#98 - The Six Marketing Books, Retail Relevancy and Building a Cocktail While You're Drinking It Episode

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"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

Ian Truscott  0:18  
Hello and welcome to episode 98 of Rockstar CMOs and M missa marketing. And if you decide as you're probably wondering, does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? I'm your host Ian Truscott and this week's podcast as my excuse to chat with marketing friends, old and new. I've met through my marketing career from techie to cmo and hopefully share with you some marketing streetlights that my guests and I have picked up along the way. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn, and a proud member of the Marketing Podcast Network. This episode was recorded on Friday the 21st of January 2022. Hope you've had a good week and you are well safe and staying sane as you feel you need to be. Alone play epic at remix of an episode this week, we kick off with me and Jeff Clark talk net marketing education and books on subject of books Ted Rubin and John Andrew stopped by to chat about their new book. And we wind down the week with my charm Robert Rose in the Rockstar CMO.

Ian Truscott  1:27  
The first we need to pay the bar tap I'll be back in a moment.

Ian Truscott  1:45  
Right on to our first segment Jeff Clark is a former research director at siriusdecisions Forrester and principal strategic advisory here at Rockstar cmo and if you know me, you'll know why we have a longer episode this week as aside from having Ted and John on the show. Jeff and I go on to the topic of

Ian Truscott  2:07  
Welcome back to Rockstar cmo f m Jeff How are you my friend? I am

Jeff Clark  2:11  
doing very well.

Ian Truscott  2:14  
Jolly good.

Jeff Clark  2:16  
Good week I guess you know everything seems to be going well so far.

Ian Truscott  2:20  
i How's how's the how's the winter training? Are you are you deepen in the snow at the moment?

Jeff Clark  2:26  
We have you know that that back and forth between you know really cold icy weather and then it warms up and it rains and back and forth back forth so it's it's it's not good for skiing yet and but hopefully it'll be getting there.

Ian Truscott  2:44  
Nice Are you escape and just some I like

Jeff Clark  2:47  
doing Nordic skiing? Yeah, more of a more on the flat plane and on the down the steep hills. never really been, you know, an adrenaline rush type of guy. So

Ian Truscott  2:59  
Wow. But that's hard work, though. That Nordic skiing, though, isn't it without gravity helping you out?

Jeff Clark  3:05  
I think I think that's the point. I'm

Ian Truscott  3:11  
I'm definitely more than take a slip sit from the hip flask and then check myself off a mountain. I think I'm iffy. I've done it for years. I mean, I don't think my thighs could take it right now. Yeah. Lovely. So that's the weather covered and extreme sports. But last week, we started a little series about marketing education. And we discovered the depth of marketing education that both of us have, which was we started out with very little Yeah. And then we had to, we have to educate ourselves. And in the discussion, I can't remember the we talked about it. Well, we had record here or whether it was afterwards and we weren't recording. But we were talking about the books that kind of shaped us as marketers and so so we thought we'd share them with our listener.

Jeff Clark  3:58  
Absolutely. What a great idea.

Ian Truscott  4:03  
What was yours? Yeah. That's why That's why you're on the show, Jeff, you're the brains of the operation. So we've nominated and I struggled with this. And if I had if I was on video and as you've seen Jeff, I've got 13 books on my desk because I leapt through my, my my bookshelves to try and pick three but I have picked three. So we're going to talk about three each. And so so I need to say at this point, what say you Jeff, books important books are definitely

Jeff Clark  4:38  
important. You know, and, you know, I think as we were talking last last time, it's like, you know, we both came from non marketing education and work experience. So we come into marketing and so, you definitely it's a little bit on you to educate yourself unless you're you know, Your your CMO, your marketing leaders have sort of put some sort of enablement plan together, which is always what I would recommend. But, you know, I think that one of the things that is I was looking at my bookshelf, is that, you know, they're just there were some books where it kind of hit me at a point in time where I was working through something. And so yeah, and so it's like, Wow, that really, that really helped. And I don't, unlike you, I don't keep a lot of business books or books in general, because my wife always looks at the bookshelf and goes one by one and says, Do we really need that one? You really need that one? Can we get that the library or she is like having a lot of clutter.

Ian Truscott  5:47  
But wow, I see I was bought a piano and my parents loves books. And they're almost like sacred items. I mean, that out of shop, you can't see the bottom shelf is like how to learn IBM AI X or like, E Fi. I got there's Java books, there's all sorts of books out I've got only got the good marketing books in view, and I can't throw anything away.

Jeff Clark  6:14  
So when you're gonna go back and read about AI X?

Ian Truscott  6:18  
Never I just like having it. Yeah, thing and and I was actually gonna ask you if you're me. If so you might might be a Kindle guy, then then you can keep your book so that your wife knows Yeah, no,

Jeff Clark  6:28  
I haven't. I haven't. I try to spend, too. They spend so much time working on screen, I try to spend my off time not working on screen. So I haven't gravitated to kindle all the way when I'm with my son. And he's like reading. So I recommended to him 1000 page book on mediaeval history. And wow, he's got it on his Kindle. And at that point, I was kind of envious because usually I get a big history book. And you know, I'm reading it in bed and and falls on my face. So which is hazardous?

Ian Truscott  7:00  
knocks you out code. You've broken glasses like that. But

Jeff Clark  7:05  
yeah, certainly could have.

Ian Truscott  7:08  
All right, well, let's kick this off. What's your first book,

Jeff Clark  7:11  
my first book is, is Ogilvy on advertising by the the famed advertising executive on Madison Avenue, David Ogilvy. And so as I mentioned, you know, they said, it's like, some of the books are important, because it kind of hits you at a particular time. And I was, when I was working at a company called Kronos, I was in charge of advertising. So you know, getting a book on advertising from an authority just seemed kind of like, a no brainer, so to speak. But one of the things that actually, that that was, to me, I found really educational, for lack of a better term for it is just, you know, you know, he was just so focused on, there's basics in, in advertising, this really applies to communication, I also was writing a lot of direct marketing stuff. And so you know, it was always about, you know, focus. And it's like, Okay, how are you going to get the audience's attention? Which is typically where an image would come in? You know, what's the promise? You know, what are you promising to that audience? You know, are you going to make they're, obviously, this is pretty consumer oriented, you making their teeth whiter? Are you going to have them a car, they get some? The girl? And what are the, what is the thing, that's the promise that you're making? And then what do you want to do next, you know, and then it's like, a little bit of copy is nice, but it's not necessary. You just got to stick to that. And again, this is whether I was writing a direct mail letter or an email, or I was working on an advertisement. It's, it's, I was the advertising guy. And I was always working with, you know, people in product marketing, or industry marketing, but typically, product marketing is the time. It was like, you know, I know you guys want to say all kinds of things, but how are we going to get your attention? What are we promising them? What do you want to do? You were going to do they go to a website to the nice, you know, they make a phone call there was Do they just need to read something? Or, you know, Dan, you know, it doesn't always have to be a call to action that focuses on you, but it's like, you what was the point? You know, and we say, Man, I

Ian Truscott  9:26  
mean that we used to do this, like,

Jeff Clark  9:28  
Oh, I was just gonna say, you know, we used to an agency I work with, we're gonna have this do like a one page strategy statement, because they're like, if your strategy statement goes down a page, I can't write an ad about it.

