The Radcast 2022 Marketing Trends with Ryan Alford and Reh Harvey

 The notion of social live stream selling is been huge this year, started in Asia last year,
 2020, blown up in America this year for a lot of brands. I call this the QVC effect.
 This isn't like a new trim, but back to that first party data, you know, getting that first party
 relationship and what better way to do that than if you're building the community, they're
 naturally going to hand that data over to you. Exactly. It feels more organic.
 The funny thing is, if you get into like a 15 or 14 year old BMW, they have the voice button
 stirred. Oh yeah. Like 19 or 2004.
 You're listening to the rad cast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan
 Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to a special edition of the rad cast. The 2022
 marketing trends edition. I'm joined by Ray Harvey, our director of digital media. What's up,
 brother? Oh, are you? Hey, I'm good, man. You know, just getting ready for the new year. I know.
 I'm glad to have you on the show, finally. Yeah, finally. I know. Right. You like me or something?
 Crushing it. I know. Like, I've been invited. You don't even say that.
 True. You're going right. Hey, you got to come on. We got to do it. Damn job gets in the way.
 Right. I mean, being busy. It's a crazy thing. I know. So I'm excited. You know, we do this,
 we've been doing this third or fourth edition. Obviously, the audience has grown and changed.
 I'm thinking all the audience out there just saw our numbers today. We're officially top 90
 on Apple business marketing podcasts and remain the top 30 on Spotify. Love that. I know.
 So we appreciate all the loyal listeners. We hope we give you both some entertainment
 and some education here on our 2022 trends. You know, before we jump in, I'm just going to
 completely put you on the spot, right? You know, but I mean, what do you think of 2021 overall?
 I don't want to talk too much. I want to forward thing most of it. But like, are there anything
 that's like, you know, has been like real surprising for you this year from just a marketing
 and digital perspective? Yeah. I think from the digital perspective, at least, it was definitely a
 year of an eruption with the iOS update. Having to learn how to navigate that. And I would say
 also chaos, but chaos in a good way with the NFTs and this whole metaverse talk and what does
 that look like? And just trying to figure it out. So it definitely feels like a year of figuring
 things out again and just constantly learning and constantly. Yeah. It's like all that buzz around
 cookies going away. And I don't know that we've, you know, because Google extended things. I don't
 know that we've completely felt that. But we definitely felt it within, you know, buying ads for
 our clients on the iOS 14 stuff. And, you know, the impact that's had with targeting because it has
 definitely shook up, especially Facebook ads, particularly. You've had to, I don't want to say
 definitely there's been a component with Facebook that you got to know what you're doing
 within the ads manager and all that. That's never been not true. But it was definitely a little
 easier a couple of years ago that I think, I think everybody made their money. Everyone earned
 their paychecks yourself included kind of navigating through that. Absolutely. I mean, it was
 just from the whole, and we all knew it was coming. The whole privacy stuff. And we were all
 getting prepared for it. And then it just kind of hit like a wall, especially on Facebook. Like
 you said, Google is kind of prolonging things. But even so, I think when that happens, it's going
 to be a process of relearning again. And it's always constantly learning. But just figuring it out.
 I know. And then the NFTs, I think that's another one. It's like the Wild Wild West of crypto and
 blockchain and all that. And it's like, you know, I'm going to talk a little bit about that when we
 get into 2022. As much as I think of myself, our name, our agency name is radical. I think of
 myself as progressive. But I'm a practical person when it comes to marketing and like the implications
 because I like, I'm kind of an action guy. And I other than buying some personal NFTs for investment
 or some crypto for investment, there's not action that I can take either for one of my own brands
 or the clients that we serve. You know, I can't I can't act upon NFTs. I mean, you could for bigger
 brand that have deeper pockets. But for the medium sized companies that we help every day. And
 especially in B2B, which is a lot of our clients, you know, I would get laughed out of the room trying
 to certainly they want to know about it. They don't want to be behind. But there's not an
 action I can take that will lead to business or brand awareness for them today. You know,
 and so it's kind of like, you don't want to be behind. I think I think you've got a little bit of
 the FOMO right going on right now or fear of being left behind. But there's not like practical
 stuff that can be done for brands of all sizes. Right. And I think you hit on it. I think
 being progressives one thing, but you still have to have a strategy that makes sense.
