Super Bowl 2024: The Importance of Big Swings

[00:00:00] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks, welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And of course, I'm joined today. This is where we're right after Super Bowl Sunday here when we're recording this – and of course the Super Bowl is not only the Super Bowl of football, it's also the Super Bowl of advertising.

So I'm joined today as I always am by the only Taylor that matters, Taylor Holiday, CEO here at CTC. Taylor, how are you doing?

[00:00:24] Taylor Holiday: I'm doing well. That was, that was a fun game. I really enjoyed it. So it was good. It was fun to watch my kids interact with it in ways that were they're getting a little older. They're attuned to the advertisers. They're attuned to the celebrities. They're attuned to the gyrations of Usher in ways that they have questions about, but overall it was a good evening.

[00:00:43] Richard Gaffin: Your kids were like, who is this man? Who's this Usher guy?

[00:00:47] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, they're constantly fascinated by, like we were watching the Grammys the other night and they're starting to be like, what are those people doing on stage? Why are they moving that way? Why are their bodies shaking? And they think it's hilarious anytime someone shakes their butt. So it was a lot to work

[00:01:02] Richard Gaffin: you go, yeah. A lot going on last night, for sure. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I was watching with a group of non sports people. And into overtime, everybody started watching the game. And I always think that's a good sign of Super Bowl and like there haven't been

[00:01:17] Taylor Holiday: There you go.

[00:01:18] Richard Gaffin: that was yeah, so it was a great game.

I love the halftime show. The ads as always are interesting. And of course, I think what we wanted to do is get on the mic and just kind of do a little topical hot take on The biggest day of the year for our industry, which is advertising ultimately. And so I think like there's a couple of angles that we can, I mean, it's interesting coming from an e commerce lens, because obviously the type of thing that we generally do is way more day to day direct to consumer, whatever.

But we also talk to, or talk about the idea of making big calendar moments, big marketing moments. Taking big swings and taking advantage of, let's say, cultural forces to create sales moments. So, I think we want to kind of talk about the Super Bowl from that perspective. But first, Taylor, who, in your opinion, won the night from an advertising perspective? What'd you come away from

[00:02:05] Taylor Holiday: It seems like Duncan is getting a lot of the attention. Right now in terms of just a celebrity star studded, they just released a really cool, like behind the scenes video of Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Tom Brady trying to throw a football through a tire on set wearing their ridiculous things. It's just like, for me, that's just like catnip.

It's like three big celebrities doing a sports thing in an authentic way. It's just like, and it was outrageous and fun. So I think that is the obvious choice. I've also seen one set of data that I saw Andrea on Twitter share that. outside of the movie trailers for wicked and Deadpool, which always tend to get a ton of engagement that it was VW and Poppy actually as the most engagement that surrounded the ad.

So I thought that was kind of cool to see an upstart trying to get in there and mix it up with the big folks. I like the Michael Cera ad. That was a fun one for me. And then there's always in every room, it's just the awkward kind of silence when the Jesus ads are playing where everyone's like, how am I totally supposed to respond to this?

So there it's, it's good. It pulls on every, every part of us as people watching the super bowl.

[00:03:13] Richard Gaffin: So, I mean, I think like we, we were talking before we hit record here. Obviously there was the two big advertisers were obviously, I guess it was Hobby Lobby with the Jesus commercials, but then also Temu

[00:03:23] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. Temo.

[00:03:24] Richard Gaffin: so as somebody who's less familiar with that platform, I know we've, we've talked about it on the, on the podcast before, but I came away from those ads having no real idea of what Temu was, but I think like, as we were discussing before we hit record here, like, yeah.

There's a lot of fascinating things about the way TEMU relates to e commerce, so we wanted to take maybe a little bit of time and talk through what exactly does it mean Taylor to shop like a billionaire, which I think was their tagline from last night.

[00:03:49] Taylor Holiday: So here's what I, my experience of Temmo is one, like they're a monster. It's hard to fathom how much volume they're doing. So just some notes, they, they did about almost 2 billion in January alone, 1. 8 ish billion, some insider knowledge. They're coming from our friends at a cast metrics. They spend over a billion dollars on meta ads last year.