Ian Truscott  9:41  
No, exactly. Exactly. And what I love about this, I mean, when was that book published? 8383. Right.

Jeff Clark  9:48  
So I mean, the late 80s, early 90s.

Ian Truscott  9:53  
Yeah, I mean, in my short list of books, it's like start with why obviously by Simon signing, I didn't want to go for the obvious That's exactly the same sort of thing, isn't it? And that's what drives us as marketers, those basic fundamentals, which is what are you trying to do? Right? Why are you doing

Jeff Clark  10:10  
and be real and be real specific? Like, you're who is the audience? It's not like, you know, everybody out there, you know, runs a business from, you know, C level people in businesses from 500,000 to 2 billion. That's like, okay, that is, yeah. That's a lot of companies.

Ian Truscott  10:29  
And the nice thing is, I know that you haven't, we're not sharing the video. But the nice thing is, you've shown me a copy of that book on video, which means that it's made numerous calls with your wife looking at the bookshelf, so we must paint important today.

Jeff Clark  10:42  
Yeah, like, get rid of that

Ian Truscott  10:42  
one. Very good. Very good. So shall I do my next My, my book? What say you em? Like that? Well, I mean, I've got I like I said, I'd like for ebooks on my desk. I mean, things like new rules of marketing, PR, Crossing the Chasm, permission marketing by Seth Godin, the one to one future by peppers. And Rogers, I think you'll probably remember that everybody writes by and handily content ink by Joe glitzy, even like the first book. And this is just my setup. I haven't even gotten my book yet. You might. This is interesting. The first probably the first book really inspired me into blogging and stuff like that. And remember, I come from a dev background was, but by Joel Spolsky, called Joel on software. And he basically turned his blog into a book. And that was from like, 2004. That's what that's what kind of got me driven on on a lot of this blogging and buying book thing. But anyway, the three that I'm going to go for, I'm going to start off with the classic that I have, that's been referred to on this show a number of times, quite a couple of times by my good friend, Robert, those who I'll be in the bar with later. And it's Marty myopia, by Theodore Levitt, which isn't technically a book, it's actually an essay, but as I show Jeff on the camera, so that he can see is actually a very small

Jeff Clark  12:05  
size, a very mild Little Red Book. So I think they call it a book,

Ian Truscott  12:10  
and you're gonna see something you're gonna see. So in common with the free books, I'm recommending, none of them are a big read. But the reason the reason why this was important to me as I started my marketing career, so I made the transition from product management, CTO, Dev, pre sales, and that kind of thing to becoming to thinking about marketing is, I think, as a b2b marketer, you're incredibly focused on your features, your functions, and outdoing your competition at that kind of level. And I think if you look at something like Marty myopia, and it was interesting when I was having that conversation, the week before last around with them, the week before last was that some of these ideas, as we were discussing last week, are completely the same in terms of thinking about what industry you're actually in and what the client actually the customer actually wants, rather than the features and functions you're in. And of course, Marty myopia gets quoted all the time. Yeah, talk about the death of the US railway system, because they didn't realise they were in the transportation business, they thought they're in the railway business. And I think it's just such good lessons in this book, that you can just go go back to all the time that takes you out of that feature function fight that detailed fight that you think you're in, in your category, and then redefining your category. So so that's my first nomination

Jeff Clark  13:34  
or my experience with our local real systems here. I totally understand the problem there. Yes.

Ian Truscott  13:44  
And what and what set so what's, what's your second book

Jeff Clark  13:47  
number two for me is, I don't think this is a big seller, but it's eating the big fish by Adam Morgan. Um, don't, don't ask me why he talks about eating the big fish, because then he always talks about the grill in the market, you know, kind of the same thing. You know, you're in a market with, you know, big players. And so when I was at, at progress, and you know, we're marketing and I was in the part of the business for marketing or development platform, and it's in the, in the arts, it was about, you know, Oracle, Java and the Microsoft with dotnet. And it's like you to, everyone's like, well, we got to do with Microsoft, we got to do and the thing about this book was, it's, it's all about being a challenger brand, which is slightly different. There's a whole series of books on challenger sales and marketing that I also got involved with later on in my career. So this kind of, you know, complimentary, but it's very different. It's about saying if the, you know, if you're up against, you know, these big these big groups was in the market? You know, in our case, we don't we would we would sort of look at the Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and say, yeah, what are the qualities that are that, that those organisations have that are not that are that are negatives that are part, you know, that are not positive? And can you set yourself up as a lighthouse brand that actually exhibits the positive to their negative. So if you take something like, too big, well, you know, we're nimble and agile, if you take something like their personal, you know, we have good customer relations Bible by the customer NTSE. So, so and you, you, we actually, we did this where it actually was a was a colleague of mine who recommended the book and then, and then myself, I was a head of marketing communications, the Head of Product Marketing, the head of product, or head of partner marketing, we all got together in a room and we sort of created this lighthouse concept of here's what's bad about these guys, here's what's good about us. And that really drove our positioning for our products for a long time. And it actually got, I mean, that we actually renamed the platform to be the open edge platform which still exists today, progress is still you know, a big moneymaker for them. So it's, it's, you know, I don't know it's to an extent, kind of put it put what was a viewed as kind of an old proprietary technology onto a new footing, which, which is last and but, but just this idea of, because it's the only thing you fight about in marketing is the fact everybody wants to be like the big guy. It's like, what does Adobe do? What are these guys do? Yeah. And it's like, oh, you know, you don't? I mean, you really got to think about who you're trying to, what their weaknesses are. And you're in, you're trying to say, you don't want every customer in the market, you want a customer that actually is going to, you know, is going to look for what you have to offer. So that's why he said that that lighthouse brand.

