Episode 38: What You Need To Know About AI In Marketing

Episode Transcript

Garrett Mehrguth: Welcome to episode 38. I said that with a lot of confidence we didn’t talk about it. Am I right?

Brady Cramm: No. I don’t know.

Garrett Mehrguth: inaudible thank you both.

Brady Cramm: I have no idea.

Garrett Mehrguth: Thank you. Episode 38 of the world’s greatest marketing show in the world, the Original Marketing show. Brady, how’s life going man?

Brady Cramm: Life is good.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah? You go to Disneyland this weekend?

Brady Cramm: I did not. Bought a fridge.

Garrett Mehrguth: Everyone’s wearing those stupid shoes.

Brady Cramm: What shoes? Crocs?

Garrett Mehrguth: Everyone. I can’t stop seeing them, Brady.

Brady Cramm: They’ve always been there, man.

Garrett Mehrguth: They’re everywhere.

Brady Cramm: They’ve always been there.

Garrett Mehrguth: So what’d you do? Anything good?

Brady Cramm: Bought a fridge.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. What kind? What brand did you go with?

Brady Cramm: Frigidaire.

Garrett Mehrguth: Why? What was their marketing like? Is there anything that compelled you? No, I want to know, because think about it. You’ve got Samsung, you got Frigidaire, you got all these brands. It’s a marketing show, so why’d you choose this one?

Brady Cramm: So I have a Samsung that died and the repair guy was like, don’t get a Samsung again.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. Why? I want to know about this. I’m looking at a new one for the lady.

Brady Cramm: They break.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay.

Brady Cramm: So quality’s bad on Samsung.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay.

Brady Cramm: Went to showrooms. French door, ice and water in the door. Pull out freezer is like what we’re looking for, counter depth.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yep.

Brady Cramm: So essentially just shopping around and finding the right one.

Garrett Mehrguth: And Frigidaire was the…

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Did they do anything in their marketing or branding at all afterwards, like email? How was the setup process? Anything that made them stand out from a marketing standpoint or did you choose them explicitly for their product marketing?

Brady Cramm: Just product and price.

Garrett Mehrguth: Product and price.

Brady Cramm: I got an email from Capital One after I bought it saying buy it and get 5% off. So I’m going to call them and say, ” Hey-”

Garrett Mehrguth: I already bought it. Can you use-

Brady Cramm: … “can youjust activate that discount?”

Garrett Mehrguth: I like that. Good luck.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, we’ll see.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. So, I was curious about that though. If there was like, was it placed, would you go Home Depot and walk the row?

Brady Cramm: Yeah, I went to Howard’s, Home Depot, Lowe’s, just to-

Garrett Mehrguth: So you go to three different vendors.

Brady Cramm: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: Why’d you go to three different vendors?

Brady Cramm: Just to see as much inventory live as possible.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay.

Brady Cramm: Just because some of them, there was one online wasn’t in the store, so it’s like, I like it online but I just want to see it. But I wasn’t sold by like, I think the sales guys there, they kind of have their typical script. This new LG makes sphere ice. So this is my favorite fridge-

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. So they come up with these gimmicky type features too, right?

Brady Cramm: Yeah. But-

Garrett Mehrguth: How much of the fridge game is gimmicks? Obviously it’s gimmicky where it’s like we’ll take a picture of everything in your fridge and come up with recipes.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. So they have those now, they have the clear windows and I’m just not that buyer. In my mind, it’s like the more gimmicks, the less reliability.

Garrett Mehrguth: You and I know the tech industry and we do marketing for a living, so when we see a lot of stuff we’re like, that’s actually not in my best interest. And they’re trying to manipulate me to a certain extent. And that’s not a feature I’m going to use all the time. I just feel like we get turned off by that. I’m the same way where I’m like, do you do the job of being a refrigerator exceptionally well or are you making up for it with all these features-

Brady Cramm: Exactly.

Garrett Mehrguth: …that I don’t need?

Brady Cramm: If it makes sphere ice, my mind is like the door’s going to fall off.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah.

Brady Cramm: If it can do that, it can’t hold it’s cooling for a while.

Garrett Mehrguth: I see. I was just curious. So why’d you go to different stores though? Why not just go to one store?

Brady Cramm: Just price shopping.

Garrett Mehrguth: Don’t they all carry-

Brady Cramm: No, there were different inventories and then pricing. And then I ended up buying it from a guy who my father- in- law knows at Home Depot, Mission Viejo.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. The homey hookup?

Brady Cramm: No hookup, just a nice guy, good guy. So I actually spent probably a hundred dollars more because Howard’s was going to cover taxes.

Garrett Mehrguth: So you somehow made a relational purchase on your fridge.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I love that about you. That’s just awesome. Yeah.

Brady Cramm: Howard’s was going to pay for the sales tax.

Garrett Mehrguth: When you run around price shopping, everything, you met a nice guy. Ah, I’ll give him a hundred bucks more.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. Less. You should be at Home Depot. He’s a golfer. Son’s a pro golfer I think.

Garrett Mehrguth: Plays Tijeras Creek all the time.

Brady Cramm: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, you’re just doing the whole thing.

Brady Cramm: He’s just a super nice guy.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. Who is your Frigidaire getting compared against? Who are your final two?

Brady Cramm: So I mean the high end was KitchenAid. But that was like mahogany wood inside and twice the cost. I was like, we don’t need that. I think LG had other-

Garrett Mehrguth: So KitchenAid’s the premium brand?

Brady Cramm: KitchenAid. I like-

Garrett Mehrguth: What about Viking? I heard Viking or…

Brady Cramm: I think Viking might be more for a built- in.

Garrett Mehrguth: And built- ins. Okay.

Brady Cramm: So KitchenAid was like the top. Bosch was up there, but-

Garrett Mehrguth: Bosch in German. Yeah.

Brady Cramm: …also looks at the 2022 consumer reports. So I did look at that.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. Jesus.

Brady Cramm: They’re just all over the place.

Garrett Mehrguth: No one does that. I love you so much.

Brady Cramm: It was all, my father- in- law sent-

Garrett Mehrguth: Yes, yes.

Brady Cramm: …sent photos of the entire consumer report.

Garrett Mehrguth: The catalog. Yeah.

Brady Cramm: Just made it more… There was like 200 fridges on there.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, no. And you’re like, am I making the right decision?

Brady Cramm: So it was pretty simple. So it was simple. It was water, ice, french doors, pullout freezer.

Garrett Mehrguth: What’s a French door? They go like this, right? Just the middle?

Brady Cramm: Yeah, the top is double door fridge and then the bottom’s a pull out.

Garrett Mehrguth: Bottom’s a pull? Okay. That’s what I have, yeah.

Brady Cramm: Doesn’t have an ice tray so I don’t use it. My wife does.

Garrett Mehrguth: It doesn’t have an ice maker or it doesn’t have an ice tray?

Brady Cramm: It has an ice maker, just doesn’t have a tray in the freezer that has extra ice.

Garrett Mehrguth: She can put one in there though, right?

Brady Cramm: It just doesn’t drop in there.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh. But yeah, she can freeze water in a…

Brady Cramm: I mean yeah, you could use the little-

Garrett Mehrguth: inaudible. Yeah. Okay.

Brady Cramm: …trays. So we had-

Garrett Mehrguth: Not that you would ever suggest that.

Brady Cramm: We had a long conversation about it. She’s okay with it.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. So was this a wife derived purchasing decision? I think we sometimes assume kitchen products are for women, let’s say, and other stuff are for men, or were you both involved? How did the dynamic of the relationship go into the purchase? I think that’s an interesting-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, both involved.

Garrett Mehrguth: Both involved. Okay.

Brady Cramm: Knowing what we both want and then just shopping together.

Garrett Mehrguth: But she’s the tiebreaker in this kitchen situation, you know what I mean? Or… I’m curious about that.

Brady Cramm: I’d say it’s just even, mutual.

Garrett Mehrguth: Just on the same page.

Brady Cramm: She wants the ice tray. This one doesn’t have one but her sister has this fridge, so it was through that connection that gave us confidence.

Garrett Mehrguth: So do you say you got involved in this purchase because you use it or because of its price point?

Brady Cramm: I just help with these decisions.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. I was just curious.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: ‘CauseI think this is important for us to talk about as marketers is how people buy things. I think we kind of ignore that a lot of times and we make these really weird assumptions, like women buy fridges, but I don’t know if that’s true. That doesn’t seem like something… I feel like that’s a household purchase.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, we both use it.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Washer, dryer, same concept for you? Or less?

Brady Cramm: I think we both know big washer, dryer, top load. We’re still using her grandpa’s old ones.

Garrett Mehrguth: Would you get involved in that decision?

Brady Cramm: Oh, yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. Like, she’ll say she wants this and I’ll say, ” Sounds great,” but I don’t use the washer, dryer to be honest. She does all the laundry, so I wouldn’t really have an opinion there. I would just be more, I feel like on the budget side of it, if that makes sense. But on the fridge I would probably want to be involved more just because I use it too, and I think it’s more of a usage thing. I always get curious about that though, because I think as marketers I don’t think we think and talk about that kind of stuff ever. And so our marketing campaigns can sometimes struggle to drive revenue because we haven’t really understood what it’s like on the humanity side for how people purchase from us. Does that make sense?

Brady Cramm: Yeah. No, I think even that example, if it is mostly the wife buying the fridge and they care about different storage, like should LG be really promoting sphere ice that’s usually used for-

Garrett Mehrguth: That’s kind of my point.

Brady Cramm: …whiskey.

Garrett Mehrguth: Which is exactly where, literally when you said that I was like, that’s a male feature. I don’t know. Now obviously if she’s loves to host and stuff like that-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, they advertise it in a picture of lemonade, so it looked really cool.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay, see there you go. So then they took a female angle on a male feature, but then that just resonates with no one.

Brady Cramm: So then the wife could think, my husband’s going to love this.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: Let’s get this fridge.

Garrett Mehrguth: And maybe she has everything she wanted and it’s$ 200 more, and so to make him not pissed, they’re like, look at this sphered ice. Right? You kind of get what I mean, there’s this weird dynamic though of how we buy things as humans that I don’t think people love to talk about. And I do think it’s important. And same thing goes with same sex marriage or whatever. I think that you have two people… Anytime two people are buying something, I do think it makes… Like, we never talk about that. We just don’t as marketers. We talk about buying centers and B2B but we don’t talk about family dynamic when it comes to purchasing things.

Brady Cramm: Oh, yeah. That was my favorite class in college was consumer behavior because it was marketing and psychology. And one of my favorites was the car buying decision. And I related to it with my dad-

Garrett Mehrguth: Yes, like the commercials. Like, who in the world… Have you ever dreamed of buying your wife a car out of the blue and putting a bow on it in-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, there’s those.

Brady Cramm: But

Brady Cramm: I was thinking about back in the day when my dad bought his truck and I was maybe in middle school at the time and just taking that class in college, we were talking about car purchases and I realized I was a big part of that purchase.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: As his son. And we were riding motorcycles and-

Garrett Mehrguth: The functionality it had for what your hobbies looked like.

Brady Cramm: He bought 20 inch chrome rims. I think I was a part of that. I was really into cars and the chrome rims back then. And so…

Garrett Mehrguth: He probably wanted the chrome rims too though. All we need as dudes sometimes is an excuse to make it about somebody else to get what we want.

Brady Cramm: I was probably 13, 14.

Garrett Mehrguth: It’s true though.

Brady Cramm: I don’t have my license. This is not my truck.

Garrett Mehrguth: You were into cars and your dad was like, hell yeah, let’s do this together. We’re buying this truck together kind of thing.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. So it’s just interesting, such a big purchase, the kids-

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, that’s-

Brady Cramm: …are involved in a way where it’s not like let’s get a minivan because we have four kids and we got to fit them. Like, I was involved-

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, my son is obsessed-

Brady Cramm: … ina different way in the purchase.

Garrett Mehrguth: …with what he calls my race car.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, the Porsche?

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. He’s obsessed with it. He wasn’t obsessed when I bought it, but now I have it I’m like, he likes the race cars. I’ll take him out there and I’ll put him in, I’ll put him on my lap and he gets to fake drive it. And I’ll show him how to shift it, and he loves that. But when I got the third kid, I sold my car, because I couldn’t put three kids in the back.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I’ve sold two cars because of kids already, which we never talked about.

Brady Cramm: Okay. You sold the…

Garrett Mehrguth: I sold my first truck.

Brady Cramm: Truck, the GMC.

Garrett Mehrguth: I couldn’t fit the car seats’cause it was a double cab and not extended.

Brady Cramm: I remember you bought a Tesla that day.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, I bought a Tesla that day because I was just pissed. I wanted to be able to pick up my kid from the hospital in my own car. I don’t drive the wife’s car and call it the family car, I like to drive my own car. That’s just how I am. I like to drive my car and she drives her car. I’ll drive her car, but I like to be able to take the family in my own car. Does that make sense?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: So a lot of times as a dude you might have a smaller car, then the wife has the big car, and then you drive your wife’s car as the family car on the weekends. Does that make sense?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: That’s how most people do it. I don’t really love that. I like having my own car that I can do both with. It doesn’t work if you have an M2 competition.

Brady Cramm: True.

Garrett Mehrguth: And so as you go through all that, I changed one truck to get the Tesla to fit the two car seats and that was great. And I can fit both car seats in there. Had the third kid, no more car seats.

Brady Cramm: Was it for kids or fishing rods? Be honest.

Garrett Mehrguth: Look, Brady, it’s about the kids.

Brady Cramm: I just remember you having your fishing poles in your BMW-

Garrett Mehrguth: I’m doing the stick shift with like six rods and reels.

Brady Cramm: … withthe hooks hanging off on the stick shift.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. That was brutal. That was brutal. But no, I love that. It’s so funny. Thanks for sharing Brady. I like just breaking down-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, it is interesting, everyone’s different.

Garrett Mehrguth: …on this show, the dichotomy of how you and your wife went about buying a fridge and why.

Brady Cramm: And it made me realize how much we do make these decisions like 50/ 50.

Garrett Mehrguth: Which I think’s unique.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, I think it is too.

Garrett Mehrguth: But that’s cool. And it also shows, if you were to run an ad for a fridge, the husband and the wife shopping for it together. Do you see what I’m saying? The couple going together. There’s just these things that if we don’t evaluate society and humanity that we all exist in and what’s real, we can make mistakes. We’re not going-

Brady Cramm: But I could be an anomaly, because I was witnessing other dynamics going on.

Garrett Mehrguth: What were the other dynamics, Brady?

Brady Cramm: Just older husband and wife, I just remember the guys like, ” Just tell me what to get.” He was so pissed-

Garrett Mehrguth: How much does it cost?

Brady Cramm: … inHome Depot.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is classic.

Brady Cramm: He’s like, ” You do it. You do this.”

Garrett Mehrguth: Cut to the chase. Tell me what-

Brady Cramm: Yeah. I don’t know what ballgame was on during the time, but he was not having it.

Garrett Mehrguth: He was trying to get in and out and get this dang fridge.

Brady Cramm: Must must’ve been a Celtics fan.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, exactly, just losing. But it’s so funny how, what we’re talking about right now is trying to understand people and if you see all these CMOs losing billions of dollars on the stock market right now. And we’ve talked a lot about politics and AI on the show, we’ve all been joking off before prepping today like, how do we do this right now without talking about politics or AI? Because it’s the only things going on in marketing. But I think the truth behind it, to give it a different angle of the conversation, is there’s a lot of people who are not embracing reality but instead trying to manipulate it. And as a marketer there can be serious wins when you kind of catch a cultural wave early and you can ride it to success. But as we can see there’s also billions of dollars to be lost when you get it wrong. And I think it’s important when we talk about these kinds of things that we’re talking about on this show, once you understand the dichotomy of how things are bought, the relationships involved, gender dynamics, all these different things, you can be a better marketer. And I think it doesn’t make you a bigot to try to understand how humans operate. I think it makes you exceptionally talented at your craft. I just think unfortunately we’re not supposed to talk like this anymore or think like this anymore. And it’s all supposed to be about what’s politically correct. But I haven’t found that being politically correct makes you a better marketer, in the sense that I think the best marketers in the world are deeply inquisitive, care deeply about people and really want to study how humans and their values and their morality and the choices they make, and then try to figure out how to get your ideal human to buy your product. But that to me is the role of a marketer not changing culture in society. Do you kind of get what I mean?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: And I feel like we lost a little bit of that.

Brady Cramm: I agree. I think, especially mass consumer companies, they should be able to be successful without offending mass audiences.

Garrett Mehrguth: Or gimmicks. They’re kind of gimmicky. To me it’s gimmicky. It’s gimmicks. The way they even go about it, you can tell it’s not real because of how the commercial turns out, like we talked about last week. The commercial isn’t based in reality or in honoring humans, it’s based off of a narrative that when you try to make a narrative into a commercial, it comes off weak and fake.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. It’s forced.

Garrett Mehrguth: It doesn’t resonate with your audience. And so in worst case, it doesn’t work and you can’t tell, so you keep running the campaign. That’s the worst case. The best case is it works, or it collapses, but audiences and humans react to marketing and advertising. And when you get it right, you make more money. And when you get it wrong, you make less money. It’s a very fun game in that regard.

Brady Cramm: But when you bring the political side into it, when you get it wrong and you back out of it, that’s all-

Garrett Mehrguth: Now you alienate everybody.

Brady Cramm: …that’s a whole other situation-

Garrett Mehrguth: That’s all my message has been, right?

Brady Cramm: …that it’s just a general ad that fails and it’s like, oh we’re not writing that anymore, no one cares.

Garrett Mehrguth: On this show, I keep saying, I’ll say it again. I got no problem if you want to take a stand for social justice issues, just don’t back down. Then be a social justice company. Keep running campaigns that are losing you billions of dollars because it’s genuinely what you believe in and what your brain stands for. Do that. I have your back in that. What I don’t have anyone’s back in is weak posturing where you pretend to be an ally of a disenfranchised group and then the second you lose money, you back out. That just shows your corporate greed and that is the worst part. You not only lost your OG audience, you also alienated the one you were trying to get. And that’s what we’re frankly seeing across the Targets of this world, across the Bud Lights of this world. And I think we’ve talked about it ad nauseum, but it’s something that we can’t ignore right now as a marketing show who does a show every week to talk about marketing,’cause it’s the biggest story there is.

Brady Cramm: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: It just is what it is. Now let’s talk a little ad jealousy though, because I think we each got some really cool, completely different-

Brady Cramm: Very different.

Garrett Mehrguth: …campaigns. Especially from what we’ve been talking about on the show. So let’s start with yours.

Brady Cramm: So I found this one through a headline. Gary Vee invests in this company.

Garrett Mehrguth: Did you see the VeeCon?

Brady Cramm: The VeeCon? Is that a car? VeeCon XL?

Garrett Mehrguth: You didn’t know Gary Vee did like a Gary Vee convention?

Brady Cramm: I haven’t seen it but I’m sure-

Garrett Mehrguth: He had Andrew Schulz come.

Brady Cramm: Okay.

Garrett Mehrguth: It was one of the funniest bits. He just roasted Gary Vee.

Brady Cramm: Oh, I’m sure.

Garrett Mehrguth: And all of his fans. He called him a word I can’t say’cause I’m not a professional comedian. And then essentially was like you all were stupid enough to buy his NFT and still showed up to this convention. And I couldn’t stop laughing. It was-

Brady Cramm: I mean I’ve seen Gary good with that stuff. I saw a video of him and the guy who impersonates him, it was hilarious.

Garrett Mehrguth: He knows how to be the-

Brady Cramm: He rolls with it.

Garrett Mehrguth: … butt ofthe joke. Yeah, you have to. But it was, I mean Schulz, Schulzy boy went up there and just-

Brady Cramm: Oh, I’m sure.

Garrett Mehrguth: …roasted him.

Brady Cramm: What else are you going to do?

Garrett Mehrguth: I loved it. It was awesome. All right-

Brady Cramm: Talk marketing?

Garrett Mehrguth: Sorry, yeah.

Brady Cramm: Anyway, so that’s just how I found it. But I dove in deeper and I just thought it was brilliant. I love ad placements, creative ad placements. And so what this company’s doing is very similar to FreeWater.

Garrett Mehrguth: inaudible get money. Yeah, yeah.

Brady Cramm: They are taking over the fortune cookie industry and selling ad space on the fortune cookie paper.

Garrett Mehrguth: So the fortune cookie’s free to the restaurant.

Brady Cramm: I haven’t been able to find that. I would assume they either can match the price or make it cheaper.

Garrett Mehrguth: Brady, that’s my very first question bro. What do you… You told me they’re taking over the free water.

Brady Cramm: It’s all, their website-

Garrett Mehrguth: The cost of a free water is it’s free.

Brady Cramm: …their website… You can just go to the website.

Garrett Mehrguth: All right. Yeah, I want to see this.

Brady Cramm: It’s all for the advertisers, just the way it’s built. So I was trying to dig up if they’re giving it to the restaurants for free.

Garrett Mehrguth: Dude. I wouldn’t mind running something like this for Directive if it was cheap enough. What’s the cost?

Brady Cramm: Yeah, go to the top. It’s on contact us.

Garrett Mehrguth: Do only Chinese food places have fortune cookies or do any other, like…

Brady Cramm: I think so, mainly.

Garrett Mehrguth: Because Japanese don’t do fortune cookies. Korean don’t do fortune cookie. Do any other non- Asian groups do fortune cookies?

Brady Cramm: I’m not sure.

Garrett Mehrguth: I know it’s just Chinese food from inaudible.

Brady Cramm: It could just be Chinese food. Maybe if you… Sorry.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, that right there is a Chinese food spot.

Brady Cramm: If you delete landing in the URL-

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, yeah.

Brady Cramm: …this is their landing page.

Garrett Mehrguth: Show us openfortune. com.

Brady Cramm: That was my bad.

Garrett Mehrguth: And then it should get rid of the tag, it really shouldn’t matter. Yeah. Oh, wait.

Garrett Mehrguth: Can you just search openfortune. com?

Brady Cramm: Or if you click the logo.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. All our tricks. Scarlet’s like, what? Yeah, go there, that looks good.

Brady Cramm: There we go.

Garrett Mehrguth: 135 million people.

Brady Cramm: That sends you to that splash, that’s how I got there.

Garrett Mehrguth: We took the traditional fortune and made it better.

Brady Cramm: Their stats are cool.

Garrett Mehrguth: Is it a good fortune cookie?

Brady Cramm: They probably just use the manufacturer that everyone else uses.

Garrett Mehrguth: I was wondering if they made the fortune cookie better. Sorry, Brady.

Brady Cramm: It’s not like it’s handmade.

Garrett Mehrguth: I think the quality of the product should matter.

Brady Cramm: So 99% open.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, I like that. Good open rate.

Brady Cramm: The brand recall.

Garrett Mehrguth: The brand recall would be phenomenal. I would love to run a campaign for Directive.

Brady Cramm: The usage of QR codes on it is brilliant. Perfect time for it.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, yeah, that’s sick. Keep slip after… That’s okay. Yeah-

Brady Cramm: And then go to users-

Garrett Mehrguth: Dude. A 5%

Garrett Mehrguth: virality

Garrett Mehrguth: rate, you could even call it, is pretty neat.

Brady Cramm: But they prove it well.

Garrett Mehrguth: Dang. Yeah.

Brady Cramm: Massive archive of social posts.

Garrett Mehrguth: Now obviously someone like us who serves B2B SaaS has less resonance. But if we just got one client to see it, they would take a call with us,’cause it’s clever enough. I wonder how much it costs per impression. Do you know the pricing on it?

Brady Cramm: No, it’s all gated I think.

Garrett Mehrguth: Anything on about or users or anything? They’re going to have some demos on users, I’m guessing.

Brady Cramm: No, the abouts that first page.

Garrett Mehrguth: First page, yeah.

Brady Cramm: Users is this page.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. All right. Well-

Brady Cramm: And then they have a contact us.

Garrett Mehrguth: … Open Fortune, you coulddo a little better with some of this stuff, but I love the idea.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, I’m sure it’s changing now that they have some money behind them.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, dude. So how’d you see this? You got this on LinkedIn or something?

Brady Cramm: No, I just saw an article about Gary Vee investing somewhere.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, the Vee boy invested in-

Brady Cramm: And I saw a photo of a fortune cookie with an ad on it. I’m like, what’s this? So I went to the company and saw, this is just from that page they had, and I thought it was brilliant.

Garrett Mehrguth: It is brilliant. This is the coolest campaign you’ve brought up on the show, Brady.

Brady Cramm: It reminds me of FreeWater. I don’t know if you know about that brand, they give their water for free because they have ad space on their water.

Garrett Mehrguth: I know, that’s why I asked you, do they give the cookies out for free?

Brady Cramm: I’m assuming they do. If not, they just match prices or make it cheaper.

Garrett Mehrguth: Make it cheaper. Okay. So their margin isn’t created on the sale to the restaurant, it’s created on the sale to the advertiser. Which is brilliant. Dude selling ad space on a fortune cookie, brilliant. Brilliant. And who doesn’t love Chinese takeout?

Brady Cramm: Exactly. And you get that fortune cookie part of it.

Garrett Mehrguth: And who doesn’t open up the… If I-

Brady Cramm: That’s why they said, the experience they put themselves in is brilliant.

Garrett Mehrguth: Because I don’t eat-

Brady Cramm: Because everyone loves a fortune cookie.

Garrett Mehrguth: … 99% offortune cookies. But I open up, I’d say, 99% of fortune cookies.

Brady Cramm: And you don’t remember any of the fortunes. And they have fortunes on it, like this one was a play on words.

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, that’s not a good point.

Brady Cramm: What?

Garrett Mehrguth: That you don’t remember any of the fortunes.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, but I’m saying, even if they didn’t have fortunes, they have to have the fortune on it because then the moment you think it’s important.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, but you get what I’m saying, right?

Brady Cramm: Yeah, I know. And then I read-

Garrett Mehrguth: By the way, I do think that’s a good point though, that you just said the quiet part out loud. No one ever remembers the fortune.

Brady Cramm: My point was like they’re not offended by the fact that it’s now a play on words, like fortune favors those who cancel unused subscriptions with Rocket Money.

Garrett Mehrguth: Well I would be upset… Do I not get a fortune on the other side?

Brady Cramm: It did say they’re doing that in the description.

Garrett Mehrguth: ‘CauseI want to still get a Chinese psalm. You know, like a proverb.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. When I was reading the article about them, it said the back side is an ad and the front side’s still a fortune. But this one is still kind of a play on a fortune-

Garrett Mehrguth: It is. I think it’s good copy.

Brady Cramm: … in the adcopy itself.

Garrett Mehrguth: It’s great copy. I think-

Brady Cramm: They’re using ChatGPT for their fortune copy as well.

Garrett Mehrguth: They are?

Brady Cramm: That might be for the backside, is all their backside fortunes are generated by ChatGPT.

Garrett Mehrguth: Imagine how pissed off you would be, because you do have the… I do like to think about the negative side of all this stuff, because you have to as a marketer, especially one who works with large companies. Imagine if you take this on the fortune cookie, everybody got pissed that they just got a bunch of ads in their cookies. There’s a fine line between pissing people off and it being brilliant marketing.

Brady Cramm: But I think that’s why they have the classic fortune on the back.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay, good. I haven’t seen it.

Brady Cramm: So you still get your fortune.

Garrett Mehrguth: They didn’t talk about that part. So like, what if there is no…

Brady Cramm: No, I’m pretty sure that the other side has it.

Garrett Mehrguth: Got you. Like this phone’s like a Pez dispenser. Imagine getting a Pez dispenser and then you get the Pez out, and it’s an ad and not a candy. You’re like, ads are everywhere. That’s kind of what I mean. It’s like, ads are ruining everything you love. Oh.

Brady Cramm: I was trying to think, like what’s another example of this?

Garrett Mehrguth: Great examples. Taxis with ads on them.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, taxis. There’s gas. I’ve seen gas handles-

Garrett Mehrguth: Gas handles.

Brady Cramm: …with ads on it.

Garrett Mehrguth: Gas. TVs, they run the ads on those now. Let me give you-

Brady Cramm: I’m thinking closer to this. FreeWater and this, I would say, is in its own category.

Garrett Mehrguth: Kids’ meals with Marvel, that’d be one.

Brady Cramm: Kids’ meal toys.

Garrett Mehrguth: Kids’ meal toys. I’m trying to think of similar one- to- ones, because you have a really good point. It is not that-

Brady Cramm: And more, I was trying to think what hasn’t been done.

Garrett Mehrguth: You could do the… What’s the-

Scarlet: What about gum.

Garrett Mehrguth: Hit me with it.

Scarlet: Like gum wrappers. Everyone chews gum. Like what if you like-

Garrett Mehrguth: Ooh.

Scarlet: …stick something in gum.

Garrett Mehrguth: The bottom of the SoBe cap. Remember when they used to have the thing on the SoBe cap, you would turn it over? You could turn that into an ad.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. But that would be like the gum brand now representing other brands. The fortune cookie just doesn’t have-

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, I think the uniqueness of what you’re actually trying to articulate is not what you’re saying there, it’s the business model of the, essentially, the business doing the fortune cookie, making money through selling ads, which isn’t how they’ve ever made money before.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I think it’s a business model change too.

Brady Cramm: But just has its perfect fit. You don’t put it on your cups in your restaurant. You wouldn’t put ads… I mean, some people have Coca- Cola cups, so they technically do. But you wouldn’t have a Rocket Mortgage cup at your restaurant.

Garrett Mehrguth: That’s not true. So I like to go to Rockafellers, is my little spot. And the guy who owns it owns, I think, a concrete business. So every one of the coffee mugs has Ed’s Concrete Paving. But my point is-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, a coffee mug would be an interesting one.

Garrett Mehrguth: …another one where they do this, Brady, so I’m giving you more examples’cause you asked me. My brain’s going.

Brady Cramm: I like it. I like it.

Garrett Mehrguth: I’m working dog. I’m working. Pizza. Pizza boxes. So historically-

Brady Cramm: That’d be good.

Garrett Mehrguth: …there’s been a lot of ads on top of the pizza box, they’ll put a paper or an ad.

Brady Cramm: I like that.

Garrett Mehrguth: So I remember, when I used to do the marketing for Jeff Shaffer Plumbing, before even… I did Jeff Shaffer Plumbing before Tanner Shaffer joined Directive as my business partner. And then he went to the meeting, saw that I was legit and was like, ” Oh, this…” And then his dad’s business blew up and he got another truck and he is like, ” All right, I’m down to join you.”‘Cause I was talking to him about it. He saw it all actually work and his dad’s business blow up and they had to hire all these people and stuff. And he’s like, holy crap, Garrett actually isn’t full of crap, this could work. So back in the day, you know, when we joined, every client was a case study, that’s how we built the whole thing. And we’re still, I’d say, pretty dang close to every client being a case study, but there’s just some that are tough when you get so big. Whatever, side note. But one of the ideas we had was their local famous pizza joint had ad space where you could essentially insert your local business’s ad to the pizza box.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. That’s cool.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah.

Brady Cramm: Like the napkin holders too, I guess, that’s a good spot. I’ve seen them.

Garrett Mehrguth: What other? Coasters.

Brady Cramm: Coasters.

Garrett Mehrguth: Think about how bars work with coasters.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Coasters. So what we’re talking about is businesses who have throwaway things, like the pizza box is a throwaway, the coaster is a throw. It’s a non- essential, is an opportunity for an ad. And I do think it actually resonates with people as well. I think people like these little surprises, like ads that are… Remember I’ve always said at Directive, I want all of my marketing advertising to be shockingly memorable. This qualifies as shockingly memorable.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: The recall part’s so high,’cause it’s so new. Now 10 years from now, these won’t work. If we all knew that there was an ad on the fortune cookie, we would just read the thing and then throw it out.

Brady Cramm: Maybe.

Garrett Mehrguth: But because we aren’t used to it… The newness of an idea, essentially the impact goes here, it never gets to zero on impact, but the impact lessens once the novelty wears off. Do you get what I’m saying?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Another one. Planes that dangle the ads at the beach.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Goodyear Blimp. They sell tires.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: They go to massive sporting venues with a hundred thousand people in it. They fly a blimp around it.

Brady Cramm: No, I know. I mean there’s bus stops, there’s buses, there’s…

Garrett Mehrguth: Bus stop ads. Times Square.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, I was just thinking closer to this fortune cookie idea.

Garrett Mehrguth: That style of where FreeWater and fortune cookie, where those are business model differences though, to your point.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I would say the pizza box insert, stuff like that would be-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, definitely the pizza box I’d say is close.

Garrett Mehrguth: It’s close. You’re right though. Coupon books back in the day.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: But that’s different still because a coupon book, it’s different. I can’t think if there’s any other.

Brady Cramm: It’s just one of those, I like the challenge of it because it just shows how brilliant this one is and it’s been under everyone’s nose-

Garrett Mehrguth: This whole time.

Brady Cramm: …for years.

Garrett Mehrguth: Chopstick ads would be dope.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, I was thinking chopsticks.

Garrett Mehrguth: Like, if you could figure out how to do chopstick wrap.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, just the paper.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, you could wrap… Oh, I was thinking the actual chopstick.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, just the sleeve it’s in, the chopstick itself, that’s some tough real estate to work with.

Garrett Mehrguth: inaudible. But yeah, to your point, yeah, I’m thinking through…

Brady Cramm: And I think the QR code made it at the right time.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah.

Brady Cramm: Because yeah, it’s a small ad space, but you open up on your phone and now you’re in a whole experience. And one of them was the Powerball, so it was like this could be a $ 500 piece of paper and you have to scan it to see if…

Garrett Mehrguth: That’s phenomenal.

Brady Cramm: And you got a free ticket out of it.

Garrett Mehrguth: This is one of the best ones, Brady. I think this is one of the best ones I’ve ever seen on the show in the sense that it’s very, very clever. And I do think it has phenomenal ad recall. And I do think it’s enough real estate, like that’s a sick ad. That’s really good copy too. And so I think that, I don’t like puns, but I wouldn’t say that’s punny. I would say that that’s clever. It’s right on the line of being punny, like fortune favors, but fortune favors is also a well enough saying that it’s not too corny, if that makes sense. I don’t think that that’s corny.

Brady Cramm: No.

Garrett Mehrguth: And that’s usually what I’m terrified of, is like, corny.

Brady Cramm: I know you don’t like the puns.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Just… Yeah. Did you hop on a call the other day where someone was talking puns to me?

Brady Cramm: I don’t think so.

Garrett Mehrguth: Last week somebody was hitting me with puns and I was like, oh. I remember the worst one we ever did, shout out Hannah Mans, love You. But she wrote this one where she… If people ever watch it, you’ll be like, it’s great. I just don’t like puns. She had this campaign where she sent all of our clients these baby plants and said, we can’t wait to grow with you. And it just broke my little heart. I don’t think it’s actually egregious or anything, but it was just like, I’m like, ” Ah, this is not enough. Come on. We can do better than this.” It’s just too… I don’t know, I feel like a comedian who’s complaining about other comics jokes, if that makes sense. But that’s kind of like when you play the way too easy of a joke and you weren’t really original or creative, that’s where I’m like, dang. But all our clients tell me how much they loved it. Oh, such a clever campaign. I was like, dang it.

Brady Cramm: Did we actually send those Icebreaker games?

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Brady Cramm: Nice.

Garrett Mehrguth: We did that too. That one actually worked pretty well. So I bought… Yeah, I’ve done some cheesy stuff.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, we looked like a toy company in the office. It was just like a tower of the Icebreaker games.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. What’s the… Alibaba. I went on Alibaba and I bought as many Icebreaker games as I could find. This pre COVID when everybody used to go to offices, and we took all of our topic ABM accounts and we physically mailed them an Icebreaker game that… Yeah, I think they got the point.

Brady Cramm: It’s like the penguin in the middle and you hit it with the hammer.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. And so we sent everybody an Icebreaker game.

Brady Cramm: Try to make it so it doesn’t collapse.

Garrett Mehrguth: That was pretty clever but also corny. But I got one for you Brady.

Brady Cramm: I did a quick preview. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

Garrett Mehrguth: You’re not even close to ready for this.

Brady Cramm: I’ve only watched this one. I haven’t seen the whole campaign.

Garrett Mehrguth: I’m obsessed with this campaign. And the reason I’m obsessed with it… We’ll get to it, let me set the stage. Okay Scarlet? I’m over here working. She’s trying to show the video early.

Brady Cramm: It was a preview.

Garrett Mehrguth: The reason I love this campaign is brands a lot of times try to make themself, in this case, more palatable. So what I mean by that is some products have raving fans and raving detractors. You know the products you either love or hate, you know what I mean, like the Yankees? No, but you kind of get what I mean. There’s these brands-

Brady Cramm: Yeah. Crocs.

Garrett Mehrguth: Crocs. Perfect one.

Brady Cramm: Love. Hate.

Garrett Mehrguth: Hate. Exactly. Love. Hey, a thousand percent. That have very visceral reactions from people. Like, Tanner Shaffer hates mayonnaise.

Brady Cramm: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: My wife loves mayonnaise. She thinks it’s great. She doesn’t know why everybody hates it. I am indifferent, but if my sandwich doesn’t have mayonnaise, I prefer it to have mayonnaise on it. Cold sandwich. A good cold turkey, bacon, avocado, lettuce, like a BLT sandwich, it needs a little mayo, a little mustard. I don’t care what nobody says, you need that on the sandwich. And I’m good with the olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper too. I’m a sauce boss, I like my sauces. You get what I’m saying?

Brady Cramm: Yep.

Garrett Mehrguth: Now, mayo, historically in my opinion, and most brands like this, have tried to be like, we’re not that bad, I swear. Does that kind of make sense? They try to own the middle instead of picking a side. And it’s not political. But you get my point here, is they try to be like, look, mayo’s great, it can work on everything. Everyone loves mayo. And everybody like, ” Ooh, mayo’s disgusting.” ” No, I love…” They don’t ever go and play into their products perception and then make their fans… Remember, haters don’t buy. I think we all forget that in life,’cause we all want to be liked. We all want to be loved, appreciated, valued. The haters don’t buy. If you take one thing out of this show, haters don’t buy.

Brady Cramm: So why not make an ad that makes them puke?

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, they made an ad that makes the haters puke. And we’re going to talk about it in a second. But my point here, why I love what mayo is doing so much is at the highest level of the strategy, which is, we’re not going to manipulate… Remember we talked about at the start of the show, like embrace reality, don’t manipulate it. This is what a campaign of you embracing who your core audience is, is all about. And I would argue it’s a big part. It’s the best branding I’ve ever seen out of a consumer product that’s old and legacy, and some people hate and some people love, and it’s so direct about it. So the campaign’s called Let Your Mayo Freak Flag Fly. And I love that. I just absolutely love how hard they went on the concept. I don’t want you to start on that one, my friend. Scarlet, I’d like you to start with the sniffers, because this is the one I saw that inspired me. And I love the warning sign. Yeah, yeah. To start, the phone was made-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, pour it out.

Garrett Mehrguth: …for mayo lovers with zero regard for anyone else. That is some of the best copy I’ve ever seen in a campaign. All right, let’s do it.

Speaker 7: Every Kraft Real Mayo lover has a special ritual and some rituals, are more special than others. Let your mayo freak flag fly.

Garrett Mehrguth: Like put the mayo on both sides of that sandwich.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: It’s just… Scarlet and her Zach Bryan.

Brady Cramm: Zach Bryan.

Garrett Mehrguth: She loves her Zach Bryan.

Brady Cramm: Well I think even to your point earlier, the consumer research is spot on because-

Garrett Mehrguth: Yes.

Brady Cramm: …I like mayo. I’m picky with my mayo, so like Jersey Mike’s Mayo is fire.

Garrett Mehrguth: It is fire. I completely agree.

Brady Cramm: But I don’t like Kraft Mayo.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, who do you like? What does Jersey Mike’s use?

Brady Cramm: I don’t know what they use.

Garrett Mehrguth: What if it’s Kraft Mayo?

Brady Cramm: We use like a Japanese mayo-

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, I’ve had one of those.

Garrett Mehrguth: Is it good?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Brady Cramm: So I like that stuff.

Garrett Mehrguth: What if Jersey Mike’s is using Kraft this whole time? Wouldn’t that mess with you?

Brady Cramm: I don’t know what I would do.

Garrett Mehrguth: Can we Google it? Come on Scarlet, let’s do this in the show.

Brady Cramm: I would like to think my palate-

Garrett Mehrguth: What mayo-

Brady Cramm: …is better than that.

Garrett Mehrguth: …does Jersey Mike’s use? Let’s see.

Brady Cramm: Special recipe.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oils, vinegar, eggs yolks and spice. No wonder.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, they’re not using Kraft.

Garrett Mehrguth: Can we see what kind… Can we click on that article though? So like they have their own mayo that they… You can continue. No, you’ll be all right. You’ll be all right, I believe in us. You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right. Get ready. Get ready. Oh, get rid of it. Get rid of it.

Brady Cramm: I don’t know about that.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay, well. Okay, so it’s not Kraft. All right. But I think it’s the coolest campaign, man.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, but what I was getting to is I would not smell mayo like that. I would not open up a Kraft Mayo and smell it, so it’s spot on.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: I’m not a mayo loving freak.

Garrett Mehrguth: Freak. And I don’t put mayo that thickly on both-

Brady Cramm: No.

Garrett Mehrguth: …sides of the bread.

Brady Cramm: No.

Garrett Mehrguth: But it made me go immediately like, holy crap, that’s shockingly memorable. That’s the type of campaign. And then you can do, what I also like is the structure of the campaign, because a 16- second clip… Now will you do the dippers for me?

Speaker 7: This is for the people who see a sandwich slathered in velvety Kraft Real Mayo and say-

Brady Cramm: That’s a censored version.

Speaker 7: …that’s not enough mayo. Let your mayo freak flag fly.

Garrett Mehrguth: inaudible. I love it. They censored it.

Brady Cramm: That’s a little joke.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, it’s all-time.

Brady Cramm: I like how they’re the ones who launched that. It’s not like someone else did that edit.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, the censored one’s genius. Can you go to the dippers on the top, Scarlet? That was your very, very top one, yeah. It’s the same concept. I just want to see it with the non- censored. Easy offended by the sight of mayo, overt your eyes now.

Speaker 7: This is for the people-

Garrett Mehrguth: Such a great start to the ad.

Speaker 7: … who see a sandwich slathered in velvetyKraft Real Mayo and says-

Garrett Mehrguth: Double.

Speaker 7: …that’s not enough mayo.

Garrett Mehrguth: Oh, yes.

Speaker 7: Let your mayo freak flag fly.

Garrett Mehrguth: Just, I love it though. Just embrace it. You know what I mean?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I think they’ve done that exceptionally, exceptionally well there. You know what I mean?

Brady Cramm: And it gets you to talk about mayo. And to your point, the people who are like, oh, that’s disgusting, aren’t going to buy it.

Garrett Mehrguth: They never bought mayo anyway. They’re never going to buy mayo.

Brady Cramm: And it’s not going to, even though that was too much mayo for me, I wouldn’t smell mayo, that doesn’t make me not get mayo-

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: … onmy sandwiches.

Garrett Mehrguth: And I think my point is, is some products, like we talked about last week, we’ll never change our light beer preference. We just won’t.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I don’t think anyone who doesn’t like mayo will ever like mayo. So you need to run different kinds of ads. Like Scarlet, do you like mayo?

Scarlet: Yeah, but I like it in avocado based.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay, so you’re like a new age mayo, let’s say.

Scarlet: Yeah. Like the healthier non-canola version.

Garrett Mehrguth: Like Whole Foods mayo.

Scarlet: Yeah.

Brady Cramm: I’ve been more into mayo over the past, I’d say, three years.

Garrett Mehrguth: But you weren’t against mayo as a kid.

Brady Cramm: I would never choose it. I was mustard on my sandwiches.

Garrett Mehrguth: But if there was mayo on your sandwich, did you not eat it?

Brady Cramm: I would eat it, I just wouldn’t enjoy it because I think it was Kraft at home and I just didn’t like that. But then I found Jersey Mike’s, I’m like, oh, I like this mayo.

Garrett Mehrguth: It is such a good-

Brady Cramm: Then I got into BLTs and that’s game over.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct, ’cause they need mayo.

Brady Cramm: Needs mayo. You can’t do mustard on BLT.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. So I think this is what’s so brilliant about it though, is they truly understand their audience and they know that if you hate mayo, you’ll never like mayo. And so we’re going to play into that and be warning, if you’re easily offended by the sight of mayo, overt your eyes now. And playing that beeping sound before the commercial, I was watching, I was on my phone, I was totally trying to… I heard the beep and I was like, what’s going on on my television? And then I saw a warning-

Brady Cramm: Is there a hurricane coming? Like, what’s going on?

Garrett Mehrguth: … ofsight of mayo, and I’m like, what kind of ad am I watching? Immediately, the marketer in me was like, this is amazing. And so this is one of the most inspired campaigns I’ve ever seen because of how bold it is to their core audience. Remember, everything that’s wrong with Bud Light and Target is the alienation of their core audience. The converse is the complete embracement of your most fanatical audience the other way and doing a campaign for that. And I would argue this drove sales.

Brady Cramm: Definitely.

Garrett Mehrguth: While the other ones have cost billions of dollars. And I think that’s the cool part about understanding kind of what this can do. Do you know what I’m saying?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: So we’ve talked politics, we talked that. Now we got to talk AI.

Brady Cramm: Never heard of it.

Garrett Mehrguth: I really don’t mean this as a bit, but we just think this is what’s going on in the world right now. AI’s taking over.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. No, it’s you go to Ad Age, Adweek, it’s all AI, generative AI, and-

Garrett Mehrguth: I’m doing a weekly show, guys-

Brady Cramm: …how to do it legally.

Garrett Mehrguth: …so if you want what’s going on currently, we’re going to be the spot for it. So I think we did a good job of, I think we’ve said we need to say about the other stuff. But with AI, we’ve talked mostly in the macro. We’ve waxed lyrical about the potential impacts it could have, what jobs it might replace, how it’ll impact our campaigns in the future. We’ve talked about that. I think what would be more interesting is now evaluating how the tools we all use as marketers are applying AI. Now I will say one of the things I think is super weird. So we are a Google admin shop, and so we run everything on Google Drive, all this stuff. Google has barred, which is their AI, and it looks super sick. They haven’t released it to any of their Google admin stuff.

Brady Cramm: It’s not integrated well in anything.

Garrett Mehrguth: Which is my biggest pet peeve with Google, always.

Brady Cramm: Outside of, I guess, in email, it’s not sophisticated, but they’re finishing sentences, which is technically AI.

Garrett Mehrguth: But that’s not barred. Yeah, but that’s not barred.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, it’s not.

Garrett Mehrguth: Their new product. Their new product is sick. I have it on my Gmail, not on my Directive Consulting account. That’s ludicrous to me. Notion has AI right now baked into it, but not… Google does not have AI for anyone who pays for it. That’s a weird thing to say out loud. Anyone who pays for Google does not have any of their features. It’s not just that. What’s also crazy is does anyone here use Google Home? Do you have one of those? Okay. So if I go, ” Okay, Google. Play…” So usually like, ” Okay, Google. Play, Lil Baby.” Something like that. And I’m in the shower and I got my rap going, I’m like, I got to wake up. It’s like six o’clock in the morning. I know Myra’s already doing something with the kids, I’m like, all right, got to get going for work and I’ll play something. That’s usually what I do. But you could also go like, ” Okay, Google. What’s my schedule like? Okay, Google. What’s my calendar like? Okay, Google. What’s the weather like?” Anything I can’t… Like my Google Home won’t integrate… So I set up my Google Home on my Directive Consulting because that’s where my calendar is for work. The two won’t talk. Google Work, Google Admin, whatever they’re calling it these days, does not connect to anything else. So all the power of their ecosystem of what they’ve developed from a cross pollination standpoint is all walled garden, so none of their products talk. So that’s why when I saw this in prepping for the show, I was like, okay, we’re finally getting some of their features on the revenue side of Google. Does that make sense?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Google Ads is how Google makes all their money. We’re going to finally get AI, even though they’ve had the… Like, Google has had the biggest AI investment of any company in the world for a long time. And we all experience Google AI, but not through a front end like a ChatGPT where it’s obvious it’s AI. To your point, like they’ve been finishing our sentences and emails for years. That’s all AI, it’s language models. Now let’s watch this, because this is how it’s going to affect us as advertisers. And I’d love to just hear your takes on it. We can expand on each part. That part’s sick.

Brady Cramm: Nice. The typo is cool.

Speaker 11: foreign language. Good for your cat. foreign language.

Garrett Mehrguth: So… I felt really good about my job security after watching it, but I also, I felt really good about my job security because the copy was pretty bad. But I also thought there was a lot of things that could make me more productive as a marketer. So you know how everybody’s like, ” Oh, your job’s going to get replaced by AI.” Yeah, if you’re in the specialist level of execution. So some things, like the resizing, that’s dope. That’s just complete admin work where there’s not really-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, the resolution.

Garrett Mehrguth: The resolution was dope. Exactly. Another admin work thing. The changing of backgrounds was definitely cool. The voiceovers though, and a lot of the other stuff, I also, to me, I don’t see this and think, oh my gosh, as a consumer I’m going to get such better marketing.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I feel like I’m going to get worse marketing.

Brady Cramm: It’s not perfect, but they are… Like, for Google, they’re replacing Teams, because they’ve trying to get people to spend more on YouTube and display. And so they previously, and probably not anymore after this, they had a team that would make you YouTube ads if you would spend a certain amount of money with Google, just so that you could enter that network and Google makes more money.

Garrett Mehrguth: So a lot of this too, for them, you’re saying is… Well, ’cause they also do localization for us. So some things I did think were cool. Now, would I do the voiceover the first time? No. But could I translate that voiceover into all these different languages? Like that, inaudible, ooh, I like that angle you just took. So essentially another angle of looking at why Google wants AI is we as advertisers, people don’t realize how much professional services Google offers. Now, I wouldn’t say the word professional is the best way to put it in front of it. The services that Google offers are exceptionally self- serving, traditionally. All the recommendations, everything they do is very much in Google’s best interest, not the advertiser’s best interest in my opinion. But the fact that they might not need a thousand people into the Philippines doing translations for everybody and they could use their AI software, it also saves them a ton of cost of goods sold at Google. Because they do offer that stuff to us, right? They’ll localize our ads. They probably had a tech like this behind the scenes. Now you can just make it on the front of the scenes and it’s probably worth it, right? At their size?

Brady Cramm: Yeah. And the video teams. I think, for a lot of people, a Google rep might say, you should be in YouTube. And their response is, I don’t have a video. And so this AI is making it to where it’s like-

Garrett Mehrguth: No worries.

Brady Cramm: …you just need a cat eating food. Give it to the platform and we will do voiceovers, we will do text layovers, transitions, all using AI. So for them it’s just getting way more people to-

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: …be able to spend money in other places.

Garrett Mehrguth: But as an artist, this breaks my heart.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. I mean, what I did like was-

Garrett Mehrguth: But the idea that all you need to do to sell cat food is have a cat eat food. Breaks my heart.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. But I liked the freedom in it. I liked when they were giving feedback to the ad copy. Hey, can you do this? Can you change this? That’s the AI that I enjoy.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: Versus, you only submit the video and it says we’re going to build you a few options and you can’t-

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, prompt based AI.

Brady Cramm: … control it. Yeah,prompt based AI.

Garrett Mehrguth: I don’t really know what they call it, but it’s prompt based.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: And I agree with that. I do like it where I am still the artist and the AI is the production, and that’s what you’re saying.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: You like to still have the creative control through the formation of very unique prompts. Like, in Midjourney, I don’t know. Have you started playing at all with any of the image AI since we chatted on the show?

Brady Cramm: No, but the one I need to get is Photoshop’s Beta.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah. Did you see that?

Brady Cramm: Looks crazy.

Garrett Mehrguth: It looks sick as all get out.

Brady Cramm: Insane.

Garrett Mehrguth: It was insane. Can we show that real quick? Can you show Photoshop? AI?

Brady Cramm: Yeah, Photoshop AI Beta.

Garrett Mehrguth: It’s so sick. Like, Generative Fill is what it’s called. That one right there.

Brady Cramm: I’ve just been seeing Instagram clips.

Garrett Mehrguth: Can you show… Watch the video. We got to show this to our audience. Politics and AI baby. That’s what we do. Yeah. But okay, so is anything real anymore, Brady? Is there any artistry? Is there any-

Brady Cramm: Well, that’s the thing, even your example with Google is if you and I started with the same cat video, I think they’ve got it to the place where we would end up with a different ad.

Garrett Mehrguth: I would agree with that.

Brady Cramm: So there’s still that artistry.

Garrett Mehrguth: It’s not… I go back to the IP on it too.’Cause did you see that one image? It looked like the image from Apple.

Brady Cramm: Which one?

Garrett Mehrguth: At the end of that video, there was an image there that it was going to fill in that I’ve seen before. How did they get these images? Whose IP is it?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: So some of this is just, I wonder too what the culture’s going to be like. So imagine if you were going to an artist and you thought you were buying art, but 75% was the artist, 25% was the AI, would that increase or decrease the value? As an artist, do you have to say that this is AI generated?

Brady Cramm: I think.

Garrett Mehrguth: Do you kind of get where my head’s at?

Brady Cramm: Yeah. Right now it could increase just because it’s a hot topic if it’s the first big artist doing it. Just like NFTs of 10 pixels.

Garrett Mehrguth: Michelangelo was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel. That… What happened to us. Beauty used to be something, Brady.

Brady Cramm: I think it’s still a thing.

Garrett Mehrguth: Everything I… This is… You know how… Okay, so I think AI is going to be a lot like fast food. Okay? So here’s what I mean by that.

Brady Cramm: There is a fully automated McDonald’s now.

Garrett Mehrguth: So here’s what I mean by that.

Brady Cramm: That’s what he meant, right?

Garrett Mehrguth: Is for the longest time, food was made at home by hand, fresh scratch, just really, really like food was homemade. Good meal, made it home. And then we got the drive- through and the car and all these places.

Brady Cramm: TV dinners.

Garrett Mehrguth: TV dinners. Right? All this stuff. And we started going to all this fast food. And then for years, like growing up, who here would go to Chili’s or TGI Friday’s or a chain or Islands? Who here went to those growing up? Anybody?

Brady Cramm: TGI Friday’s.

Scarlet: Islands.

Peter: Applebee’s.

Garrett Mehrguth: Applebee’s. Okay, we all got our spots we all grew up with.

Brady Cramm: Honey mustard.

Garrett Mehrguth: Who here has been to one of those chain restaurants in the last three months?

Scarlet: I have.

Garrett Mehrguth: Go off queen. What’d you-

Scarlet: I love Islands.

Brady Cramm: I do too.

Garrett Mehrguth: Nice. I’ve been to Islands in the last three months, but I don’t even count Islands. I mean more like Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s, Chili’s. When was the last time anybody here has been one of those? Peter, when was the last time you went?

Peter: I have no idea.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. Where do we go instead? Well, we still all go out to eat, right?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: But do we go to fast food or do we go to places that embrace a culinary artistic perspective?

Brady Cramm: The latter. Chick- fil- A.

Scarlet: I was going to say Chick-fil-A. Hell yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. But if we go to a restaurant is what I’m referring to, we don’t go to Chili’s, TGI Friday’s, Applebee’s, Texas Roadhouse. We don’t go to those spots-

Brady Cramm: Like a brewery or-

Garrett Mehrguth: We’re going to go to a brewery or we’re going to go to this mom and pop spot. We’re going to go to more of a hole in the wall.

Brady Cramm: The authentic Mexican.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, authentic Mexican. What I’m trying to explain is I think AI is going to go through the same journey, where artists and all these people, and so everybody’s going to use AI, and AI is going to be big. And then we’re going to have a reversion back to manmade… You know how it’s like, gluten- free. I think we’re going to have AI- free, very, very quickly in everything we consume.’Cause I think we as humans are going to revolt against the concept that we as humans are no longer valuable. What happened was the food became non- essential. The quality of the ingredients, the local food, how you interacted with the entire ecosystem of the culinary scene was no longer important. And that’s what this new food scene we’re in today, it’s about embracing local, fresh ingredients, respecting the farmers and the people that are cultivating the food for you. That’s where we’re at, right? I think you’re going to see movies that are now AI- free. I think everything will have to do a… We’ll go through this AI craze and then we’re going to want art that was made by humans, not computers.

Scarlet: Yeah. This scares me.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, it does, right? Especially with your fiance being-

Scarlet: Yeah, because part of being a good photographer, and Brady you should know this, is getting the shot.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Scarlet: There are so many times I’ve had to wake up at 3: 00 AM, 4: 00 AM for him to get the shot.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Scarlet: This just made a shot in 30 seconds.

Garrett Mehrguth: And there was no artistry to it.

Scarlet: No.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: There’s vision. I’ll give it that. You have to have vision in creativity, but I wouldn’t call it art. Like the process of making something great through one’s craft and one’s self, whether that’s basketball… To me basketball’s like sports art, because you are turning yourself… If anyone thinks it’s easy to go shoot like Steph Curry, try. That’s art to me, because Steph has put in the hours of his craft to literally take something that could be as brutish as basketball and turn it into art through his mastery. Michelangelo had mastery. Great art has always been about mastery and we don’t even see it that often. Think about the last time you saw a sculpture that blew your mind and then go look at the old Italian sculptures when they do a full sculpture and they put a veil. Have you ever seen the veiled sculptures?

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: I don’t think there’s anyone alive right now that could even recreate that level of mastery.

Brady Cramm: The most recent one I saw is the guy who makes the, it looks like a balloon animal, but it’s made out of steel. It took him, I think, six years to make.

Garrett Mehrguth: That to me has value because of the amount of craft that went into it. My grandpa was a tool and die maker. He’s gone now, but when he was alive, even into his late eighties and stuff, he would manually create. Now that’s all been replaced by 3D printing, but it’s still the human telling the printer and essentially working in a software program. If the AI does the whole thing and is better, I just don’t know what happens to art and mastery and craftsmanship.

Brady Cramm: I guess for me, all those examples, those are things I used to do, just would take me long to do it.

Garrett Mehrguth: No, but there’s some things you couldn’t do and that’s what I think Scarlet’s point is. You couldn’t make a bad shot a good one. That’s why I said, I thought the resizing’s dope. I think the translation’s dope, because that’s all admin. But what she’s saying, what I’m saying, is if you didn’t get the right width of the shot, you didn’t get the right width of the shot. If you didn’t get the focus right, you didn’t get the focus right. If you didn’t get-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, the focus is one.

Garrett Mehrguth: … the sunrise right,you didn’t get the sunrise right.

Scarlet: In landscape photography, it’s a little sketch, but if you’re shooting for a company and you can’t go to a place across the world and you are on a dirt road and you can make it into a street, that’s cool.

Garrett Mehrguth: Agreed. I’m not saying it’s not cool and I’m not saying this isn’t impactful or awesome, it just breaks my little heart because I still like to think that I’m a craftsman. I still like to think that what I do for a living, for… I think marketing can be art. I think you can master marketing as a craft. And I don’t think you can ever master it, but I think you can pursue mastery of the psychology of humans, what motivates humans from apathy to action, what creates preferences. And we’re devaluing all of that by being like, oh, well just make a cat video. Make a video of a cat eating food, you’ll sell cat food. That’s not true though, is all I’m trying to point out. I don’t think that marketing can just be soulless, and work.

Brady Cramm: But that’s where I think like with the Google stuff we watched, I think it’s enough freedom to where it comes down to the marketer. It’s not just anyone can use this AI-

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Garrett Mehrguth: There is still creativity in the prompts and in the creation. I agree.

Brady Cramm: Even with this, like my personal is when I upgrade my Photoshop to this AI Beta, in my mind already, it’s coming from an artist’s point of view. It’s like I am excited to create something with this. It’s not coming from like, oh-

Garrett Mehrguth: I know, but the true-

Brady Cramm: … I don’t have to do anything. Ijust type random things and it creates and it’s whatever.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, but the true artist spent 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 hours learning how to get all that, in one click.

Brady Cramm: But it’s not… Like you and I entering this, we would end up with completely different-

Garrett Mehrguth: I know, but the editing on Photoshop used to take such a technical-

Brady Cramm: Yeah, it’s pain.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, but that’s what makes it, when you see it in it’s purest form-

Brady Cramm: And you see as a pen tool and you zoom in a thousand percent and you just click.

Garrett Mehrguth: But that’s the beauty. The manual nature of something is what makes it beautiful. That’s why cabinetry sucks. It’s all mass- produced Ikea garbage.

Brady Cramm: No, I get it. I get the story and the process.

Garrett Mehrguth: And there’s no craftsmanship anymore in anything we get, everything we get breaks every 10 years and five years and it’s all cheap. What happened to art? What happened to craftsmanship?

Brady Cramm: Yeah. I mean I think that’s a category of art, is the process. For me, it’s having a vision and executing that vision. And before stuff like this, it would take me a lot of hours standing in intersections in Tokyo and taking thousands of photos of taxis.

Garrett Mehrguth: And that’s what made me respect your photo.

Brady Cramm: And for that photo specifically, I’d probably still want to do it that way. But there’s also a side of me that would just want to take my shots that I’ve done-

Garrett Mehrguth: We’re lazy, those humans. I know what this turns us into, that’s why I get disappointed.

Brady Cramm: I don’t know.

Garrett Mehrguth: You think people are going to still go out there and earn a good shot or do you think they’re just going to go-

Brady Cramm: I think it’s…

Garrett Mehrguth: Do you get… That’s what I’m saying.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. I mean for me, I’d want to do a blend.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: I would want to take my photos, put it into Photoshop and then use generative AI. I wouldn’t want to start with a blank canvas and say-

Garrett Mehrguth: Give me a deer.

Brady Cramm: …put a street-

Garrett Mehrguth: Give me a forest.

Brady Cramm: … putTokyo in there, then do this. And I’d want to start with one of my photos.

Garrett Mehrguth: You don’t even have to take the photo anymore, Brady. You don’t. You don’t have to take the photo.

Brady Cramm: Just empty canvas.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yes.

Brady Cramm: Fill.

Garrett Mehrguth: I’m being dead serious. To do this you don’t need a photo. Prompts. Give me a forest background. Put a moose in front of it. Add ice. And then they’re doing it on the aperture, have you seen? So they’re able to now control-

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: …the type of camera the moose would’ve been shot on.

Brady Cramm: Yeah.

Garrett Mehrguth: They don’t even have to buy the camera.

Brady Cramm: Like 50 millimeter.

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: 2. 8.

Garrett Mehrguth: They can do a lighting, they can say time of day, they can say moon phase. They can literally take the specs of what they would normally have to do to get the shot, put it in the computer, the computer will do the shot. They don’t have to take the photo. That’s what this is.

Scarlet: I think it’s already hard to be a photographer and also an editor on top of being a photographer, that this just opens up the pool. So that, that person that has that job is now someone who barely did anything.

Garrett Mehrguth: Well, yeah.’Cause editing, editing used to be the biggest part of being a photographer in my opinion. It was like the editing. Am I missing something there? Getting the shot right, but I thought, I felt like I could take good photos, but I couldn’t create a finished product,’cause I didn’t know how to do the editing on the exposure, the highlights, the shadows, the contrast, the light. I didn’t know how to do all that. And I felt like the best photographers were also very, very good at editing. But they weren’t doing generative editing.

Brady Cramm: And lighting too.

Scarlet: Your photos are really good.

Garrett Mehrguth: His are phenomenal. That’s why I think it’s so crazy. He’s literally the artist being like, I don’t care about art. This guy spends how many hours editing a photo, Brady? Honest to God.

Brady Cramm: I used to spend five to eight per photo.

Garrett Mehrguth: Per photo.

Brady Cramm: But now hopefully just-

Garrett Mehrguth: Five seconds.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, 30 seconds maybe.

Garrett Mehrguth: So that doesn’t disappoint you though? I’m just curious about that.

Brady Cramm: No.

Garrett Mehrguth: To me, that part wasn’t the busy work.

Brady Cramm: It wouldn’t be like-

Garrett Mehrguth: Resizing it into 3000 different sizes, please AI, let’s not have humans have to resize display ads anymore. I’m all in on that.

Brady Cramm: In my mind, I don’t even do photography anymore, because of how long it took.

Garrett Mehrguth: So you’re saying, so you have a different angle. In other words, it became so time prohibitive for you that you lost your passion for it, and this could bring it back potentially.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, because my end goal is to get to an outcome and still have it custom to me. So I would want to have the root photo taken by me, and then if this is a quicker-

Garrett Mehrguth: All your prompts, they’re still your prompts, so you still-

Brady Cramm: Still my prompts too.

Garrett Mehrguth: …feel the artist’s control.

Brady Cramm: And so my whole goal is to get to a certain outcome that’s in my head.

Garrett Mehrguth: More efficiently.

Brady Cramm: More efficiently.

Garrett Mehrguth: Can you get to be so efficient-

Brady Cramm: So I’m not too concerned-

Garrett Mehrguth: …though that the outcome has less value to you? Because I think a part of what made you so proud-

Brady Cramm: No, ’cause it’s my personal vision. I’m not like… Because I think you’re bringing up other points where it’s like I could look at some other artists who spent millions of hours and I could just tell it copy, paste. Or make a subtle variation of this.

Garrett Mehrguth: But I think the pain is what-

Brady Cramm: And that’s just not my goal.

Garrett Mehrguth: …I think the pain is what creates the connection. I think the reason you love some of the photos you’ve done is the amount of time you’ve spent falling in love with it.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. And I think that would still come with the root photo. To me, the journey is the base photo I start on. So the taxi panning in Tokyo, that took a long time, thousands of photos to track a taxi perfectly in the center of this.

Garrett Mehrguth: So the concept is still human derived, right? So that’s the concept.

Brady Cramm: And then from there, it was a lot of hours spending time with changing colors where I could prompt color changes.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, but I could literally say, create a scene of a taxi going through Tokyo a thousand different times, and then the generative AI could do your same photo shoot.

Brady Cramm: And so I wouldn’t be proud of that, to your point.

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay. So that’s where you would draw the… That’s what I’m trying to get to is, ’cause I think that’s where we’re getting as humans is I’m trying to find that perspective we have as humans of where it affects our pride or our connection to our work. Because if we all become apathetic because the computers do everything for us and we aren’t personally invested in it or personally connected to it, I feel like our society as a global whole loses its soul. I really do believe, all of a sudden we lose our identity and our value as people if everything we’ve always done is now somehow done for us, what do we do? I know it sounds crazy, but I do think that I’ve gone through that in my own career where I used to be the specialist on the marketing campaigns and I found my value in the pushing of the buttons. And then I had to find my value in the leading of it, but I still have someone beneath me who finds their value in pushing the buttons.

Brady Cramm: I don’t know, I think I would still find value in the ideation-

Garrett Mehrguth: Okay, in the ideation.

Brady Cramm: … and theprompting. I’m just thinking, growing in Instagram, trying to get, let’s say a million followers only using AI. Yes, I would ditch the past of going out and taking photos, but my passion would be-

Garrett Mehrguth: So your creative mastery of the usage of AI would be where you would-

Brady Cramm: Exactly. So I would find a different form of passion in it.

Garrett Mehrguth: But then it makes… That’s kind of my point though, is it makes the… AI becomes the beginning and the end.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. It’s just this different tool.

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, but it’s the only tool that matters which is what’s so crazy about how powerful it is. The process of taking the photo does become slightly irrelevant. Being the photographer is no longer about your skills with the camera. Truthfully, in 10 years you will not be a good photographer because of what you can do with the camera. You’ll be a good photographer because what you can do with AI. It’s a completely different skillset and it comes for everything. I saw my dad go through this. So there’s these machine in cabinetry, inaudible… Essentially, I forget what it’s… I forget the name of it right now. Sorry. But you could essentially, like you know how you use a printer with paper, you put a bunch of paper into a printer and just prints pages and it could print all night? They could do that with wood.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, they 3D model it and then just-

Garrett Mehrguth: Correct.

Brady Cramm: …build it.

Garrett Mehrguth: And you could put a thousand stacks of plywood and it will just all night, cut the plywood into the perfect shape that you need for an entire install.

Brady Cramm: Yeah. Custom, too.

Garrett Mehrguth: So like boat builders,’cause I’ve been doing a lot of… I’ve been pretty passionate about boats and stuff, so I watched a lot of YouTube videos of boat builders at night and learn how they build. I have this dream that one day when I’m done with Directive, my current passion in my head is like, what if I made trans- Atlantic shipping more efficient using modern day technology, because of how old school the boats are and how capital intensive it is to get into the industry. But all these oil tankers, there hasn’t been really any innovation in the fuel economy, the speed or the efficiency of oil tankers. And all of our goods-

Brady Cramm: Like cargo ships?

Garrett Mehrguth: Yeah, the cargo ships. I would love to innovate the cargo ship. So I’ve been looking and trying to get into, I’ve got 20 years to prep for it. And I want to do something with the ocean and I want to do something that’s like minimum billion dollar size idea. So to me, innovating how cargo ships work could save a ton in the environment, be exceptionally profitable and be a pretty cool thing. So that’s what I’d like, my brain goes there. So I’ve been teaching myself this and I’ve been seeing all these boat builders. Same thing happens is they have all this craftsmanship that goes into the individual creation of each hole and each part of how they develop the boat. And then what’s happening is these new manufacturers are using these machines… I can’t remember the stinking name of it. But essentially, and same thing happened to my dad, he used to have to build all the custom cabinets by hand and do every cut on the machine. His competitors and the guy who bought his company from him and actually made it profitable and a lot bigger, I would say the quality of work maybe isn’t as good as it used to be, but it’s a way more successful cabinet shop, frankly, and he’ll be the first to tell you that, because of the technology, which is, it can do everything overnight without any manual labor, but it does cost millions of dollars. So it’s very expensive, but it can do it all. That’s where I think we’re getting with a lot of this is there’s not that many people though now who could build a cabinet, because the tech does it all. And there’s some things that tech still can’t do that humans can when it comes to artistry. And so we just have to learn, I think across all professional services, how do we embrace AI and help our clients leverage it without also ironically replacing ourself. And I think that’s going to be a big, big part of what comes to our industry in the next 10 years. So it’ll be an exciting time. It’s an insane time. I mean the internet only got made in 1998, that’s when Google started. The search engine, what we operate in, I think it was 1998. It’s barely been around. But nothing has been more seismic in the internet than this. We are truly in transformational times. So any final thoughts, Brady?

Brady Cramm: I’m excited for it.

Garrett Mehrguth: I am too actually. I love new tech and finding new fit, but it hurts my little heart when I think about the soul of it. I’ve always been-

Brady Cramm: Well, I’ll dive into the beta and I’ll try to create something that has soul.

Garrett Mehrguth: You know how I’ve been though, I’ve always been a soul guy.

Brady Cramm: Yeah, I know.

Garrett Mehrguth: I’ve always been about the heart of what we do as marketers and finding passion and joy in that. And I feel like the soul of marketing is going through an existential crisis. And that part’s hard for me. But it’s exciting too, to see all the things it can make us better at as marketers. So it’s not all negative. But very, very cool to see what Google Ads is doing with AI. So thanks everyone. Episode 38, like, subscribe, five stars, share with your friends. And thanks everybody.

Brady Cramm: See you next week.