? Is it the ego thing?

Garrett: I know. I like it better-

Brady: Are they after big feedback?

Garrett: I’m going to be honest. So if you told me, Garrett, you can do a vending machine campaign or a booth at a conference. I’m taking the vending machine campaign all day.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Because events to me, mark my words, Directive will never do another booth, period. I will not do another booth. I will spend that money and be at the conference.

Brady: You can be there and never-

Garrett: I’ll throw a party. I’ll do a telescope. I’ll do vending machine. To me nothing says, trust me, I’ve got no ideas than doing a booth as a marketing agency. To me, a event as a marketing shop, like at Directive, it’s this moment to flex your creativity. Well you and I did the booth. How well did that go for us? We were so bad at it.

Brady: Well I think as a professional service it’s also hard.

Garrett: But we were so bad. We went to all these shows. I don’t think you and I were able to monetize a penny out of it.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Think, how many did we do? There’s so many me and you just trying to be-

Brady: That was a while ago.

Garrett: That was a while ago. We were so bad at at.

Brady: But even I was in one last year and it’s just a bunch of-

Garrett: Unqualified visitors.

Brady: Software companies trying to sell you on what they do. That’s what it is.

Garrett: How’d it go for us?

Brady: We made some connections. No, it went well. The thing that went well is we closed a massive client and our POC from Dublin happened to be at the conference and speaking, and so-

Garrett: But nothing to do with the booth.

Brady: No. I was able to meet her in person.

Garrett: Correct. Across the world.

Brady: That was the value I got from that conference. But it wasn’t-

Garrett: The value I got was exceptionally minimal.

Brady: She met us through an LinkedIn ad, she didn’t meet us through walking up to our booth for the first time and-

Garrett: Now there is something to be said about having the biggest booth at a conference.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I remember we went to all of them. You and I really did. But remember we’d go to the ones that had the big booths. You were always like, well that person’s the bigger player. Then you’d see the smaller player and they have a tiny little booth and you never think, well they’re better. So I do see how it’s a virtue signal or a confidence signal. But if I’m going to spend let’s say 75 grand on a booth, I would rather spend 75 grand building a telescope and putting it in front of the conference. Like a street vendor.

Brady: Yeah, I agree. The biggest booth, that’s the difference.

Garrett: Yeah. Oh, of doing the booths? Yes, correct.

Brady: I’m just saying if we were going to sponsor a SaaS based conference and we were the center of the conference, the largest booth and we had a circular screen that’s had all of our client logos, that would be a moment where everyone there is like, holy shit, this is the agency to service as SaaS and tech.

Garrett: So I guess I would be okay. So when I say never no booth, I think I would be okay with that idea.

Brady: Derek, I think he just approved a million dollar budget for the biggest booth at Saaster.

Garrett: Just look, anytime you get the CEO, play another ego. It’s a easy sell.

Brady: You won’t.

Garrett: But I would do something like that. I would say if you don’t do that, you might as well just flush your money down the drain, compared to just a normal booth at row 32- Z like you’re at a Costco and it just doesn’t stand out.

Brady: Yeah. I mean you could have the smallest booth and play on, ” We’re also the lowest cost, but we’re powerful this way.”

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: And set up an experience where you don’t need all the room in space.

Garrett: Or take up a ton of space, but keep it exceptionally frugal and it’s just a giant sign of all our budget goes to client work. See, there are clever ways, but once again, that’s clever. So I don’t mind when things are creative like that. So I wouldn’t mind buying out six booths and then putting a giant sign that says, ” No one’s here. We’re all busy in getting customer results DirectiveConsulting. com.” Now that’s clever.

Brady: Yeah, we’re focusing our clients not-

Garrett: So I will go download something like that. What I’m not down with is having just two of our best looking people just being like, ” Hi, I’m Jim.” ” Hi, I’m Susan.” And they’re collecting business cards. That is not it. It’s the classic way of doing it, but I don’t think it really works. Even trying to make it work of, we put a key under every chair at the conference, but only one of them unlocks the new Air Pod Pros. Come see if your key’s the one.

Brady: And people will engage in that.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: But once they turn it and they don’t get the Air Pods, they don’t care who did the key.

Garrett: And it says nothing about your brand compared to renting out four booths with a giant sign that says, ” No one’s here. We’re too busy serving clients.”

Brady: Now that-

Garrett: I’m not going to lie to you, that is not the worst idea to buy up a whole row and then just have a giant sign that looks like, have you ever seen that thing” Hiring for graphic designer”? The Graphic Designer Ad?

Brady: Oh yeah. It’s like terrible design.

Garrett: Yes. Yeah, something like that. Watch this inaudible ad.

Brady: Yeah, that one is essentially the concept. I don’t if that’s-

Garrett: Yeah, that’s not the one. But it’s like that, “The city of Los Angeles is not hiring now.” Something like that style I think would be pretty creative and clever. But for events, I think we’re finding the most success doing the private dinners, invite only using the SDR team to book those. And I would say that little, I wouldn’t mind that booth idea. Get like the biggest booth and then don’t staff it with anyone and just say, ” Sorry, no one’s here. We’re all busy serving customers.”

Brady: Join us.

Garrett: Join us.

Brady: Yeah. Just a QR code to-

Garrett: Then have all our competitors there with their booths.

Brady: Yeah, I would say that that’d be fun.

Garrett: That’s just an idea. But I think even better than that would be renting the Goodyear Blimp and flying it around the thing the whole time. I don’t know. Ideas that stand out to me are more fun. Like experiential marketing is the anti girl staring down the bull monument? Do you remember that?

Brady: No.

Garrett: There was like, oh, I’m such a nerd with marketing. In the financial district in New York, there’s-

Brady: There’s like a bull statue?