Ian Truscott  17:04  
Yeah, no, I like that. And so that's in the big fish. It

Jeff Clark  17:07  
was that by Adam Morgan. And I did read one of his subsequent books and didn't particularly connect to it. So that was definitely a special one in his night from his repertoire.

Ian Truscott  17:24  
Nice. Okay, so my next up pick. I think we were both thinking about permission marketing by Seth Gordon. Yes. But and I definitely was going to do that. And I can't I can't express the importance of Seth Gordon's books, in my marketing education, for sure. I mean, if there was a button on Amazon, which said, every time Seth Godin does something, just send it to my house, I would have pressed it. But basically,

Jeff Clark  17:51  
they're just having fun. I think

Ian Truscott  17:53  
I have it, I think I have all of his books and permission, marketing is fantastic. And it is the original and the Oracle. And there are a bunch of them that give you a bunch of BS, but to give you a real aha moment, and one of those, and I like from Seth Godin was tribes, and the reason why I like, and he also talks about sneezes, and all these great.

Ian Truscott  18:24  
That's what's important about some of the books that we're going to discuss is they're relevant today. But tribes is great, because what I like about tribes is it that education that it gave me was about finding your people. And I think as marketers, we're kind of educated. And using the word educate the most loosely, we're kind of driven to appeal to as many people as possible, and appealing to many people as possible means that you're just going to create something grey and boring and samey, and you're going to appeal to nobody, right? And what I like about tribes and set view on that kind of stuff, and a bunch of people have written about the same sort of concept is, if you appeal really appeal to like your 1000 true fans, or whatever concept you want to do, you're going to you're going to differentiate, you're going to resonate with a bunch of people, and you're going to bring people along with you on that. The contrary to that is obviously you're gonna get you have to get used to the fact that some people won't like you, right? Yeah. I said that bit too loudly. But, but people won't like you, you know, so you don't. And so. And I think we we struggle with that, when we're taking products to market is that is when somebody gives you negative feedback, because you're not like them, but that's important, because you need to find the people that really like you. And that's what I like about

Jeff Clark  19:33  
James tells me even the big fish. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Ian Truscott  19:37  
exactly. And I think I think many of us, I mean, hopefully like because we're now educated marketers, that there's a theme here of some of the origins stories that we tell each other and I think that's what we were talking about last week about education is that so many people come up with these ideas and you thinking, hang on isn't particularly new. That's

Jeff Clark  19:56  
a new one like the first I think first shows I did was We were talking about one hit wonders. And I put Account Based Marketing on there because I said, well isn't isn't it all b2b marketing account base? Anyway? Exactly.

Ian Truscott  20:09  
And also, I've got, because I was floundering. Just a minute ago, a couple of weeks ago, I spoke to Stan Bernard and his book brands don't win, which is the one that kind of made me think about Marcy myopia, as well, which apparently is getting all sorts of accolades. And I don't know, is it like number one bestseller? So I've interviewed a number one best selling book on Hey, what's your third? Are we on your third book?

Jeff Clark  20:34  
We are on my third book, which is yes, the ultimate question 2.0 by Fred Reichheld. Wow, read Reichheld is this. I mean, this goes a little bit beyond just marketing, he is the are one of the creators behind the net promoter score. And this may not make him very popular among some in our audience, because a lot people either, you know, have have poo pooed, the net promoter score or, or just just got tired with receiving surveys, which said, how would you recommend this, this vendor, give me a score from zero to 10. So but one of the things, so I was at pega systems at the time, and actually, we had Fred Reichheld, we were actually implementing the ability to do the NPS ratings are just the survey emails and the scoring and all that within within the platform, because we service a lot of companies that did had customer service applications. And so he came and spoke at our user conference. And, and the thing I like so you know, people don't know about Net Promoter Score, it's trying to solve the branding challenge of preference. So you know, there's brand awareness, there's brand perception, and then there's preference. And so if you're trying to understand whether an existing customer potential customer prefers you over others, then you have them rank in terms of how they would whether they would recommend you. And, and so, and it's, it's a, it's, to me, it's a simple measure of a fairly complex thing. And one of the things that was pretty interesting about this 2.0 version of the ultimate question was, you talked about how to operationalize you know, when somebody gives you a good rating or a bad rating or whatever, what do you what, what do you do with that information, because you actually, if it's if it's like, after a service call, and you get a bad review, then your your service organisation can, can reach out and try to? Well, for one, they can understand what the problem was, and then reach out and see how to how to best correct it. So it's one of the things that's a challenge with with all kinds of brand measurement is, how can we be precise? And what are we gonna do about the information and so to me, this was a way of making a brand measurement for one more precise, but also giving insights, giving you something that's actionable in the short term, as opposed to waiting till the end of the year, when you do the big brand survey, and people tell you, you suck. It's like it's too late.

Ian Truscott  23:20  
Yeah, you know, yeah. No, I and I think, well, the other thing is, is like, I love it, I mean, just the very idea of measuring brand perception in the early days, right? It gives you something to resist against or do but at least you're doing it right are iterating against it, and then thinking about that idea. So that's cool. So that was the ultimate question to put on by

Jeff Clark  23:41  
Fred. Right. Right. Killed R E. H, E, LD. Cool.

Ian Truscott  23:47  
Excellent. Well, okay, so my said but which was tricky, and I know that we prep for this, and we actually, I did actually share with you a list of three books. And I haven't stuck to it. I was, I was gonna say play bigger, which is buy a whole bunch of authors, and I think there's about four authors play bigger. It's a brilliant book, and it's about particularly for b2b about defining your category and all that kind of stuff. And I read it and I was inspired by it, but then I was thinking about the fact that what actually our remit for this was the brief as it were for this particular podcast episode was those seminal things that got us thinking early in our careers right and and so I was thinking about you know, Crossing the Chasm was being I was in sales when I was in pre sales and stuff but that got overplayed but I'm gonna go for another and then I know that Robert, Robert Rose who will meet in the bar later and I'm not just saying it cuz he's on the show. And he knows my views about this is his book managing content marketing, the real world guide for creating passionate subscribes to your brand by by him and Joe Pulizzi. came at a time and he says this book is woefully out of date, and I shouldn't refer to it anymore. I need to do an update version. It came at a time when I'm actually at 10 years ago, when I made the actual, you know, move from, from product marketing to content marketing to ultimately into marketing sales, sorry, CMO. And I really like this book because I and it's similar to your stories isn't a book comes into your life at a particular time when you're making that transition. And and, and this for me was just excellent because it talks about telling stories, and how people respond to telling stories. It has in here the framework for telling stories, the hero's story and all that kind of stuff. And also some basics for actually getting started with content marketing and the sorts of things you need to do. It's great, sort of, and it's by a practitioner of the craft, right isn't, you know, and we it was when we were both sto and Robert came in and did some did some work with me and my team. And and it's just it was just, you know, it's just the thing. And so my third book is managing content marketing by Robert Rose. So there's my three so we'll tell him what, we're your 3g

Jeff Clark  26:07  
when you get him in a bar. Yeah, make sure he updates it.