 Yep. And like you said, brush medium sizes, the NFT world doesn't make sense yet. I think it
 will one day. But yes, I agree. And it'll be interesting where it all plays out. And if there's
 some reason my kids are riding it all ends up on Roblox. Damn it. I mean, who knows what
 metaverse will win. Right. Right. But we'll see. Let's let's kick off 2022 talk here. And really,
 you know, you do it. We joked before the the episodes, you know, about keywords and things
 like that. And invariably, this will be titled 2022 marketing trends. But it's really again,
 back to that practical. It's like the here and the now and we're in December now. So
 thus we are into 2022 planning and all that. So it's certainly for the foreseeable future for,
 you know, where marketing technology, messaging and just overall opportunities for brands
 and people that are listening to kind of get ahead. You know, I'll let you kick it off. Like, is
 there a first and foremost thing that you're seeing, you know, is either expanding or starting in
 2022? Yeah, I think and this isn't going to be super surprising. But I think we're moving towards
 a reals and a tick tock video world. And the big players in the game, Facebook, they've all
 said it. They've all come out and said it to our face. So it's like how much clear they can they
 get. That's where we're heading. That's where they're going to start. I mean, promoting that's
 they're going to put some boosting behind it. They won't say that. But yeah, definitely change the
 algorithm to it is. And I, you know, I titled this you and I were on the same page. We both kind of
 started there with it with our trends. And we were kind of pre-planning. I call it ADD America.
 Because with the it's both the functionality of the apps. Right. The swiping fast nature of
 of the UI combined with our fleeting attention span. And it's whether you physically are on
 Adderall or not or whatever. It's still we're all a bit ADD. You know, our interest in trends is
 fleeting. Our interest in the videos is like get to the point. Jack, you know, and I think to your
 point, the tick tock Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels, even LinkedIn is coming out with short form
 video, which we'll get to. You know, you're seeing. I kind of made this statement that short firm
 is getting bigger and long form is getting quicker. Because I don't think that long form is going,
 I think long form will have its day. But I think what you're going to see is the proliferation
 of the video experience and content taking on. It might be a three minute or two minute video.
 But it's still going to move quicker. Right. I think you're going to see, you know,
 some of that stuff that, you know, 15 second tick tock video that's boom, boom, boom, boom,
 like frenetic. I think you're going to see some of that in the longer form video, perhaps.
 Yeah. And I also think on tick tock specifically, I think the lifespan for trends, it's already
 super short. If you know about a trend, you're already behind, but I think it's going to get
 shorter. Yeah. And I think tick tock videos are going to become more entertaining in the fact that
 they're going to be entertaining with a purpose. Yep. And so I definitely see that. I mean,
 it's not going to be just an app for Gen Z anymore. Everybody's going to start to get on tick tock.
 The questions now becoming, have you seen this tick tock? Whether then are you on tick tock?
 That's right. Because that kind of was the question, especially the beginning of this year's,
 are you on tick tock? Right. You stick tock growing? Yeah. Yeah. Now it's like, but have you seen
 this? Exactly. That's a good way to put it. And you use the buzz word there, which for me, it's,
 you know, this is my soapbox. I talk about all the time on social media, you're educating
 you're entertaining. Right. And if you're doing both, you're really winning, but entertainment,
 you're entertained or die in today's world. Because in this world where the smartphones,
 the television, any ad light contact content is an interruption to my entertainment.
 Yep. So you've got to play that entertainment or edutainment. Right.
 Game or you're getting swiped faster than, you know, you take a breath.
 And it's funny too, because I do think that's where tick tock has their work cut out for them
 in 2022 is with the ad game. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about it how ads on tick tock just piss
 people off right now because they just want to swipe. Yes. So figuring out what that looks like in 2022
 is going to be tick tock challenge. I'm sure there are already ahead of the game and just hadn't said
 anything. But I think I think you nailed it. I think the, you know, some of the shopping
 integration, I think for them is going to be really big, you know, like because that's going to
 help maybe. But I do think brand placement, you know, within the natural form, it's going to
 play a more branding medium, perhaps. Right. You know, and I think once they get the Shopify linkage
 and the, and the shopping, no matter what your e-commerce platform is, once they get products
 like loading your product catalog into and all that, once they figure all that out,
 certainly starts to make sense. But I think you're kind of chipping away at the brand a bit for
 now. Right. If you can kind of get with the right influencers and stuff like that and kind of
 get product placement or product mention. Yeah. 100%. I think that's the name of the game right now,
 for sure. Um, cool. Well, I'm going to go to my kind of, you know, first or along the same
 thing. I think we've seen this, we have some clients that are just blowing up in this. But
 the notion of social live stream selling is been huge this year, started in Asia last year,
 2020, blown up in America this year for a lot of brands. I call this the QVC effect. Right.