Garrett: Yeah. Do bull statue experiential marketing. I don’t know. Did they add the girl? I think they added the girl is what it was. It was like the raging bull and they yeah, the fearless girl. I just think it was what’s added to it, if that makes sense. Or is it the same?

Brady: I don’t know if that-

Garrett: I think it’s Fearless Girl. Let me see Fearless Girl.

Brady: I think the girl’s been there the whole time. I think it’s Fearless Girl campaign. I think that’s what I’m referring to. I’m sorry. Now I’m lost. I’m like, I thought there was a girl on it. There it is, Fearless Girl.

Brady: Looks like it’s like a Banksy installation or some street artist.

Garrett: So the sculpture, it was installed on March 7th, ahead of International Women’s Day. That’s what I loved about it. Now that’s experiential marketing to me. Right? Running a campaign. Imagine if Dove did that.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Right? Cause that fits their brand narrative perfectly. And they take the fearless girl and they put it right in front of the bull. That to me is really cool and I love that. So I guess that’s experiential marketing when done correctly to me is a super powerful tactic. I think when it’s forced because you have a line item and you don’t want to lose your budget, that’s when it gets bad. What’s your take.

Brady: Yeah. It seems risky for B2B.

Garrett: Press is press baby.

Brady: Yeah. And I think a lot of people do it for the press.

Garrett: Correct.

Brady: Which is weird because it’s like that means the majority of people don’t actually experience it. But what’s the impact?

Garrett: Well, physically?

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: I’d report on digital impressions for sure if I was the agency doing that report. Not how many people look through the telescope. How many impressions did we get of the campaign of the telescope?

Brady: Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know if, well if this experience isn’t great with the product, let’s at least do a great experience with marketing. I don’t know if it’s just making up for the lack of product.

Garrett: That’s okay, because the spectacles has been quite the spectacle when it comes to that camp. I want to say spectacles has been a massive success with wearables. Nothing really in the wearables category has-

Brady: Yeah, I didn’t know about that campaign.

Garrett: Sorry. I was, I’m going back in my little treasure’s chest of marketing stuff. But yeah, events to me, I would rather do experiential stuff more than events now that I’m saying it out loud.

Brady: Yeah, I guess it seems like that post was defining events as experiential marketing.

Garrett: Which it’s definitely not.

Brady: No. I would say in my mind it’s way different. I think you could have an experiential marketing campaign at an event.

Garrett: Yes. Yes.

Brady: And that’s how you get the people to experience it is, hey, everyone’s here, let’s build it here.

Garrett: And everybody wants to go back to doing events in B2B. They really do want to go back to doing events. I don’t think that the sponsorship booths were doing very well pre- covid, to be honest from a ROI standpoint. So I wouldn’t say that they’re doing better now, if that makes sense. And I like what we did. We did a customer event, all private.

Brady: Yeah.

Garrett: Flew our customers, put them in a five star resort, had her own content, did a day to relax. It was like a summit. I thought that crushed. I thought that was epic. Do we have the video of that? We can show that video real quick. So, this is what we did. We had some of the top CMOs and VPs there. Good shot.

Brady: Took a lot of takes today and put a tracer on it for a reason.

Garrett: I thought it was a success. I would say events like that, intimate, smaller, targeted audience, hosted, once again work. I just don’t think we can spray and pray on doing 15, 20 booths this year and see a ton of success.

Brady: I mean this was just so intentional and we went out of our way and it’s so noticeable. But then events, you get a booth because you feel like you have to and it’s definitely different. So I agree private events would be the way to do it. And this was for our customers, which I thought was special. But even doing it for prospects and people you’re not working with yet.

Garrett: And you turn in all this micro level content and you can turn in all these different moments. You can see the little shorts we have, Russell from Gong responding to a question. I think it’s like number four there. So you do Q&A.

Russell: AI is kind of similar where there’s always going to be a role for the person because technology can’t solve everything. There’s always going to be that balance.

Garrett: You can turn it into these little snippets, some shorts.

Russell: inaudible interaction, technology.

Garrett: So I don’t know. Part of me really likes what that does for you from a content standpoint too and a brand positioning standpoint. But I think it also makes it harder. I think if you do a good enough event that your customers really love, they have to think about it when renewal comes up. So yeah, I would say that was a success. But that was some good topics today. So good job, Scarlet, thank you. Any final thoughts, Brady?

Brady: No. I’m just going to be thinking of B2B and SaaS and tech experiential.

Garrett: I know I can see your brain’s churning right now.

Brady: Campaigns-

Garrett: That are worth it.

Brady: Yes.

Garrett: Right.

Brady: I think tying it to ROI and it being better than other things and pulling budget out of maybe the mid- tier performance campaigns to put it into that-

Garrett: I don’t know, I think it’s got to come out of the brand budget, dude.

Brady: Yeah, I could see that.

Garrett: If you take it out of the brand budget, I think it is more effective than running random programmatic ads. I wouldn’t say doing something really creative that gets a ton of press coverage isn’t worth it. I would just say booths and bad experiential marketing is just bad allocation of capital. But good marketing-

Brady: Good market experiential just makes it sticky.

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: Like that brand real estate.

Garrett: Yeah.

Brady: You just get stickier and-

Garrett: It’s hard to ignore it.

Brady: Yeah. Makes you memorable.

Garrett: So, that’s original marketing, episode 31. It’s going to be dropping this Friday. We’re going to try to do weekly shows now. So we’re going to cover more up- to- date events and things like that. So you really have an inside look at what’s going on in marketing. Feel very up to date. One show obviously hilarious guests and hosts, whatever you want to call us. But thanks for being here. Like, subscribe, comment. But every Friday, dropping a new episode with some coverage on current events so you can stay up to date with what’s going on in marketing. So, thanks.

Brady: And see you next week.