Ian Truscott  26:12  
We discussed on the on the Christmas episode while you were away. I actually asked him directly about that. He's like, Yeah, yeah. But But yes. So what were your three? That's a reminder though, okay.

Jeff Clark  26:26  
in reverse order. The ultimate question 2.0. Right, killed eating the big fish by Adam Morgan. And Ogilvy on advertising by none other than David Ogilvy trying to facilitate anyway,

Ian Truscott  26:41  
among the micro marketing myopia by Theodore Levitt tribes by Seth Godin, and managing content marketing by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi. So we didn't just talk about we're not going to stop talking about books, right? We're going to talk about marketing education. And because we've got so many, and it was hard to choose, we're going to carry on talking about books. But on the interwebs on them, socials where people come and talk to us. Irene, Nihon Khan, our popular regular commentator guest has made a comment on on LinkedIn. And she was talking about one of the points he made last week about the three P's the five P's and six PS, how many peas over? And she refer to the seven PS by Philip Kotler? So shall we discuss that next one?

Jeff Clark  27:30  
I think we should, we should, we should dig into that. And certainly, I think we should encourage all of our fans, whether you're a super fan like Irene, or just regular fans, that if you've got a book that that was seminal in your development as a marketer, it's like, Yeah, send it in. And because I think as we go in, dig into other topics, we may, you know, we may see a lot to talk about brand. And let's be let's bring back talking about the, you know, I don't know what would be an advertising or, you know, the, you know, any one of the other ones that we make stumble upon that say, these are just classics, because, as you said, you know, so many ideas and marketing are not all that new. They're, you know, they're things that have been written about before. We just need to build that foundation and that discipline to remember them.

Ian Truscott  28:21  
Yes, and, and also, people can suggest topics we might want to talk about too. So marry those two together as we continue our discovery of marketing education over the next few weeks. And there's only one more point on the agenda. And that's the song, which do I confess that I actually

Jeff Clark  28:38  
yes, why don't you confess.

Ian Truscott  28:42  
I always I, you know, I always give this very responsible job to you. And it's actually it's not a very new song. It's three years younger than the song we picked last week. It's Elvis Costello and the attractions everyday I write the book from 1983. So we're playing

Jeff Clark  29:01  
maybe he wrote about

Ian Truscott  29:04  
Yeah, well, I mean, we'll do some we'll do some better research and find better songs as this. This series continues. Alright, mate. So we'll continue with marketing education next week. Have a great week, mate, I'll speak to you that sounds great.

Ted Rubin  29:34  
Dream turns out to be two three every day, every day, every day.

Ian Truscott  29:57  
Thank you, Jeff. For that was every day All right. Bye. Elvis Costello from 1983. Next week we'll be chatting about the Ps of Marketing following a suggestion from our listener, Irene newhome. Kane on LinkedIn. And if you have a suggestion for a book or a topic, let us know. We are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn or drop us an email at Hello at Rockstar cmo.com by onto my guests, I had absolutely no chance keeping this episode to time as I've to great knowledgeable and entertaining guests. A fascinating topic and a marketing book to talk about. Ted Rubin and John Andrews have been wonderful supporters of Rockstar CMOS since we started this as a web publication back in 2018. But if you don't know them, John Andrews is a career shopper marketer, entrepreneur and entrepreneur. He has over 20 years of experience in consumer packaged goods companies, including HANES Brands, Newell Rubbermaid picture vision Kodak digital, and Implus. He moved to the retail side in 2007, joining Walmart and building one the first people as media platforms called Walmart 11 moms is the founder of collective bias that was acquired by Inma in 2016, co founder of carousel and most recently served as CEO photo Fi is now working on retail marketing, projects and teaching. Ted Rubin is a leading social marketing strategist international keynote speaker author connector provocateur. In March 2009. He started using evangelising the term return on relationship. Ted has had fantastic marketing career with Elf Cosmetics Open Sky and also was a collective bias as Chief Social Marketing Officer. He published his first book return on relationship in January 2013. And since then, he's published how to look people in the eye digitally and the age of influence. Many people in the social media world including me noted for his enthusiastic, energetic and undeniably personal connection to people, and is no letup hashtag and approach to life. As you'll hear John and Ted have come together to publish retail relevancy, how brands and retailers will connect with shoppers in a post physical retail.

Ian Truscott  32:02  
Welcome to Rockstar, CMA, FN, Ted and John. I've got two guests, both friends, this show of friends, Rockstar cmo from since we began really appreciate you guys coming on. Hello, Ted. Hello, John.

Ted Rubin  32:14  
How are you? We off we are friends of Ian Truscott, I I've had the pleasure of hugging Ian Truscott so multiple times.

John Andrews  32:23  
Yeah, well, I'm gonna have to get across the pond and make sure I'm good. I got

Ted Rubin  32:27  
to add. I'm doing participating in Oktoberfest with Yashraj Scott? Oh,

Ian Truscott  32:35  
yeah, if you participate in Oktoberfest, there's a lot of hugs. I mean, I've already kind of introduce you guys before we kick this off. But Ted, for people that don't know you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Ted Rubin  32:47  
Well, that's kind of easy. I've been around for way too many years to go through my entire background. But I I jumped into the digital world with a company that Seth Godin started back in 1997, progressed into a company called Elf Cosmetics was kind of at the forefront of using social to build a consumer brand. I was fortunate enough to meet John during that period. And we connected and started doing what he was doing at Walmart and what I was doing at Elf Cosmetics kind of morph together and ever since we've been creating content together and helping retailers to sell more product and to understand the path to purchase.

Ian Truscott  33:25  
Yeah, love it. Thanks, Ted. And I love it when you tell your story. I mean, I've seen you on stage telling your story. It's it's excellent. And and John, for folks that haven't come across your rockstar cmo before. What's What's your story?