 For all the middle aged women out there that do it. But it's blown up this year. And I think,
 you know, for a lot of reasons, it's, you know, the one thing that I think QVC always did well,
 obviously they had the live component. Um, but they built a sense of community, right? You know,
 it was like, you get, they got to know the host, they got to know the, they, you know, the brand of
 QVC and the brand of the products because a lot of times they'd be sharing products and it'd be
 the, whoever the founder was on stage with the personalities. And so you're seeing a lot of that,
 um, with the brands that are doing well this year with live selling, you know, they sell out of
 stuff. There's that scarcity effect, plus promotion, plus community. I think really is become
 the secret sauce. And I think I'm calling it kind of live stream shopping 2.0 because I think
 what you're going to see is you're going to see that community engagement get even more involved
 where they're doing a live shopping session and they bring a customer into the live, right?
 That might have already bought it. It might do a live review right there. Oh, I've already got
 this necklace. Look how beautiful it is. And like, wow, it's a person. It's so personalized or
 interaction with the, with the host or brand personality. I think you're going to see that community
 engagement kind of come to life more. And even some level, I think customer service, live customer
 service might start to hit off of kind of that same notion. I think you're going to see like just
 this whole community development kind of take it to the another level.
 Yeah, the one thing I love about just the live social selling is this scalable too. I mean,
 your mom and pop store can do it all the way up to the big brands, the million billion dollar
 brands, they can all do it. And so it really just comes down to the strategy of, hey, is this a
 live social selling where you have to come into the furniture store to get 10% off today? Or is it a,
 I don't know, X, Y or Z for the big brands. But I think that to me is the, and that's with all
 social media, right? That's why it's taken off is it's, my recommendation you nailed it is the
 scalability of this is both e-commerce and if you have brick and mortar. Yeah, because if I was
 brick and mortar, I would literally have a 10 by 10 section studio cornered off in my building
 or my back room. And I'd have live selling going on three times a week. Absolutely. And you know,
 products with its furniture, whether it's jewelry, whether it's t-shirts, jeans,
 whatever it is, I would have a live studio section going on within a brick and mortar. And then if
 you're e-com, wherever your office is or whatever, same thing, live studio, that's how most of them
 are do it. But this is not just an e-commerce game. Not at all. It's brick and mortar, huge
 opportunity. It's another distribution channel. Right. I think it's, I mean, it's B2C obviously,
 but it's also B2B. I mean, if I think of, I mean, ultra fabrics are client, it's a look at how
 this fabric feels, how it can look up against this color, things you can do now with an image,
 but it takes that one step further and connecting with the human emotion to say, hey, this feels
 the certain way or this would look great in this concept. There's a difference. I kind of compare
 it to talking over email and talking face to face. Like we can still get the message across,
 but there's something different about talking face to face. Absolutely. Yep. And I think you
 know what it would be to be. I think it does cross the gamut of personalization and what even with
 influence or just certain things bringing them in, there's just so many ways to bring it in. It
 doesn't your live selling or promotion or sharing doesn't have to take place within your physical
 building. Right. You can bring in influencers, whatever do multi-person lives, different things.
 It's just really that, again, back to that work community, the community opportunity and the
 realness of that organic interaction. Right. And I think that's the, I mean, you'll hear me say
 it a thousand times over, that's common thread that will always stay the same. All social media,
 all tactics go back to the storytelling, go back to the connectivity of the people using it.
 It's kind of funny that we as humans use a digital platform to connect, but that's the world we're
 in. It is. And I think that's where we're going to keep going to even with all the talk of the
 metaverse and all that kind of stuff and what it's connectivity look like there. Who knows? But at this
 point, that's, that's the goal. Yep. One hundred percent. So live social selling, live stream selling,
 whatever you want to call it, 2.0. It's coming in 2022. What else is on your list, my friend?