So I saw four Super Bowl ads. There might have been five. I might have miscounted, but that's 28 to 35 million in Super Bowl spots. And to your point, a lot of people don't even know who they are and they sell the sort of wildest collection of tchotchkes and American flags meets drones, meets, you know, glow in the dark mushrooms that you slap on your wall, like just anything you can imagine.

But I think that what can't be missed in the joke of shop like a billionaire. One is you remember the tagline. It's stupid and it doesn't seem to make any real sense, but it is so easy to remember and it's very easy to associate. So it's one word name, Temu, super simple, like Amazon, right? Very simple shop like a billionaire.

Again, what does it mean? I don't really know, but here's the thing that I noticed about Temu. So I went on the app. I, I have bought things there before. I'm not going to lie mainly for the experience of it, but when you go to Temu, if you sign in, And you play with it, what you're going to realize it is that it is a fundamentally different shopping experience than anything else that exists in the United States.

It is Chuck E. Cheese meets DraftKings meets, you know, shopping in a way that is primarily a game more than anything. You can't go into the app without being prompted for a spin a wheel or try and catch a falling coupon. And any, I just tried to leave the app and they said, do you want to leave your free 220 that you just got?

And the button said like, no, stay and redeem my 220 or give up and quit. It's like, it is, it is a casino. It is not a shopping environment. And I think that. They are trying to gamify the experience of buying stuff in a way that taps deeply into our capitalistic meets gambling roots of America and it is worth Spending some time understanding and looking at because they do it incredibly well.

[00:06:03] Richard Gaffin: I mean, I think it's interesting that this sort of. Hasn't really been done before done effectively before, which is like gamify the shopping experience or make it as sort of, I mean, fundamentally mindless, I guess, is like, you know, sitting at the slot machine and just like popping quarters into it over and over again.

But yeah, no, it's to your point about tchotchkes is fast. I'm like, I'm on their homepage right now. You can buy a waterproof recliner chair cover, a chainsaw sharpening kit, an RFID credit card holder. Um, uh, what appears to be an assault rifle. A little bit of netting that covers your air conditioner.

There's like, all kinds of different crap on here. Honestly, this reminds me of Skyball, which is

[00:06:44] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, it's SkyMalt meets the dollar store meets, you know wish and what's interesting is they have So there's the, they have Temu's big game ad encore. Okay. The 5 million blitz tons of prizes. And they've got Christian McCaffrey in a generic photo there. So there's some sort of deal going on and every 12 minutes, which is a very mobile app.

I don't know if you have ever played mobile app games, Richard, but I used to be a big clash of clans player for a while. And the way they get you is like, You can like redeem things and then you have to wait like seven minutes and then you can go back and redeem things again. Same idea, right? Like every 12 next, every hour there's another round of games that I can play to win more prizes that Christian's going to help me do.

And it's like, I can turn on a notification to come back to the game, the app when things are like, it is crazy. What's going on? But you have four Super Bowl ads that drive to a very robust shopping experience where there's in app development featuring a player from the game with a clear promotional follow up.

Like that's tactical marketing excellence in a way that's hard to ignore.

[00:07:46] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, okay. So it's interesting. Then we kind of connect this maybe to this idea we were talking about before of creating a big moment, which is obviously something that Temu has done or is doing particularly because, and I think the interesting connection is, as you're pointing out, like Temu is primarily like, it's an e commerce site, a marketplace.

It's in many ways, direct to consumer. I think you were mentioning manufacturing. Maybe already mentioned earlier on the Pat or before we hit record. I don't remember, but their, their media bada bled was something let like a billion and a half or something on meta last year. Is that correct?

[00:08:17] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. One point, like 4 billion on metal alone.