John Andrews  33:37  
Sure. Yeah, I took a little non traditional path I kind of wasn't ready for higher education after my lower education. So I became a manager of a Domino's Pizza. And I learned I did and I moved to Maine, which was kind of like moving to Mars from a guy from a small town in North Carolina. And I learned how to run a business right? I learned how to hire people fire people, how to do a lot of firing people, but you know, managing inventory. And what I really got fascinated was marketing. So by the time I was ready to go back to school, I went back and and decide I want to be a brand manager. So I would have been a brand person my my entire career. I still love brand. And I actually think one of the questions you have is his brand is the answer. Right? So we'll talk about that. But I was a brand for big brands, like HANES Brands. I was a brand for some startups like company called picture vision that got purchased by Kodak. And then I got the opportunity to work for Walmart. And while I was at Walmart, got asked to lead and emerging media team said, Awesome, what's that? You know, that's great. It was defined for me. This was 2008 Everything beyond the banner ad. And about that time I met Ted. Ted was CMO. elfin, we were both experimenting with people as media with influencers. And, and we learned, we learned something we're doing today, you know, I'm I was I was working with my daughter and, and her boyfriend last night he asked me a question. He says, Hey, can you teach me about NF? TS? I'm like, I sure can. And the only reason I could do that, and it was a moment to be cool with teenagers, which, you know, how cool how rare those are. I, I just cuz I did it. You know, I bought some NF T's. And I made some, and I'm not an expert. But that's how you do stuff, right? Anyway, that's it?

Ian Truscott  35:38  
Absolutely. I'm both you've got this great credibility in retail. I know, you've talked about retail and Rockstar CMO, when we had the web publication, I think we've been connected for four or five years, something like that. So. So really appreciate your insight in. And I'm really pleased to talk about the fact you published your book retail relevancy, how brands and retailers will connect a post physical world, which is a fabulous title. And I know you guys have been working on it for a while, what what is it that finally got this thing across the line? How did you get it published? COVID, COVID.

Ted Rubin  36:13  
I got to tell you, I, I've written three of the books and and to be told, I think this is probably the best one because John wrote most of it. And, you know, when you do it yourself to work at your own schedule, you work with your editor, you do it your way. And, you know, as as I've experienced along a lot with John, and why we're great business partners and friends, is that neither one of us says it has to be this way. So although I tried to impress upon John, like, this is probably the easiest way to do the club, you know, John had his own way of going about it, and, you know, trying to work together and get all the parts we needed. And then our editor would send a list of what you needed. And I'd raise my hand for some genres and for other and then don't think the other one did something. And, you know, finally COVID hit, and there was a little more time and I you know, John, and I got on the phone, we said, well, like, you know, if we don't finish this now, we're not going to finish it plus, so many of the things we were already talking about in the stuff we'd written for the book was starting to accelerate so rapidly. Yeah, that not only did we have to fix some of what we already wrote, but it was really cool. Because instead of just writing predictions, what we were writing about was already happening. Yeah, it really made the book and wait for it much more relevant.

John Andrews  37:30  
I see what you did there.

Ian Truscott  37:35  
Before I hit record, but when I was doing research, and I remember us talking, we were chatting, and then I remember you talking about retail relevancy tape and some of the stuff we've been talking about. And I look back and you've been talking about this in 2018. I mean, this this stuff's been been brewing for a while, right?

Ted Rubin  37:50  
So I remember John and my conference call with our editor in 2017. I can remember exactly, I don't remember the name of the place. But I remember, like, where we were, there was an upstairs in the downstairs, and John was on the what, when one place, and I was in another and we were talking to her about it. And we made all our plans. So yeah, it's been in the works for a long time. And I think it made it a better book to be told, like, you know, sometimes things get delayed, and you either miss your window, or, you know, it becomes irrelevant. And I just think this really helped us and, like a lot of us got a view into how things probably should have been before COVID with a lot of things, you know, not obviously, there's been things that have been very stressful and difficult for people. But as far as the ability to work remote, the ability for E commerce to accelerate for delivery. And John has really remarkable thinking about all this stuff. So I'm gonna hand off. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  38:46  
What was your experience? John, what kind of made it happen for you?

John Andrews  38:50  
You know, what, what COVID would have been COVID? Is it 2017 2018 2019 A retailer sort of went into this mode of Yeah, yeah, we know this is happening. But we're just we're gonna, we're gonna ease into it. We've got other priorities, we're gonna do stuff. And then, you know, we've told the story a couple times. I never will forget reading an article that in wall in March of 2020. I'm trying to remember when COVID happened because my day, like, you know, we're in this, like, What day is it? Right?

Ian Truscott  39:25  
They just fly by not just the days it's like, 2020. Yeah, who believes it? Yeah, exactly.

Ted Rubin  39:32  
My, my last real business trip was probably two years ago. Before COVID Yeah. In March

John Andrews  39:39  
of 22, Walmart went from about 9% of its customers who had used Trello you know, online ordering or pickup? Yep. 30%. Wow. Right. And all of a sudden, and I can remember when I was at Walmart, my boss and a colleague of his had actually present did this was a way right? They had presented the way to transform Walmart was through these awesome pickup lanes and making, you know, bricks it and I can remember people in that meeting and it'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but what I think happened was they they started to embrace that. And luckily for them when COVID hit, they were ready to go. Right. Right, right. And all of a sudden, and by doing so we're its customers, right? Yeah, you know, I, my wife and I went to target the other day. And when I say went to Target went to Target parking lot, and we pulled into one of the numbered spaces, and she pops the thing and the gate goes up, and the person puts our stuff in the back and away we go, you know, I, you know, like, why would why would I ever Why do I want to go in that store? I mean, you know, I like to read. I like retail. And I like being in retail. But I don't need to go wander around a target. I know what's in there.

Ian Truscott  41:07  
I got Yeah. What? So what do you think is going to be the future of the High Street and read? I mean, that's the big topic, right about retail Relevancy is it's not just the relevancy of getting shipped from their warehouse into our house. Right. But it's also that leisure pursuit, which is retail has, would you think that's still going to exist in this, what you've described as post physical world

John Andrews  41:30  
100% 100%. Because I mean, we we like to go and see in touch, Ted tells a story where my North Face. We have a north face store here. And it's got a little bit of product, but it's really experiential, you can go and you can see all their cool tents and all their stuff. And whatever, anything that they have, like this product is a Summit Series. This is like a high alpine product to sell this in Raleigh. Yeah. Who would buy it? You don't you don't need it. I used it to climb Mount Rainier a couple months ago. And I needed it, you know, and x is the warmest thing I got. And I you know, you think about that, that, of course is going to be there. But that idea of walking around to get, you know, toothpaste and, and stuff and things that I know, I don't I don't need to browse the toothpaste section. Right. I've been using Colgate Optic light for 2015 since it came out. You know and and you know what I want? I don't want to think about to face I'm sorry, Colgate, because it's a great toothpaste and I love this product. But you know how often I brush my teeth? Or Alexa does just should that stuff should just show up? You know, I open my drawer. And there's two things. It's like dog food. I don't want to think about dog food, you know? Yeah. And so yes. You probably are more familiar with this than I think a lot of people in the States but I'm sure you're familiar with the big dirt mound they built that the Marble Arch. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think people are thinking like, Oh, we got to do all this money. Yeah. I don't need a dirt mound. By the way, I points kudos for, for creativity. You know, what? entice people to come shop I got on High Street. We, of course, we're going to shop, it's just going to transform into much more experiential, much more dwell. You know, I like to go to my men's clothing store here. When I go there. They have a glass of wine or something, I walk around and talk, I look at stuff on her body thing. I just go there for free wine. But I think about it. It's so I don't know, what do you think Ted?

Ted Rubin  43:52  
Yeah, you know, I think and, you know, we talked about the whole simplicity thing and convenience. I think, you know, convenience is becoming an important thing I think people will shop for like John likes to say that most supermarkets get them 90% of their businesses, because they're the closest supermarket to where somebody lives. You know, and and it's always been a certain amount of convenience, except I think the convenience is going to continue to accelerate where you know, the Amazon stores where you walk out without having to check out because it's been checked out for you as you go, where you can buy online and return in store or buy in store and have ups or somebody pick it up at your door. So it's I think a lot of this is gonna be like John was just mentioning not only the experimental, but the whole evolution of the destination and the parking lots because not only are we combining how easy it is to have retail delivered or buy online, but cars are going to start disappearing. I mean, yeah, people are going to be it's either going to be like your Ubers and Alicia the world or it's going to be self driving cars. It's certainly not going to be all tomorrow. But even today Again COVID accelerated this drive by those parking lots. They're not full. No. And that space is going to start to be reimagined. What can we do? What can we do with that space? Whether it's the regrowth I think one of the things we're going to see is a regrowth of small businesses. I think that all the people that wanted to have retail stores that really can deliver on that personal experience that no major chain can deliver on I'm sorry, you walk into a Lowe's, you walk into a I mean, Whole Foods is probably one of the best at it. Yeah, but Lowe's, like not only, not only can you not get that experience from them, but they don't have the knowledge whereas a small retailer who before could not afford the retail space, because we know all know how expensive all this space got. But if there, if a lot of if the JC Penney's and the Macy's and the Sears and Kmart, and all these other large retailers in the world disappear, there's going to be this massive amount of space available. And then same thing with the parking lot. So I think you're going to see a lot more smaller retailers a lot more of these pop up locations, whether it's like flea markets, or it's, you know, Sunday Farmer's Market neighbourhood. And I think a lot of that face to face shopping is going to is going to move to there.

Ian Truscott  46:18  
Yeah. And do you think one of the things is that people aren't travelling to cities, not just not travelling to those big out of town boxes, big box stores, but they're not travelling to cities anymore? Do you think this is going to revitalise like, our local high streets? I mean, I know that that's more of a concept probably for the UK than it is in in some parts of the US. But do you think that's going to revitalise what you're saying about having small specialist stores that are local to us? Because we're not going to be travelling quite so much.

Ted Rubin  46:48  
Um, okay, so you're talking about the issue of travel because of pandemic? Oh, yeah.

Ian Truscott  46:53  
Well, just generally, like we don't have to go into I mean, like, say, I know, you guys. I mean, you're in Florida. Ted. John, you're in, in, in Kara in one of the

John Andrews  47:03  
North Carolina? Yeah.

Ian Truscott  47:05  
Sorry. People have been, you know, people. So like, when I was when I was living over there, you know, my office was in New York, I was living in Connecticut, I travelled down every day on the train. And there was a bunch of stuff a bunch of retail I'd interact with in New York, because I travelled on the train. But nowadays, people are doing quite similar. You're talking

Ted Rubin  47:25  
about, you're talking about like commuting type travel like yeah, travel. I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about like, you know, travel destination travel. I just Yes, I think a lot of that is is gonna change too. I mean, I don't think New York City is ever going to have the same foot traffic it had in one time. Although I work from what I know of New York City, before COVID. And probably London is similar, is a lot of that retail space became so expensive, it moved to the high end retailers. I think those people still want to go into a store. Oh, yeah, you're buying a $20,000 watch or $30,000 code $1,500 2000 $3,000 suit, I think there's a little bit more of that desire, until we get a lot better at pickup delivery, sending someone to your home to fashion, something like that for you. Um, I still believe those places will.

Ian Truscott  48:25  
Yeah, it's to John's point isn't it about getting the glass of wine, getting the high level of service being shown stuff, you know, experience experience. So

John Andrews  48:33  
when we we went there, you know, in my lifetime and this is a very us experience and I don't I don't know how this this reflects it. But you know, we hollowed out all the small towns here, going to the malls and doing doing these, you know, the Walmart's all of those things. Every small town within a 50 mile radius of Raleigh now as a destination, right, do your play, and they're cute, and I want to go there because I got a little restaurant, and they've got a pub, but then they have some interesting shopping, you know, they've got a an old hardware store that's now turned into hardware and vinyl record, you know, whatever. Right. Yeah, it's, it's cool. But there, it's literally the revitalization. Well, and, you know, a real estate has gotten so out of whack here that people want to go buy houses there. You know, my wife and I were just talking about, you know, one of one of you know, we're not far from from kind of starting to think about, you know, retirements as the right word, but you know, our daughter's gonna go to school and then down and then I'm probably not going to let you know Rowley is going you know, on this trajectory of growth right now. You know, we have Apple's AI headquarters moving here and some other things and it's, it's insane, and it's going to be great for us because our house has doubled or maybe even tripled by the time we left in price. And we can we can, what's called geo arbitrage, right? So we're going to spend some time this summer in Vermont, looking at small towns, I'll sell my house, take half of the proceeds and buy another house and bank. The other is my, as my retirement, you know, and I'm like, this is this is this, this is a factor, I think that is leading to some of these transformational things. Plus, I can live it to your point, I can live in a small town now. And if I want Louis the time, I can get Louis the time. If I want. If I Ted I still want if I'm gonna spend two 2000 bucks on a jacket, I know somebody listen, I don't care about much Louis Vuitton jacket for 2000 bucks, whatever. You know, but, but I can get my entire whatever set from Amazon or Walmart or whoever out you know, to think about it, you know, yeah,

Ian Truscott  51:05  
but you can also get your, you know, your rally, was it. The barbecue is vinegar based barbecue. Yeah, get barbecue shipped, you can get whatever you like, right? And you can be all the way up there in Vermont, and eat in the fine barbecue from that,

John Andrews  51:24  
you you you actually just spur a great thought. Um, think about that. Right. So So one of the things that COVID Did is people got really good at other forms of retail because they had to or they're gonna go out of business, right? We have a sushi restaurant that our little our local sushi restaurants about a mile and a half from our house. And they wouldn't let anybody in there. But they you know, you pulled up I brought your stuff and handed it to you. Now, there is no place to park there because every time we go there to eat everybody they have half of the parking spots or pull up because everybody's like, you know, I like to see in my pyjamas I would literally drive there in my pyjamas. And and not you know, because I knew I didn't have to get out the car do anything. It'd be like peace out suckers.