 Yeah, I think one of the things that that'll be interesting to see and we've already seen
 a little bit of this, but it goes back to the community building aspect with live social selling
 and everything else. But the Facebook, the Instagrams of the world going to have just constant Facebook
 lives are niche audio groups, which is still trying to find its footing, but I think it's going to
 stick. And Facebook groups as a whole, I think if we can start looking at Facebook and Instagram
 as niche platforms and start saying, Hey, here's a Facebook group for the furniture lovers of the
 world or the digital marketers of the world stuff that we already do. But it's going to become more
 of a fourth all. It's going to become more of a in your face. This is a specialized group and it
 works with live social selling because if you're in this group, you can get 20% off when we go live at
 APM tonight. And it kind of captivates that audience even more rather than just having the giant
 Facebook audience. 100% this is like niche marketing 101. This is how do you aggregate your super
 fans? Right. It is a brand. Exactly. And how do you create connection so that you have the
 interpop, you know, kind of polarity of like coming together so that they share ideas, share
 stuff. So how do you aggregate your super fans and create community for them, which then, you know,
 ladders up to so many other opportunities, you know, you learn from them, you sell to them,
 they learn and share with each other. And so that kind of community aspect is, you know,
 again, right at the center of it. Right. And I think Twitter too, I mean, I don't want to leave
 them out there. And I were talking about Facebook a lot. But I think one of Jack's last great ideas
 was the super follower and the paying per month on Twitter and being able to captivate that audience
 even more like you're saying aggregate the audience because that's in me. If you can talk
 directly to a person and get it goes back to connectivity, you're not talking to the masses
 anymore, you're kind of personalizing it to people you know, there's going to respond. That's
 right. And kind of all plays into this isn't like a new trend, but back to that first party data,
 you know, getting that first party relationship and what better way to do that than if you're
 building the community, they're naturally going to hand that data over to you. Exactly. It feels
 more organic leading into the next one. I think we're going to see this has already kind of been
 proliferation, but I think you know, email marketing is this is not some prognostication
 of the marketing's dying. I still am a huge fan of email marketing, but I do think that
 we're on the cusp of like true share going away from email marketing in this social messaging
 SMS realm because, you know, SMS proliferation has grown tremendously. There's becoming more
 acceptability. It might be annoying. I know people get annoyed. I'm I get annoyed sometimes
 especially if I don't opt in. Yeah, I really get annoyed with, you know, SMS marketing, but you're
 seeing more and more of that, but whether it's WhatsApp, whether it's Facebook Messenger, IG Messenger,
 Instagram Messenger, TikTok, LinkedIn, I think you're going to see marketing proliferate even more
 within those messaging channels and start to chip away at just pure email. Not that email is going
 to go away, but you know, I just think there's some fatigue that's taking place with email marketing.
 Yes, there's fatigue with the other ones, but I think there's a little bit of acceptability because
 they're new and they're, you know, more organic and maybe, I don't know, back to that community
 aspect of where you are, what you're doing, right, versus kind of interrupting just, well, this is my
 personal email box. Right. So yeah. Yeah, and I think I think and we've seen it with our clients,
 email has to start to become more informative and more valuable content rather than just
 here's a product. Yeah. People never want to be sold to. That's always been the case. That's not
 a new trend and they still don't want to be sold to exactly. They want valuable information,
 which is why the community aspect is starting to grow up a little bit. Absolutely. And I think
 you're, but the one thing that you are seeing is, you know, we do this for some of our clients.
 You can do mass to give campaigns and different things like that at scale. And because of,
 and I think, you know, Instagram at least does this well. Some of the others are starting to do it
 better. It's kind of the separation of your inboxes, the channels that they go in. A Gmail does
 this pretty good, but so that not everything goes into like your primary box. You can kind of
 stuff, you know, stiff. I get a lot of DMs anyway, you know, on my channels, but they at least
 go to the different inboxes so that I can kind of go, okay, I know that's probably promotional
 or whatever, but I do look at them. I mean, I get probably 100 DMs a day and I look at almost
 everyone eventually. Right. You know, so it gets my, it gets an impression on me one way or the
 other. And I sit through the stuff that's of interest and this not, but I've bought products that
 have gotten Instagram DMs on. Right. Definitely followed some people. I was like, you know,
 went down the rabbit hole and you know, okay, it's pretty interesting. So I think you're going to see,
 and you've got automation tools that have come out. I'll give a props to one of the companies we've
 had on the podcast Larry came on, who's the CEO of mobile monkey, which does automated
 Instagram messaging pretty slick. And so you're seeing some proliferation of different tools
 within these channels. And I think you're going to start to see it maybe chip away at, you know,
 just naturally going, okay, we're going to email them, you know, okay, maybe there's another channel.
