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You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

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Here's your host, Ryan Alford. What's up guys. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It is Friday, December 15th, 2023, halfway through the last month of the year. We're 10 days to Christmas, Chris Hansen. That's when you say the 15th.

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10 day countdown. Your 10 day countdown is on. If you're listening to this in real time, IE the same day, this is a news episode, people get with it. You should be at least listening to it on the weekend of the 15th. You got about eight to 10 days left, depending. And if you're listening to this a week late, you are fucked. Yeah. And I'll, you're not really screwed in today's world. You can gift card it up. There's a lot of like backup plans.

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I do my best work under pressure. I'm not a Christmas Eve shopper. Absolutely not. I need to be down. I'll get it done before then. But the day before Christmas Eve, there might be a little shenanigans going on. 22, 23 December, definitely. That's my prime shopping time. Yep. And we welcome you to the show. This is our weekly marketing and business news.

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of the week, business news, marketing news, just anything and everything that hits our radar that we think has a business spin, a marketing spin, or just a human interest spin. And speaking of human interest, I think we started, we might as well with humans, we talk about her every week. And I think we, I feel like we may have touched on this. Did we mention the time person of the year last week being Taylor Swift?

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That was the Spotify. It was the Spotify downloads. It was, she has the most downloads. She's winning together with all her awards. I can't even keep up. But time has nominated Taylor Swift person of the year. Yeah. I'm proud of Taylor. I'm just getting a little worried the last week. It felt like she was just tailoring off a little bit. Tailoring off a little bit.

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Cause she wasn't making the headlines. Yeah. Well, she didn't hear my radar every hour. So if we're not talking about her PR teams, not doing the job. Exactly. I've been getting a hate mail from her team. We really need you on the right. Headcast has gotten popular and we need Taylor Taylor to be front and center on the show. So Cameron, our producer, one of several producers and my assistant, extraordinary did fit her in here and I pushed her to the top and not Cameron. She's already at the top, but Taylor Swift.

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I'm just wondering when is her guest appearance on the Radcast? That's what we're working on. That's what we talk about every week here. This is all, I like to manifest things. My wife calls manifestation bullshit. I do too, but I feel like if I talk about something enough, it happens. You're like it's bullshit, but I'm thinking maybe it's worked in my life, so I'm going to stay in the middle here. I don't want to get, in case it is working, I don't want to piss off the gods of manifestation. Yeah, exactly.

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Exactly. I speak out loud. In the middle, just show me. Exactly. I think if you tell yourself enough something, you it has some action behind it. I notice here, I want one hundred dollars right now. One hundred dollars. Yeah, it's not quite that obvious. But you tell yourself something enough. It comes true. And Chris, I've always wanted to award you with different adjectives, different verbs, different nouns. And luckily for us, Oxford.

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has a Word of the Year. And Pantone actually has a Color of the Year. And one of our clients, Ultra Fabrics, great client, by the way, shout out to A.R. and Barry, two of our really great clients, and Nicole, and I'm gonna leave out a lot of people. But they work with Pantone. And the Color of the Year is Peach Fuzz. And Peach Fuzz is a cool name. So anyway, Color of the Year. But we're talking today about the Word of the Year. And it's Riz.

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Riz. I kind of use my best. I'm blessed with very few things. I have a radio voice. I'm like, Riz. You got that Riz. You got that Riz. And we debated with our millennials and younger alphas, everything we got going on here at the agency, younger ones. And they're not even that young. They're just younger than me because I'm an old man. And about exactly. We knew it was something good, but we didn't know all the connotations.

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and things of it, but as Oxford's word of the year, it's defined, Chris, as style, charm, or attractiveness, particularly in attracting a romantic or sexual partner. So you need to be about that Riz. The Riz, I'm just blown away that it's short for charisma. Now it all makes a lot more sense. Exactly. If someone would just said that, because we talked about it for five minutes, and then that came up, I'm like, that would have.