Ted Rubin  52:21  
I mean, food delivery just accelerated as far as fine food delivery, you know that people are now knowing that. First of all, it's easy. It's quick, you know, you can rely on it. I recently ordered something through one of the local delivery services. And literally within 15 minutes, I got something back from them saying, listen, we're having trouble getting through to the restaurant. We don't want to hold you up. So either we can cancel that order and reorder for you or you can wait but meaning that that didn't exist a couple of years ago, you'd call us wait, you'd wait. you'd wait when it come? You'd call you'd say where is it? Oh, it's it's in process. Now. So many of these have refined their services to make it something that we are so much more likely to do because we enjoy it.

Ian Truscott  53:06  
Well, it's majors that koffice Right, because they've had to fix it back. Right,

John Andrews  53:11  
of course. And that's a major theme of the book is, you know, the future of shopping is about removing friction. Right, right. If I want if I want sushi, I you know, I might have not ordered sushi before because to go sushi. I'm just is it gonna be okay, is it now man, they package it. They've got the little Google absorbent pad so it doesn't get soggy and stuff. You know, they fall about all of the logistics that have to go around. How do I deliver my restaurant quality? At my shoppers home? Right?

Ian Truscott  53:47  
Yeah, yeah. And I'll just Yeah, we were gobbling through the time. I knew we would with you too. So this is x. In talking about the future, and you talk in the book, you talk about Siri and Alexa and, and voice being a major part of it, which I don't think we've covered. I mean, we've covered like, direct to consumer, I think we know that for consumables like your toothpaste, John. That's that's where that's gonna go. But what role do you think voice is going to start to play in terms of changing the way that retail works the consumer relationship?

John Andrews  54:20  
Did you want me to talk about that? Yeah.

Ted Rubin  54:24  
No, I mean, honestly, John always has a little deeper insight into this than I do.

John Andrews  54:29  
Well, there's a there's a wonderful woman that Ted and I both know, named Emily Bender, and I highly recommend people follow her on the show. Yeah. She is one of the thought leaders in voice marketing and she has a little low Alexa thing every day and called wealth voice. Yeah. And it talks about you know, so So I think what's gonna happen I really believe is AI is getting pretty smart right now. Siri and Alexa and her friends, their friends are are listening to us pretty much constantly unless you tell them not to write. And everybody says, oh, man, we were just talking about this. And I saw an ad. I'm like, Yeah, you did. Because, you know, but again, think about the friction, removal of that it's a little creepy. Except that if you make it really easy, my, my buddy here just bought a new home. And we were talking about a solo stove, you know, one of those little cool kind of things, you can throw wood, and you can have it on a back porch. And literally, we both started getting Instagram ads like that. Right? Wow. And I was like, I'm fine with that, you know, people aren't there yet, I think. But But I think the ability for own a fly to be able to communicate with our devices. And, you know, Tesla, and Apple, and I think most of the car manufacturers are realising, too, that cars are big interactive platforms, you know, especially when you don't have to drive them anywhere. We're all gonna be bored in there. You know, and so, let me let me begin to shift some of this shopper activities to those platforms, right, either either through guidance through through whatever, but you know, we're talking to our things. Now, you may have those friends that dictate all of their, their text and stuff. My, my, my next door neighbour dictate dictates, like, like, paragraphs, you know, write a dear Brenda, comma, stop a new paragraph, you know, I mean, it's like, he doesn't while you're riding in the car, I'm like, What do you like, what are you doing? But it is actually easier than typing. It's just one of those things, you got to start doing

Ian Truscott  56:47  
it all the time. I mean, if she's gonna Google something, she's asking Siri, she's talking to a device, it goes

Ted Rubin  56:53  
to the whole friction free thing. Yeah. You know, John, and I have a line, I just emailed it to you along with the PDF, it's simplicity is the new eDLP every pricing, you know, make it easy for them, and they'll buy from you again and again. And again. Yeah, it was retail is a retailer future, but I think frictionless everything. And I love that you brought up cars, because, you know, I was just driving today, and the technology isn't quite there yet. But it's really getting there. Because right now a lot of our effort in the car, I still have to use a touchscreen, you know, and I'm driving and that takes my attention away from what I want to do. And I can I can use Siri to make some calls. And she doesn't always quite understand me. You know, she's telling me he sent me to Yellowstone park when I'm just trying to call them yellow or something and, but that gets better. It's going to give us more time and the ability to get more done in what we consider our downtime, you know, you know, I'm John got me into audiobooks during the pandemic. And now, like, whenever I'm outside doing sports, doing anything, I'm an audio book. Yeah. And learning that your brain, you know, you I've heard about this a lot, but I'm experiencing it even more now. Because I'm listening to so many books, that your brain absorbs stuff, even when you're not totally paying attention. Yeah. So you know, obviously, there's certain things where you really have to pay attention, because you're really going to learn it. But there's other things where you just want to take it in. And I think that when it comes to retail, it's going to just give us the ability to get other things done. You know, just like just like the Amazon app has made it easy for us when I'm with you or John. Yeah, you say, Hey, man, you know, you should get this new holder for your phones. Yeah, right there. You click on your buy it. Imagine when I can just say it as I'm walking? Yeah. And it really effectively gets it done for you. And I think it's gonna combine with John and I have been working with a company called lucid, lucid. Mm hmm. Which which is, so you asked me about it before when you're on the call. Yeah. And it's a Bluetooth, sunglass company or Bluetooth glasses company. But you know, as they're progressing, they're adding more and more tech to these phones know is going to exist. And the point is going to come where we're going to not only be able to tell our phone to order something for us, but it's gonna be able to flash by us, you know, with some of the different options that we might want. Yeah, it's in the sub screen, or it's right, like the Google Glass were at one time, you know, which was an early technology. But as all of this combined, it's just gonna make everything more fluid. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  59:19  
I love it. I love it. Anyway, I, the book is retail relevancy, how brands and retailers will connect in a post physical world, which is, as I said, as fabulous title, and I encourage everybody to have a look at especially. And I think we're all interested in retail, right? And I think we, as marketers can learn from, from what's really happening there. But I've got a final question for both of you. As you know, and I know as friends of Rockstar CMO, we haven't you know, we have a regular feature the Rockstar CMOS simple port to hell for where we throw all the BS snake on an overhyped trends of this craft we love. What specifically about retail needs to be flung in the pool needs to be gotten rid of. But