 Right. And I think it just becomes a holistic point of view. So why are you emailing them? What are
 you emailing them about? And then can you also turn in some SMS marketing with that or some DMs?
 That way it's not just a, here's an email at 5 p.m. because this program says the best time.
 You actually look at that person as a human and say, what if I were them, what would I want to see?
 What would I want to hear? And just everyday life, like if I'm driving and I get a text message,
 I'm probably not going to look at it. But if I get an email from that same company later that night,
 I'm probably going to see it. Yes. And so it relies more on multiple tactics rather than putting
 all the weight just on email marketing. That's right. And they do say, I mean, like, especially SMS,
 like the open rates, like 80%. Right. That's probably going to go down over time as we,
 as us marketers start to junk up everybody's inbox. Right. But, uh, but it is like astounding.
 I email open rates, like, you know, you're great if it's like five or six percent. Yeah.
 And now SMS is clouding it. But look, it's all about relevant message, right person,
 right message. Absolutely. If you're relevant, they've opted in, they've already done business with you,
 or you know, there are relevant super fan or consumer, then they're not going to be annoyed.
 You know, like even if they delete it, it's not the right moment for them. You know,
 that repetition of message, if they've opted in and they're ready for that message, you know,
 you want to be able to get to them, where and when you need to. Absolutely. Yep.
 Uh, anything else on your list? You know, I think for me, one of the things that we kind of
 talked about earlier, but is Facebook ads, I think the chaos of 2020, 2021 is going to slow down
 a little bit. I do believe that Facebook ads will become not more effective, but we'll calm down,
 so to speak. So we want to worry about the iOS updates. We'll have figured out the pixel. We'll
 figure out the cookie idea. Um, I think across the board. I don't think that's just with Facebook.
 But sooner or later, an alternative, an alternative is going to have to come up. So, um,
 that's one of the things that that I'm looking forward to the most is not having to ride the
 tsunami of all the changes, kind of going back to the early days of, hey, this is Facebook ads.
 And obviously that doesn't mean that they're not going to change. I do think that they'll be
 different, um, add types that they'll roll out next year. I think one buzzword that everybody's
 talking about right now is the Metaverse. Yeah. Um, I, I disagree or agree. Don't think that's
 going to be a big thing in 2022. Um, I think 2022 is going to be a preparation year for Metaverse.
 So all the big brands, I mean, a lot of them have already jumping on ship for that. But
 I think the big brands of the world's going to drive the Metaverse, not necessarily the
 medium class. Yeah. No, I think you're 100% right. I think I think it's one of those that, you know,
 brands that we work with and brands that we talked to and if you're listening to this podcast
 and you, you're not with Pepsi or Pizza Hut or, you know, insert larger brand here, it's not that you
 should, you should pay attention. Absolutely. And we're going to talk about it. I'm going to talk
 about on the podcast. I'm going to have people on, you know, thought leadership on on the podcast.
 So you'll hear it here first, but there's not a real like action step today. Right.
 You know, for what you need to do, because a lot of this is going to play out because you don't
 know who's going to kind of be the lead Metaverse. Right. Yeah. At some point, because it's
 blockchain, they should all connect. But we don't even have the major players worked out. Yeah,
 we know Facebook's going to be evolved. But is it through Oculus Rift and and VR and AR and all
 that? The answer is probably yes. But what's the, what's the true universe that we're talking
 about here? Is it going to be a gaming platform like Roblox? Is it going to be insert crypto here
 that's tied to some type of Metaverse that they're selling land on? You know, again, I would pay
 attention more from an investment and an interest standpoint than necessarily work and I spend
 marketing dollars today. Right. And you know, and again, no one wants to get left behind,
 but I think 2022 is going to start to paint the picture for where all this goes. And I'm not
 sure it's going to be, I think this is like the next five year thing. Right. You know, like figuring
 out where, you know, the true landing spot is for a lot of this stuff. It reminds me a lot of
 on a smaller scale of the whole voice phenomenon. And how everybody was saying for years,
 I don't get ready for voice, get ready for voice, get ready for voice. And I feel like I don't
 feel like voice is dead by any means, but I definitely don't feel like we have it understood
 or as used as much as it was expected. Yes. So that's that's similar. What I feel about Metaverse
 right now. Again, I think once they figure it out, I think once everybody jumps on board,
 will it be great? Absolutely. You know, voice, so funny. Voice, voice search has been on
 everyone's marketing trends list for the last 10 years. Right. And someone I'm sure has it
 on their their trip list for this year. Right. It's like eventually someone will be right. Yeah.
