Weekly News Update: Data Companies Rewarding Shoppers For Personal Data; Instagram Shopping Catalog For Viral Products; Pepsi Fighting Coke’s Dominance At Burger Chains; Study: 71% Of Consumers Tire Of Empty Promises, Spurring ‘Age Of Cynicism’

 It has to start somewhere. It has to start some time. What better place than here? What better time than now?
 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast.
 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's our weekly advertising
 and news segment on Friday, May 28th. It's Memorial weekend and we're ready. I'm ready for boating.
 I'm ready for hot dogs, hamburgers and sun. And I'm also ready for my partner in crime, Josh Hill.
 What's up, brother? What's up? Also looking forward to hot dogs. I guess I'm today. Hey, I'm a promoter,
 man. I'm promoting it. I'm ready. I'm ready for some sun fun and lots of none business work or
 anything otherwise. That's right. I was good. We're making it up as we go here, Josh. That's what we do.
 And glad to have Josh back in the saddle. He's our digital marketing manager here at Radical.
 I know it's been busy. Lots of new clients, lots of new work. Josh manages all of our digital media.
 He is the mad rad ad scientist. Yeah. Good to take a break. Take a little step out of the
 laboratory and get me it. We're going to get Josh a lab coat. Yeah. The rad lab needs some
 test tubes. But yeah, man, it's been a good week. Lots of new stuff going on. What's any highlights
 for you? Here is we head into a Memorial weekend. Oh, man. Got plenty of new content rolling out.
 Got been having some good fun with some dynamic content, stuff like that. Love.
 Love and the new ad tools coming out. It's been fun getting the nice adjustment to
 you know, the ever changing. Yeah. No, it's like the platforms or the mediums change like crazy.
 It's like and we do a lot of e-commerce. So yeah, to translate dynamic IE as someone's product
 interest change or things they look at serving them the content that's relevant to what they've
 already looked at. Mine. Mine. Oh, yeah. Calling that correctly. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Working
 with the robots hanging out with the algorithms. Exactly. Speaking of the robots, I'm pretty excited.
 I'm going to tease a little bit. We're getting to, you know, we've got
 cookie list data coming where going to be harder to target people. But in our ever advancing
 radical nature that we are, we're working with a data partner to be able to leverage
 some data sets to really get after in-market audiences. It's going to be pretty advanced and
 we're going to have a dashboard. There's a dashboard for everything. So just going to be called
 like rat intent. I don't know. We're going to, we're going to merchandise the hell out of it. I
 don't know. We'll make up a name. But we can get after people that are, you know, you go on
 to be relevant. But obviously to date a lot of that relevance has typically been behavioral
 or they visit your website, which is good, which is definitely the first, the biggest hand raising
 you could have. Right. But sometimes people are raising their hand. You don't know it because
 they haven't visited your website yet. So, and a lot of those signals come from searches
 and otherwise. So we're going to be able to get in-market pretty much audiences for any
 category. So pretty stoked about that. We've got a demo actually next week Josh. I'm actually
 putting it on your calendar right after this video. I'm excited for that. Yes. So demo time next
 week after we come back from Sun Fun and Buns. It's a rhyming Friday here. Yeah. The cast
 phrases don't stop. They do not stop here at Radical. But it's been a good week. A lot to new stuff.
 I have expansion with existing clients. Just seems to be a flood of activity. I feel like the
 world is kind of like antsy to move. You just kind of feel it a little bit. Don't you?
 Oh, yeah. It's exciting. You know, pandemic slowly going away and hopefully gone forever here
 in the States. I know other countries are dealing with a little bit more, but we've been blessed to
 kind of exercise the demon that has been the pandemic. So it's exciting. Hey, congratulations to
 Phil Mickelson. The 50 year old as a 40 something. That's pretty excited by this. He was the
 oldest winner of a major championship on Sunday. So I was kind of glued to my seat on Sunday
 afternoon watching Phil carry through. I know. I don't know. You're I don't know. You might be
 in the golf. I don't know. But did that hit your radar at all? It's a it tickles my radar here
 in there. I've got a lot of friends who are really close in the golf. So it doesn't I can't get away
 from it. There you go. And actually even better than this. And you know, I know you're a mean guy.
 We're both they're who don't like some good memes. Brooks Kepka and Bryce and De Shembo who are two
 of the younger stars. Brooks is pushing 30 and De Shembo is not, you know, 23 or something,
 but they're both in their 20s or almost 30. They are in a bit of a feud. They don't like one
 another. And I kind of I like that they don't like what it is. I kind of like a little zest.
 I mean, they're always too nice. Yeah. It's like golf claps all around. You know, everybody's
 really nice. But these guys don't like each other. And there was a clip of Brooks doing after the
 PJ championship doing an interview. And he was it was an unared clip where he did a big
 eye roll because Bryce and Mike walked by him or behind him in the middle of his thing. And
 a few curse words. So the memes about that. If you follow me on social media, you can look
 on my story. I'm kind of posting one about every other day. Look, they're freaking hilarious.
 These guys don't like you. And they're coming out. What's what you don't see in sports these days,
 especially in golf. These guys may not like each other, but you won't know it in public. Yeah.
 These guys are going at it on Twitter. Yeah, Bryce and like posted yesterday. It's wonderful
 that Brooks is living rent free. I'm living a rent free in Brooks mine. It's like, you
 they don't normally say this shit. Yeah, it's like, you know, they don't like each other. And they'll
 be like, there's a rumor that Tiger and Phil don't get along or something, you know, but much less
 what they're like going right. Right. I tell them on social media. It's so fun to watch. I love
 to see it. Add to the passion. That's what I love to see. Exactly. So it's been fun watching that.
 And we'll get right to the news. So our first topic of today. I don't know what you think about
 this. Just goes right down, you know, your highway for sure. So data companies. So you've got,
 I just teased it up a little bit talking about first party data and cookies going away that
 tracks you around the internet when you visit a site. But there's data companies now that are
 trying to get by this. So obviously they are being direct and honest that, hey, we would like to
 get your data. We would like some of your data. Come eat some of your data. It's like, we really like
 your data. Can we have your data? Yeah. And so they're rewarding first party data with iPods and
 trips and, you know, essentially, there's even sites where if you do all your surfing on certain
 sites, you get rewards added up because, hey, we're tracking your every move. You know it,
 but we'd like to reward you for it. I know what your thoughts about this. I mean, most of these places
 are making tons of money off of that already and doing it without paying you. So might as well
 give you a little snack here and there. A little little price. And if you're willing to give
 up your data like that, like most people are willing to give it up for free. Might as well
 get a little something for it. Hey, this is true. You know, like, uh, some reason I thought of
 hookers or something. I don't know why. I got an old joke. We'll see all like giving it up for
 free. Yeah. We're going to all time. All kinds of, hey, we're going to go into a holiday weekend
 here. And it's the radcast. So, you know, we're talking about hookers and everything else.
 Giving it up for free or getting paid for it. Yeah. So consumers rather than giving it up for free.
 Let's say giving up the milk for free. I don't know. Anyway, I digress. I agree. It's interesting,
 though. A lot of the big companies, the big three, I supposedly aren't very favorable with this.
 I think because they're, I think concerned yet another player in the market with data and other
 thing. I think it's more competition thing than maybe true concern for the consumer because,
 look, like you said, consumers have been giving it up for free and not even knowing it for, you know,
 for the average consumer, not knowing it. So at least there's an acknowledgement that it's happening.
 And you're at least giving them something back in response to it, right?
 Oh, absolutely. And I've heard of places like, I mean, people will like give discounts already,
 like product sellers will like give discounts based off like, like, for instance, like the app honey,
 like give you the discount based off of like helping you find it. I think this is like right in
 that same trail, that same train of thought. I love. Anytime I'm looking for something and I don't
 need it now, I'll like put some searches in on Instagram or the internet like Google and stuff.
 And I'll just like, all right, send me some ads. Let's see what you got out there.
 So we'd love to get some, some incentives there. Yes, yes, yes. We do like that. I, again,
 I need to see more of like how they're using it as long as they're being transparent about all
 those things. And the biggest thing for me in all this is, do we really want to get back to the
 space where I used to panic host thing all the time, but I'll change it. Like I, like, I hate
 avocados, which I don't, but let's pretend that I did. And I'm getting served to avocado ads.
 Like do we really want to get back to that space where all these ads you get, you're going to get
 served ads because all these, there's so many platforms. Yeah, if Netflix, maybe the one place
 there's a couple others, but like social media is still free. And so there's got to be ad support
 content. You really want to get back to a place of uninteresting, unrelated content. That's,
 you know, that's because we know you're not going to play pay for 99 a month for Instagram. I'm like,
 no. Yeah. And like if you keep getting stuff that doesn't, doesn't mean anything to you, like,
 you're going to, you're going to get annoyed. Exactly. And I look, I get the slippery slope of how
 this data gets used in like all sides of it, right? But it's core for how ad content is served up.
 I don't know. I'm hoping, you know, there's discussion of all these other platforms and ways,
 with which we're going to get around this. And I hope someone really smart kind of figures it out
 so that we can keep the ad content. We're going to keep it relevant because we're going to go
 ride it in market shoppers, right? But, you know, unless you're calling radical, you're going to be
 getting ads, you're going to be serving ads, people uninterested in whatever you're selling.
 So we'll see where this goes. But I like me some rewards, at least being up for, for what's
 happening. Our second one in yet another evolution of e-commerce and social shopping. It never
 ends, folks. It's never ending. Never ends. So many opportunities. So little time. Instagram
 introducing in their shopping button at the bottom. If you're in the app, you haven't noticed
 that surely you've noticed that there's a little shopping button so that you can see places and
 things and companies that you follow what they're selling in a shopping way or things that you're
 selling if you want to manage it. But there's a new within after you hit the shopping button,
 a new tab called Drops, which is the newest, greatest, trendiest products, viral products,
 if we call them that. Potentially viral. Potentially viral. I'm like, how are they another viral?
 I guess they've already been made viral or they get viral because you click on them within drops.
 A new feature called Drops, just dropped. Yes. Instagram drops are dropping. Instagram drop
 their drops. Thoughts on this one, Josh? I think it's cool. I think it really goes after those
 people who are really wanting to be the early adopters, who want to be the trendsetters.
 And I think Instagram knows that Instagram is the platform for that.
 It's literally all the people on there who are famous for the ones doing the first to have
 everything. And so why not create a space where, hey, maybe you can be the first to own this product.
 Like this just came out. Let me buy it. Let me share it with my friends.
 I went on there when I saw this launch and I started hitting it and I'm like,
 man, they must think I'm a lot cooler than I am because this is like, I'm talking the trendiest
 of trendy. It's like some out there clothes, like some necklace that, you know, I would have worn
 never. Right. No, these are, this is probably like the highest risk section because since
 this brand new stuff, you're not going to have any reviews. There's not going to be any kind of
 like proven concept that like, oh, people are actually going to wear it. And yeah, it's kind of,
 it's like that early investing, like maybe the product might tank, but hey, you're the first to have it.
 Yeah, I do think it'll be interesting to see if it leads to sales. I mean, I'm sure that it will,
 but like, I don't know how, how they exactly back to kind of cookies and everything else,
 the refinement of what's relevant to you, you know, that's gone viral or interesting or
 is it just going to be universal? I don't know. I'd like to think that it gets more relevant to
 whatever your shopping behaviors are. Yeah, I'm sure it will. I'm sure they've got plenty of
 different categories that are scanning. But the biggest thing here, people, if you're listening,
 social shopping, it was one of Josh and I's actual trends for this year, the increase in social
 shopping, you're going to see it. It's happening. All of these things are built and baked around
 the notion that people are shopping more and more through their social channels. Instagram
 has finally made it easier for you to shop within their platform. Still has a ways to go if you
 ask me, but it's gotten a lot better or is adding products and otherwise. And this is just another
 another feather in the cap of where social shopping is going. Our third topic for today. So,
 I like this, too. This is kind of down that Keptka De Chumbo. I like a little robbery in my brands.
 And, you know, Verizon AT&T, Coke and Pepsi are battling out for burger supremacy. So Pepsi's fighting
 back. Coke's always has held the big three McDonald's Burger King and Wendy's always they serve Coke.
 And Pepsi's done a little survey that says 60% of people, I'm always a little skeptical of brands
 that do their own surveys. It's barely over 60% of people would prefer a Pepsi with their burger
 over a Coke. You're going to see this campaign. You're listening to this before Memorial Weekend
 of 2021. You're probably going to see this blasted ever if you're watching any media or digital media.
 You're going to see their campaign showing that they go better with Coke in a very competitive way.
 Yeah, I think it's beautiful. I love the ads were like really funny. Yeah. It's definitely bold.
 And it's cool that it's like the Titans battling because they literally have like
 major brands kind of sort of in the images and stuff. Like you can recognize that
 that's the McDonald's bag or recognize that's the mascot. It's windy, but it doesn't show the
 full thing. And that's cool that they're using that power of the brands recognition to their own
 advantage. I don't really like Pepsi. Yeah. You know, I'm pretty honest like you're on the
 red cast about the brands I like and don't like. I hated some of Coke's drones and gimmicky stuff
 with Coke coffee and Coke energy, both of which have kind of gone to the misfits drinks section
 of your local gas station. But with that said, I'm a Coke Coke Zero's like my kryptonite. You know,
 I should say it's my I don't know if I kryptonite in that it weakens me to my knees. I always won't
 want even though it's not the greatest thing for me. Right. But with that said, I love the competition.
 I love the challenger brands. Yeah. You know, kind of going after the top and like, look,
 what do you have to lose? Like, you know, like go at it. That's a great effort. I love the sea.
 I love the approach, but I'm kind of in the same boat. It's I'm if it's going to be a float,
 it's going to be a Coke float. It's going to be a Roman Coke. It's going to be. But I like it for
 the taste. Some people will say, Hey, I don't really know the difference, but I like Coke as a brand.
 I go in there and I'm like, I'm like literally looking on the wall to see, you know,
 what's on the Coke? I think it's a Coke or Pepsi's place. And I'm like, I'm literally like
 disappointed because it's even it's like the sweet of drinks, the sweet of all the drinks,
 like my kids like Dr. Pepper, which I think may all on either depending. I don't know. But like,
 it just seems like whatever comes with the Pepsi drinks, yeah, isn't as good with not only just
 the Coke, I think is a little bit. Right. I don't know. Yeah. Just like Coke Sprite. It's great.
 Yes. Yes. His love says Sprite versus what is it? What's it?
 Ciramis. Ciramis. Come on. Give me a Sprite all day long.
 Ciramis. You know, like it just sounds bad. Yeah. Ciramis. Yeah. There's no mist on Ciram.
 Dry and desert. You know, anyway, I digress. But I do like the campaign and you'll see it everywhere.
 So I respect the brand. I respect the approach that is prefer a Coke. Yeah.
 Especially Coke Zero. Our last topic of today. This is interesting. Not surprising. Yeah.
 A study done. This comes by way of marketing. We'll tag you on the post. If you're listening
 to this, we'll tag marketing dive is his who posted it. We'll give them credit. It's all this
 on one of their articles. We'll post it on the feed in the podcast, but to a link to it.
 But 71% of consumers are tiring of empty promises from brands,
 spurring an age of advertising cynicism. Yes. Like the no shit article of the day. Yeah.
 And they should be. Finally, they come around and realize it's just no shockingly low number of
 71%. Yes.
 Well, we heard. Yeah. But I thought that they actually thought that they believed all of them.
 Read my lips. Yeah. No. Okay. They don't.
 They've been an all seriousness. I love to know what this number was like 10 years ago.
 That would give me more of a point of reference. Yeah. I'm sure we're an age of cynicism,
 but was it really only 31% thought brands were full of shit? Yeah. Like 10 years ago. Yeah.
 Or was it 68.4? That would be a more point of reference. But you know, it's not surprising. And
 I think honestly, this is just my perspective focus group of one here. I'm not sure
 that the purpose driven marketing is open. I think it might actually be leading to even more
 cynicism because they're promoting it more. And you don't, the average person isn't seeing
 that fulfilled. Absolutely. You know, like Tom's being the one example or, and I know they're like
 the age old, you know, example, and there's others that do this and live it and breathe it in
 as a brand. But as one off campaigns, it comes off as just that a campaign. Exactly. Like why,
 why do it at all if you have a plan to stop doing it? And like there's been a lot of like,
 a lot of promises, especially over the last year of like hiring or different practices and stuff
 like that. And I'm a little falling into here like with the 71% because I've seen a lot of people
 and kind of like indie reporters go follow up with those companies like, hey, remember this promise
 they made, they didn't fall up with it. They're still making excuses or not doing anything.
 It's just don't, don't make the promise at all. Like if you're not going to do it.
 I think we're living in the age of cynicism for everything. Yeah. That's just marketing.
 Right. Definitely. Yeah. Everybody is cynical of everything. I mean, maybe our politics of our
 advertising of our food. I don't know. I think a little cynicism is good for you.
 But at the same time, there's a slippery slope, especially being in the industry,
 working with companies and wanting to help them. I think it still goes back to just stay true to
 your brand, be authentically yourself. And it's okay if sometimes you're just selling something.
 You don't have to slap on something that's going to ring hollow that might actually hurt your
 brand of the long haul more than it actually helps. Absolutely. Yeah. Staying true to your brand,
 staying like sticking to that brand guideline, that mission statement, the vision statement,
 those are there for a reason. The more you're true to yourself and just we're a company that sells
 something, that's respectful. That's what makes it useful. And like my good friend,
 Christopher Lockhead, who we had on the podcast this week, if you haven't listened,
 I'm going to do a quick pause. If you haven't listened to this week's guest episode on Tuesday,
 it was at least Christopher Lockhead, original category pirate talks about create a category,
 focus more on category creation and innovation, rather than hollow, meaningless branding.
 And I wasn't saying branding as a whole. I think there's overspin and overthought about some of
 these things that we're talking about versus innovation in product development and category development.
 Absolutely. I think that's my desert island episode. If I'm stranded with one episode of
 Radcast, it's that one. Yeah. I think it might be. I've had episodes where I feel like I've just
 laughed the whole time and it's been fun and all this, but it's getting hard to like,
 like choosing your babies, like which one you like to best. And sometimes, you know, I have
 guests on and it's like, okay, that was a good episode. We had a lot of fun. I think that would
 be fun to listen to. And then there's episodes with Christopher where I'm like, damn,
 just drop the mic like eight times, like on how many insights? You know, box of mics to just say,
 like our editing team puts the highlights together. Like he literally messes me and he's like,
 hey, man, there's like, you know, we normally do like six, eight highlight clips. He's like,
 I could probably do 30 from those episodes. Yes, you could. And yes, you will. Yeah.
 He's like, damn, he's made a lot of work for us up. Well, no, Christopher made a lot of work
 for you because he's smart as shit and he dropped a lot of knowledge. If you're in business,
 if you're in marketing, no matter what it is, but it does play into this notion that, you know,
 all this bullshit branding, it's the wrong kind of branding. I'm a brand advocate brand
 and evangelist even, but the wrong kind of hollow branding is is doing you no favors. Yeah,
 exactly. I think that's it for this week, Josh. Any final words, anything that, you know,
 you saw this week that we didn't, you know, a TikTok majesty.
 There's too much on TikTok. I say, just go get out there. If you haven't gotten on TikTok yet,
 you're way behind. Yeah, go hang out. It's so much fun. It is fun. We're, we had new intern start.
 They're doing a great job. We're about three weeks, two or three weeks in. Yeah, they're killing it.
 Yeah, the rad ship, not an internship. It's a rad ship. Oh, yeah. We appreciate them. And I
 appreciate you. Appreciate you. Hey, guys, we really appreciate everyone listening. You know,
 we're to learn more of the radcast.com, all the content, all the highlights, all of yours truly
 talking about marketing and everything in between. You can find us at v.rad.cast on Instagram.
 And I'm always at Ryan Allford anywhere, everywhere on the internet on Instagram. TikTok.
 We'll see you have a great weekend. If it's more weekend, no matter wherever, however,
 whenever you are, we love you. See you next time. Radcast.