The Week of February 16, 2024 Marketing and Business News: Google's AI now goes by a new name: Gemini

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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 rad cast. It's Friday, February 16th, 2024, our weekly marketing and business news of the week. What's up, Chris Hansen. What's up, my man. How are you? I'm doing well. We record, admittedly we do pre-record these. And so I don't mind giving away our insider secrets I've got on.

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my pinkish reddish is my closest thing to feeling at least a little festive on technically what record day is Valentine's Day. I've got more color than I normally have. I'm feeling extra colorful. You're looking like a Florida man coming down for vacation. Oh yeah. I like it. Yeah. In the vacay lounge there in hot Miami. What's the temp in Miami today? 76 and sunny. Yeah.

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It's nice here though. I think we're in the sixties today. We're starting to warm up a little in Greenville. Well, it's funny in Greenville. We'll be, it'd be 65 today and 38 on Saturday, probably. That's what happens in February. But that bipolar weather. Yeah. We get four seasons in one month. We get all four seasons in the month of February, but I hope everyone is doing fabulous wherever, whenever, however you are listening.

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We appreciate you for making us number one in marketing and business on Apple and climbing the ranks on Spotify, I might add. We appreciate that. Keep listening, keep telling your friends, hey, friends don't let friends not be listening to their adcast. So that's how this works. If you enjoy it, tell somebody. We gotta spread the word. We're taking the BS out of business, baby. That's right, boy. I like that. Yes. Snapping necks and cashing checks.

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How would you say, did you watch any of the Super Bowl? You were out at dinner. You're like maybe the second half or so. I admittedly watched zero seconds of any Super Bowl. First time in my life. Not planned, but you said I was at dinner. Yeah, your menu looked better than most. We'll leave it at that. Yeah, inside joke. But yeah, good game. Longest game in Super Bowl history.

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which means they probably sold more ads than history. If we're equating that to commercial time and business, I did see this, the Super Bowl this year, the amount of economic activity that it generated, not, I guess, just worldwide, everything, not just like local activity, local commerce, but was $21 billion. It was-

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I might have my number off by one decibel or one point. It was well in the double figure billions. Let's just say that. Doesn't matter if it's 10 billion or 21 billion, it's still billions. The point is the impact of the Super Bowl from ads to hotels, to sponsors, to travel, like every impact that it has. That's pretty insane. I mean, for one event. It's huge. B-b-billions.

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That's why it's the super bowl, baby. It's gotten super expensive too. Sick. I heard seats, even they cooled at the end. Does just to go sit and let the nosebleed you're like six grand or something like that. I saw that on Instagram, people interviewing on the street, how much they paid. It was five, 10, 12 K. And I'm like, do that math for a second. And I don't want to pretend that the average middle-class American is at the game.

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But what's the average salary? What's the average salary in America? 42,000 something, 40 maybe. Exactly what I saw when I saw these people saying this. Yeah. Say, say, say, give it, say 55. Yeah, 55. That's what's no way it's that high. Yeah, household income maybe. But yeah, so you're dropping five to 10 grand on that. And wait, let's be honest. No one in there is probably making that. They might be, or their uncle gave them a free ticket or something, but nonetheless, it's an expensive venture.

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And some people don't even have to pay to get shown, especially if your name's Taylor Swift. Ha ha. 47 times. Yeah. Was it 47? That's what I heard. I heard there was a betting line in Vegas on how many times she would be shown. I knew there was. It didn't end up being 47? That sounds about right. That's what I was told yesterday. It didn't feel like that many times when, like, the cameras, but admittedly- You didn't feel you were overwhelmed with the shit. We had some friends over and so it was, I was a little distracted.

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other than bouncing back and forth the combo. But I will say, this verbal commercials, as we talked about, as we previewed last week, were about what I expected. Not creative, not pushing the envelope, and we'll call them safe. That's the nicest term I can give them. I think most people in the industry and in general agreed with that. It was.

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I want to give credit where credit's due. This was one of the reviewers terms, but I agreed with it. It was an arms race for celebrity mentions. It was just like, how many celebrities can we jam in here? Like it was not enough to have one celebrity. You had to have 17. Did you see Kanye's commercial? I did. And 19 million sales.

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And because he said this is the commercial because we dropped the whole ad budget. Use the whole ad budget on on it. I thought that was he typed. He spoke out the website and he had it on screen at the end. And so if you're selling and this is what I said, I talked about this last week and I've talked to I've written on this. If you have a direct to consumer product, which you can and you have 100 million people watching and you sell it worldwide, which he does.