 I can tell you at this point with my sports, we have to we have an Alexa and and Google, but
 both of them are only used to listen to blippy or whatever my daughters want to listen to.
 It's really all for us at least. I mean, I'm sure Alexa set timer for 10 minutes for the
 cookies. The kids are right. Exactly. Exactly. So again, I think they're valuable. I think they
 will be valuable more so in the future. But once we figure out all of the connects and works going
 back to the connectivity, the funny thing is if you get into like a 15 or 14 year old BMW,
 they have the voice button on steering wheel like 19 or 2004. Yep. The voice buttons there.
 Yeah, it's success. But like, right. It was there. We were talking about voice.
 They wasn't internet connected. I get all that. It's almost going to DM me invariably and go,
 well, you know, it wasn't really connected. Right. You know, shit, Sherlock. Just let it to me.
 I think they're like, but like, yeah, but it's like, we were talking voice for 20 years. It's like,
 and then now it is all under it connected. And yes, I do some things to voice, but I'm not
 voice searching internet. Right at all. Right. And I feel like I am on, I may not be on the
 compared to my friends. I'm on the cutting edge, you know, right? So it's like, I don't know.
 I can tell you in the past week, I've used it three times once to listen to songs for my daughters
 twice for a timer. Yeah. And the third time is to say, hey, Siri, who is this or what is this song?
 Yeah. And that's it. So again, but you haven't gone, hey, Siri, internet look up,
 uh, how to play monopoly or whatever, you know, like whatever we go, or it's going to be some like
 random Google search, like how many miles this is sent away from whatever planet I want to look at.
 And they've been talking about like, I don't go, hey, Amazon order five rolls of toilet paper.
 No, they've been saying that's going to happen too. Right. Now I'm not doing that. Not doing that,
 either. Not yet. Right. I mean, it will out maybe and look back. But again, who knows, we might
 use it for the metaverse and be like, yeah, order four or five rolls of toilet paper for my
 $650,000 yacht that I just bought on the metaverse. Yeah.
 Yeah. I just was doing to a dark place.
 Literally, figuratively of the metaverse. What do we do there? Joe and I joked about
 getting catfish in the dating metaverse. How will you know? You'll never know. We don't ever know.
 It's features ahead of us. Don't make believe anyway. Right. Uh, cool. I do have a couple more.
 I do think LinkedIn's taking shape as a platform that's beyond job seekers, job hunters,
 and people looking for jobs. I mean, that's been happening the last few years with content.
 But creator mode has come out. You've got live events. You've got short form videos supposed
 launching any day. You've got video I am back to video messaging. I do think it's rounding into
 a broader platform for content, for influencers, um, for, I don't know, a hub of a lot more than
 just selling in jobs. Yeah. It's becoming a platform of valuable information. Yes.
 And it's funny. We were actually talking about this before starting recording. And
 one of our creative director, he said, you know, nobody has subscriptions to add
 week or at age, like the physical copies and our other creative director said, because I see all
 of that on LinkedIn, like all of that information on LinkedIn. Um, and I think that's at least for,
 for my age, we did use it for jobs. And now it's become more curated. Right. Curated content.
 Be that we can look up whatever we want to look up. And it's professional. It's business minded.
 So it's not the wild wild west like TikTok, but also it's valuable. So that's right. And so I think
 you're going to see, it's going to be interesting, um, you know, with virtual events and stuff like
 that, you know, with live events, um, on LinkedIn, it's going to be big. And I think, you know, as much
 as, you know, I did, I was trying not to say the word COVID on this, but like, you know, our news
 cycle just scares the shit out of us, I guess. So with again, not seemingly never going away, um,
 I, you know, I think we're going to be in a hybrid world again in 22 with events, uh, because
 until I think it's completely out of the news, even if we just learned to live with it on some
 level, uh, I just don't think we're going to have every single trade show that we had in 2019.