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Short, short conversation. Got it. Especially you and me, Chris, all that charisma we have. We would have known exactly what that was. A ton, man. In our own head. I'm just glad I can finally keep up with some of these conversations I've been hearing just used in now. You're down in Miami and hipsteredville and trend land. So you know, you're probably hearing it all the time. Yeah. There's a new word for cool like every three months.

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I'm going to use this with my younger ones, i.e. my sons. I think they're going to like it. I'm going to drop it. But you got that Riz today. I think they're going to like it. Yeah. They're going to be like, dad, don't make the word of the year uncool. They're like, yeah. Nothing makes something. Don't ruin our Riz. Dad, you're screwing with my Riz. Come on, dude. I never thought I was going to be. I feel like I'm a cool dad.

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When you're a dad, you can only be so cool. I'm in touch with this reality, like with your kids at least. I think you're pretty cool. You're pulling it off. Yeah, but your kids are only gonna think you're so cool no matter how much I try. Dad jokes don't really help, so there it is. So this is interesting. Another person, our two favorite people, the people of the year, let's go ahead and announce the Radcast.

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We need these awards anyway, let's be honest. I do have, I think, and I'm gonna get Cameron to hand me the piece of paper. I think she knows what I'm gonna be talking about here. So I do have in hand, Chris, something. If you watch the episode, it's gonna be, this will be much more rewarding for you. But I can do the, is it ASMR? Am I saying that right? Sorry. It sounds like some good tape. Yeah, it's paper. ASMR. I'm holding in my hands the trademark.

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for the Radcast. Let me just tell you people, they don't just hand these out. It takes time and money. I was going to say it takes me to forget the fuck. Yeah, we've got four or five classic occasions here. The big news is if you use our name, we coming for you bitches. That's what that means. And more than that, it's not but some really smaller shows that

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We aren't really worried about, but we'll send you some C send assists here soon. It's more about the future and someone actually, maybe trying to take that name, the future use it, but my lawyer has been given an unlimited authority to go after any of you. So just watch out in all seriousness. It does. It, it, here's the thing we're about value here. I'm kidding about the veil threats, even though I will come after you if you do go use our name, but in all seriousness, it's really more about.

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protecting the content and the things that we might do with it in the future. And so brands protect their names so that other people aren't using and commercializing it. So I won't make it about value for people. So if you're thinking about, hey, do I should I trade this? Should I get a patents and trademark? Patents are ideas or things, perhaps something works, trademarks are around names and or graphic depictions of things. And so we own the name. So get lost, but we do thank you.

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for making it worth getting. If you didn't listen, it wouldn't be worth getting. We're glad you like it. Yes, we are. We do appreciate you for making us number one. And Chris, we did hit number one in Great Britain this week. I have no idea why, but I want to thank everyone in Great Britain and across Europe for listening to the Radcast. We're going to keep doing what we're doing because you seem to like it. And my DMs seem to be getting more and more littered with people from all over the world, and I appreciate it.

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I appreciate everyone takes time. Cheers. Cheers to you. And we appreciate you. In other news, our second favorite person I was getting back to, I went down two tangents there, but there's two people of the year. We might as well name them. The Radcast people of the year, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk. Congratulations to both of you for making it to the unofficial awards show that has never existed, but I just made it up. Traffic from Elon Musk Starlink satellites tripled this year. Says.

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New report, global internet traffic for Elon Musk, Starlink satellites nearly tripled with US traffic growing by over 150% and Brazilian traffic increasing by more than 1,600%. Brazil must have some crappy landline services. According to a report by CloudFlare, despite concerns about Musk's influence, Starlink's rapid.

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They just got to dog the guy, don't they, no matter what in New York? Right. I know. Yeah. Starlink's rapid expansion continues, outpacing global internet traffic growth. Starlink, part of SpaceX, uses low orbit satellites for internet service, attracting users in remote areas. So, yeah, they send those balloons out, essentially. That's what those, you see them flying around, they're being like, dispatched across the world. But look, everything's done on the internet now.

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Software ads, life, the metaverse, all the important stuff. And so transactions, banking, it's like number five on the list after gaming and the metaverse. But yeah, your money, your health comes tertiary. Your medical records. Your medical records, but it all serious, life kind of flows on the internet. That could be a tagline. Yep.

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That's a freebie for somebody. You can pick that up. The every you need ubiquitous internet service. That's the point here. That's where I'm going here. We need ubiquitous internet service everywhere in rural areas, areas and otherwise. And the fact that my phone can't carry a signal on highway 26 going from Greenville to Charleston half the time is a problem. This is tangent central here today on the Radcast, but that's why Elon Musk does this. And

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Verizon needs to get their service shit together between Columbia, Charleston and Greenville. It's the 2023 people. Bro, I can say the same driving Tampa to Miami, about a 40 minute just complete dead zone. How is that even possible? Like in 2023, anyway. But the reason this matters. It matters because we rely on the internet and Elon Musk, Starlink, it's smart because it gets its rural areas and the government wants this in everybody's hands because they know

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that when they send out those tax notifications and you gotta pay more and the snail mail is no longer be reliable. They need you to have internet so you can pay that bill. That's why they care. They're gonna act like they care because they want equal access for everyone. But this is what the world's turning into. Exactly. It will be really interesting, not to go down the, I'm going down all the tangents, let's just keep going. I mean, the biggest threat to society, I think,

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If you talk about, it's the power grid and the internet grid. Yeah. Right. 100%. That's where you're going to see the attacks in the future. Cause that's the, we're all industry and everything's being done. You gotta have power first. And once you have power and you can almost generate that with solar and other things at home. So, you know, they took out a grid. There are some backup options there. They wouldn't power everything we need, but, but then the internet. And so that's where you're going to see these probably people that want anarchy want.

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one of those two things to go down. Yeah, absolutely. We're venturing very far out of the business realm here a little bit on the Radcast, but hey, it's all about knowledge. You're informed. We know you want power at internet. Another Elon Musk article, colonizing Mars could be dangerous and ridiculously expensive, but Elon Musk wants to do it anyway.

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This is a no shit article of the day. Elon Musk's ambition to prioritize Mars with SpaceX faces numerous challenges. Really? I had no idea. No way. Including financial hurdles and ethical consideration. Okay. The ethics, that's a new information. Interesting. Yeah. The cost of such a mission is unknown with the last comparable effort being NASA's Apollo program.

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that cost well over $280 billion in today's dollars. Yeah, especially with inflation. Musk, whose wealth is around $100 billion, hopes SpaceX profits and investments will fund the Mars project. However, the economic viability of Mars' settlement is uncertain. Elon Musk's vision includes transforming Mars, a process phasing technology and resource.

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His vision includes transforming Mars and terraforming Mars. Oh my God, that's a big word. Terraforming Mars. This sheet's 10 feet away from me and I'm juxtaposing words here. But critics raise concerns about the potential exploitation and the need for clear objectives and agreement. The guy wants to spend $100 billion to get Mars. Why are we really worried about? What exploitation are we worried about here at this point?

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Yeah. Is there like an endangered species we don't know about on Mars that that's it's actually who he's communicating with to make all these moves right now. I did have someone tell me that he's got to be a secret agent because the fact that they're letting him have as much control and do what he does, he has to be on in on the government or something. I'm like, I've heard that too. There's a big, I don't, I just, I'm neutral. I'm here for the show.

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Exactly. I enjoy it. Be honest. It gives us something to talk about. Yeah. It's more interesting. Besides Elon and Taylor Swift, they're carrying the news every week. Exactly. And if you want to learn from me directly, join my newsletter, RyanOffer.com backslash newsletter. Sign up. I give daily advice on marketing, personal branding, podcasting, life.