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He's got the whole world was his market, not everyone, but he, in theory, he started shipping and where he all that. So if you have that logistics figured out and you have a mass and his is niche, but it's mass cause it does cross a lot of boundaries. Who would wear those shoes and 7 million to do 19 million in sales. And then the, here's what happened. Even if he did 19 million in sales and he spent 7 million on spot. I'm sure there's other costs, different things. Let's just

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Let's say for a second, and I'm sure he made profit on that, but let's just say for a second it was break even. Do you know what happens when $19 million of his merchandise end up on people's feet and people see them and their friends have them? It will sell another 19 million in referrals and word of mouth. This is where the Super Bowl has power over a lot of other mediums if you have that. Now it's a unique product from a unique character. We'll call him that, personality.

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And I don't agree with his every approach at all. I do admire his genius at times. And let's be honest, he clearly has some issues. But that aside, the marketing, the pure thinking out for purely marketing and product, it was. Pretty well played. I'd like to get validation on all that, but.

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He did share some stuff that looked at screenshots and stuff and it looked real. You have to really be trying to parade that fake aid if that wasn't real. So anyway, I will say this overall. It's just, I posted this on LinkedIn. A guy pinged me about what I thought of the Super Bowl ads or whatever. And he had these left the building. Experimentations left the building. It's yeah, we can write a spot with put celebrities in it, which brings interest and it's borrowed interest and Hey.

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We know no one loves borrowed interest more than this guy. However, I'll say this, what do they say when everybody goes right? If somebody, it is ripe for somebody to break through with some jam of creative ideas on Super Bowls and in general with content because it's getting stale and formulaic is what I'd call it. And I will say this, I thought this was the most effective. Everybody asked me what my favorite ad was. And I don't...

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I got an iPhone. I'm probably not gonna buy the Google Pixel. But I will say, let the brand, top of mind brand notion for me is called Javier in Frame. It was essentially the feature. Javier was the voiceover, a guy that had bad vision, near blindness, and the functionality of the phone allowed him to know when to take these selfies. It was very creative. It was wonderful storytelling.

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had an emotional impact at the end with a little bit of a left turn. And that is how you tell a story with emotion and build brand and sell product. So I think Google's had a masterclass, the only, one of the only brands that's had a masterclass in storytelling and branding the last couple of years. They had another spot a couple of years with Google assistant with the old man who was recalling memories with, we didn't know it was his deceased wife.

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but turned out to be his deceased wife. And if you go watch that spot, do you better have a Kleenex ready? Because it was similar in emotional impact. So I thought again, and look, everybody was saying you won't see the gurus talk about that spot probably in their top three. They're gonna go the Duncan spot, which we'll get to. We'll talk about all these other things and the things that won the ad meter. But let me tell you this, you go look at Javier and frame on Google.

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on YouTube, 42 million plays, 25x, the closest competitor commercial that was on Sunday night. So 42 million people have gone and watched that spot since the Super Bowl, 25 times more than any other commercial played. That's because it has impact. If you want to go watch it again. And shared it. Yeah. So, you know, again,

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The Google phones got a lot of challenges to take over, take iPhone with the whole ecosystem and all that. But I bet you they sold some. Yeah. Now the Duncan spot. Look, I'm a dude. I like Tom Brady. I like Matt Damon. I like Ben Affleck. I enjoyed the spot. It was fun. It's humorous. So it was a good spot. I don't, I'm not hating on it. It just, it was just.

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It was, I think they had 27 celebrities. And I was more like adding up. How much did this cost? I want to know how much that spot costs. 7 million to run it. And the dumb. How much of the talent that was in it? How much of the talent was in it? I had to be, it's gotta be 20 million. I don't know. Cause Tom, a lot of those celebrities aren't getting off the couch for high six figure or seven figure. So, interesting, but it was fun. I, you know.

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How effective it'll be having coffees or so. I don't know, a good brand. I like the Nike Dunk shoes. Nice touch. I don't know if you saw those. But have you seen a replay of that? The Dunkings? Yeah. You need to go watch it. I will. The, it's fun. And I don't know what it is. It's hard not to like Tom Brady. Like even to hit Tom, at all times. I like Tom Brady. Tom Brady was the one. Tom Brady was the quarter. He's the only one that's.

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I guess not technically the actor. I know there were some music artists and things like that. They aren't acting actors either. Ben and Matt Damon, some of those guys are in it. And, but Tom's, you realize, see this is what people don't realize. You realize how tall Tom is. Tall Tom in the right corner, like with sunglasses on. I'm like, all right, I like Tom. I don't know. He's hard not to like, at least for me. I mean, he's just, I don't know what it is. I'm likeable. I'm a big fan of him. Yeah. And, but it was fun.

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I enjoyed it. I want to not hold it against them that they had an easy path. They still had good writing. It was good writing. And but overall, I wasn't able to watch pay attention as much. And then I replayed, I watched the replay of I think all of them or whatever. They had a couple of videos online. You could find them. But look, I break through some something creative. It doesn't have to like offend people to be creative. Like that's where they're most playing it safe because they.

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No one really wanted, we didn't want social backlash. You don't get social backlash for being creative. You get social backlash when you take a stand on something that 80% of America doesn't agree with. Or just don't be stupid and still be creative. So we'll see what happens. It was a historic Super Bowl as far as length and time and the final outcome and hey, congrats to the Chiefs. Hail to the Chiefs or the Chefs.

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That's a good commercial too if you've seen that. Stay for him. The guy was painting the end zone and he forgot the eye. Andy Reid walks up to him and he goes, who are the chefs? Anyway, that's fun. If you haven't seen it, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Metta, AKA Facebook, AKA Instagram, AKA WhatsApp.

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AKA Quest. These are all the same. AKA Snapchat? No, he didn't have Snapchat. He didn't acquire Snapchat? The Mark Zuckerberg thinks the Quest 3 is better than the Vision Pro. These are AR, VR headsets. Mark Zuckerberg compared MetaQuest 3 and Apple Vision Pro headsets, stating that Quest 3 is a superior product. Despite being less expensive, Zuckerberg believes the Quest 3 offers better value and overall performance.

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He highlighted the comfort, wider field of view and combination of hand tracking and physical controls as advantages over Vision Pro. Additionally, he mentioned Meta's rich library of content and established presence in the mixed reality market compared to Apple's late entry. He owns a company, so what else is he gonna say? But I have read a lot of reviews on these. I'm gonna get one of these things. We already have the MetaQuest 2 at home. The kids play with it.

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I've never, it's just a gamey thing. The Quest 3 is further along, because it has a color overlay where you can actually turn it on and see in front of you, the cameras. And so you're actually, it's closer to what the Vision Pro is with that mixed reality and or AR experience so that you can walk around with it on. Because who doesn't want to walk around with a big headset on your head? But the, so I wanted to trial one of these, but.

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I just think until these things get smaller, less obtuse, I think it's going to be a struggle for it to be more of the mainstream. And the Vision Pro, everyone is mesmerized by the quality of it and the potential of it, but they all take the same thing. I'm not sure what it replaces. I'm not sure it improves anything. It was just an enhanced experience on some levels.

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And I'm not sure who wants it. You have multiple desktops up. Do I really want eight desktops up what you can see? It's like, how much can you digest? I'm trying to do the episode. Yeah. Trying to detach a little bit more. What was the stuff in the nineties? Like the Nintendo had a big red one. Do you remember that? Yeah. It was all like a tripod. And you would stick your face into it. Yeah. I think it was just- That was what?

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20 years ago. Oh, that was way 30, 40, 30 years ago, probably. Yeah. And we're still kind of, you would think that we would have progressed quicker, but I think you said this recently once it becomes a contact lens or an implant or something that's a bit more. Were you seamless? Yes. Sunglasses, maybe. I saw a video of a kid getting pulled over in a

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You can't drive with that thing. It does raise questions. Like you're going to see people doing that. Is that, is there a law that it's not? Cause you could see out it. What's the difference? But you're not seeing the real world. You're seeing potentially what five millisecond behind lag of the real world. I don't know if it's like, what's the lag. Eventually they're going to emerge it into your windshield. Like my windshield now that projects the speed limit.

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Is it going to be like there you could if you really like pause for a second and a lot of people think about thinking like the car is going to drive itself and you're going to have that on and you're going to have these experiences. You're going to outdoor boards can go away because the AR can layer it onto what you're seeing. You don't have to take up real estate anymore. She'll say. And what it does is the irony for me is.

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This is such an expensive niche product. It's at the wrong end of the spectrum because the people that have a shitty house that would like to go somewhere nice, they need this so they can put this on and go to a better place, like the virtual reality. But it's so expensive, they can't afford it. And then the people that can't afford it don't have such a bad environment to begin with. So I think that delta and that

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dichotomy will change over time. But in premise, it's an escape. It's an escapism. Like it's, that's what this is. And

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You need it. It'll be, you could see a world where people don't ever leave their closet. It's the fucking Matrix here. We're coming to the Matrix, aren't we? Is that just where we're ending up? Like one way or the other? Yeah, there's a movie that talks about this. Ready Player One, Ready Player One. Yeah. Literally what we're turning into. Go watch it.

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There it is. And if you wanna learn from me directly, join my newsletter, RyanAlford.com backslash newsletter. Sign up, I give daily advice on marketing, personal branding, podcasting, life. Give that a shout, join that, it's free, it's daily. Just like this show, give away our best advice. Adidas has a new campaign, and tells athletes of all types, you got this. Adidas has launched a new.

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Global brand campaign centered around the theme of overcoming pressure in sports to enhance athletes' enjoyment. The campaign features a 90-second video showcasing a mix of professional and amateur athletes, including endorsers like Pat Mahomes, Trinity Rodman, Lionel Messi, and others. Adidas collaborated with Neuro11, a group of sports neuroscientists, to gain insights into how elite athletes handle pressure.

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with the aim of providing practical advice to athletes at all levels. You got this. So. You got this bro. Just do it. Versus you got this. Well, as I say, that's where we've come. Nike and everybody's kind of like, just do it man, do this. Now it's, you got this Bobby. You can do it. Hey. You can do it. You got this. I don't have that. You got this.

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We need support. We just need support. Is that the phrase that the neuroscientists decided was most empowering? Yeah. Is it the woke scientists or Neuros? I'm kidding. Whatever. It's a random collab. What do they do? They didn't get into it. Obviously we're doing some summation here, but they're essentially helping understand like how the best athletes.

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manage pressure and maybe looking at some of the brain activity and different things like that might could Inform recommendations to other people and here I'm gonna give you some advice Grow some discipline create some good habits. That's what they do a little self-control There you go. You got it. You got this. Oh It is funny like we're joking have a little bit of fun around

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like societal stereotypes and everything. But it is funny. The just do it versus you got this. Seems a little soft. Yeah. You got this. It's supportive. I get it. It's not that bad. It's just supportive is a great word. Yeah. Support. It's a, like just do it is more. Offensive. Yeah. Get after it. Oh, it's way better. Get after it. Yeah. Get after it. Whatever. I don't know.

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Adidas adidas with a new global campaign that you'll be seeing everywhere Coke keeps innovation rolling with a new permanent flavor For a second, I'll admit I read some of these articles and I thought it said peppermint flavor. I'm just gonna I was like, oh no, it's permanent flavor. So Little thing there and these are tick tock shop exclusives. You cannot get these anywhere. You got to go shop on tick tock

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to get these cokes. This comes from our friends at Marketing Dive, MarketingDive.com. Coca-Cola introduces two innovative products to its lineup. Coca-Cola Spiced, a permanent edition featuring raspberry, this is permanent, permanent edition featuring raspberry and spiced flavors and Happy Tears Zero Sugar, a limited run soda inspired by Tears of Joy, exclusively available on TikTok Shop.

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These tears taste delicious. I was like, is it salty? But when you're talking shit about somebody, you know, you go, oh yeah, those tears taste delicious. There's something we're missing. I'm going to take time after this and research this tears of joy. What is this? The tea? No, happy tears on tears of joy. But it's inspired by tears of joy. But the name of it is happy tears. Zero sugar.

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The launch reflects Coke's commitment to fast paced innovation and staying relevant with Gen Z consumers. Spiced aims to capitalize on the trend of flavored cola while Happy Tears leverages TikTok's e-commerce platform and the unboxing trend. Both products showcases Coke's agility in product development and marketing strategies tailored to digital platforms. They're coming out with a lot of flavors. I'll give them that. The, I haven't had one that I like. I like Coke Zero and I like Cherry Coke Zero.

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I've tried all the other ones, I'm dying to learn something different. And they all are just weird fruity nastiness. I don't know. I love coke, but I just can't get after the, maybe the tears of joy or happy tears, whatever they're happy ending tears, whatever they are in the tick. I'm going to go get it. I'm going to go hit the tick tock shop later on. Yeah. I don't know if raspberry spice flavor sounds good either, but at the end of the day.

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Let me tell you what, this is all PR. They're not gonna sell, I guarantee if you go look at the numbers, they still sell 90 probably percent of their product and makes us Coke classic. Maybe Diet Coke's got pretty damn popular. I bet it's 50% Coke, 30% Diet Coke, 10% Coke Zero, and maybe three to 5% are.

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all these other bullshit stuff. Maybe. This is product cycle, this is innovation to keep you in the PR cycle and the news cycle, like us talking about it. This is earned media from these things and it shows, hey, they're trying to find something, they're trying to keep people interested, but the total available market of soda drinkers doesn't magically increase every day. There's only so many people that drink so much soda.

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So it's not like they're creating new market here. I don't, they might say they're gonna get people that don't drink it on and that might be happening with the Gen Z. Maybe they're like, I'm anti-coke but I'm gonna drink these funky flavors. But I'd need to see that date if that's really happening. It's more to stay top of mind with that market who's just gonna buy a Coke Zero or a Diet Coke anyway, probably, after they maybe buy one of these to do what I did and turn my nose up and go, this doesn't taste very good. But my son,

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who's 14 does collect all the bottles of the new flavors. So that's like his thing. Don't know why, but collectibles, people like collecting different things. So it's having that impact, but you know what? He does that, but you know what he buys every time he goes back, like to actually get what he wants. Coke Zero or Coke Regular. It's one of the two. Yeah, he goes back and forth. When he thinks he's trying to save some calories, he's 14 and barely.

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100 pounds soaking wet and it's like 4% body fat. So when he's saving calories, he's about to go zero. Like it. And look, we don't feed them soda all day, but we let them have, you gotta have a Coke. Especially if you're getting some McDonald's, bro. Oh yeah. I know you guys. Hotcake. Lab check Fridays. Hotcake Fridays. Lab checks just tomorrow. This is nine years running.

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Every Friday school for nine years in a row. McDonald's, you didn't call me, baby. This would be a, this would be a story that you've want to tell. So I agree. Cause I want to hear it. Google AI now goes by a new name. Gemini come to the main stage. Gemini sounds like American gladiator. It's gladiator.

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Yeah, Monkey Bars, Gemini. Private Dances in the Backroom with Gemini. That too. It does sound like that as well. Yeah. Google has rebranded its AI efforts under the name Gemini. I got to say, I'm only going to ever say it that way. I'm going to, I'm going to patent that, that way of saying it. I could.

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Duet AI features in Google Workspace in the Gemini Ultra One. This is like foreign language here. Gemini aims to serve as a conversational multimodal assistant. Come on guys, just call it what it is. Readable to literally the average person. We don't know what the hell that means. Yeah. The company is prioritizing Gemini over Google Assistant and integrating it into its Android ecosystem. Gemini.

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iOS presence is limited. It's features will be accessible through the Google app. So it's similar to Chat GBT. It's gonna be built into the functionality. It's essentially a more helpful chat bot is all this is. And I like this stuff. It's just the writing and the naming and everything else. It's just, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's fun to everyone else, but it just seems ridiculous. The naming department, everything else, Jim and I.

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It's a space, this sounds like either Spacey or, I don't know, my mind goes to different places, but it's not, I guess it's meant to be fun and light, which is kind of like the Google brand. But I do think a lot of this stuff is making its way into more useful integrations with the devices and stuff, which is good to see. Everybody's not gonna just go to the web browser and check GPT and look up stuff. So some of the features and benefits and the access.

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to this additional layer of technology is being built in. So I think you're gonna see positive outcomes and use of this stuff as it gets more mainstream, which is good. Let's just make it easy though and call it what it is. More helpful assistance. And not a- It sounds- Instead of multimodal, it's a multimodal assistant. Do less.

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There we have it. I think that's all the articles we can cover today. We had the Super Bowl news, the impact with the ads, and the overall economic impact is incredible. Any last thoughts here, Chris? It's the end of the week.

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You know what? To touch on the Super Bowl stuff, let's get some more creativity pumping again. Yeah. Call the Radical Agency if you need help with it. Exactly. Hey, we don't just talk shit. We back it up, baby. Yeah, radical.com. You can find us. You're gonna find me. You're gonna find us. Theradcast.com. All of the highlight clips from today. Search for Jim and I. You'll find them.

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All of it today. One of the keywords, keywords from the episode. That's the secret code word. If you want to DM me, Jim and I, I'll laugh at you. For Chris Hansen in Miami, I'm right off. We'll see you next time. The Radcast.

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To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, v.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical.