AI transcript
0:00:04 There’s over 500,000 small businesses in B.C. and no two are alike.
0:00:05 I’m a carpenter.
0:00:06 I’m a graphic designer.
0:00:09 I sell dog socks online.
0:00:12 That’s why B.C.A.A. created one size doesn’t fit all insurance.
0:00:15 It’s customizable, based on your unique needs.
0:00:19 So whether you manage rental properties or paint pet portraits,
0:00:23 you can protect your small business with B.C.’s most trusted insurance brand.
0:00:29 Visit bcaa.com/smallbusiness and use promo code radio to receive $50 off.
0:00:31 Conditions apply.
0:00:33 Welcome to the PropG Pods Office Hours.
0:00:35 This is the part of the show where we answer questions about business,
0:00:38 big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind.
0:00:39 Hey, PropG.
0:00:40 Hey, Scott and team.
0:00:41 Hey, Scott.
0:00:41 Hi, PropG.
0:00:42 Hey, PropG.
0:00:42 Hey, PropG.
0:00:45 Hi, Professor G.
0:00:48 Today, we’re kicking off a special two-part series.
0:00:48 I did not know that.
0:00:52 I guess we’re in part one today, answering your questions about all things.
0:00:54 Marketing, I just got insecure.
0:00:57 We’ll answer your questions surrounding common marketing misconceptions,
0:01:01 the power of community-driven marketing, and what their future holds for the industry.
0:01:04 So with that, first question.
0:01:05 Good day.
0:01:09 This is Nick from Sheffield, Massachusetts.
0:01:10 I have two questions.
0:01:17 The first is, what do you believe to be the greatest fallacy today in marketing,
0:01:22 i.e. the greatest misconception or misperception that you encounter?
0:01:28 And the second is, why is B2B marketing so dull?
0:01:33 Nick, why are you so sexy with that whispering voice?
0:01:36 Jesus, what are we exchanging like nuclear codes here?
0:01:42 Anyways, look, the sun has passed midday on the world of brand strategy.
0:01:48 I worry that and I have tried to dramatically alter my curriculum to talk about algorithms,
0:01:54 APIs, new platforms, supply chain, which I think is sort of the new gangster attribute
0:01:56 of a company, if you will.
0:01:58 If you think about all the companies that really add a lot of value, it’s usually about
0:02:03 a supply chain innovation, whether it’s Netflix going from DVD to streaming to now producing
0:02:06 stuff in Madrid and Seoul.
0:02:08 Amazon is obviously a supply chain story.
0:02:15 I think almost all massive, if you will, value accretions or supply chain.
0:02:16 What about NVIDIA Scott?
0:02:18 Well, that’s supply chain, too, bitch.
0:02:20 How did we print money or create shareholder value?
0:02:24 What was the algorithm for shareholder value from the underworld war two to the introduction
0:02:25 of Google?
0:02:26 Simple.
0:02:28 Manufacture a mediocre product.
0:02:32 And it doesn’t matter because we had just leveled our competition, specifically Germany
0:02:33 and Japan.
0:02:38 And so we could produce a mediocre product and then we would wrap it in these amazing
0:02:43 brand codes of American toughness or youth or sex appeal or European elegance or paternal
0:02:45 love or maternal love.
0:02:49 Let’s turn 20 cents of peanut butter paste into $2 of peanut butter.
0:02:50 Why?
0:02:51 Because choosy moms choose Jiff.
0:02:55 And if you want to show your neighbors that you love your kids more, then it’s worth it.
0:02:56 This is maternal love.
0:03:02 And these brand codes could be hammered away and cemented into our psyche using this extraordinarily
0:03:08 cheap medium called Broadcast Television, where all of America spent five hours a day
0:03:13 watching Y Tang, which the astronauts drank, was good for you, right?
0:03:15 All of these amazing associations.
0:03:17 We were better at imbuing than anyone in the world.
0:03:20 And that was the world of marketing and there were marketing departments everywhere.
0:03:27 And I worry now that the whole price promotion product, placing the four Ps in traditional
0:03:32 marketing is essentially training kids to go to work for Kraft or General Foods or Procter
0:03:35 and Gamble and be laid off two or three years later.
0:03:37 Because where has the majority of capital gone?
0:03:39 It’s gone back into the product.
0:03:40 Why?
0:03:45 Because digital technologies have unlocked an opportunity to 10 X products.
0:03:51 The idea, the ability to unlock product quality and find the better product using digital
0:03:55 technologies and these weapons of mass diligence called Google and TripAdvisor and all these
0:04:00 other platforms has essentially taken traditional marketing and kicked it in the nuts.