 Right. You know, I agree with that 100%. And I think that's just smart strategy to take
 COVID or not. I agree. You have to become a hybrid. You can't rely on your brick and mortar store
 or your physical trade show because that's just not the world we're living in anymore. It's not
 even efficient. Right. I mean, you know, it's just unnecessary. Right. From a cost standpoint,
 I still believe in that human interaction. Yep. But not for everything. Right. And you shouldn't
 just because you did have five physical trade shows in 2019 pre-COVID, I don't know that that
 Genie needs to go back in the bottle. I think you can be more efficient with the hybrid approach. You
 might have, you know, two, especially once you've COVID finally settles down completely or whatever
 that looks like, you know, two in person and three virtual, but they're all hybrid. You have both
 experiences. Right. So you can draw a broader crowd. Yep. And I would be at those two in person
 ones that would be collecting in people already are first person data left and right. That would
 be kind of my goal for that is to and then use the hybrids as, hey, here's my captivated audience.
 And the great thing about hybrid is you naturally collect the audience because people
 with opt-in, you get email addresses no matter what. Yep. You still have to physically get that
 once you get to the trade chain. 100%. It's just kind of the hardest part sometimes. No matter how
 many Frisbee's you give away. My last thing on my list is, you know, what I'm calling back to
 the past is, you know, I get on the sub box a lot. It's kind of like one of those things. I'm a long
 term guy in a short term world. And, you know, I believe in playing the long game as it relates
 to brand and other things like that. But I think also the world that we live in and the nature of
 where, you know, we talked about with the ad targeting not being like again, five years ago,
 you could, I mean, with the data, lack of data privacy and everything else, Facebook ads was easy.
 I mean, like, it was like, you know, ROA was like a snap of a fingers. If you had a decent
 product, I'm not saying if you had trash or something, but like compared to what it is now. Right.
 And so in a world where data privacy is more secure, it's a little harder to get to the absolute
 bottom of the funnel of every one. And even that's that universe is smaller than it needs to be.
 Right. You've got to play the brand game where you've got to raise awareness and have a drumbeat
 of getting people to know and understand your brand. Because if you're not known and your
 people buy familiarity, this is why you have reach and frequency in media. You have to have reach
 which is the size of the audience that you get to, the number of people that you hit and frequency
 the amount of messages that you hit. And you've got to have that drumbeat happening more important
 now than ever, especially with the just every other day, twenty hundred e-commerce businesses popping
 up. I mean, you have to have some type of brand presence and familiarity because you can't just
 go to the bottom of the funnel. If you have no awareness, unless you're selling truly a
 differentiated one of one product, right. But if you're selling a t-shirt or necklace or
 a fabric or whatever and there's a lot of other category players, you've got to stand out with
 your brand and have built some type of drumbeat familiarity and awareness in either your purpose
 or your perspective or whatever your brand stands for. There's got to be some familiarity there.
 And I think there's, it's just vitally important and gets lost in the sauce today.
 Right. Yeah, I think one example of that for me personally is liquid IV. I saw it in Costco,
 went home, researched it, and then saw an ad for it on Facebook and finally bought it. But between
 those three, I would say it took probably about a month. And so clearly they're geotargeting
 Costco's or something because I got an ad for it after going, well, either way, weeds.
 ADD, I do have ADD by the way. But I think that's, I think you're 100% right. I think it is a
 brand building. It is a storytelling. People are people that want to, we're skeptical by nature.
 Yep. So if I see an ad of something that I've never heard of or never researched or never
 did anything, I'm not clicking on it. And I'm sure it's hell not buying it. Like, let me figure out
 on my own what you are, who you are, and then show me your product. Yeah. It's an average of
 seven to 10 impressions. Right. Before you consider buying. Right. Not necessarily before you buy.
 Right. And so one ad at one moment doesn't make a sale. Right. And then you know, we work with
 clients and that's hard to get across them. And you know, we know we're in it for either in it
 to sell stuff. We get it. But you don't just turn that motor on. You've got to build. And I still
 believe, you know, I think you might title park to the phone all differently. It's still just true.
 Yep. You know, there's still some level of awareness that you have to build. Right. That builds
 towards intent, ultimately to consideration and then purchase. Right. And you don't just go to
 purchase unless you got them at the zero moment of truth. Right. I needed that pack of gum. And
 I'm at the, I'm at the checkout line. And I'm like, damn, I've been going to these meetings. I've
 been wondering about my breast thinking about that pack of gum. Right. And it's that exact zero
 moment of truth. Right. Or you know, I've been really wanting a new Clemson t-shirt to support my
 fandom. And damn it. They got me right there on the Clemson forums website. Okay. You know,
 that happens. But probably don't want that t-shirt this year. Yeah. I don't know. Have a fan thick
 thick and thin brother. Go dogs. Oh, sorry. You're here. You have your year. Well, hey,
 beat BAM on Saturday. Oh god. And by the time you're anyone's listening to this, you're already
 have known. And we'll see if, uh, and the dogs get over the hump. They think if you can't get over
 the hump this year, you're not going to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So do whatever. But yeah, I mean, yeah,
 I mean, yeah, I mean, even go back to like the old traditional ways, like the QVCs of the world.
 That's why they brought the owner on the founders of the company to it might have tried to shorten
 that length a little bit, but to tell the story. Yep. I mean, they're not just having a product on
 here, not telling you what it does or why you need it. Or you have to go back to the beginning.
 You have to entertain. You have to educate all day long. But QVC had their whole
 funnel built into the 30 minute show. Right. You got on the show. You meet the first 30 minutes
 are we've got 200 of these to sell. So they set up scarcity immediately. Yeah. And then,
 you know, whoever's watching is watching here. Meet the founder who's going to talk about it. You
 know, Jim, you know, I put a lot of heart and soul into this soap. You know, we've got a goat farm.
 And, you know, they do all that and you see the story. And they're like, we only got 200 bars to
 sell today, Jim. Right. But oh, look now. So they built the entire funnel right there. You got
 to know the brand. You got to understand it. But not every company is that way. Not every ad could
 carry that. Right. Unless you're doing live selling. Right. We talked about. But, you know, it's like
 that was it's it's its own like funnel that covers a lot of bases. You get 30 minutes of
 impression. They're not three seconds. Right. And I think at the end of the day, we can talk about
 the new 2022 2022. Yeah. Trends. But at the end of the day, it's the old is new again. It's
 the same old human emotion, connection, storytelling, brand building. It might be different tactics.
 It might be newer tactics. But the principle stays the same. I mean, that's that's that's the
 end of it for me is like we can be talking in 2032, 52. Those principles are always going to be
 the same. Yep. 100%. Not every every product is going to be a viral TikTok product, which
 everybody wants it to be. But then what it be viral. And so. And you know, it large brands can
 sustain under investment because of the awareness they've built over time. Yep. If you're a small
 to medium brand, you have to over invest in branding and awareness. Yep. When to play the long
 game. Yeah. Yeah. You can throw sales up and you can do short term behaviors and those things,
 but that it doesn't last. Right. Short term doesn't last. Right. And so you've got to be ready to play
 the long game and do the fundamental things that have mattered because I think we had this little
 I don't know how long it was this this universe from 2010 to 2018, 19. You had this moment in time
 where you could kind of play the digital marketing game and short circuit some of that. Yep. But
 both before that and now we're back to the past of you got to play the long game to kind of have
 sustainability. Yeah. Absolutely. I agree with that 100%. And again, that's how it's always going to be.
 You never hear me say that you should never not build your brand. And you're going to have these
 organic moments. Right. You're going to have these moments if you could be a first mover on TikTok.
 Yep. You know, and you could just get a skyrocket. You know, but like some of those first
 movies on skyrocket, they skyrocket for eight months. Right. And then they fizzle. Yep.
 You know, they runs out and maybe they made two million dollars and they can, you know, they did
 well enough if they're just a small individual person. But, you know, a brand can ride a rocket
 chip for six months, but that's not going to sustain you forever. Nope. And trying to rekindle
 that moment in time is a fleeting exercise. Right. Yeah. It one way or another, you're going to have
 to play the game of long-term branding. Mm-hmm. Always, always. Yeah. It's the name of the game,
 for sure. Cool, man. Any final thoughts? No, I'm interested to see what 2022 brings. Yeah.
 I think they keep, like I said, I think the chaos is going to. I probably am wrong on that,
 but I think it's going to calm down a little bit. Yeah. I hope so. I love so. I appreciate you.
 Absolutely. I appreciate you. Cool, guys. We really appreciate you listening today. You know,
 where to find us. We're at theradcast.com. Learn about all of this search 2022 trends. You'll find
 all the content today. And hey, if you're looking for an incredible mastermind, I want you to go check
 out the radical formula dot com. Any Murphy and I are going to do brain and brand engineering,
 a mastermind with the mastermind kicking off here the next few weeks. Go check that out.
 Get signed up for our email newsletter to learn more. We appreciate everyone. I'm Ryan
 off from all platforms. We'll see you next time on theradcast.