Ryan Alford [00:00:20] Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Rad Cast news update. I'm joined by my lovely co-host, Reiley Clark. 

Reiley Clark [00:00:31] Hello. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:32] Thank you. What's up, Reiley? 

Reiley Clark [00:00:34] Nothing much. This is our weekly news update. Thanksgiving edition. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:38] And hey, happy almost Thanksgiving to you. Appreciate it, but that was not rehearsed, even, you know, kind of caught off guard. We could have made, like, you know, a thing for it, but yeah, 

Reiley Clark [00:00:55] I could have. But that's OK. No, thank you. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family as well. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:59] How are you spending? You know, I know this is going to, by the way, release. We record these pre and for anyone listening devices releasing the day after Thanksgiving. So a very happy post. Thanksgiving to everyone listening. So what's your plans for Thanksgiving? 

Reiley Clark [00:01:18] I am going down to see my dad and he is in Georgia. And so I'm going down to see him and his wife and their family and everything. And we're doing Thanksgiving down there. What about you? 

Ryan Alford [00:01:30] We're around here. One of my wife's family, my dad's coming over tonight, which would be Wednesday night when we were recording the episode here. And we do a dinner with him at our place and then do it in smaller groups. With my wife's parents tomorrow. But a smaller group. I wouldn't call us the Covid fearful group. I think we live our lives and do what we do. But at the same time, being responsible like Americans can be, which is you have elderly people in your family and they probably shouldn't be in a group of 25 locked in the house. So we're not doing that. So we'll be around. And one thing I won't be doing is Black Friday shopping, but yeah, I'll be shopping online. 

Reiley Clark [00:02:22] I was going to say I'll be doing Cyber Monday.

Ryan Alford [00:02:24] I guess I'm still conditioned, you know, being in my 40s. And I know I still think it's popular. I don't think this is a generation. I think it was pretty mainstream before covid at least that you would go to the store on Black Friday and be online and all that. But we've definitely been more online Black Friday, Cyber Monday shoppers for a few years. 

Reiley Clark [00:02:46] Same, same 

Ryan Alford [00:02:47] I can't imagine getting in the line necessarily. But of any store right now, I don't know. It just sounds terrible. At some point in my life I thought I definitely did it. There were some that rush of like I'm getting this 75 inch TV for eight hundred dollars instead of twelve hundred. I'm like, oh yes. Now I think online and yeah, life in general, things aren't quite as important as they were then or things like that. 

Reiley Clark [00:03:17] Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. And a couple of things around here. I guess we're having some upcoming things happening. Gvl Hussle is next week, which is crazy. December, we could be surprised. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:33] Hey, here it is. 

Reiley Clark [00:03:34] Yeah, this is your news update. Actually, December is next week. That's your news. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:37] You've got five weeks to finish your shopping. Exactly. That’s the news 

Reiley Clark [00:03:41] that. Oh, OK. Well, put it in that perspective. This is like now we need the buzz or whatever. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:48] Whatever you were getting me. You've got five weeks left. 

Reiley Clark [00:03:53] Yeah, so that's happening next week. And again, if you're in the Greenville area, I know like more people listen to this than just the Greenville community. But if you're in Greenville and you listen to the podcast, be sure to come to Gvl Hustle. There's a link on our Facebook page. So be sure to check that out. It's twelve dollars preorder and then fifteen dollars at the door and there's going to be a food truck and alcohol is provided. It’ll be a good time.

Ryan Alford [00:04:18] It'll be tons of fun. We can do a good Q & A with myself and Tyler Harris who we started, we were also together about three or four years ago and obviously covid put a little dent in in-person gathering to really get back together. We're going to have Massen indoor outdoor stuff. So be totally safe. And, you know, we're going to network Deducible Q&A, Tyler and I do that where people are going to ask any kind of questions, whether it's marketing or business or I mean, you can ask me anything I might not know, accounting and legal, but I'll answer it. Yeah, give me a question or respond to it. But more from the business, personal growth, those kind of things. And so excited to have that next Thursday night. 

Reiley Clark [00:05:02] Yes, 6 to 9. 

Ryan Alford [00:05:03] Six to nine. So that's cool. And, business is good at Radical. We've onboarded a few new clients. We're really growing in a couple areas, textiles, fabric marketing, B2B marketing, and then in the finance sector, financial, working with a lot of finance institutions, banks, those kind of things. And then, some of our mainstays are restaurants and different stuff. But we were kind of niching down on a few things and got on at least 15 to 20 like active e-commerce or website projects going on, few wrapping up. So digital is digital goes. Well, here's Reiley with the news. 

Reiley Clark [00:05:55] OK, so articles for today, obviously, we already discussed this is kind of post Thanksgiving kind of stuff, but it's still important regardless. If you have not already at this point, make sure you are sharing your Thanksgiving fails with Pepsi, especially if you do it via TikTook or Instagram. I think they specified those two things. And if you do, then you get to have like a pre, you're like one of the first people to get the new Pepsi flavor, which is apple pie flavor, which. Apparently that's happening. 

Ryan Alford [00:06:38] I will say a couple of things that hit me, flavor development within the drink category, especially energy drinks, has been a boom, especially with things, whether it's Rain, which is made by Monster and Monster Energy Drinks coming out with stuff. But then especially just like the growth of the category has been driven by new flavors. And Bang is the fastest growing energy drink in the country. And so they've got a flavor every month. They do all there from their growth has been driven not only with a good product and great marketing, but really through that growth of flavor development. And I see this potentially this certainly strikes me as falling in that realm with maybe soft drinks, trying to pick up. There's been a bit stale with growth within just the general soft drink segment with Seltzer's and Waters and all these other things growing. So it's an interesting way to be both seasonal being apple pie, but also playing into that trend of growth of people wanting different tastes and flavors. So I like this. I also like playing off the fails, ironically enough, and maybe Good Taste has company. We do some great social campaigns in the fields for a couple of our different clients, gets great engagement. People love seeing it. There's a real following and it looks like the Fail Army. The other channels, my kids watch it all the time. We watch it. That's kind of like our guilty pleasure. We'll get together and they'll throw on. They'll be watching us watch a few fail, so we'll throw them on. And it's like the best of America's Funniest Home Videos combined with Fails and so great love how they're using all the social media channels and building awareness around it. So it's great. 

Reiley Clark [00:08:35] Our next topic is White Castle is having a special Thanksgiving recipe that you obviously use the sliders for a Thanksgiving stuffing. I don't necessarily know how I feel about this, but I know a lot of people really get family, friends back in West Virginia. They he loves letters and they always have sliders in their freezer or the White Castle sliders. And I could almost see them maybe doing this. So, Rich, if you're watching, probably I want to know if you tried this or not. But yeah, I mean, it looks interesting. It's again, it's just kind of like a Thanksgiving stuffing kind of deal, I guess. But you use the slider and I guess they have the recipe on the back of the box so you can go on their website or whatever to find it. But yeah, and this is something they're teaming up with rapper Coolio, which this brings in a whole nother thing that I know we're going to dive into and probably more next week on our podcast. As far as cross-industry influencers, celebrities, rappers coming into the space with the brand promoting the product. And this makes sense because Coolio used to have a or I think he still does, the cooking of Coolio and he had that YouTube channel. And so I think that makes sense for White Castle to then come in here. But, yeah, that's kind of where this is all going. 

Ryan Alford [00:10:04]I like innovation. I like thinking out of the box. And as much as I like thinking out of the box is not out of the box as a statement. So it's kind of overplayed innovation, using social media, using the McDonald's Travis Scott Avenue of rapper pop culture with your brand. What I don't know is that I have the guys she wants, you recognize Coolio, the name, but he's not the hippest. Unless he's done something special that I'm unaware of in my Gen X mindset. Does he have relevancy right now necessarily other than being the old school rapper? 

Reiley Clark [00:10:49] But I don't know if this is something else that White Castle is trying to do as far as playing on nostalgia, because I know not that I was alive for this, but I know thirty years ago they had the things there. They had a food Thanksgiving kind of deal they were promoting about thirty years ago. And so I don't necessarily know if they're trying to tap into, like, more of this nostalgia kind of marketing, which I know is really big anymore. And so I don't know if that's trying to be the tie in, but 

Ryan Alford [00:11:14] I wonder if I assume that <sings Voyage by Coolio> will be somehow in the campaign. I just imagine that it will. Again, I like the usage of pop culture. Are like tying it in with the brand. I like that white castles trying to do something a little different. The stuffing thing doesn't sound appealing to me personally -- the White Castle Burger, I don't like onions on my burgers. And all I think about is like, and I know, you can get without it, by the way. But it's just something about the White Castle dressing, it is just not really appealing to me personally. But again, hey, we'll see where it goes. 

Reiley Clark [00:12:04] Exactly. Next topic moving right along here. Wal-Mart is partnering up with the cash back rewards app. I hope I'm saying this right. I feel like I always picture this Ibotta .Yeah, I always mess it up. But anyway, they are teaming up to give away free Thanksgiving dinners. And I just love the initiative of obviously teaming up to try to give back to the community. It's what we did with our can drive. And I think it's just an excellent way to obviously give back so that props to them and props that campaign. And I hope it goes well. 

Ryan Alford [00:12:37] It's the one thing I don't know is like. Is this just another play like I guess when you have the scope, scale and volume that Wal-Mart does, any kind of initiative that they do or get involved with takes off in some way, shape or form. And so if it's helping families, feed families and do good over the holidays, great. I just don't know how this is. I'd never heard of this. And there's I feel like there's a lot of things on my radar. And so if it was for Thanksgiving, I imagine it's been around for a bit. So a free Thanksgiving dinner that's effectively tomorrow. And so again, maybe they're going to feed 100000 families, which would be amazing. But this promotion has not hit my radar now. 

Reiley Clark [00:13:36] And the timeliness of it, to your point, is kind of. 

Ryan Alford [00:13:38] And so if it works great, anything that does good, I'm all for it; sign me up for it. But from a marketing perspective, how it's been marketed, how it's been, the awareness has been driven beyond maybe point of sale and different things at Wal-Mart. It hasn't hit my feed of both subscribing to a ton of like services other than seeing this is today. You know, it ran across our radar right before the episode, so we'll see. But I'm sure we'll see how it goes. 

Reiley Clark [00:14:11] So that's kind of it for us this week. A super quick episode, just old Thanksgiving recap. A news edition here, but feel free to follow us along on social media. That way you can stay in touch with everything that's going on. Our Instagram is @TheRadCast and then on our YouTube is @RadicalCompany. And that way you can see all these live videos. That way, if you missed any graphics or whatever that you want to catch up on, that's where you can find all of that kind of stuff. And that is it for this. 

Ryan Alford [00:14:45] And if you’re listening, we're very thankful for all our listeners, everyone that follows along. It means a lot that you choose to listen to our podcast. We try to make it entertaining and educational. From a marketing standpoint, sometimes you may learn more than others. You learn how bad I could sing today. But, we do appreciate it. And,  I just encourage everyone to show some empathy this holiday season. Think about others before yourself. As hard as that may be for all of us, myself included, sometimes we all get kind of unlocked in our world, but someone always has it worse than you and just know that things are going to be better. I feel it coming. 

Reiley Clark [00:15:34] Yes. We're going to manifest a great 2021 and it's going to be fantastic. 

“Yo guys, what's up? Ryan Alford here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Rad Cast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it and give us a review at Apple or Spotify. Do us a solid, tell more people, leave us some reviews. And hey, here's the best news of all. If you want to work with me to check with you, to get your business kicking ass and you want Radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 8647293680. Don't wait another minute. Let's get your business going. 8647293680.”