0:04:05 So I think you’re going to see a reallocation of capital going back to the original notion
0:04:11 around CEO’s job is to, or a manager’s job, is to allocate resources to the greatest return.
0:04:15 I think the greater return is pulling money out of marketing right now and I hate to say
0:04:21 it and putting it into supply chain or actual product innovation using new digital technologies.
0:04:23 But what about spending more money on Google?
0:04:24 Yeah, that happened.
0:04:26 I think that will likely slow down.
0:04:30 It’ll still be greater than the rest of the industry, but they have managed to bid up
0:04:32 their prices through monopoly abuse.
0:04:37 And I think people are figuring out that it’s no longer the deal it used to be.
0:04:39 It’s still a better deal than broadcast advertising.
0:04:40 What does that mean?
0:04:44 It means the CMO is like a second lieutenant in Vietnam and that is their lifespan is going
0:04:46 to be pretty short.
0:04:48 It’s going to be CSO, Chief Supply Chain Officer.
0:04:51 I think the CMO is kind of already dead.
0:04:52 They just don’t know it.
0:04:57 And I used to work with CMOs all through the 90s when I was running my first firm, Profit.
0:05:02 And effectively their job was to create this intangible kind of notion of these intangible
0:05:06 associations and also their job was to convince everyone that they were somehow the Yoda of
0:05:10 the brand and no one else was allowed to even talk about it, that the whole brand thing
0:05:15 was a Faberge egg and only certain people could use certain words around the brand.
0:05:18 And if you smudge the egg, it might be a career ending injury.
0:05:20 It’s also fucking arrogant.
0:05:22 What does that mean if you’re working in advertising?
0:05:23 Boy, am I going on here.
0:05:26 It means if you already have momentum and you’re doing well, you probably should stay
0:05:27 put.
0:05:32 I would argue if you’re under the age of 40 and you don’t see like you’re not skyrocketing
0:05:36 at your current agency, I would say thinking about, I would consider getting out of that
0:05:40 business and getting in on the client side to things that are more closer to the product,
0:05:41 if you will.
0:05:44 Anyways, I think that’s a great question.
0:05:48 I need to answer the biggest question and that is the misconception.
0:05:51 The biggest misconception in marketing is the following.
0:05:56 And that is the belief or the misconception that choice is a good thing.
0:05:58 It’s not.
0:05:59 Choices attacks on consumers.
0:06:00 Consumers don’t want more choice.
0:06:02 They want to be more confident in the choices presented.
0:06:07 What is the basis of the category of retail that added more shareholder value in retail
0:06:10 than any sector in history and that especially retail?
0:06:11 Why?
0:06:13 I don’t want every yoga pan available.
0:06:16 I don’t want to go on Amazon and see 300.
0:06:18 Some people do, obviously a lot do.
0:06:22 But what I really want is someone with much better taste than me in Vancouver to pick
0:06:24 the three best yoga pans.
0:06:27 Anyways, next question.
0:06:28 Hey, Scott.
0:06:33 I’m Phillip, a German-speaking podcaster currently doing an executive MBA.
0:06:37 This weekend we discussed in class that companies and universities should be communities.
0:06:41 Additionally, creators often refer to their audience as a community.
0:06:46 What are your thoughts on using communities as a marketing tool to create and retain customers
0:06:49 and turn them into ambassadors?
0:06:51 Keep up the good work and thank you for answering my question.
0:06:52 Oh, sure.
0:06:54 I mean, you know the answer to this, Phillip.
0:06:56 It’s powerful.
0:06:59 In my branch gadget class, I have a series of constructs.
0:07:02 You may not remember me, you may not remember the class, but you need to remember these
0:07:03 constructs.
0:07:05 I think I have about a dozen of them.
0:07:07 They’re essentially models to sort through the basics of marketing.
0:07:10 One of those models is called the clock model.
0:07:14 That is from 12 to 4 when the consumer enters or a stakeholder enters the franchise, that’s
0:07:22 pre-purchase marketing, advertising, PR, sampling, conventions, whatever it is, thought leadership
0:07:25 that raises awareness, creates hopefully intent to buy.
0:07:28 4 to 8, the bottom of the clock, is distribution.
0:07:33 I walk into a Lexus dealership and I think this is a nice experience and it makes me
0:07:34 feel better about the car.
0:07:38 The ultimate kind of 4 to 8 is Apple’s gangster decision to take $6 or $7 billion a year out
0:07:44 of advertising and put it into these 500 temples of the brand called their stores.
0:07:48 I think that may have been a more important move than the iPhone, although the iPhone
0:07:53 is the one that harvests all that brand equity, but these stores, think about where you used
0:07:58 to go to buy electronics, like a Verizon store with bad lighting and a guy named Roy.
0:08:02 It’s sort of where, I don’t know, it’s sort of, it was just awful, right?
0:08:06 Or, I mean, Best Buy does a good job, but it’s not really aspirational.
0:08:10 There was nothing aspirational in one of the largest categories in the world, technology.
0:08:13 And Apple came in and said, “Why don’t we make it feel like on our money store that’s
0:08:14 like the coolest?”
0:08:16 I’d like to live in an Apple store.
0:08:20 I think if they had a coffee shop, it would, everyone would just go, “Hang on, I think
0:08:24 they’d put Starbucks out of business if they started a coffee adjunct just called Apple
0:08:26 Up or Apple Calf.
0:08:27 Apple Calf.
0:08:28 I like that.
0:08:33 But C-A-F-F-E, oh, hashtag, trademark, Scott Galloway, anyway.
0:08:34 That’s the distribution.
0:08:35 That’s 4 to 8.
0:08:39 8 to 12 is post-purchase, loyalty programs, customer service, right?
0:08:44 You go into Nordstrom and if you’re a customer there and you bought something, they are just
0:08:46 going to take the return no matter what.
0:08:48 FedEx, once you ship the product, you can track it.
0:08:50 That was sort of the gangster move back in the ’90s.
0:08:53 I remember sending all my applications in for business school and freaking out because,
0:08:57 of course, I waited to the deadline and I could go on the FedEx site and they had invested
0:08:58 billions of dollars at that time.
0:09:04 So they could say, “I will assign by a woman named June Allison at the University of Pennsylvania
0:09:08 Wharton who will soon get about rejecting you.”
0:09:09 Thank you, Joan.
0:09:10 Come back, Scott.
0:09:11 Okay.
0:09:12 Community.
0:09:13 Post-purchase.
0:09:20 Groups. Affinity programs, loyalty, kind of empowering or illuminating or activating your
0:09:26 community is just huge and one of the reasons we try and do events and try and write back
0:09:30 and I try to be, it’s actually easy for me to be nice to people on the street is you want
0:09:33 a community of people who are your evangelists.
0:09:39 It’s just no, when you have a small company, what’s the most important thing?
0:09:42 The core team of amazing players that you give them much equity to and literally nail
0:09:43 them to the ground.
0:09:45 That’s number one.
0:09:47 But what you also need is those first few clients.
0:09:52 I was in the services business and I was said our first three clients have to be just fanatical
0:09:53 about us.
0:09:54 We have to over serve them.
0:09:55 I don’t care if we lose money.
0:09:56 I don’t care if you have to go on vacation with them.
0:09:58 I don’t care what it is.
0:09:59 They have to be evangelists.
0:10:04 So if you can create a community of evangelists or people who have sort of a goodwill towards
0:10:08 you and there’s ways to activate that, obviously it’s hugely important.
0:10:12 Something NYU does not do well, does not do well.
0:10:18 There’s not that same sense of camaraderie or community post-purchase, if you will.
0:10:23 So thinking about how to illuminate or really engage or activate this community and give
0:10:26 them opportunities to get together, one of the things we’re talking about for all of
0:10:30 our podcasts is doing a series of events or a tour next year.
0:10:34 Because when we meet people and you’re nice to them and they see you live, they just feel
0:10:35 more cemented.
0:10:36 They feel more engaged.
0:10:39 They feel more intimate with the brand.
0:10:41 So yeah, you know, I was going to agree with you.
0:10:43 The question is what is actionable here.
0:10:47 If you were to roll out or unfurl the brand clock in terms of resources, you want to have
0:10:48 a bias.
0:10:49 Now what’s that bias?
0:10:52 You want capital to be slanted downhill.
0:10:53 What do I mean by that?
0:10:58 You want to have a bias against pre-purchase, kind of a mediocre bias against distribution,
0:11:00 and you want to have a bias towards post-purchase.
0:11:01 Why?
0:11:03 Because pre-purchase is overinvested because it’s cool.
0:11:09 I used to go back to New York and advertise with Condonass because I wanted to have lunch
0:11:14 in the Condonass cafeteria with my friend David Carey because the people were hot and I got
0:11:19 to see Anna Winter and they would invite me to these cool parties and I felt cool.
0:11:22 And you get to hang out with good-looking people who wear black and invite you to cool parties
0:11:27 when you spend money on pre-purchase, mostly agency people and magazines and media companies.