[00:08:20] Richard Gaffin: so it's fundamentally a DTC brand that obviously has the budget to make a Super Bowl commercial. So that's obviously the caveat here, but what they were doing was, was. Spending that time or taking the big swing with this ad that was about shopping like a billionaire, whatever it happened to be to get people more sort of involved in their sort of more day to day kind of e commerce platform.

So let's talk a little bit about. In terms of taking big swings, like what are the lessons that you take away from, from the super bowl as a particular example of creating a marketing moment?

[00:08:52] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. The Super Bowl is always one of those times that I. It's sort of challenging to me because it's so outside of the way that we would encourage people to behave most of the time, at least in context of direct response and immediate measurable impact. Last year, I did try to do a breakdown of Coinbase's impact of their QR code ad, which was one of the first ones that kind of went through the expectations of direct response return.

And next month, if you turn into our state of the commerce. Report, you're going to get a clear breakdown and we're going to use cast metrics to show you how much revenue both poppy and Temu did on the Super Bowl ad. So we're going to get a sense of that. But what I like about it is it is, it's like you said, it's big swings at big ideas that aren't generally about direct response, right?

If you think of very few of the ads actually trigger any sort of immediate call to action in some ways, I think about like the dove ad stands out to me where they're sort of continuing to campaign on. This idea of like supporting a teenage girl's body image for the sake of their sport participation.

That's like, I didn't know that they sold soap in that ad. Right. So you get a lot of that sort of branded messaging and affinity for the, the, the category or, or brand. And It makes me think about what the role is that, that, that needs to play in our world more often. And it, it certainly has a place.

And I think the Temu thing is an interesting example where it's easy to think about the 28 million as being a lot, but 1. 4 billion on meta divided by 12 months, 110 million a month, 28 million in one month is like out of 150 million ad budget. You know, you're looking at. 10, 15 percent of the overall budget, maybe 20 percent in a peak month.

Well, what would it be like to apply that kind of thinking to a brand spending 500, 000 a month, which is more in our range, 500, 000 to a million a month in ad spend. What does 15 to 25, 150 to 250, 000 could still get you a pretty wild swing at something, right? It could get you some attention. And I think that.

There's opportunities to grab moments where we utilize that kind of thinking to take expansionary efforts for the sake of developing that skill, and it's not a core function of ours on a day to day basis. We aren't truly an advertising agency, right? We're much more. of a growth partner that supports in the execution of your media strategy against a financial outcome.

So like we're kind of tacticians against more than we are the creative layer usually often. I think it's a, it is worth using it as a challenge to yourself to think about what is the impact of these kinds of moments on our perception of the products that we buy and the brands that we interact with.

[00:11:31] Richard Gaffin: Well, I think it's interesting, like, the lessons that can be taken from Super Bowl ads from a, from a creative perspective, because like, yeah, I'm, I'm, With for CTC, we don't really do that per se, but of course, like if brands are coming to us and they have great creative messaging, that's always a benefit for us as well.

And then we also have, like, there's some control that we have again over what we actually say in our ads in terms of the copy and all that kind of thing. And so I think like there's a valuable sort of general creative lesson. I feel like that comes from the super bowl is that it's the one day out of the year where the commercials are good and everybody wants, wants to watch them and.

In our world, that's obviously what we want from our ads is that people want to watch the ads and it's weird that there's only one day out of the year where people actually feel compelled to watch it. So we were thinking like part of the reason of course that that's the case is that so many Super Bowl ads lean on celebrity cameos, which is of course not something that everybody can afford.

But one example that I was bringing up before was the Pluto TV couch potatoes spot, which I don't believe had any celebrities in it, but the central sort of creative concept of kind of. Satirizing that sort of like Heartland farmer type commercial that gets played at the Superbowl so much, but have it be about harvesting great content in the form of these like couch potatoes or whatever, like there was like a really memorable creative concept that now I sort of remember.

I remember Pluto TV. And I think like the idea behind any great ad is to make a product famous. And that's, I think what like the best Superbowl ads do. So maybe like talk about that too. Like what kind of creative lessons do you feel like you take away? From

[00:13:04] Taylor Holiday: So it's, I like that, I like that phrase make a brand famous. If you think about The game itself. Okay. Each player is in tempting to use this giant global platform To cement this word that you'll hear come up, which is like legacy, or they'll become a legend. Like, after the game I heard Travis Kelsey being interviewed and he referred to Andy Reid as legendary.

It was like, this moment has created, based on your performance on the biggest stage in the world, made you legendary. And I think in some ways, if I think about, the Budweiser Clydesdales or the, you know, the the frogs you know, the, those guys or the polar bear from Coca Cola, like there are these, these places by which you can endear yourself into the culture in a way that is.

Deeply rooted. That's what this moment is. You're, you're taking a swing on the biggest stage with the chance of being great in the same way the players are. And if you nail it, if you really nail it, then you do. You grab this part of Americana culture in a way that's truly unique. And so I think it is taking that kind of swing at a moment where we open ourselves up as Americans to the idea that we are here to receive your message.

And we are going to. Either, it's like a Kingmaker moment, we're either going to grant you the place within our culture in a way that's like, yes, that is part of who we are, or we're going to reject it in this aggressive way. But it is, it's a, it's a moment for legacy. It's a moment for becoming famous. And I think brands have a chance to do that.

And when that is what is required in order for you to win your category then I think it presents that kind of possibility.

[00:14:42] Richard Gaffin: Okay, so maybe let's talk about, let's maybe bring it back down to the e commerce level a little bit. And we've already touched on this, kind of, but, what do you feel like, so, we talked a little bit about creative lessons or whatever. Like, what do you think is the takeaway for a brand? Like let's say the brands we serve, the brands, people that are listening to this podcast right now, where obviously you don't have, you know, the million dollar, 10 million budget you need to get a Superbowl ad made, but like what, what is the, and we were talking a little bit, like, how do you think about the idea of, let's say this type of awareness marketing in, in our world?

Like what, what's, what is the takeaway for brands at this size?

[00:15:22] Taylor Holiday: When we think about the GQ giants and the brands that are wildly successful in a way that is Truly unique they are producing profit at a greater efficiency than everybody else driving demand at a greater efficiency than everybody else There's always I shouldn't say always there's almost always a common attribute in their ability to leverage Fame as an organic audience demand creation engine.

Like I think about the heart and soils, the Jones road beauties, you know, the nude, a brand that we just talked to recently, like that sells women's basics. And this is the influencer story. It's Mr. Beast. It's the, the capacity to access large audience in a way that Build affinity and attention for your thing in a way that is not a linear relationship to cost is just a superpower as a brand building.

And now advertising isn't that necessarily, it isn't necessarily the idea that you are paying. Or that you are gathering an ongoing audience in some capacity. But I think what these kinds of things do is they have the potential to disassociate from the CPM. What do I mean by that? If I were to think about meta ads, one of the things that they will never do is disassociate from the CPM in the sense that you are paying for a set of impressions and that price may change, but the next thousand impressions you are going to pay for at the same price.

Almost never. I think there are certainly some very small edge cases where a Facebook ad went so viral that it disassociated from the CPM in a way that garnered this additional halo effect of impact. It's almost always the case that the next 1, 000 impressions is paid for. But this kind of advertising, this kind of swing, like I think about when Red Bull, Had the guy set the record for the longest free fall jump from outer space.

I still watch that video. Occasionally my kids were watching that and I like the, the, there is a compounding set of impressions that have now disassociated from the price of the initial buy. And that's what great. Advertising does is it breaks that association between the cost of the inventory placement and the attention that it garners and figuring that out.

Some would, people would call that like an organic flywheel, right? Like this idea that surrounding your thing now is a, is a halo effect of word of mouth or conversation that is not paid for anymore that like to truly create escape velocity, like somewhere that has to occur. And this is the thing I'm feeling very much in Bamboo Earth right now, where we don't have that.

We don't have the escape velocity of surrounding conversation that's driving any sort of organic flywheel. It's that we have to be great next month again on Facebook ads. And we have to be great the next month again on Facebook ads. And we're, we're good at it and it happens and we're growing and it's a good business.

But like, it's hard and it doesn't seem to be. A sort of wind at our back in any way that I have experienced previously in other brands where it's suddenly you can feel it. It's not measurable, but there's a conversation happening that's disassociated that direct payment for attention.

[00:18:38] Richard Gaffin: Okay. So, I mean, this is, this is a good example. And so what do you do with Bamboo Earth to, to create that? I mean, is that something that like, so obviously you've experienced with other brands before, like was it purely organic? Was there any, anything manufactured or strategic about creating that moment?

Like, what do you do with Bamboo Earth now?

[00:18:56] Taylor Holiday: So I think we've got to think about the advertising in a way that. Has that kind of potential. So like one of the things, and it this tends to push you into boundaries of thinking that like, would be like what would get attention naturally, what would people share or talk about? And so I'll, I'll give you an example of something that I was just texting with Josh about as an idea.

You know, you were into, you were in the fitness space for a little bit. So if you're on fitness TikTok or if you follow a guy like Sam Lac or you're into. Any of the bodybuilding parts of TikTok, like there's this whole set of content that's around the idea of are they natty or not? Okay. So natty, just being a shorthand for natural, meaning they don't use steroids.

And so there's all this content where it's like sort of man on the street. Someone walks up and says, are you natty or not? And there's this whole dialogue. And then there's this whole like sub genres of people debating whether certain influencers or celebrities are natty or not. Okay. And so if I think about bamboo earth, like the whole idea is that That's why we're talking about the beauty of this tech.

It's the natural beauty. And there's an alternative wave of our culture where like Botox is like on this growth curve. Right. And so there's this question of like women, thatty or not, and that could be a little bit sensitive that could cause a little bit of a friction. But like, how could you unlock a set of content and put yourself surrounding the idea in a way that might generate impressions beyond.

The ad conversation now, is that the brand and who they stand for? I don't know. I, but the point is the kind of thinking that we're doing now versus like, if you go listen to Andrew and Dave's episode about, he did an episode where they were writing a long form ad together for bamboo earth. And it's very much like direct response, media buying.

And like, that's important too, but there's no way that conversation leads to the thing we're describing, which is like organic demand grows somehow. And so I think that's, that's. The kind of thing that I'm just trying to think about how you could break into the zeitgeist in a way that puts you into the Stanley water bottle category, right?

Like where it's like, where something begins to move with you in a way that is bigger than you. It goes back to like, make green cool. If you're lucky strike, how do you do that? It's not a direct response ad, it's make green cool in culture. And so I think that's the question is like, how do you impact culture with your thing?

And that's, it's a big ask.

[00:21:17] Richard Gaffin: And just to, just for context around the make green cool thing with Lucky Strike, this goes back to in the 1920s, Lucky Strike overproduced a bunch of packs of cigarettes with that were colored green. And it was like, they didn't really know how to sell them. It was like the wrong color, something along those lines.

And so what they did is they hired a PR firm to essentially start putting on events where everybody had to wear green. They would invite all like the biggest celebrities in New York, whatever. And they would have these green parties and eventually green became really hot. And then lucky strike cigarettes, because they were already the green one started flying off the shelf.

So that's exactly the type of cultural moment I think you're talking about. Talk to me about like in, in situations that you've had before. So I don't know if Kalo is one of these, maybe like other brands where you've seen this organic things start to happen. Talk me through like, what, what were the events surrounding that?

Like, how did that, how did it work?

[00:22:03] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, it's, it's crazy. People will describe it in these like almost supernatural terms where they'll say, it was like magic, you know, like everything worked and what, or, you know, there's the classic sort of product market fit where the markets need or want for a thing sort of suddenly overlaps perfectly with your thing.

And it just feels like every action is multiplied and compounded. Two, three, four times the actual effort put in and in a way that is like. Really wild to experience, right? Where you're just like, we can't, every time we insert something, even if it's kind of careless and not ideal, the amplification of the effect is so great that you're just like, holy cow, that it's amazing.

Can we do more? You know, and

[00:22:52] Richard Gaffin: Mm hmm.

[00:22:53] Taylor Holiday: it's hard to recognize when you're in that moment. how rare it is. Like I work with a client right now that sort of has this going on in their product category. And one of the things I'm trying to say to them is don't miss how rare the thing you're in right now, or assume that this lasts forever.

Like it just, it doesn't work this way, but what you guys have is so disproportionately unique that. Either it's the time to realize the value of the thing because it's at its absolute peak, or to sort of fill the storehouses in a way that prepares the reality that it won't always be this way. But in terms of what creates it, it can be created, I think, by a lot of magical things.

A lot of times it is. Can be like the right person says the right thing at the right time. That's the, you see all the brands of the classic Joe Rogan brought me on the podcast. And we have a brand that sort of experienced that it's like validation or like Andrew Huberman. I've seen this with him right now where it's like Kingmakers blessing you and saying, this is the thing for the moment.

Other times it's like a cultural move that underlines like lifestyle. So I think about right now, we have brands that are experiencing this in the supplement space where there's like a movement into, you know, think about diets, think about keto as an example of a thing that for a long time, just drove this sort of cultural surrounding where what happens is.

That what, what you have become attached to is a movement that a bunch of people are creating demand for the movement, but you get associated with it. Right. So it's like CrossFit was that as an example for Kayla, where we weren't creating the demand for CrossFit, but as the demand for CrossFit grew. the demand for Caillou grew because it was a solution that fed it or met that community.

And so all the demand that was going like this, we benefited from right. In a way that you get associated with an underlying movement to that. That's like sailing with the wind at your back, I think is another, another way that happens.

[00:24:53] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, and I think like the thing that makes, A moment like the super bowl you unique is it's one of the few opportunities that you have to actually create that moment for yourself. Cause it sounds like. Kind of what you're saying is that, generally speaking, it's like you're saying, like a magical thing.

Like a movement of the winds or something. That you just have to harness in. jump on for the ride and then take advantage of. But there's certain, like, I always think about go daddy when they started doing their commercials back, like, 20 years ago now probably where they were so offensive, essentially that it put go daddy on the map.

Now that I'm not saying that everybody should go and be as offensive as possible, but there is a little bit of like, all publicity is good publicity there. Whereas the super bowl, it's the one time that you're guaranteed that a bunch of people are going to be, are going to be watching your thing and going to be attempting to enjoy it.

And actually are there to listen to you. So it's like, the thing I wonder is like, are, are there any other, are there any places in let's say the e-commerce world or for a brand like at, at the sort of level of the brands that we serve where there's a little, there's a lever of control that you can pull to like, make the wind blow a cer, winds blow a certain way?

[00:25:55] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. That's a great question. It is not simple. I think, I think it's just one of the things I think is important is to be able to be someone who can recognize where the wind is currently blowing, though, I think is probably the better skill than to be the person creating the wind. Like, the wind creators are sort of unique.

They're very rare and special people that can affect things that way. But I think that more often you can recognize where it is. And this is one of those things with like influencers where if you can really clearly understand who is affecting culture. And assigned to them. I'll give you a great example.

Jordan Rogers, if you guys don't follow him on TikTok he creates some of my absolute favorite TikTok. And he is a former Nike exec that did sports marketing at Nike. And he said that he used to be the GM of Nike football, like American football. And at one point he was tasked with turning Odell Beckham Jr.

into a global star for Nike. Okay. That was the, that was the agenda. Make an American football player a global athlete. Nike has a subset of athletes that are considered global, that they'll use in global advertising. Not usually American football players, by the way, because not a very global sport, right?

And so he talks about how he did this and then Corey, we should all send you this TikTok and we should link it in the show notes. And he has this very famous, iconic photo that is Odell Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo holding up their shoes together. And they said what they did is they took him on a tour of Europe and they set up these PR moments with Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappe and different people and they, and Virgil Abloh. And they like, so they set up meetings with Virgil, they set up meetings with Cristiano Ronaldo, and they created these very public PR moments where. Odell was basically became associated with these global cultural icons in a way that his status moved out of football player into cultural influencer.

Right. And now Odell Beckham dating Kim Kardashian. Like, I think we've, he did transcend the sport in a way that was about the kind of person you'd expect to appear in a rap video as much as you would expect them to appear in a Gatorade commercial. And the intention with which that occurred, I think. was connected to the recognition of who were the global influencers that Beckham would need to be seen next to in order to be seen the same way.

It wasn't that they needed to establish him as any better of a football player. That actually had nothing to do with it. And so I think it's just an example of someone seeing what moves the cultural meter. And moves the, the, the influence in a way. I think about this, like, again, this brand that I, that we're talking to right now is a company called nudes.

They sell women's basics and the woman who founded is an influencer herself. So she has a big audience and reach, but more than that, within the communities of influencers, she understands who right now. Is moving the needle on attention, you know, it's the Alex earls and the Bobby all tops and like, and so the people wearing the product are the, are the ones that we recognize are the current it things.

And it's just just an ability to identify that and be connected to it. That some people are really good at. They're tapped into the culture. They know the zeitgeist. And I think that skill, I would even argue, and it's not just people, it's also topics and media outlets and points of conversation that, and I have some friends like this, that it's just like.

They're kind of cooler than everybody else. They kind of know first where the cool thing is happening. And, and in a way that you're just like, if you can touch that, Corey, do you want to come off mic and tell me that it's you, that you're, that you're going to, were you going to, is that what you were going to do?

But that to me is part of it more than, more than more than trying to change culture, which is just like, damn. In our little world, hard to do. I don't know. What do you think, Richard?

[00:29:52] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. I mean, I think definitely it's, it's, you have to harness the winds of change in some way. I mean, I think like the, the Odell Blackcomb Jr. example is really interesting because I think it goes back to that point of, of our ultimate task as advertisers, whether we're tacticians or creatives or whatever, is to make a product famous.

And I wonder if there's like, Taking notes from the playbook of other industries that are about creating fame. Like for instance, obviously like making Odell Beckham Jr. a star is a little bit closer maybe to making the product a star or something like that. But thinking about like, okay, the person who's tasked who is the person tasked with making Jennifer Lawrence a star?

Because they did it and they did it within a series, maybe two or three years. They turned her into the biggest name in, in movie dom like about 10, 12 years ago or whatever. Like what, what's the playbook for turning something into? Into a cultural icon and for, you know, if you're Jennifer Lawrence talks about it, she says like, Hey, if you put your face on a billboard, people will be like, Oh yeah, I recognize her.

And that's kind of all that fame is, but there's, but especially when it comes to a product where there's less of the, there's not a human relationship to be had with the product necessarily. That just becomes a more difficult task. So. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm just curious, like how, how we can take that mindset and bring it into the e commerce world, the world of like the type of advertising that we do.

I don't know.

[00:31:11] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. And I think what's happening is we're just watching this inversion kind of occur, which is that it's like brand to person. And now it's sort of person becoming brand in a way that I think is probably our generational transformation in a way that's really like. At the core of this is that rather than.

You know, Gatorade pen, LeBron, it's Logan Paul becoming Gatorade, you know. And I think that is probably the biggest transition not to belabor in an obvious point around the creator economy, et cetera, et cetera, where the key is just like the. Access to audience and influence where if you can combine access plus positive influence, meaning that the audience values what you have to say, like there's nothing more precious than that.

And when you can aim it at something like what you can do with that force is like really wild. You'd like the amount of capital you can create out of that kind of influence is like really hard to Really understand like how big that, that potentially can be.

[00:32:14] Richard Gaffin: Okay, so let's, let's bring it down to earth for a second here, or just maybe down to the practical level. Like, so if part of this is just being able to know which way the wind is blowing. So is that something, what's like, what is a practical step that one can take towards figuring out how to harness this sort of CPM breaking type of organic attention, maybe like, because, because, you know, I don't necessarily want to leave everybody with, oh, you just have to sort of sit and listen to the wind and you know, look at the Throw the dice and fortune tell or whatever, but I mean it could be that it's that's just it's just about sensitivity to that.

But like What other things practically are there to do to take steps towards creating this kind of thing?

[00:32:57] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, it's, gosh, that's a tough question. I think I'm trying to think of another example. I was, I think golf. Okay. Is this, is this interesting example right now where there is a movement happening within the sport? That is bigger than any one brand or even bigger than any one person, right? Like tiger, I think drove a generation of golf interest that right now is very different.

It's very much ground roots level participation, interest in golf. That's actually being driven more by internet influencers than by athlete and celebrity. Okay. So I think the opportunity right now, when you're in a category is to try to recognize, again, like I'm, I'm belaboring this point, but, to, to understand what is the current trend interest in your present category and what are the sources of it.

We were, so I'm inside the Skullcandy office, we share an office. With CEO and I have been friends for a long time. And he and I talk about this kind of thing all the time. Cause he's someone I think is uniquely tapped into culture a lot. But like for consumer electronics and headphones my contention would be right now that the category is driven almost exclusively by like streamers.

Okay. That if you think about this subset of the internet, that where there's massive amounts of attention of people who wear headphones, like it used to be. The athletes would walk into the stadium wearing beads. Like that was a thing for a while. Like they would all wear beats when they walk in. But I think that's been replaced by, you know, the kai Senate's and the aid in Ross's and the, all the video gamers that are all wear headphones as the, as the most influential set of people.

And so there's this question of like, what's happening in this category? What's the movement. Who drives the interest, if you were to sort of build yourself a rubric, like. To write that down and to say, is my, is my product category presently trending up or down? Okay. If up, what is the source of that categorical interest?

And then what is my connection to it? And if, if it's down, what would need to be true in order for it to go up? As a thought exercise. And it probably isn't you do something, but it might be bigger than that. Like we talked about this with the heart and soil guys a lot, right? They benefit from an increased interest in the carnivore diet.

And so one of the things that we've actually talked about with them is how do you drive demand for the, the lifestyle? More than your own interest in the thing, right? This is sort of the like, classic, uh, people selling Pepsi have to drive interest in soda and drinks more than they do their individual brand.

It's like, how do you make sure that there's content and people and influence over the idea of carnivore diet that isn't you? Because you know, if that goes up, you'll go up, you know? And so I think the question is, which search term would need to go up? In order for your brand to go up with it and to think about some of the actions you're taking affecting that idea more than just the branded search term.

And if you have the budget or some allocation to it, that might be the most powerful thing that you could do practically.

[00:35:57] Richard Gaffin: that's thing. Okay, cool. I mean, I think that's a It's a good a good way to connect sort of like the the thing that's happening at the Super Bowl To two things that we can sort of like practically think about today. So let's any, any last stray thoughts on super bowl

[00:36:15] Taylor Holiday: No, I would say that like, don't dismiss it. It's, it's fascinating. Go try and understand it. Try and build yourself a mental roadmap to why they would do it versus assuming that they're stupid or needed away most money. Like, I think some of the shallowest takes are like, ah, they're just trying to win an award or whatever it might be like, but just go understand what might be.

Well, if it worked really well, why would it work really well? And find the ones that do and the ones that last. Maybe six months from now we can revisit and see what, what sort of has perpetuated culture. And then I think the last thing is go try and identify the trend lines that you're connected to in a way that's practical and that you can determine if you're which way the wind is blowing.

[00:36:50] Richard Gaffin: Totally. Cool folks. All right. I think that's going to do it for us this week. Thanks everybody for listening. Hey, one thing that I'm going to say is if you're listening and you're not a subscriber, please smash that subscribe button. That is the thing that helps us out. And we're looking to grow that list.

So hit subscribe if you haven't already. And for all the rest of you, we will talk to you next week. See everyone.