The Week of July 21, 2023 Marketing and Business News: Coca-Cola Expands Coke AI Studio Immersive Experience

 You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast, if it's radical, we
 cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition
 of the Radcast. It's Friday, July 21st, 20, 23, at least for us. We don't know where you
 are or how you are, but hopefully doing fantastic. We've got our weekly business and marketing news
 and just everything you need to know. I'm joined by my good friend and my co-founder of
 VK Chris Hansen's joining me today on the Radcast. What's up brother? Happy to be here
 feeling the Friday energy. I love it. Hey, Friday vibes, hashtag Friday vibes. You know, we did
 one, I did one monologue version last week. Official day of AK. Yeah, exact. Hey, it is Friday.
 Every day is a VK at VK. But yeah, I did one monologue episode. Then I'm like, Chris, join me now.
 I gave him like an hour notice, but that's what a good friend is. One hour to do. I'm in
 sauna. I'm there. Let me get this one out of me and I'll be there, baby. Exactly. Yes, it's our
 weekly marketing news and Chris, I don't know if you saw this. I'm not a big lottery guy, but
 I'm neither. I think of the only time I play the lottery is so there's two things. I like to give
 people that are like not really my good friends, but someone that maybe I need to give a card or
 birthday gift to. I like to put scratch off cards as like a, as a kind of a cool set of like 20 bucks
 in a card, throw some scratch offs and like a birthday card or something. So I like to do that.
 And occasionally we'll go to the gas station. If I've got like cash that's random in my pocket,
 like I got a random $15 or something and my kids are in the car. I'll buy I'll bring out like
 15 scratch offs so they can like get a kick out of it and look, just so you know,
 it's listening with the with the lottery commission. Let's scratch them. They're just for me.
 They're using them for child labor. Just for I would collect the winnings for them,
 but I don't really do the lottery, but the power ball is up to 900 million. It's insane.
 It's a big number. It is a big number. It wasn't funny to me.
 So everyone scrambles like when he gets up there, right?
 900,000,000 billion. Yeah. Because it wasn't enough when it was 100.
 What is 100 million? That's I'm not playing. They're like, honey. I'm not getting off the couch
 to go to the gas station for a hundred mill. It needs to be closer to a bill for me to get off.
 trailer like hanging out like 100.000. That's hitting me off the couch. But 900 mill gets my attention.
 I'm like, why is it that? It's like, you know, it was a million dollars. It's game changing for
 most people. Yeah, absolutely. But I'm only playing when it gets to 900 million. But there is
 a one in two and a nine two million chance that you'll want Chris. So you gotta get out there.
 I need to go buy one today then. One in two hundred ninety two million chance of winning.
 That's almost the entire that's what like basically the population of the United States.
 Essentially. Yeah, I think so. Like essentially, it was like 360 million or something in the US.
 So one and you got a one in the entire population chance of winning. But as my good friend,
 Jim Carey said in Dumb and Dumber, you're saying there's a chance of a guy like you and a girl
 like me getting together. I'll say one and a million. I love that movie. It's a classic. It is. But
 so here's some details for those of you listening. I know you're wanting to get out there and play
 the power ball. If you choose, if you win, you have two options. You could choose the lump sum,
 which is 465.1 million. Check written at one time. Or you get 30 years of annual payments
 that are worth an estimated nine hundred million dollars before taxes. So you get over 30 years,
 you get the whole nine hundred million or you get four hundred sixty five million at once. Which one
 are you taking there, Chris? Four sixty five all at once or nine hundred over 30 years.
 I'm taking nine hundred over 30 years. Ah, okay. You want the whole ship, kitten,
 caboodle. It's better from a tax perspective because if you take the lump sum, you're getting
 hit over the head with a hundred and twenty five million dollar tax bill day one. So you really take
 home about three forty. Yeah, other way to now. Waited out. I want the long term game plan. Give me
 that 30 year comfort. I don't you don't like what are you going to do with that much upfront?
 Yeah, because what is it? 30 million a year. So because 30 times 30 is not a hundred
 millions, that right? Because 30 times. I think that's right. So you get 30 million year for 30 years.
 You can live a great life on 30 million a year. The only problem is, and as someone that's
 gotten their life, maybe more in order than me, you can take that quitting bad habits and you're
 saying, as someone that still drinks a little bit, I'm a little worried if I had that much more
 money and thus free time that I hope that my bad habits wouldn't increase. And I just mean
 going to more part of the things that decrease my lifetime. So thus, am I going to live 30 more years?
 That would that was what would come through my mind is, okay, play as your kids to fair concern.
 You do see that happen all the time. Yeah, when people get that kind of windfall, I've got,
 look, I do okay. You do it. We do okay. And I guess I can do it. I want now, but it's a little,
 it's those extra numbers do kind of change things a little bit for anyone. You can do whatever you want.
 You can do whatever you want whenever you want. And I don't know, with kids and family,
 I think I'd stay on the rails, but I don't know. I just feel like the cold when I would travel more,
 we'd hang out. I started to be certain lifestyle things that at least in the short term might be,
 I don't know, we're partying and drinking or something, like just socially. You'd probably be
 drinking more fine wine on the Omophie coast. Exactly. On a yacht. Exactly. And so maybe I'd
 all set it because I did have, we all have coaches and certain things, but I'd have probably
 like LeBron James style. The one coach all the time with you, you pay him like a million dollars
 something to just keeping you in shape and like working off all your bad habits,
 giving you like IV drips every morning to count the alcohol consumption, keeping you steady,
 which exactly look a Hollywood. They have these type of people everywhere. Yeah. I think I'd take
 the 465, try to all set as much of the taxes as possible. And maybe start investing in thinking
 that I could double it quicker than the 30 years. Put in some Bitcoin. Yeah. Put it in. I've heard
 there's like a, a good trader called like FX or something. Yeah. Great trading platform.
 Yeah. Super. Can I bail him out of a jail and maybe he can help me invest it?
 So last week I talked about threads from Instagram and told people to thread lightly. I think people
 need to be testing the waters, but thread lightly, Chris. Thread lightly.
 Okay. They just come to you so naturally. It was like the first thing I thought to them like,
 okay, how do I need to tell people that they should try threads, but not go too heavy?
 Thread lightly. So anyway, anyway, you can check out my full review on YouTube. I did a 10 minute
 kind of spiel on it. And all I'm saying is I don't think it's gonna be a core platform.
 I think it's great. It's interesting, but it's the exact copy of Twitter. But I think you got
 a mismatch of audiences. And sure enough, the data has come out. Engagement dropped to 50%
 since it's a peak. I think yes, they got to 100 million users fast, but it's because Instagram made
 it super easy for you to transition. And I think it'll be one of those that people dabble in.
 But I think if you're a business and you want to gain customers and you want to do business,
 there's so many other opportunities on other platforms that I always wouldn't throw the bank
 at threads. And sure enough, the data kind of supports it. So I don't know what your experience
 has been on it, Chris. I think I've posted two things on it. It's definitely a softer environment
 than Twitter. Yeah, as far as more. But I've noticed people using it like they're still
 posting their Instagram picture, but on threads with essentially their caption. So I'm like,
 you're just double posting. Yeah. In a way, I'm trying to use it for my mind kind of works in
 headlines and piffy statements. So if I think of something, I try to just write it there
 and as a medium and I'm a pretty good engagement. But I'm a reposter. I don't do a lot of I just
 repost things that resonate with me. Same as I just don't think it's going to be a business driving
 until they get some ad components. You can't even really look at your total numbers like your
 total analytics. Yeah, you could see some of the basic engagement of like likes and comments,
 but you can't look at the entire picture. So until all that gets settled, I can't take it too
 seriously as a business driving platform. I just treat it as like your thing else. It's another
 place to get a little more awareness, maybe a user base. I still get I get I've done nothing on
 the platform and I'm approaching like 10,000 followers. Like I but I think it's mainly just people
 turning over from the Instagram platform in general. So we'll see continue to tread lightly
 my friends and the data suggests that you should as well. I thought this was pretty cool. Chris,
 I've always wanted to make my own song, even though I can't I can play like guitar and stuff,
 but I am not a good enough musician. But now Coke is doing this interactive thing at concerts
 and different activities and places where they do activations where you can essentially make your
 own song, make your own cover out album, make all this stuff. It's getting a little scary with
 generative AI, how easy it is to mimic. Yeah, I guess first of beats together and go, I want to sound
 like Post Malone and a song about breaking up. I'm intrigued by it. Like we just said, does it
 use my voice as using someone else's voice? I don't know how I feel about it. It's a little too
 robotic for me, I think. But what's the auto tune? Yeah, within the studio that makes everybody's
 voice sound okay. They just add auto tune. Could they could they take like my voice right now talking
 and I'm not a good singer. I can carry a tune at church or something, but it's not great. But
 sneaking at the background chorus and looking at AI combined with like auto tune, turn me in this
 sound into a good singing voice. I don't know. Scary. I've got a buddy who did a whole album with AI
 and I didn't know it initially. I learned it later and it sounds good. But I'm like, I don't know,
 I'm one of these people like your soul resonates through music. So how much
 and how much variation is going to come with this AI? Is everything going to sound similar? How
 much differentiation can actually be? But that's my problem with pop music now. Yeah, a lot of the
 rap beats especially and I like rap and I like hip hop. But the beats, certain things are all
 starting to sound same. It's all this kind of melodrama, get underneath, boom, dude, dude,
 oh, I don't know. And so I don't I think we need originality. Exactly. We're losing
 originality and individuality. Yeah. So I like it from an activation standpoint for coke
 because it's fun and they can do it and people can kind of it's something to bring alive and
 experience at a show and make people feel like a star. But the broader side of like music creation,
 it's a little I don't know. I can see it maybe inspiring people to pay maybe I want to pursue
 something like this. Yeah. But to make it too easy where everyone can do it and what is the value
 in the people that actually have real talent? I think some of the imperfection of like live shows
 is and I even like what you hear is imperfection. But more of the improv improvisation is what make
 live shows so great. You hear a little bit of a different sound than maybe the CD I'm going
 updating myself or the streaming version. And I think that's what people had to go to live
 music for to hear and see how it's performed live. So I think they'll always be an appreciation of
 that. It's just the studios. Very interactive marketing. Yes. Cool. Yep. A magic of coke.
 Are you a coke or Pepsi guy? I'm a coke guy. Yeah. I'll have a Pepsi, but I'm choosing coke.
 Yeah. I'm a brand stop coke all the way. Pepsi's marketing is really good. And I know the CEO
 really wouldn't see the marketing's great. But it's kind of like Burger King. I think Burger King's
 marketing is pretty great too. But like my kids aren't asking for Burger King. And they're not asking for
 Pepsi. Yeah. They're going. Daddy, we need some don'ts for us. And I'm like, no shit you do.
 Yeah. So is that it was some Heinz ketchup. No hunts on that shit. No.
 But yeah, coke zeros become it was really a bad invention for me because I stopped
 drinking coke because I didn't want 250 calories on every drink. And I coke was always had that
 aspartame taste to it. Coke zero man was this like the greatest invention and the worst invention ever.
 I bought a two liter of coke classic last night. Probably made it as much as we love to talk about
 health and wellness too. I get that craving. Oh yeah, the original formula. There you go. Speaking
 of original form to those, if you go to roll off the pain.com, Chris Knight of the first class
 products here. It's called vacay, official sponsor of the radcast and in all full transparency
 the company we own. But I will say this. I said it. I literally have old man tennis elbow going on.
 And I had a bad rest. It's fixed. But now I'm at 10 a.m. tennis elbow started up and was hurting
 after going to the gym this morning, rolled it on. It was feeling cool. As I came into the office
 and you know what? Don't feel the pain anymore, Chris. It's gone for that joint baby. It works.
 It's legit. CBD stuff is legit. It feels cooling, the cooling effect. But then 20, 30 minutes later,
 it's like it really does roll the pain off. Yeah. I love it. So yes, go check out roll off the
 pain.com. You'll get that CBD effect. And look, let's check an icy hot. He did take a walk.
 It doesn't work. I've used all of it. You need to go roll off the pain.com. Get the stuff that
 really works. You roll it on. Pain falls off eventually. And you know what? Has healing properties
 my doctor even said so I couldn't believe it. I was like, really? He's yes. CBD has healing
 properties that actually tackle not only the pain, but over time if you keep using it, soaking
 into the muscles and the joints has healing properties. And it's been pretty much cured my wrist.
 And now being the actor that inflammation. I know. That's what it is. I don't even know what
 tennis elbow is. But that's what it means either. I've heard it from my whole life. I just don't
 need your elbow hurts. You don't want it. It's like right on the outside of your head. I don't know
 what it is, but I know I don't want it. I know. You don't want it either. If you've got tennis
 elbow store muscles or you know what? I've been using one of my temples too for headache. Yeah.
 You do my neck. I don't think I feel I'm hitting the roll on the temples. Go to roll off the pain.com
 or you can visit our full product line. It take a vacay. That's VA. I see why the only way to spell
 vacay. Take a vacay.com. Chris, we had some big and a big country start on this week on the
 red cast. Spencer Krandel. He's got the hottest song of the summer. Didn't do out this week
 along with Cooper Allen. Working with Cooper. Cooper. If you're listening and coming after you,
 baby, I want you on the show. Spencer's working on that. But they did a little duo. It's called
 Didn't do. It's a little jam. It's fun for the summer. But Spencer was awesome. It's good vibe.
 And he's a great guy. Very transparent, very open about his. He talked to Ivan Astin. I was like,
 how the hell is country? You're on the roll time. How are you not drinking party in every night?
 He's how was he quit drinking six years ago? It's like I couldn't keep up. And he's a younger guy. He's
 probably 30, maybe 32. He had to quit early. He's dude. I wouldn't survive in the business. He's
 like there's guys that do it. They're like somehow pull it off and it didn't seem to affect them. But
 he was transparent about that and the music business being an independent artist. So that was a really
 interesting look behind the country music business with Spencer Krandel. Got a lot of songs. So
 you may not know his first name. But when soon as you start to go to Apple music, you'll play them.
 And if you listen to any country music, you'll go, okay, I know that song. Yeah, I heard it like
 on the radio. Next week, Jeff Duden CEO of Homefront Brands and host of the Homefront podcast.
 Jeff's a great guy. And you're going to enjoy him. He's got a great podcast himself. And he is
 crushing it in a lot of different ways. Really progressive CEO. So you'll enjoy that episode. Next
 Tuesday, got some social media news here. So TikTok is coming out with a musing streaming service.
 Makes sense to me. It seems like a natural kind of like next step, right?
 Absolutely. TikTok is driving so much music right now with the viral trends. I almost think that's
 the one song that top 10, I would say every week is from going viral on TikTok. Yeah, exactly.
 And so much. All these guys, like the guys of this mentor Spencer and Cooper out like,
 these guys have half a million followers on TikTok. They get to test out music.
 And once they're using it, it's crazy. Like you can use it different ways for different business
 and different things. Like so for them to have their own music, like streaming service,
 they ties into the app. It's like a no brainer. So it makes a lot of sense. It's launched in a
 couple of other countries. I hadn't lost to the US first. I think they're starting and it looks
 like Australia, Mexico and Singapore. So all of our Singapore listeners, you can get it now.
 So there you go. We actually are in the top 100 in Singapore. I think worldwide, baby.
 You've never been, but I heard amazing things very clean. Yes. I'm going to go on like an
 Asian tour or something. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let me start. When we get VK, I count
 side of the US. Take a VK, take it Asian VK. We'll do it. So Twitter, according to Elon Musk,
 is going to support long form articles with mixed media, surviving its long form content feature
 called Twitter notes with support for mixed media such as photos, videos, gifs, and tweets,
 or gifs, depending on where you fall in that camp. That's a very controversial subject.
 The company first launched Twitter notes in June of last year and it was recently rebranded
 its articles. Elon Musk has confirmed the news and response to a user's tweet regarding the
 renaming of the project feature could help retain writers who want more distribution for articles
 that would be otherwise posted on their blogs or newsletters. So Musk has raised the
 character limit to 4,000 and 10,000 for 20 Twitter blue subscribers to enable users to post longer
 messages. There you have it. You blog writer. You're written. You're written a blog. I don't
 think I've ever written a blog, but I do think there's a lot less people watching the news now
 and mainstream media and whatnot. So I think this is a great way to give independent journalists
 a platform to showcase. We need that. We need real journalism. We don't look at Tucker Carlson,
 what's he's doing? He says, leave Fox, 100 billion viewers with him and Andrew Tate or whatever,
 like crazy numbers. You want to set interviews? Which one? Tucker and your date? Yeah, absolutely.
 Yeah, great interview. I think Tucker obviously has probably been the biggest thing that's shown like,
 you don't need a major network to do journalism, your thing. But I just think it would be great to
 have more independent journalists. And there's a lot that I follow, but it's obviously very limited
 in what was more picture reporting and little updates of things. But yeah, I don't know how many
 people are reading the newspapers anymore or subscribed. Not many. No, it's all online. The paper,
 the true paper and my first one of my first jobs is like literally newspaper ads and how big
 they were back early 2000s and how that industry is just like about almost dried up completely.
 Because everything's online. But I do think it's smart for us to continue to add feature sets,
 because if you've got threads breathing down your neck supposedly, you need, and this is my
 biggest complaint with threads. There's no, they needed to come out with more or a more unique
 functionality, something that separated it from Twitter from day one instead of just being the
 exact same thing, at least the core phone and even less functionality than Twitter today.
 And so they can't bog it down from day one, but at least something to differentiate it. So I think
 Musk number one needs to get a little bit out of the way and let his CEO run the company. I think
 he needs to do what he does best. And but then I do think having features that separate it and
 giving journalists a reason to stay on the platform was smart. So we'll see where that goes.
 Meta slash Facebook is release Alama to which is essentially text generated like suggestions.
 It's similar to chat GPT. It's Facebook's version that integrates so that it gives you text
 recommendations for me captions or other things. So Alama to and Lama to chat like wow,
 what do these names come from? I don't know. I don't get like a good visual, perfect visual.
 No, it's a very awkward name. Yeah. Meta Lama. I met Alama. It doesn't roll off the tongue very well.
 So human aviators find it roughly as helpful as chat GPT. Safety layers have been implemented
 to prevent potentially harmful outcomes. Have you best run with chat GPT and it completely
 tells you something just totally false. I have not, but I've seen people posting stuff or asking
 questions and then chat GPT being like, we're ethical and we cannot entertain. Does it
 ethically want to answer the question? Yeah. So everybody's got the version of and I'll tell people
 that use these things is it's a good starter. It's good for like research and starting point,
 but then you need to add it with your own point of view. So that you don't because otherwise,
 you're going to start to see the same text threads with like exactly the same stuff because if
 it's been something out for you of a question you've asked, somebody else is going to post that same
 shit and start sounding the same. I used to want to sound like yourself. I definitely used it for
 some stuff and I'm like, I do not talk like this. Yeah, this is not mine. Yeah. Like it sounds like
 a 19th century Victorian speech and I'm like, but like you said, great starting point gives you
 a foundation you can play with. So I still need to dive deeper into it.
 The we'll close out today, Chris, with some really important social holidays we want to make
 people aware of. These are just the most important ones. So today is National Junk Food Day.
 The 21st. Yes. National Junk Food Day. Set your little behind if you haven't planned for
 this. If you're like a junk food category brand, but I will be posting my Cheetos later.
 That might be the most American holiday I've ever heard of. Yeah. What's your go-to junk food?
 Tandy. Yeah. Hareboats. Twin snakes and butterflies with very specific. Yeah. We're talking chips.
 Cheetos are baked lays, but you know, I got to speak to you. Oh, yeah. National Day of the Cowboys
 tomorrow along with National hammock day. So it spurs up and getting that hammock.
 I'm going to say those two go together. I just saw my cowboy hats from Texas. Maybe I'll start
 rocking those down on Miami tomorrow. That might go over real well. Yeah. You don't feel
 out of cowboy hats here in Miami. No, not a whole lot. That's not a pated background there in
 his background. That is Miyami in the background where Chris is at today. Sunday, gorgeous grandma day.
 That's a celebrate your grandmother. Yep. And it's parents day. So I'm going to celebrate
 myself on Sunday. They combined parents and grandparents day. I don't know. This is National
 Parents Day on my show notes here. So the team makes it fit me. Send my mom's flowers and
 national tequila day is Monday, the 24th. Are you a tequila guy? I'm an equal opportunity.
 You don't discriminate. I don't discriminate. Like I don't drink anything like daily or
 even weekly necessarily. I do like a crown vanilla with a cherry coke. That's a go-to in the summer.
 But pretty tasty. Which is tequila go-to. That's Amiga's. Yeah. Yeah.
 George Clooney's some love. He's hurting so bad. I want to make sure I support him.
 Yeah, man. He has his bills. I know. I wouldn't want him to not carry forward.
 National tequila day on Monday. And finally, we Tuesday the 25th is National Wine and Cheese Day.
 So there you go. It's a lot of holidays coming up. I do use that. I do go with my kids. Like,
 sir, yeah, you want to get some cheese with that wine? Use that a lot when they're bitching
 about like stupid shit. I'm like, what's the cheese with that wine? That jokes galore.
 There's the social holidays that you just can't miss. I think that's hey, it's summertime news.
 News is light here in the summer, Chris. There's nothing too heavy really going on.
 It's good. That's what summer's for. Keep it light. When like the trending article the
 week is like the Taco Bell menu. There's not like major. The Gordita crunch is back.
 Yeah, what are they bringing back? Is it like a chicken crunchy taco or something? I don't know.
 It's like that. They brought back to Mexican pizza. And so I'm waiting for the boss takes your
 loop. But it come back. That was my go. Oh, that was a go to. Yeah, that knee on Trump's Supreme.
 Exactly. Well, I think that's all for us today. You know, we're to find us the radcast.com search
 for threads. You'll find my opinion on that search for Taco Bell. You'll find our parting shots on
 all the Taco news and all. Hey, go buy yourself a powerball ticket. 900 million. Now it's time. It
 was a time at 200 million, but 900 million. Now is the time, folks. Yeah. Now that trip to the
 gas station. Yes, it always goes support the company we own in our sponsor. Take a vacay.com via
 YCA Y get your best plant based wellness products. All third party tested and approved by Ryan
 offered and the radcast. And of course, Chris Hanson. We have to approve. We make them.
 Definitely appreciate it, Chris. Absolutely pleasure, man.
 For Chris Hanson, I'm Ryan Allford. We'll see you next time.