0:11:28 Purchase is kind of fun.
0:11:31 That’s stores, expensive, but kind of fun.
0:11:33 Post-purchase is boring.
0:11:38 That’s slipping a pizza under the door to a bunch of MIS guys building CRM databases.
0:11:39 It’s not romantic.
0:11:40 It’s not sexy.
0:11:41 And guess what?
0:11:44 The inverse correlation holds here as it does with careers, the less sexy, the greater
0:11:45 the ROI.
0:11:50 So I want you to have a bias towards post-purchase loyalty programs, database marketing, CRM,
0:11:53 and also community, if you will.
0:11:55 Thanks for the question.
0:11:57 We have one quick break before our final question.
0:12:03 Stay with us.
0:12:04 Welcome back.
0:12:05 Question number three.
0:12:10 I’m a 40-year-old freelance film professional working behind the camera as a cinematographer.
0:12:17 I’ve managed to navigate the industry’s challenges in recent years, primarily by working on broadcast
0:12:22 and internet commercials, even as the industry as a whole, including film, TV, and reality
0:12:24 content, has scaled back.
0:12:29 With high-quality videos now achievable on consumer-grade cameras and personal phones,
0:12:33 do you think there still will be a need for professionally made commercial and marketing
0:12:37 campaigns from a branding perspective?
0:12:41 Or are we likely to see a decline in demand for my services?
0:12:46 Alternatively, could the growing need for video content across numerous mobile platforms
0:12:50 ensure ongoing demand for professional production?
0:12:55 Essentially, will my skills be needed in 10 or 20 years?
0:13:00 Anonymous, you’re at exactly the wrong age, or the tough age, because it’s not like you’re
0:13:01 25.
0:13:03 25, let’s say, get the hell out of dodge.
0:13:06 But if you’re 40, it means you’re probably pretty good at what you do.
0:13:11 You have some professional credibility, some awareness, some momentum, contacts, and that’s
0:13:16 tough around whether you should can that and go be a commercial real estate broker or something,
0:13:20 not suggesting you do that or do something else.
0:13:23 If you’ve done well, I would say, “All right, what are we going to do if we want to stay
0:13:24 in this industry?”
0:13:29 The term I would use, or the statement I always make, is that AI is not going to take
0:13:33 your job, someone who understands AI is going to take your job, and that is, you need to
0:13:37 become a warrior around where there’ll be growth in the industry, and that is getting
0:13:41 80% of the production value for 20% of the price.
0:13:45 So I’m a small firm that wants to put together promotional videos or thought leadership or
0:13:50 video assets, and I’m not going to hire an agency who’s going to show up and storyboard
0:13:53 it and do all this cool shit and take me out to dinner and charge me a quarter of a million
0:13:56 dollars before I even see a reel.
0:14:01 I think those days are gone unless you’re a super high-end, high-budget production luxury
0:14:02 brand or automobile company.
0:14:06 I just think that’s going away, but I’m a guy who understands the newest technologies
0:14:12 and can string together what I’ll call the old Navy of video production.
0:14:13 What do I mean by that?
0:14:19 I can give you 80% of the gap for 50, not even 50, 20, 10% of the price.
0:14:24 So I think you’ve got to become a ninja warrior in terms of these new tools that take costs
0:14:28 out and figure out a way to use, I don’t know if it’s Firefly, I forget what the other
0:14:32 visual one is that everyone’s talking about, but you have got to get very good at AI and
0:14:36 be able to spin up assets at a fraction of the cost.
0:14:40 You have got to go back to school, if you will, get really fast out with these technologies
0:14:42 with one objective.
0:14:48 How do I produce something of 80% of the quality that I have produced in the past for 20% of
0:14:49 the price?
0:14:50 That should be your goal.
0:14:54 What technologies, what skills do I need to garner such that I could do that?
0:14:59 It is not easy, it is not easy and there will always be signs of hope to hold on to the
0:15:01 old days, but make that transition.
0:15:02 You’re still a young man.
0:15:07 Anyways, you want to be the old Navy, if you will, of cinematography.
0:15:09 Thanks for the question.
0:15:10 That’s all for this episode.
0:15:14 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to OfficeHours@propertymedia.com.
0:15:18 Again, that’s OfficeHours@propertymedia.com.
0:15:30 This episode was produced by Caroline Shagren.
0:15:36 Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:15:39 Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:15:44 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercenial Malice, as read by George Hahn, and please
0:15:49 follow our PropG Markets Pod, wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
0:15:50 and Thursday.
0:00:05 I’m a carpenter.
0:00:06 I’m a graphic designer.
0:00:09 I sell dog socks online.
0:00:12 That’s why B.C.A.A. created one size doesn’t fit all insurance.
0:00:15 It’s customizable, based on your unique needs.
0:00:19 So whether you manage rental properties or paint pet portraits,
0:00:23 you can protect your small business with B.C.’s most trusted insurance brand.
0:00:29 Visit bcaa.com/smallbusiness and use promo code radio to receive $50 off.
0:00:31 Conditions apply.
0:00:33 Welcome to the PropG Pods Office Hours.
0:00:35 This is the part of the show where we answer questions about business,
0:00:38 big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind.
0:00:39 Hey, PropG.
0:00:40 Hey, Scott and team.
0:00:41 Hey, Scott.
0:00:41 Hi, PropG.
0:00:42 Hey, PropG.
0:00:42 Hey, PropG.
0:00:45 Hi, Professor G.
0:00:48 Today, we’re kicking off a special two-part series.
0:00:48 I did not know that.
0:00:52 I guess we’re in part one today, answering your questions about all things.
0:00:54 Marketing, I just got insecure.
0:00:57 We’ll answer your questions surrounding common marketing misconceptions,
0:01:01 the power of community-driven marketing, and what their future holds for the industry.
0:01:04 So with that, first question.
0:01:05 Good day.
0:01:09 This is Nick from Sheffield, Massachusetts.
0:01:10 I have two questions.
0:01:17 The first is, what do you believe to be the greatest fallacy today in marketing,
0:01:22 i.e. the greatest misconception or misperception that you encounter?
0:01:28 And the second is, why is B2B marketing so dull?
0:01:33 Nick, why are you so sexy with that whispering voice?
0:01:36 Jesus, what are we exchanging like nuclear codes here?
0:01:42 Anyways, look, the sun has passed midday on the world of brand strategy.
0:01:48 I worry that and I have tried to dramatically alter my curriculum to talk about algorithms,
0:01:54 APIs, new platforms, supply chain, which I think is sort of the new gangster attribute
0:01:56 of a company, if you will.
0:01:58 If you think about all the companies that really add a lot of value, it’s usually about
0:02:03 a supply chain innovation, whether it’s Netflix going from DVD to streaming to now producing
0:02:06 stuff in Madrid and Seoul.
0:02:08 Amazon is obviously a supply chain story.
0:02:15 I think almost all massive, if you will, value accretions or supply chain.
0:02:16 What about NVIDIA Scott?
0:02:18 Well, that’s supply chain, too, bitch.
0:02:20 How did we print money or create shareholder value?
0:02:24 What was the algorithm for shareholder value from the underworld war two to the introduction
0:02:25 of Google?
0:02:26 Simple.
0:02:28 Manufacture a mediocre product.
0:02:32 And it doesn’t matter because we had just leveled our competition, specifically Germany
0:02:33 and Japan.
0:02:38 And so we could produce a mediocre product and then we would wrap it in these amazing
0:02:43 brand codes of American toughness or youth or sex appeal or European elegance or paternal
0:02:45 love or maternal love.
0:02:49 Let’s turn 20 cents of peanut butter paste into $2 of peanut butter.
0:02:50 Why?
0:02:51 Because choosy moms choose Jiff.
0:02:55 And if you want to show your neighbors that you love your kids more, then it’s worth it.
0:02:56 This is maternal love.
0:03:02 And these brand codes could be hammered away and cemented into our psyche using this extraordinarily
0:03:08 cheap medium called Broadcast Television, where all of America spent five hours a day
0:03:13 watching Y Tang, which the astronauts drank, was good for you, right?
0:03:15 All of these amazing associations.
0:03:17 We were better at imbuing than anyone in the world.
0:03:20 And that was the world of marketing and there were marketing departments everywhere.
0:03:27 And I worry now that the whole price promotion product, placing the four Ps in traditional
0:03:32 marketing is essentially training kids to go to work for Kraft or General Foods or Procter
0:03:35 and Gamble and be laid off two or three years later.
0:03:37 Because where has the majority of capital gone?
0:03:39 It’s gone back into the product.
0:03:40 Why?
0:03:45 Because digital technologies have unlocked an opportunity to 10 X products.
0:03:51 The idea, the ability to unlock product quality and find the better product using digital
0:03:55 technologies and these weapons of mass diligence called Google and TripAdvisor and all these
0:04:00 other platforms has essentially taken traditional marketing and kicked it in the nuts.
0:04:05 So I think you’re going to see a reallocation of capital going back to the original notion
0:04:11 around CEO’s job is to, or a manager’s job, is to allocate resources to the greatest return.
0:04:15 I think the greater return is pulling money out of marketing right now and I hate to say
0:04:21 it and putting it into supply chain or actual product innovation using new digital technologies.
0:04:23 But what about spending more money on Google?
0:04:24 Yeah, that happened.
0:04:26 I think that will likely slow down.
0:04:30 It’ll still be greater than the rest of the industry, but they have managed to bid up
0:04:32 their prices through monopoly abuse.
0:04:37 And I think people are figuring out that it’s no longer the deal it used to be.
0:04:39 It’s still a better deal than broadcast advertising.
0:04:40 What does that mean?
0:04:44 It means the CMO is like a second lieutenant in Vietnam and that is their lifespan is going
0:04:46 to be pretty short.
0:04:48 It’s going to be CSO, Chief Supply Chain Officer.
0:04:51 I think the CMO is kind of already dead.
0:04:52 They just don’t know it.
0:04:57 And I used to work with CMOs all through the 90s when I was running my first firm, Profit.
0:05:02 And effectively their job was to create this intangible kind of notion of these intangible
0:05:06 associations and also their job was to convince everyone that they were somehow the Yoda of
0:05:10 the brand and no one else was allowed to even talk about it, that the whole brand thing
0:05:15 was a Faberge egg and only certain people could use certain words around the brand.
0:05:18 And if you smudge the egg, it might be a career ending injury.
0:05:20 It’s also fucking arrogant.
0:05:22 What does that mean if you’re working in advertising?
0:05:23 Boy, am I going on here.
0:05:26 It means if you already have momentum and you’re doing well, you probably should stay
0:05:27 put.
0:05:32 I would argue if you’re under the age of 40 and you don’t see like you’re not skyrocketing
0:05:36 at your current agency, I would say thinking about, I would consider getting out of that
0:05:40 business and getting in on the client side to things that are more closer to the product,
0:05:41 if you will.
0:05:44 Anyways, I think that’s a great question.
0:05:48 I need to answer the biggest question and that is the misconception.
0:05:51 The biggest misconception in marketing is the following.
0:05:56 And that is the belief or the misconception that choice is a good thing.
0:05:58 It’s not.
0:05:59 Choices attacks on consumers.
0:06:00 Consumers don’t want more choice.
0:06:02 They want to be more confident in the choices presented.
0:06:07 What is the basis of the category of retail that added more shareholder value in retail
0:06:10 than any sector in history and that especially retail?
0:06:11 Why?
0:06:13 I don’t want every yoga pan available.
0:06:16 I don’t want to go on Amazon and see 300.
0:06:18 Some people do, obviously a lot do.
0:06:22 But what I really want is someone with much better taste than me in Vancouver to pick
0:06:24 the three best yoga pans.
0:06:27 Anyways, next question.
0:06:28 Hey, Scott.
0:06:33 I’m Phillip, a German-speaking podcaster currently doing an executive MBA.
0:06:37 This weekend we discussed in class that companies and universities should be communities.
0:06:41 Additionally, creators often refer to their audience as a community.
0:06:46 What are your thoughts on using communities as a marketing tool to create and retain customers
0:06:49 and turn them into ambassadors?
0:06:51 Keep up the good work and thank you for answering my question.
0:06:52 Oh, sure.
0:06:54 I mean, you know the answer to this, Phillip.
0:06:56 It’s powerful.
0:06:59 In my branch gadget class, I have a series of constructs.
0:07:02 You may not remember me, you may not remember the class, but you need to remember these
0:07:03 constructs.
0:07:05 I think I have about a dozen of them.
0:07:07 They’re essentially models to sort through the basics of marketing.
0:07:10 One of those models is called the clock model.
0:07:14 That is from 12 to 4 when the consumer enters or a stakeholder enters the franchise, that’s
0:07:22 pre-purchase marketing, advertising, PR, sampling, conventions, whatever it is, thought leadership
0:07:25 that raises awareness, creates hopefully intent to buy.
0:07:28 4 to 8, the bottom of the clock, is distribution.
0:07:33 I walk into a Lexus dealership and I think this is a nice experience and it makes me
0:07:34 feel better about the car.
0:07:38 The ultimate kind of 4 to 8 is Apple’s gangster decision to take $6 or $7 billion a year out
0:07:44 of advertising and put it into these 500 temples of the brand called their stores.
0:07:48 I think that may have been a more important move than the iPhone, although the iPhone
0:07:53 is the one that harvests all that brand equity, but these stores, think about where you used
0:07:58 to go to buy electronics, like a Verizon store with bad lighting and a guy named Roy.
0:08:02 It’s sort of where, I don’t know, it’s sort of, it was just awful, right?
0:08:06 Or, I mean, Best Buy does a good job, but it’s not really aspirational.
0:08:10 There was nothing aspirational in one of the largest categories in the world, technology.
0:08:13 And Apple came in and said, “Why don’t we make it feel like on our money store that’s
0:08:14 like the coolest?”
0:08:16 I’d like to live in an Apple store.
0:08:20 I think if they had a coffee shop, it would, everyone would just go, “Hang on, I think
0:08:24 they’d put Starbucks out of business if they started a coffee adjunct just called Apple
0:08:26 Up or Apple Calf.
0:08:27 Apple Calf.
0:08:28 I like that.
0:08:33 But C-A-F-F-E, oh, hashtag, trademark, Scott Galloway, anyway.
0:08:34 That’s the distribution.
0:08:35 That’s 4 to 8.
0:08:39 8 to 12 is post-purchase, loyalty programs, customer service, right?
0:08:44 You go into Nordstrom and if you’re a customer there and you bought something, they are just
0:08:46 going to take the return no matter what.
0:08:48 FedEx, once you ship the product, you can track it.
0:08:50 That was sort of the gangster move back in the ’90s.
0:08:53 I remember sending all my applications in for business school and freaking out because,
0:08:57 of course, I waited to the deadline and I could go on the FedEx site and they had invested
0:08:58 billions of dollars at that time.
0:09:04 So they could say, “I will assign by a woman named June Allison at the University of Pennsylvania
0:09:08 Wharton who will soon get about rejecting you.”
0:09:09 Thank you, Joan.
0:09:10 Come back, Scott.
0:09:11 Okay.
0:09:12 Community.
0:09:13 Post-purchase.
0:09:20 Groups. Affinity programs, loyalty, kind of empowering or illuminating or activating your
0:09:26 community is just huge and one of the reasons we try and do events and try and write back
0:09:30 and I try to be, it’s actually easy for me to be nice to people on the street is you want
0:09:33 a community of people who are your evangelists.
0:09:39 It’s just no, when you have a small company, what’s the most important thing?
0:09:42 The core team of amazing players that you give them much equity to and literally nail
0:09:43 them to the ground.
0:09:45 That’s number one.
0:09:47 But what you also need is those first few clients.
0:09:52 I was in the services business and I was said our first three clients have to be just fanatical
0:09:53 about us.
0:09:54 We have to over serve them.
0:09:55 I don’t care if we lose money.
0:09:56 I don’t care if you have to go on vacation with them.
0:09:58 I don’t care what it is.
0:09:59 They have to be evangelists.
0:10:04 So if you can create a community of evangelists or people who have sort of a goodwill towards
0:10:08 you and there’s ways to activate that, obviously it’s hugely important.
0:10:12 Something NYU does not do well, does not do well.
0:10:18 There’s not that same sense of camaraderie or community post-purchase, if you will.
0:10:23 So thinking about how to illuminate or really engage or activate this community and give
0:10:26 them opportunities to get together, one of the things we’re talking about for all of
0:10:30 our podcasts is doing a series of events or a tour next year.
0:10:34 Because when we meet people and you’re nice to them and they see you live, they just feel
0:10:35 more cemented.
0:10:36 They feel more engaged.
0:10:39 They feel more intimate with the brand.
0:10:41 So yeah, you know, I was going to agree with you.
0:10:43 The question is what is actionable here.
0:10:47 If you were to roll out or unfurl the brand clock in terms of resources, you want to have
0:10:48 a bias.
0:10:49 Now what’s that bias?
0:10:52 You want capital to be slanted downhill.
0:10:53 What do I mean by that?
0:10:58 You want to have a bias against pre-purchase, kind of a mediocre bias against distribution,
0:11:00 and you want to have a bias towards post-purchase.
0:11:01 Why?
0:11:03 Because pre-purchase is overinvested because it’s cool.
0:11:09 I used to go back to New York and advertise with Condonass because I wanted to have lunch
0:11:14 in the Condonass cafeteria with my friend David Carey because the people were hot and I got
0:11:19 to see Anna Winter and they would invite me to these cool parties and I felt cool.
0:11:22 And you get to hang out with good-looking people who wear black and invite you to cool parties
0:11:27 when you spend money on pre-purchase, mostly agency people and magazines and media companies.
0:11:28 Purchase is kind of fun.
0:11:31 That’s stores, expensive, but kind of fun.
0:11:33 Post-purchase is boring.
0:11:38 That’s slipping a pizza under the door to a bunch of MIS guys building CRM databases.
0:11:39 It’s not romantic.
0:11:40 It’s not sexy.
0:11:41 And guess what?
0:11:44 The inverse correlation holds here as it does with careers, the less sexy, the greater
0:11:45 the ROI.
0:11:50 So I want you to have a bias towards post-purchase loyalty programs, database marketing, CRM,
0:11:53 and also community, if you will.
0:11:55 Thanks for the question.
0:11:57 We have one quick break before our final question.
0:12:03 Stay with us.
0:12:04 Welcome back.
0:12:05 Question number three.
0:12:10 I’m a 40-year-old freelance film professional working behind the camera as a cinematographer.
0:12:17 I’ve managed to navigate the industry’s challenges in recent years, primarily by working on broadcast
0:12:22 and internet commercials, even as the industry as a whole, including film, TV, and reality
0:12:24 content, has scaled back.
0:12:29 With high-quality videos now achievable on consumer-grade cameras and personal phones,
0:12:33 do you think there still will be a need for professionally made commercial and marketing
0:12:37 campaigns from a branding perspective?
0:12:41 Or are we likely to see a decline in demand for my services?
0:12:46 Alternatively, could the growing need for video content across numerous mobile platforms
0:12:50 ensure ongoing demand for professional production?
0:12:55 Essentially, will my skills be needed in 10 or 20 years?
0:13:00 Anonymous, you’re at exactly the wrong age, or the tough age, because it’s not like you’re
0:13:01 25.
0:13:03 25, let’s say, get the hell out of dodge.
0:13:06 But if you’re 40, it means you’re probably pretty good at what you do.
0:13:11 You have some professional credibility, some awareness, some momentum, contacts, and that’s
0:13:16 tough around whether you should can that and go be a commercial real estate broker or something,
0:13:20 not suggesting you do that or do something else.
0:13:23 If you’ve done well, I would say, “All right, what are we going to do if we want to stay
0:13:24 in this industry?”
0:13:29 The term I would use, or the statement I always make, is that AI is not going to take
0:13:33 your job, someone who understands AI is going to take your job, and that is, you need to
0:13:37 become a warrior around where there’ll be growth in the industry, and that is getting
0:13:41 80% of the production value for 20% of the price.
0:13:45 So I’m a small firm that wants to put together promotional videos or thought leadership or
0:13:50 video assets, and I’m not going to hire an agency who’s going to show up and storyboard
0:13:53 it and do all this cool shit and take me out to dinner and charge me a quarter of a million
0:13:56 dollars before I even see a reel.
0:14:01 I think those days are gone unless you’re a super high-end, high-budget production luxury
0:14:02 brand or automobile company.
0:14:06 I just think that’s going away, but I’m a guy who understands the newest technologies
0:14:12 and can string together what I’ll call the old Navy of video production.
0:14:13 What do I mean by that?
0:14:19 I can give you 80% of the gap for 50, not even 50, 20, 10% of the price.
0:14:24 So I think you’ve got to become a ninja warrior in terms of these new tools that take costs
0:14:28 out and figure out a way to use, I don’t know if it’s Firefly, I forget what the other
0:14:32 visual one is that everyone’s talking about, but you have got to get very good at AI and
0:14:36 be able to spin up assets at a fraction of the cost.
0:14:40 You have got to go back to school, if you will, get really fast out with these technologies
0:14:42 with one objective.
0:14:48 How do I produce something of 80% of the quality that I have produced in the past for 20% of
0:14:49 the price?
0:14:50 That should be your goal.
0:14:54 What technologies, what skills do I need to garner such that I could do that?
0:14:59 It is not easy, it is not easy and there will always be signs of hope to hold on to the
0:15:01 old days, but make that transition.
0:15:02 You’re still a young man.
0:15:07 Anyways, you want to be the old Navy, if you will, of cinematography.
0:15:09 Thanks for the question.
0:15:10 That’s all for this episode.
0:15:14 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to OfficeHours@propertymedia.com.
0:15:18 Again, that’s OfficeHours@propertymedia.com.
0:15:30 This episode was produced by Caroline Shagren.
0:15:36 Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:15:39 Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:15:44 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercenial Malice, as read by George Hahn, and please
0:15:49 follow our PropG Markets Pod, wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
0:15:50 and Thursday.
Today, we’re kicking off a special two-part series answering your questions about all things marketing.
Scott puts on his professor hat and answers your questions surrounding common marketing misconceptions, the power of community-driven marketing, and what the future holds for the industry.
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