It has to start somewhere, has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now? 

Ryan Alford [00:00:25] Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Alford. 

Josh Hill [00:00:31] and I'm Josh Hill. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:32] And we are here for your weekly marketing and advertising news update. Today is June 25th, 2021. It's my mother's birthday. Happy birthday Mom. If you're out there or wherever you are, if you were to be listening, she doesn't probably listen to our podcast, but she does say she listens occasionally. So yeah, let's shout out to mom. 

Josh Hill [00:00:53] Happy Birthday. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:53] Happy birthday, Mari Linda. She does have a double name, ML. I'm going to just tell how old she is, she is 69. So coming up on the big 70 next year. That’s the big one we celebrated last weekend. And I hope you're using your designer handbag that my wife bought you. But cool, man. How's it going? You had a good week? 

Josh Hill [00:01:24] Yeah, really productive. I got a lot of stuff done. A lot of new campaigns launched.  

Ryan Alford [00:01:31] It’s been good here. We've got a lot of new talent here at radical. We got a couple of new copywriters, Morgan and Caroline, helping us push the envelope of marketing and advertising for us here. Shout out to them. Good writing is like the engine for creativity a bit. You've got design and you've got websites and ads and all that. But the importance of great writing and stimulating the creative process gets lost sometimes. 

Josh Hill [00:02:10] It's like the one element that touches the entire picture. 

Ryan Alford [00:02:15] That's exactly right. So we're excited about that. Lots of good growth here at the agency. I’m going to kick it off with this one Josh, we talked a little bit pre episode, but there was a New York Times report this week, for Subway fans out there. I'm not a gigantic Subway fan. It's kind of about necessity typically, like it's not bad but if I'm going to have a sandwich then there are just other places I go. But a report from New York Times, they actually tested the tuna at subways and there was zero DNA of a tuna in the subway. I mean, under the guise of not surprising yet a little disappointing news of the week. What are your first reactions? 

Josh Hill [00:03:06] Subway can't catch a break. First off from their previous spokespersons to their whole bread debacle. And then now to do this. I've never had the tuna from Subway, but now I'm a little glad I haven't. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:22] I've had it. It's OK. And quite frankly, it tasted like every other tuna fish, it's always got mayonnaise in it or something. And I don't mind it, I like it but there's always like six other choices ahead of it. And even growing up as a kid, like, what kind of sandwich do you want? And it’s like I have tuna, I got this that and the other and it's always this, that or the other. 

Josh Hill [00:03:45] Yeah, if I'm going to Subway, I'm getting that spicy Italian or the magnificent meatball sub. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:52] It's really underrated at Subway. And if you're hungry right now, just get hungrier. But the flatbread, spicy BMT flatbread toasted is definitely underrated. It’s quite good and delicious. 

Josh Hill [00:04:07] I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. 

Ryan Alford [00:04:09] But then everything else, I'm kind of like, I'll pass on that. But yes, with the zero percent tuna news, the subway came back and said, no, it's 100 percent wildcat tuna from the shores of North Korea or wherever they're from. I don't even know if they have tuna in North Korea but it sounded good. 

Josh Hill [00:04:28] Yeah, it sounds great. 

Ryan Alford [00:04:30] So, yeah, that was interesting. Likewise, Amazon Prime Day or Amazon Prime weekend, I started getting emails saying, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and it's like, Pre-sale Prime Day, Prime Day pre-sale, So I feel Black Friday isn't really a day any more, It's like four prime days. 

Josh Hill [00:04:50] For sure. It's like there's lead up sales and they really prime themselves for prime data. 

Ryan Alford [00:04:57] Yes, they do. I did buy a battery operated fan for the boat. So it's a rechargeable fan that's like 16 inches. You can hook a hose to it and like it mists on you.  

Josh Hill [00:05:23] It is the summer purchase of the year. 

Ryan Alford [00:05:25] I know. But that was the only thing I bought on Prime Day and it was just purely coincidental as I was going for the purchase anyway and it happened to be one of the prime deals. But I wasn't as interested. I know you saw some stats on this. I wondered if maybe, I'm sure e-commerce is going to grow every year no matter what, but I had a feeling like my own interest. And with everything opening back up on the pandemic and people getting out there and shopping and having other things to do, we might see some drop-off and I saw a few figures on that. 

Josh Hill [00:05:58] Yeah, this year was one of the slowest year-over-year growth of the last 10 years for Amazon Prime Day specifically, not Amazon's total sales. But I think it's telling where e-commerce boomed. I think there's a lot of sales happening throughout the year anyways. I think you kind of spread out and as you said, people are going out. I know Prime Day usually is tech-heavy and home goods heavy and I think people are starting to look elsewhere for gadgets and stuff. 

Ryan Alford [00:06:31] It felt like it was a five-day event and not a one-day event. I'm sure if their total is up someone's going to go, well they did it for five days, so they had to have gotten more sales. OK, maybe. But by making it less scarce; because it felt like the deals were early and often, if that hurt the scarcity factor or the one day factor 

Josh Hill [00:07:02] Very well could have. I know I had a friend texted me about what they bought on Prime Day. And I know this was for me to go and look. So I said I have all day and then I just never looked again. 

Ryan Alford [00:07:13] I don't know. But any crazy hashtags or trends you're seeing on Tik Tok this week? 

Josh Hill [00:07:20] Oh man, there are so many. But one of my favorites recently has been the videos with the song Nobody by Mitsuki and someone's running away from the camera and it says, pov someone's on the way to do something to you. I'm also seeing pov like someone is on the way to ask you about your  Zodiac sign or something and you're running away from it. I saw a couple of agency-specific ones,  Pov you're a graphic designer running away from the ten creative changes that the client made. 

Ryan Alford [00:08:00] I have some neighbors that I might see myself running away from; Hey coming over to ask you something. Right. See you later. 

Josh Hill [00:08:11] Yeah, that's a good one. I've been saying it's my favorite so far. 

Ryan Alford [00:08:14] I like it. Well, we talked a little about the news, but now we'll get to the official news. First, though, when I saw this, it was interesting; Tik Tok is replacing YouTube as the top sponsor of Vidcon. So we've got the platform wars are heating up and this is pretty telling and interesting with where we're at. I mean, they can act as if you're going to sponsor for something or you can outbid for something. But I thought it was pretty telling for maybe more of the place, scale, and size of TikTok, more than a knock on YouTube because YouTube is still fucking behemoth.  Well, any first reactions? 

Josh Hill [00:09:01] Yeah, I was really surprised by that. I know Vidcon was co-founded by the vlog brothers Hank and John Green. And Hank is one of the biggest creators On Tik Tok too. And so I thought that was interesting. Even this morning, I did see him commenting on tech talk and saying how Tik Tok makes more money than YouTube but gives less to creators than YouTube does, which is a little interesting. I  like that parallel to Tik Tok replacing them at his event. 

Ryan Alford [00:09:38] Exactly. And, you know, and we didn't put this article up there, but related to it was just I keep seeing the ever creeping higher role of streaming and video and other sources of video in overall time spent throughout the day of consumers just creeping up between streaming, between social platforms and everything else. I mean, yes, this falls in the; yeah we know category. I'm sure people are paying attention, but I don't know that we're quite magnifying it to the level that it's happening. 

Josh Hill [00:10:15] Yeah, it's like we know but do we know the scale? Yes. And it's growing more and more. And I'm sure plenty of us are like; surely it can’t get much bigger than this. 

Ryan Alford [00:10:25] Yeah, exactly.  I'm finding my habits. I'm 44 years old and probably different than a millennial or someone else, but at the same time, I still find myself like even the little bit of linear TV that I was, is I guarantee you, if you look 12 months over 12 months, for me, it's probably at least 40 percent less.. And so, like the just in my habits and the people around me, I mean, between streaming and Netflix and time on social channels and other things,  I might catch twenty minutes of linear TV on average a day, and that's including three hours on a Sunday when I'm watching golf and I'm averaging it out at ten minutes on axle during the week. Do you watch an hour of linear TV a week?  

Josh Hill [00:11:31] I don't have it, it'll be  a TV at  work or a commercial at a bar 

Ryan Alford [00:11:37]   I thought that was interesting.  Tik Tok is a behemoth. I did see as well unrelated didn't have the article that it has pretty much surpassed Snapchat now, as you know, Snapchat had a little bit of a comeback and still has a place as a platform, I'm not dissing it, but just showing that  Tik Tok is roaring past it in the overall presence on social platforms.  That surprised you at all? 

Josh Hill [00:12:16] Yes and no. The  Snapchat comeback did surprise me, but the way Tik Tok is growing and just taking over everything, at this point,  it’s just going to keep growing. 

Ryan Alford [00:12:36] The interesting thing for me with Tik Tok is not only the popularity and scale that it's gaining, but it's the way that it's changing the way people develop content holistically for sure. Yes, it has a specific format that's attention span driven which is short. But I feel you're seeing that translate to other media now because people are going; well, maybe they're onto something. And the content that works there, I'm not saying its exact form worked in a lot of places, but there are just parts of that, transitioning into other places because people want information quickly. They want to be entertained, but they want it served in a certain manner. 

Josh Hill [00:13:30] Oh, yeah, for sure. I'm noticing a lot of places where it's quicker to the point, they're not doing these big lead-ups, there's not these big suspenseful ones; you've got to wait till next week, they are now. 

Ryan Alford [00:13:43] That's interesting.  Number two; John McAfee, antivirus creator was found dead in his prison cell.  I thought this was interesting for a few points as far as marketing needs go. Number  One; It is sad when someone passes, I'm not making light of it at all.  I know you talk about some of the conspiracy sides of it but mine is more nostalgic remembering when the CD started showing up in the mail.  It activated the marketing tactics that I was noticing even when I was young. When the antivirus  CDs started showing up the mail, that was the pioneering of direct marketing, 

Josh Hill [00:14:32] I always had the pop-ups in the bottom right of my desktop. 

Ryan Alford [00:14:34] Oh God. I mean, they were everywhere and so it was funny to learn after the fact. And for him, it was the right time. I  remember, because PCs had exploded in popularity, and the Internet was kicking. And so viruses started crashing computers and it was the right time and the right place.  But I  always wondered; Is this doing anything? It pops up and it's running through the window on the screen, oh, it's doing these magical things on my computer and  I have no idea what it is. 

Josh Hill [00:15:09] Could have just been a screen saying it's doing it and doing absolutely nothing for all we knew. 

Ryan Alford [00:15:13] Well according to him who said he never used it on a single one of those computers; I read that. I'm not sure it did, but it removed one file and added another. He tweeted that these were all conspiracies. He was always a little strange and that’s putting it mildly. 

Josh Hill [00:15:33] I was reading a little bit more about his life story and he was running from someone in one country, his neighbor died and he had fled that country because of allegations of that, and he always denied it and  I was always aggressive. And he was in jail for tax evasion because he didn't want to pay taxes. I can understand that I guess, but maybe not invading.  

Ryan Alford [00:16:02] Who wants to pay taxes. 

Josh Hill [00:16:06] No one. 

Ryan Alford [00:16:07]  But we have to if we want to live in America. 

Josh Hill [00:16:10] But yeah, he had a tweet from a long time ago that's blowing up again. He had a dollar sign whacked or swacked if you will and he's giving a lot of subtle hints that America wants to make me kill myself. So he gave that just as a little signal that if I  show up dead it wasn't me, he used to say. We will see, interesting or we won't see. 

Ryan Alford [00:16:35] Yeah, exactly. We won't see.  I don't know if he was 78 or 77 or something older, he either took care of himself or had a lot of plastic surgery. In his last photo, he looked like he was  55. 

Josh Hill [00:16:48] Oh yeah. I'm gonna spend more time researching more about what he was doing in his later years because there's going to be a movie about it. Oh yeah, for sure. It was all these random stories of oh, he did this in this country and this in this country, he was just hanging out in places. 

Ryan Alford [00:17:03]  Hanging out and he made a few billion dollars with the  CDs and people being convinced they needed to.  How many people didn't need it, the antivirus thing? And I remember adding it and it boggled the computer. Back in the day, you had  44 megabytes of memory, and that  CD was like 22. It'll get rid of the virus but is going to slow the hell out of your computer. 

Josh Hill [00:17:31]  That name is now just memories of; you had Internet Explorer, you had Microsoft paint, you had McAfee free copy. 

Ryan Alford [00:17:40] It was one of those things that every computer started coming with it on and you could activate it. And the antivirus was more like anti memory and you don't have any interest you load it 

Josh Hill [00:17:55]  He's in our memory but took up your computer memory. 

Ryan Alford [00:17:59] Yes. So there was an article I wanted to notate from ad week. Jerry Daeschler, I want to give Jerry some credit here for his five takeaways from the Google marketing live stream this week in his summation of what you saw there. What do you think we're being told by the powers that be at Google that we need to do to maximize our marketing on their platforms? 

Josh Hill [00:18:22]  My overall takeaway is; use the tools available you're not going to find some magical pathway without using the stuff available. And one of the things is if they have it available, I might as well test it out and use their automation's, use their platform expansions, their everything else because it just gives you more opportunities to get in front of your customers. (Ding)Yes, there it was, I am looking for more of those. 

Ryan Alford [00:18:56]  I did see and I haven't done it yet because you manage most of the ads now, thank God, at least setting them up and running them and making them optimized, you and your team. The biggest thing that I saw that I think needs improvement and this is very tactical, God, it was painful setting up YouTube ads. I remember even a year ago, we'd have clients and I'd be in there, trying to set my arm to play around with it. I mean, how fucking hard is it to set up a YouTube ad? I heard they've made it easier. So they say now you can do it on your mobile device. On my mobile device? I couldn't do it on a desktop with four screens. 

Josh Hill [00:19:37]  I  remember when I finally got through and set it up and it ran and all that, I might have just done something else. 

Ryan Alford [00:19:44] I know it's painful as hell so supposedly that's gotten better  I hope. It's so funny, we're doing automation and A.I. and we're sending people to Mars, but it takes four hours to set up a YouTube campaign?. I'm not lying here right now. It's painful. We set up programmatic across 27 platforms and that's not easy, but it's easier than setting up a freaking Youtube ad. 

Josh Hill [00:20:09] Their UI in general, just has all these weird pages and layers and stuff to things. And I think Facebook's ad manager layout is a little bit more intuitive than Google. 

Ryan Alford [00:20:21] Yes. And it's gotten a lot better, it used to be a nightmare too. Finally building and maintaining a brand takes more than simply maintaining sales. This was a Nielsen report. Nielsen is great for insights and research. If anyone out there is in marketing, advertising, no matter who, you have some really smart people at Nielsen. If you are an agency then you know who Nielsen is. But if you're just a small business, go follow Nielsen. Lots of good tips. This is the go-to for Industry Knowledge Research reports. They have a great podcast report out. So I want to give them a shout-out as an agency. Appreciate all the insights we get from them. But this was interesting and it goes right at the heart of a lot of the things that I talk about with companies and brands. We've gotten so performance and sales-driven; which I understand every CMO who's got their feet to the fire for ROI,  I get it. But the importance of a diversified marketing platform and approach is not forgetting the top of the funnel and those brand driving tactics 

Josh Hill [00:21:30]  You have to feed the funnel. It'll run out and then you're stuck scraping at the bottom of the barrel. 

Ryan Alford [00:21:36] Exactly. And I think people forget it's a sales funnel or cycle or whatever you want to call it, whoever's thinking you want to buy into it. The cycle is cyclical. It's a circle, it's ever-changing. The point is you have people with different interests. You're not making a sale every day. And so brand building awareness driving larger audience-building tactics are so important to keep an active funnel that will convert at all levels is so important and so lost today because we just want to go, OK, here's a product, here's a price point, and here's how it's going to sell. And you need to insert a gimmick here for that. And we get it. That's important. And we have e-commerce clients and we're fighting that battle every day. But until you create broader awareness and purpose and meaning behind your brand at scale, it's really hard to convert sales every day. 

Josh Hill [00:22:42] I think it's a simple rule of business, if you want to be a long-term business, you have to do long-term marketing. If you want to just stick to the short-term conversion only and not do brand positioning, there is no purpose. Sorry, but you're going to be a short-term business. 

Ryan Alford [00:22:59] And you know, I even put our money where our mouth is. This podcast for Radical is a brand builder. We are in the top 150 now for business and marketing-specific podcasts on Apple, but it's taken three years. But this is a brand builder for Radical, people get to know us. They learn our insights. They like the guests that we have come on, it's not an Arawa I drive or day one, but it's building the top of the funnel. And now about every other client who hires us, mentions the podcast. And it took three years for that to happen. And it's going to continue to grow. So this is a brand-building mechanism for us. And so you have to understand that as a business. I know it's painful because everything is so margin driven and investment-driven, so you're either a startup, you have no money, it's just you and you're scrounging it together and you need to make sales or your investment-driven because you brought in all this investment and they want sales immediately. It's hard, but you've got to fight for the long term and not focus just on today, because if you do, you're going to be sorely disappointed and it's in this study, in this report, People to go down below we'll have a link to it. And notes in the footnotes of the episode, it calls out the importance of that top of the phone while driving tactics. So, yes, there is your marketing and advertising news for the week. Appreciate it, Josh. 

Josh Hill [00:24:34] Always good to be here. 

Ryan Alford [00:24:36] Always good. We hope everyone's good out there. Wherever, however, whenever you are. Be safe and you know where to find us. Theradcast.com and at the.rad.cast.  I'm at Ryan Alford on the platforms and at Josh Chill on Instagram for Josh. You look Josh up, give him a follow. We'll see you next time on the Radcast