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Give that a shout. Join that. It's free. It's daily. Just like this show. Give away our best advice. Getting into some specific marketing slash social media news. This is a big number. We're talking big numbers today. TikTok hits 10 billion user spending milestone. TikTok has become the first non-mobile game app to reach 10 billion in global consumer spending. The video sharing platform is poised to become the highest earning app ever.

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approaching the 15 billion milestone this year, being next year, 24. This surpasses popular games like Candy Crush. Wow, how'd they do that? Which has a lifeline, lifeline, free and slip or not, has a lifetime user spending of over 12 billion. That's Candy Crush. TikTok spending comes from in-app purchases or coins, primarily used to buy gifts for influencers.

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made $10 billion for that shit. Nobody's buying, giving me any coins. I gotta get active on the TikTok. Man, platformers. This includes like companies doing like in-app purchasing, like shop shopping. That would not a company. It's all consumer spending. So not in-app purchases. If we're running ads, like if I'm buying Coldair labs, no, it's straight, just no, their revenue.

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It's not because if we sold vacay on TikTok, we get the revenue, they get a share of it. It's not, it's nothing to do with that. This is all from purely in-app purchases by consumers. No ads, not related to the commerce. How many coins are people buying? Can you buy avatars? Is that like, this number blows my mind.

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in-app purchases, coins, primarily used to buy gifts for influencers. Yeah. It blows my mind too. That's why I'm, I'm like, why are people just giving away or what? I think we need to start a whole like coin collection. I think I'm going to make an account and I think we should make it as a big giant pond and be like, throw coins into the pond. Follow me. You follow me? It's not crazy.

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Ah, just won't mimic the splash wishing well the wishing well. Hey, no, I'm serious. Have the caps. Have you're really your bio say this is a virtual wishing well. Welcome to it. The more coins you throw in, the luckier you'll get. That shit will play, man. I'm telling you, that's it. Well, that's a better than the pet rock. You tell me he wouldn't go on there and do that. People are so desperate, like they don't want to.

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Do the work or do anything that it takes to really get ahead. They want to spend a dollar and have a fake wish. Dude, that would play. No one take that idea until I can, Chris and I could figure out how to do it. I think it's a simple development. Cameron, can we set up that app? You think it in all seriousness, would that play? Think that would play? People are dumb. Yes. Or not. They're, they're wishful.

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I'm telling you that could play. All right. Anyway, $10 billion for tick tock. Congratulations to them. Oscar Meyer, everybody's favorite Wienermobile, uh, is having a collab with mint mobile, doling out free bacon for a national campaign. Hey, handing out the bacon. I know this is going mint mobile. Anyway, Oscar Meyer has launched a national campaign called a side of bacon.

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I see what they did there. In collaboration with Mint Mobile, owned by Ryan Reynolds. That guy, I love Ryan. The campaign offers consumers who purchase any three month Mint Mobile plan a coupon for free Oscar Mayer bacon. The promotion extends a partnership with local businesses providing consumers with free bacon alongside with their purchases. Side of bacon includes 15 second spot and will be rep...

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promoted throughout a home social media and creator partnerships, IE influencers. Don't let them fool you with that terminology. The campaign builds on Oscar Mayer's Keep It Oscar platform and reflects on creative initiatives from both Oscar Mayer and Met Mobile throughout the year. I like this. Give me some bacon, baby. You're baking me crazy. Give me the bacon. I want that turkey bacon, though.

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Yeah, no turkey bacon. Oscar Mayer doesn't make some turkey. They do make turkey bacon though. I like turkey bacon. Yeah. You sign up for three months on Mint Mobile. So you get your cell phone plan. We already talked about that a little bit. Hopefully their coverage is a little better than some of the players that are seen to be going downhill. And I bet you they're just in MVNO for in technical terms. That just means they're on the backbone of another network, i.e. AT&T or Verizon.

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which means their service will only be as good as one of those. But the bacon side of this, it's fun. I'm trying to think of the other gimmicks they do when you sign up for three months, like a free case or three months free to Apple music, which I already have. Get this Bluetooth speaker for $200 off. But then part of me is a side of bacon enough.

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Well, like a side of the whole pig, like a side of beef. Is there like a three, six month period I'm getting this bacon or just give me like one one grocery like I mean, they need to part of an Instacart and then deliver it to your house or Uber Eats and they it's cooked. Now that's that would make it a little more interesting. The side of bacon, right to your door smelling good, free smells. So that would definitely go viral.

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I know how to make these ideas better, just a lot harder to pull off. So says any account. A lot more complicated. Yes, exactly. Pizza Hut, I love their marketing these days, celebrates delivery drivers. I think all the pizza brands are doing pretty good pizza commercials. Pizza Hut celebrates delivery drivers with QR code, doormat, I don't know where I was going there.

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with QR code, door mat, and free pizza. Pizza Hut is offering free pizza to delivery drivers this holiday season through a reverse delivery door mat. The door mat features the message, leave a box, get a box, and a QR code. Delivery drivers can scan the code to access a microsite and redeem a free pizza. Customers could order the door mat for display on their doorsteps.

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and drivers can redeem the offer until December 27th. The initiative aims to strengthen connections with customers and potentially convert delivery drivers into Pizza Hut customers during one of the busiest delivery seasons. It's fun. This is cool. I like the QR code on the doormat. You had me at that. It's cool. I thought, here's what I thought. If I'm Pizza Hut, instead of thinking I'm going to get more business from the delivery drivers, this would be a great recruitment tool.

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to get delivery drivers from other companies. This should be a way to recruit the team and go sign up, hey, we'll pay you a dollar more an hour, whatever, dollar more per delivery. So if they're struggling to get delivery drivers, you had me there. I thought that's where this was gonna go. And then just went to work, trying to get more business. I agree.

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Cause it's a little weird to say we want to convert our own drivers customers. I would hope they're already fans. If they're working for the company, I would hope they're already pizza people. Yeah. They're probably getting free food wherever they work at. I know I didn't get in between pickups. It's like all you can eat slide there or subs or you're delivering, but yeah. And most of them are picking up, picking it out of your food anyway. Now.

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Aren't they? On your way to indoor dash, yes. I got to order a fries. I got to order this weekend. It looks like there's a sandwich, a bite out of this sandwich gone. Oh no, it's just where the lettuce was rubbing. What? Yeah, you took a bite of this damn. I ordered pizza this weekend and it was missing the breadsticks to dessert and the four bottle drinks we were with it. And I go, it is what it is. Yes.

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Finally today Doritos and Empirical launched first ever Nacho Cheese Spirit. I think, I don't know. Doritos is a partner with Global Flavor Innovator, Empirical. Four words I enjoy. Global Flavor Innovator, Empirical. To launch a limited edition distilled spirit called Empirical Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit. They really thought up some creativity there with the name.

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This unique beverage aims to replicate the iconic flavor of Doritos Nacho Cheese Chips in a multi-sensorial experience. This production process involves extracting the flavor layers from Doritos Chips through Empirical's innovative vacuum distillation method, preserving the essence of the chips at lower temperatures.

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This limited edition bottles will be available next month for 65 Buccarones. That's dollars to you and me. You can learn more at Doritos.exe.empirical.co. Never gonna buy it. That would be me. Yeah, I don't know about the nacho cheese and alcohol mixed together, Chris. It might be a hard, I appreciate the.

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The creativity of the partnership, but it might be a hard pass for me on tasting it. I know you don't want to know what you're making. What are you mixing it with? Yeah. Tea drawer and soda water with the lime. Good point. Uh, unless there's some, uh, lime flavored chips seltzer, uh, I might, you know, I don't know. I might pass. I would guess lime something maybe.

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lime and the cheese, but it's going to be a hard note for me because who wants it's obviously fancy. I'm a $65 bottle. And I don't know if that's purely because it's special edition, maybe, but that's not an inexpensive bottle. So maybe you're just shooting it. Man, I want some nacho cheese. What kind of spirit is, what's the base vodka? It's the global flavor innovator, empirical, you know who they are.

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I'm someone that does drink and they're not like daily on my radar. I think they're, they come up with a lot of crazy flavors, obviously. And clearly Doritos is making a PR. See folks, we've, we talk about this a lot, but in case you're new to the show, this is called PR to sell more of other things. Not necessarily this thing.

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It's so that shows like us, articles like the one we're reading, that people talk about your brands. That's why they do these things. They do them and sometimes they're so weird you're like, why would they do that? They won't ever sell any of it. They do it for the attention. This is PR Play 101 because there ain't a lot of people that really want nacho cheese spirits, let's be honest. But people talk about it because it's so crazy.

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And maybe it'll become a TikTok trend because people will be doing like some funky shots or doing something weird with it. Grimace, like the McDonald's purple nastiness. Who knows? That's what I'd be like. And those Druno's Locos tacos with the little cheese spirits. Yeah. They need to do a, it was like the Kool-Aid man, like breaking through a brick wall or something. And that shit's funny. Who don't wanna watch that big Kool-Aid man break through something?

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Like it is to him like running the other way when you whenever you pour a shot. We can make a random collapse here at any time, but that's what it is, folks. This is a PR. Most of these articles that we read on this show are done. Most of the tactics are PR plays. They're trying to get earned media. There's earned media and paid media. You pay to run the ad. It's an ad like object. Earned media is article stories.

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and podcasting different things where you get it's earned because it gets attention worthy of being spoken about without being paid for. There you go folks. We're all about, hey, we have fun, but we bring it back to the clinical nature of marketing at some point. Oh, here we are in the holidays. We want to wish everyone a happy holiday season. We do have a few more episodes to close out the year, most of which will be fairly lighthearted.

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even more lighthearted, maybe than normal. One or two more guests, and then we kick off the new year with a bang with the legend. The original biohacker, Dave Asprey, will be our first guest of the year. So I know you'll want to listen to that. Dave is very controversial. Hey, some people like him, some people don't, but you can't deny his impact. If you ever heard of bulletproof coffee.

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You change the game, you put a lot of things in keto and a lot of other things on the map. So that will kick off your 20, 24 guest lists for the Radcast. Mr. Hansen. Do we have any final words? Let's just hope my internet comes back up so you can keep it rolling. Yeah. We lost our production quality audio there for Chris. He's in a rainstorm in Miami. We're back. Oh, it's back up. It still goes on.

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There it goes, we'll see how long it does. Finally today, we do wanna mention our sponsor, Caldera Lab, calderalab.com, official skincare of Ryan Alford and the Radcast. Look folks, it only gets so good, but it only gets this good because of Caldera Lab. My favorite's the icon, gets rid of the bags on the guys, and then I've talked a lot about the soap. Suds Galore, just had that before I got here.

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right after the gym. Sud City, baby. That's Caldera Lab. Premium skincare, bath care for men delivered right to your door. The official partner of the Radcast. Use Rad Ryan, you'll get 20% off. Hey, it's a deal. It's a deal without the 20% because it works. It's really good shit. Chris uses it, I use it. We love them. CalderaLab.com.

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Get it for the holidays. You're right here at the end. I think you're like the final shipping window. So if you're listening to this on the 15th or the 16th of that window, you're in that final window to get a gift where you can always get a gift card for that stocking stuff or for the man in your life, the son in your life, whoever it is, calderalab.com.

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Chris, appreciate you brother. Down in the vacay lounge. For Chris Hansen, I'm Ryan Alford. We'll see you next time on the Radcast. To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical.