Ryan [00:00:19] Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast News. I'm joined by the lovely Reiley Clark, the producer of the Radcast. If you haven't listened to it. So, we're kicking off the new year. We’re into the first week of the new year. If you have a listened before this is our news episode where we talk about what we think is the latest and greatest in marketing, advertising and everything under the sun in business, I would even venture to say, if you're a new listener, we're going to talk and break down everything that's happening in the world of marketing and advertising. We pull from all the latest headlines. We look at things and trends that are happening, that are real time. So, if this is your first time listening, welcome aboard! And I know that we’ve kind of a growing audience so we have got new people. Sometimes we don’t pause to go, but we appreciate you, no matter who is there, where you are, what country. We’ve learned that it’s international now. So, we appreciate it. And we appreciate that you are growing with us, here at the Radcast. So what's up, Reiley? 

Reiley [00:01:32] Oh, nothing much. Just chilling really. It's been kind of a busy week in a way, because you get back from the new year and it feels like all this extra stuff of all you have to do and catch up on, and whatever. But it's been a good week. And I'm excited. This is going to be a good year, despite just everything. I'm just looking forward to the positivity being there, and love being there. 

Ryan [00:02:00] I’m just kind of ignoring the news, ironically. It’s not that I avoid the issues, I don’t. You’ll know where I stand on things. But I am not just gonna elevate the negativity, that’s out there. And it’s important. This is not the Republican or Democratic podcast. This is the Radcast. And we are going to keep it Radical. I'm excited about the year. I've tried to be careful. I think we all know that 2020 was a weird year, in a way because of the COVID, because of the issues, and all those things. But I also want to be careful that you never kind of wish time away. We all have such limited time and limited opportunities. But I am excited about everything going with the Radcast, and at Radical and with the team. So, I am in a passionate mood, so to speak. You do know that I believe that passion is bullshit, I’m gonna get into it. So a little bit of a different episode for next week, next Tuesday. We're getting a lot of great guests lined up and schedules, we’re excited about that. Going to do a little bit of Ryan Unfiltered, just some of my opinions, my beliefs in both business and in general. And so, I think it will help people know the perspective of where this show comes from, where I come from. And I think it will be motivational in a way, because I think it hopefully gives everybody a little kick in the ass, including myself for the new year. And so I'm excited about that. 

Reiley [00:03:47] Yeah, it’ll be super good. 

Ryan [00:03:49] But what else is going on? Any other big announcements for this we've got? Again, if you're a new listener or have been listening, we produce each one of these shows in both audio and video. We have a multi, multicast — I don’t if that’s the exact word for it, but yeah. We've got a YouTube channel, we've got IGTV, Facebook. So it's a little more interactive. And so, you see some of the visuals, especially the News episode. I would say every episode, I won’t say every episode. Reiley brings contextual content to kind of whatever we’re talking about…

Reiley [00:04:42] I think the other thing I would say that's happening, and I know we have kind of talked about this the last couple of episodes, but this will be something that probably we’ll put out soon. Like, we have got all of our merch together and we have several different ideas, different kinds of styles, different types of texture, different designs that now I feel we have a really good lineup. I'm excited to get it out there and share it with whoever wants to purchase that. So, if you're curious about it. There’ll be more on that too.

Ryan [00:05:13] Love more on that. Our goal here is to inform, to entertain, to motivate. This is a marketing and advertising podcast that's always going to be our core. Being run by and through our ad agency here — Radical. But it also has a lot of layers to it. And I think the merchandise is going to bring that to life and hopefully be stuff that has a little bit of edge to it. I think it's got to be Radical. If it's radical, it's Radcast, right!

Reiley [00:05:49] Yes, absolutely.

Ryan [00:05:53] Well, here's Riley with the news.

Announcer 3 [00:05:56] Here is the Radcast news.

Reiley [00:06:01] Okay, so our topics for today, first of all, let's talk about Clubhouse -- something that obviously is for people who have huge levels of influence and are able to come in and bring an opinion and perspective with a lot more people and have that kind of conversation.

Ryan [00:06:18] Yeah, I think it's over a year old now. It started very exclusively, and it’s still exclusive, invite only. But they're broadening that. I think it's eventually going to be a mainstream app. But this is an audio-only app. It's really interesting. And I got an invite a while back and I'm just amazed. It takes some time. I don’t wanna say some channels sticking a post or story up, you can kinda knock out a few minutes, like your engagement with social media can kinda come and go. To get the most out of this app, you've got to invest some time into it because they have rooms that are set up. Clubhouse is right, it reminds me of, if you have seen Friday – when I hear the word CLubhouse it’s always -- there's this line in Friday, the movie, where the guys goes, he was like, somebody got caught for stealing cardboard boxes, and the line in the movie is “What’s he doing, building a clubhouse, or something?” Sorry. I hear Clubhouse and it’s always…Need to Google ‘Friday’ and ‘Clubhouse’, and you'll be able to watch the scene. It’s pretty funny. Anyway, Chris Tucker, hilarious.Anyway, I digress. But Clubhouse, cool. Audio only, a very unique experience because you go into these rooms, there's no video. It's audio only you go. I mean, obviously there's a UI for you to navigate around the app, but it's tons of influencers, tons of celebrities and they set up rooms. A lot of networking at its core. But it's also you get a real insightful view because, you've got some of these rooms, you and I will say this, you never know who’s gonna be in a room, like you go into a room and Tom Hanks is there, talking about some subject. So you've got moderators that set up the room. So maybe it's like how to become a millionaire, you know, the millionaire-mindset for starting a business. And you’d have heard from five to two thousand people in the room. You get moderators that started it and you can raise your hand. So if you want to speak or hear something that you're listening to people give tons of advice, networking, chatting, almost like, again, it's like the perfect thing with COVID that happened. You'll have people getting together and having that real time discussion. It fills that gap. OK, but it's really fascinating. It's had some bumps in the roads because some of the subjects can go off the rails. And there's not a lot of moderating, overarching moderating that happens. I haven't experienced that firsthand. But I could see where that could happen. Setting up rooms, because you can set up a room about any topic and your audience will grow because you can search on certain terms and certain things about what you're looking for. You put out your profile, but it's been really great for networking. I'm just now starting to unpeel the onion, so to speak, of everything on it. But I can see a lot of opportunities for where this goes. In some ways, it takes a lot more investment of time and energy. But then in another way, it's a completely different experience because you're not having to stare at your phone the entire time. Go into a room and you have your airpods on, or whatever. You can talk and engage in that. And it's not necessarily -- you definitely want to see if you're going to raise your hand or do stuff, but you can be very voyeuristic because you can listen-in on some of these rooms, and you set up private rooms, non-private rooms. But I see a lot of potential as it becomes more mainstream. I could see an interesting way for influencers or marketing. So like, if it becomes open up to everyone, I could see where you would have audio influencers. For example, I'm in a room and I'm talking about a subject. And then it's almost like a podcast commercial. Like I could see where I could go, like, I got these shoes, Louis Vuitton, or whatever — which I don’t have, Louis Vuitton shoes on, today at least, or ever, actually… I could see where you're going to start to see potentially that versus visual ads that you see another thing. That's going to be audio driven. It feels like in some ways a big group podcast, each room does. But it's real time, that notion, because when you speak nothing's recorded, at all, It's all encoded in all this stuff so that it doesn't leave the platform and they have all these policies. So, it’s almost like, and there’s a name for it…content that doesn’t stick around, like stories or -- originally the whole premise of Snapchat, which is still there — sending nudes to each other. I’ve never done that, I’m just saying. I have heard that people do. If I did, it'd be my wife…anyway. But nonetheless, once you talk and you've spoken the word, it's gone. There's no one there not saving it in an archive. And so, that's different from a podcast that gets recorded and everything. It's really liberating. It’s live…

Reiley [00:12:01] It's really liberating. Like you can just say whatever realizing it's not going to go anywhere and it's not going to do anything. It's just going to stay on that platform…

Ryan [00:12:06]. And so, really fascinating. It's going to grow. You’re not going to find a ton of news articles and things on it just yet. But it certainly has been out for a year or so. So, it's not like it's new or something. Someone is going, “What are they talking about? This isn’t news, [it’s] been out forever”. Somebody is listening and saying that, well fuck you! -- No, I am kidding. In all seriousness, the cool app, I see all the lots of potential. Lots of great networking. It feels in a way like an extension of LinkedIn. Suddenly you get on with your best friends or you're like-minded friends for networking, and you’re sharing ideas and stuff.

Reiley [00:12:55] It's an interesting point because I know we’ve talked about this even in the episode with Josh, that y’all did for 2021 trends for marketing. But in general, audio platforms are becoming a lot bigger in 2021. I know we're just barely a weekend now, but I mean, this is a trend that has been anticipated, I think, for a while. And the audio, whether it's podcasting or whatever it is -- audio platforms are becoming bigger. And this is obviously even seen with our other topic today, that Amazon buys Wondery. It's that podcast platform that -- it was one of the only left independent, independently run podcasting platforms if I remember right. And then Amazon bought it. So now, it's part of Amazon music, which just further shows that the platform is growing. I don't think it necessarily means that everyone should be starting their own podcast. But what I do think it means, from a business perspective, I think it's smart to also be putting your advertisements on an audio platform, podcasting, like any sort of audio thing, because otherwise, listener rates are growing on a podcast platform. So, why would you put it where they're not like, you know what I mean?

Ryan [00:14:14] Well, it's a region frequency thing. You still get more reach, which is more people on terrestrial radio, which is standard radio. That's the only argument. That's the biggest fear with advertisers, I mean, are we putting ads where there is no one listening or not enough scale? Because like, the problem is, if you're a small to medium size brand, advertising on this makes sense because you don't have to have tons of customers like you just get niche customers — makes sense with podcasting. If you need to sell Tide in the grocery store, not saying you shouldn’t be on a podcast. And I'm sure they're probably on Joe Rogan's, or who knows what. But you don't get the scale that you need. And it's become a management issue because if I've got to be on seven thousand podcasts to get the reach that I could get running on 12 country music radio stations. And so, really that’s the struggle. But if you're looking for niche markets, you can find here in podcasting, it is growing, and audio is growing. Audio is the new TV. But in all seriousness, it is growing. It feels weird. It’s kind of funny to say that, like audio in 2021…

Reiley [00:15:32] But I feel like it's an easier platform… We talk about this with authenticity and just being real, or whatever. And podcasting, or audio in general, is just so real and so truthful in the moment, because so much of it is our normal conversation. We're not, like this isn’t a scripted podcast… like this isn’t a scripted thing, and I think it just creates natural organic conversation. I think people now just want organic things. They just want realness. They want authenticity and I think podcasting delivers that in so many ways. And that's why I love it.

Ryan [00:16:17] And unless it's live TV. And even live TV can be stripped, the news for the most part, it’s scripted. There's moments where you don't have it all mapped out. You can kinda see it in the look in their eyes, “ We’re back. I didn't know we were back”, but yes, I do think it's interesting with the Amazon purchase. I'll be honest, until Amazon bought them, and I'm in the game with podcasting. But I'm loyal to where we produce and are at, which is the mainstream ones. This one's more of a walled garden, as they call it, because you can't just -- you have to get approved through them. I think from what I understand, they're all exclusive to that. I didn't see some of -- and I messed around there a few weeks ago because I had heard about them with this Amazon thing telling me. And then when we chose this for the news article, so I spent some more time with it. But I wasn't finding mainstream names. So there were some interesting topics. I listed a couple of them; very professional and sounded good. But I wasn't seeing Joe Rogan or Gary Vee ,or whatever anyone in the mainstream business, or in entertainment type stuff. So maybe they're on there… I think it's like a walled garden, I don’t know, it’s interesting… Amazon will bring a lot of data for targeting, so they know they're just expanding their advertising abilities across platforms. So we'll see where that goes. But it's definitely, audio is the tour de force here in 2021. 

Reiley [00:18:09] No, it really is. And the other thing that I feel like obviously Amazon is a huge tech company, and the overall hub of everything pretty much anymore. But the other thing they're starting to do, and this has been a thing that they've been doing through other parts of apparel, on their website, you can customize a t-shirt, but they're getting really into customizing particular clothing just by sending in a t-shirt. Or you send in a picture of yourself in a t-shirt, you send in your way, and you send in your gender and it sends you back a very tailored fit t-shirt back from that. But I think this is something that's going to be seen a lot more. I mean when Amazon does something I feel like it's because it's about ‘the launch bigger’, and I feel they're always on top of the game like that. But this is something that even reminds me. It feels similar to even things that we've had other guests talk about on the podcast, like whether that was George or Sean Whalen, or whoever it was. I feel like this brings in the tailoring aspect of it, even the right stuff. I mean, it reminds me of all that stuff, too. So that's happening too.

Ryan [00:19:23] No, it sounds good. Look, you're going to see this development and this isn’t necessarily AR, this is using data and who knows what technology, every technology they have involved with this. But you're going to see this as the reality of more online shopping, making people comfortable with that, especially ordering things that take some amount of customization. They've had this for a while, back when I used to actually wear suits. There was a size that came out —it might have even been eight or ten years ago, the technology's gotten better — where they literally take your exact custom stuff, there were some things that seem similar with this, and they would build you a custom suit. Right to your custom shirts and everything, so a similar type of approach.  And I think, again, what's happened here is we've grown ecommerce in one year at the rate of like seven years. And so, you have, the average —call it 20 to 35 year olds— have been very comfortable with ecommerce in the last 8-10 years. 40 to 60, a little less comfortable, and 55 to 75 have been laggards with ecommerce. They have always gone to stores, they have always bought things certainly more customized, whether it’s grocery, whether it’s clothes, or whatever. But you have all of this convergence of all people of all ages coming online. And so, Amazon is trying to get ahead of that.  Alright, suddenly, people that haven’t always been comfortable with this are now doing it. How do we get them even more comfortable with the level of customization that you can do that would normally be expected when you’re in the store? And so you're seeing those technologies. I think you see them across a lot of things. The only thing that I'm aware of that you won't be able to do is to taste what that fruit tastes like before you put it in your shopping cart… 

Reiley [00:23:18] In another news, Kia is rebranding their logo.I kinda like this, it feels very modern and they wanted to do this to symbolize confidence because it's a very clean looking stroke, arithmetic kind of deal, symbolizing confidence and this is an empowering kind of thing. Interesting, a cool way to start 2021. 

Ryan [00:23:44] They had one of the worst logos in auto before, it looked very cheap.  It was one of the weakest points of their brand. However, I'm a technology guy. I like modernity. It is better. But generally speaking, I don't love logos where you can't read the name of the brand. And when I look at that, it's so modern, if I didn't know it. Now I know it's coming on a car that's Kia, but I'm not crazy when you can't completely read the letters. If you really look at that, like when I first saw it I was like — obviously I knew it was Kia —if I didn’t know it was Kia I would have definitely known that it was K I A. And if you're watching the video version, you're seeing it on your screen. Can you definitely see a K I A there, or is that just me?
Reiley [00:24:40] I personally can. But I don’t know if it’s just because I read about it beforehand, and I see it, if you know what I mean…

Ryan [00:24:51] I’d like to show that to 10 people cold and see if they definitely notice…and ask them, “can you read it?”. Because I didn’t read it as Kia. And that sounds very old-school or something. It doesn’t mean that I need block letters in a logo. It could be cool, but it was just, that was the only thing that was a little bit like, OK, alright, it's cool. It's modern. It's better than what it was. And once it’s on the car it'll look cool.

Reiley [00:25:15] But the way it looks in the steering wheel, I have it pulled up by the way, if you're on the video version. But the way it looks on the steering wheel, it's so cool and it just looks so futuristic.

Ryan [00:26:26] Yeah definitely there’s that. Look, here's the deal. Electric cars are coming like a freight train. It’s coming. We're having this massive switch over, all these brands are going to electric and battery power stuff. And so, it definitely feels in line with that change happening, and again, it’s better.  But that was the only thing that just bothered me a little bit. I just like immediately looking at it and like... It's cool looking, but can you read it? Well, everyone immediately sees that, because again, on the car driving by, it's not a big deal, it looks cool. But when I put my logo up, and I pay for naming rights at a Major League Baseball stadium, and I've got three letters on the stadium board, I spent 20 million dollars to have it there. You have to be sure that people know it and can read it. But I know over time they know what they are… look I get it, I am in the business. But just the only thing that’s like -- make sure that you see Kia.

Reiley [00:26:34] Yes. This is changing it up a little bit apart from, this is our last news topic for today. But KFC — I love, for the record, all of these companies that are coming into the esports gaming space because I just think it’s interesting how they then put their spin on trying to increase their [reach]… I love the Mountain Dew’s Direct to Gamer, the D2G. I love that, So, I am even going to use it here and KFC’s a part of it — KFC has created a console that has a built-in chicken chamber. I just think it's smart and it's so funny and I just love all the different ways that these brands are coming into the EA Sports gaming space because they know it's growing. And so, it's how are they going to get… How are we going to put our foot in the door? 

Ryan [00:27:25] I like it for a PR play and for like from a marketing perspective, advertising perspective. I mean, how many people are actually going to own one of these things? But because you can but like, sometimes you create products and stuff for the news. And I feel like this is an example of it, right? Yes, Esports is booming. Yes KFC wants to be the official fried chicken snack, whatever you want to call it, of all gamers. Brilliant, I get it, they want to leverage the audiences. But again, are there gonna be four million KF Consoles, as they are called? No. And that’s not the point. I know someone would go, then what was the point, Ryan? I’m aware, but just so that people are aware, this is less about having a console that can warm your chicken. But I am wondering if it warms it up from the heat of just playing the game, it produces a lot of heat, which might even be like a recycle. It’s like, “hey don’t use your microwave”, it’s sustainable, that’s another angle…that’s where my head went first. But nonetheless, this is about the PR and less about the product. even though it probably looks cool. It looks cool.. I felt it was, I was like, OK, but it's PC gaming. I'm sure I didn't see any integration with Xbox or Sony. So it’s just kind of PC gaming, which is the largest platform because of the broadness and most of the true gamers are PC console guys. And so, I guess it'll be interesting who they partner with from their technology standpoint, because these guys are all about like how many gigabytes…It's got to have every spec and speed feed that’s possible. So we'll see if it's got the KFC original recipe, and if it's super fast, or if it's a little extra — an extra crispy console. KFC, call us. This is what you pay for on the Radcast. 

Reiley [00:29:31] This is not even scripted content. Here we are killing the game today. No but that is it from Radcast today. Yeah, these are the news topics for today.

Ryan [00:29:41] Yeah, we had some good topics this week. Go and read about Clubhouse. It'll be the next big app coming down the road. And if you get on there, you can follow me at Ryan Alford on Clubhouse. I will be setting up some channels. I've got some ideas in the works. I even see the Radcast coming to life a little bit, potentially on Clubhouse. So, there’s more to come. Actually I’m gonna send one of my invites to the lovely Reiley Clark.

Reiley [00:30:05] Thank you! That’s so nice of you, oh my gosh.

Ryan [00:30:08] So we really appreciate everyone listening. You know where to find us at the Radcast, the Radcast dot com and the.rad.cast on Instagram. You can follow along with me on Instagram at any time @RyanAlford and Ryan Alford Dotcom. We'll see you next time.

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 RADcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We really appreciate it. And go leave us a review at Apple or Spotify. Leave 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 directly, 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. Eight six four seven two nine thirty six eighty. We'll see you next time.