Digital & Dirt
01:38:56 · David Sable, Ian Dallimore, Raj Lala, Craig Brommers, Barry Frey
[01:38:56] S9: Good to see you. Thanks for having me. [01:38:58] S0: Yeah. Great job. You you just came off the stage with Craig. [01:39:01] S9: Yeah. It's always easier with Craig Brommers, CMO of American Eagle. I guess we we do... Like, we're... We got like a tag team active going, so it's good. [01:39:09] S0: Yeah. I feel like you guys should start your own podcast and just talk about random topics all the time. I loved it. So you just walked walked off stage. What's the one thing you hope people take away from that conversation? [01:39:20] S9: I I hope that they get that marketing is a real art. It's great to talk about. It's just great to talk about all the tech. It's important, all the data. It's important, all the optimization, because we do all [01:39:35] S8: of that. [01:39:35] S9: That's sort of obvious. Price of entry. But you got to think about the art. And the art is understanding who your customer really is. It's the insight. It's not enough just to look at purchase data and say, Oh my God, look what they bought. Because that just tells you what they bought five seconds ago or five days ago or five years [01:39:55] S7: ago or [01:39:56] S9: whatever. Critical thing is to understand who they really are. I think what you heard on stage was that Gen Z is not who you think they are. [01:40:05] S1: Yeah. You know, when
01:40:05 · Barry Frey, David Sable, Ian Dallimore
[01:40:05] S1: Yeah. You know, when [01:40:05] S9: Craig mentioned the study that was just done and that one of the top three most important levers for Gen Z is a store experience in a mall. I asked the audience, how many of you would have said that? Not 2% of the audience put their hand in. Yeah. So I think that we live we live in a world where people just assume because the pundits tell us that digital is everything. There's nothing else. Right. And my mantra is digital is everything, but not everything is digital. There you go. [01:40:34] S0: Yeah. And it's... I love that you said that. There's a misconception and not saying data is bad, but sometimes a human... I always thought that the idea of using too much data to determine when and where to buy next. Look, this is coming from someone that works for the oldest out of home company in The US at Lamar. It's almost like a cop out, right? Because it's like your job as an agency or as a brand is to persuade me to take an action. And if you do so in a very curious way, and you know, the old school thought that you delight and surprise people, then your data can be all the greatest data in the world and you can just miss that consumer completely. [01:41:13] S9: Oh, for sure. You know, I'll tell you what I what I always say. Nobody, nothing, all the optimization, all the retargeting in the world is ever gonna get you to buy those purple pants with the little embroidered pink whales. [01:41:29] S0: Mhmm.
01:41:29 · Ian Dallimore, David Sable
[01:41:29] S0: Mhmm. [01:41:29] S9: Nothing. Now if it was true that retargeting and better targeting and optimization could get you to buy anything, there would be one business in the world called Amazon. Yep. And maybe a second one called Tameware. Right? That's it. Everybody else would be dead, but they're not. And there's a reason that all of the businesses that started being only digital like Warby Parker or Bond and Blossom, they can't open stores fast enough. Right. Now, it's not... Knee jerk alert. It's not that digital's bad. Right. It's not that digital doesn't work. Right. It's that people are whole human beings. Right. It's a $3.60 deal here. [01:42:08] S0: Right. And we wanna physically touch things. Right. A good friend of mine is the co founder of Goodr Sunglasses. And, you know, he sits on Abbot Kinney with Warby Parker, Ray Ban, all those things. And his approach was a bit different. It was... If I was in that audience, I would have raised my hand and said, no. I think a retail experience is perfect. And in that example, he built out this entire experiential slash you could also purchase his sunglasses in a very cluttered Abbot Kinney. Right? So utilizing out of home, but talking to the consumer. And doing a little bit of research on you throughout your your very long tenured beautiful career. It's like consumers are curious. So pique my curiosity. [01:42:51] S9: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Long tenure is a way of saying I'm old.
01:42:51 · David Sable, Ian Dallimore
[01:42:51] S9: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Long tenure is a way of saying I'm old. [01:42:54] S0: No. Thank you very You're a man and you've done a lot of things. So you've been at the front row for five decades, right? I feel like you've probably seen this story play out just in a different model. And so what are advertisers getting right today and what are they missing out on? [01:43:10] S9: So look, I've seen this play out from the day I came into the business. I walked in to Young & Rubicam at 285 Madison Avenue when it was there in June 1976. I sat down, I was in the training program, one of five people who had been chosen with like 1,500 applicants. It's pretty crazy. First thing they did is tell us, okay, everything's changed. The good news for me was that I had no clue. [01:43:35] S0: I Yeah, didn't no know what was.
01:43:35 · Ian Dallimore, David Sable, Anthony Scaramucci
[01:43:35] S0: I Yeah, didn't no know what was. [01:43:37] S9: Great. Like to me, I was ground zero. So I didn't know anything had changed. I just knew what was. I have heard that same thing. I've seen that from that day to today. Everything changes. It changes all the time. When I was there, like literally while I was in the training program, cable launched. Yep. That was gonna put everything else out of business. It didn't. And I'm proud to say that we placed, and I was part of it, the very first cable ad ever placed by a advertising agency. It was on the SciFi channel, was like a big deal back in that early thing. So my sense is that everything's changing and the people who get it right are the people who aren't scared of the change. They understand what doesn't change is as a consumer. What doesn't change is the consumer wants to hear a story. What doesn't change is that the consumer wants to hear a story because they do want brands. Like the biggest mistake and the biggest fallacy is that brands aren't important. Oh yeah, they're pretty important. Like these kids, these Gen Z kids are still running after brands. Let's be really, really clear. And the younger kids, the Gen A, they're also, they're crazy for you. And my grandkids playing, know these squishies? [01:44:55] S0: Yeah, my daughter's. [01:44:56] S9: So you know about squishies, right? Squishies become the biggest thing. You gotta invite, and they know which are the real squishies, [01:45:03] S4: Correct, yeah.
01:45:03 · Anthony Scaramucci, David Sable, Ian Dallimore
[01:45:03] S4: Correct, yeah. [01:45:03] S9: The brass root versus which are the fake squishies. Right. It is the oldest story in history. Right. Right? We crave real things. We crave things that have provenance. We crave things that make us feel good. That is never going to change. Yeah. And I think that the best marketers like Craig on this. Yep. That's what they go for. [01:45:25] S0: So let's let's give Craig a shout out here. There he is. We'll get... We're going get you on. Yeah. Following trends is not something that you've ever done in your career. You've never followed the crowd. Right? So where do you think advertising industry is following the crowd right now successfully? And I'll add the influencer economy. There's so much put into that space. But also... And I love that you're sparking because I agree with you. [01:45:51] S9: But there's... We're lemmings. Let's be [01:45:53] S0: really clear. [01:45:54] S9: We're in a lemming world here. [01:45:55] S0: Yes. We