John Andrews  59:57  
I'm going to talk about something that I think is overhyped. But I don't think the the I don't think I don't think it. I don't think it's overhyped in terms of it's not going to happen. I just think it's not going to happen today. But but it Ted just talked about part of it is going to so there was an article this week, you probably all saw ballparks filing a bunch of patents to get into the metaverse in crypto. And and I think the metaverse Metaverse is it's 100% coming in. But in fact, a lot of parts of it are already here and you use them and you don't really think about it. But But I think it's early, but I'm kind of actually happy about that. Because usually, you know, the knock on retail is they're the last people to do anything. So that Walmart's even thinking about this is a positive thing. And I think it knows that many of its customers are already spending a lot of time in the metaverse. Yeah, but but I think the the, you know, I think when people talk about Metaverse, they're like, Oh, we're going to be in these virtual blah, blah, blah. I think it's going to be closer to what Ted just described. I think that's why lucid is on the path is you're gonna have a device that isn't there's already contact lenses that are that are experimentation that do this. Just augment your reality. So and maybe even have some of your your Metaverse friends with you, you know, when you're out shopping, you're doing stuff. So when I'm out visiting you at a pub, and Ted's back home in Florida, you know, he's actually there with us or whatever, those things are coming. And those are coming very quickly. And again, as a is a as somebody who's interested in that thing. I spent time learning about it. So I'm on a platform called upland, again, is you know, Upland, it's the real world in real estate. And I just built my first apartment building in Upland, right? Nice. I'm collecting rents or money on it or whatever. And it's not there yet. But wow, you can really begin to see what happens when I you know, I like this little street in New Orleans called Frenchmen Street. And I have bought properties on Frenchmen Street. And I was in New Orleans several weeks ago. And I spent some time with my yard guys are here. Now, I spent some time going to look at the properties that I own, in, in Upland, the real ones. Imagine when you connect that and it's a restaurant or a retailer or something like that's happening, like maybe like so. So go learn it, go get into it. But don't just do hype stuff just to do it. You know, Ted, Ted, Ted, Ted laughs that every influencer now has their own crypto token. And

Ted Rubin  1:02:59  
you just brought that up, John, because that's what I got is ridiculously overhyped is having your own currency. Yeah. In other words, by the way, I don't get me wrong. I mean, this whole crypto thing is happening and there are going to be new currencies and things are gonna change. And it's going to change the whole unbanked world. But everyone's not going to have their own currencies and nobody's going to want those currencies. Yeah. And the hype factor and like every influencer is issuing a coin. Now, part of it I get it's fun to experiment like John does. And yeah, but too many of them are now talking about it's so seriously that their coins are going to become currencies of exchange. And I don't I think that's way overhyped. I think it will definitely be a bunch that are and I think a lot of this is coming. But you're not gonna get rich off your own personal currency. Yeah, yeah. Or start trading interactively?

Ian Truscott  1:04:00  
I think I think I mean, that's clear. I mean, Metaverse and crypto, you've hit both the hot key words right now. Right.

John Andrews  1:04:08  
I will give you one good example of where that is working. And and I think, you know, Gary Vee thinks about things and he thinks about how to connect them. And and I'm not a Gary Vee fanboy, but I don't just like Gary Vee, but you know, I he connects things for people in relevant ways. And he, he is working on a NFT restaurant in New York. And it is very aligned with what is going on with the badge value of NF TS matters in that community. Right. So if you want to board a NF T, you're you're pretty cool. People have it as an avatar. This restaurant, it's a sushi restaurant in New York is selling NF T's and you have to own one to get in the restaurant, and they begin Selling at about two and a half Aetherium. And the restaurant sold $15 million worth of NF T's out of the box. Those kind of practical applications are coming. And I applaud applaud Gary and people thinking about that beyond. I've got an I've got an NFT, or I've got coin, you know, but what's a practical application anyway? That's it.

Ian Truscott  1:05:25  
Yeah, no, that's really cool. Absolutely. And as that one's up, so Ted, when folks spin the dial on the interwebs, where do they find you, Ted?

Ted Rubin  1:05:35  
Oh, just head over to wherever just Google Ted Rubin or go to any platform, or at least, the old school ones. I actually have a tick tock account. I'm not real active there. But I certainly go there to see what's being created. And I create some content myself, I've kind of pretty much abandoned Snapchat, just because there's only so many hours in a day of where you can be checking things. And I kind of shifted over to the tic tac thing, except, you know, like, all other social multiple application folks, I do post my tic TOCs. To automatically to Snapchat because why not? But just Ted Rubin, you can also call me I actually answered my phone 505511. Or if you want to get somewhere where you sure I'll follow up? Just email me at Ted rubin@gmail.com.

Ian Truscott  1:06:25  
Cool. Thank you. And John, where where can people find you?

John Andrews  1:06:28  
I'm at Katahdin on about everything KTADH I N. And like, Ted, I'm in the winnowing process of social channels. I have at least taken a extended pause from Facebook. is Ted said there's so many hours in the day. Yeah, I can do all the things right and I want to focus where I get value

Ian Truscott  1:06:55  
x and and I presume the book and I'll say the title again, retail MC how brands retailers will connect in a post physical world is available on all good bookshops and some bad ones too. Right? They can find that pretty easy.

Ted Rubin  1:07:09  
Just go to Amazon.

Ian Truscott  1:07:11  
Alright. Well, thank you very much for your time. We've run over wildly, but I hope everybody enjoys our compensation. Always a pleasure to to catch up with you, Ted and John, I look forward to speaking to you very soon.

Ian Truscott  1:07:22  
Thanks. Thank you, Ted and John. As you can tell, I completely lost control of the time there. But such great guests and a topic that impacts all of us and lessons for wherever we are taking to market. And reminder. Their book is called retail relevancy, how brands and retailers will connect with shoppers in a post physical retail world. Right? It's Friday evening, time to wind down in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar with my friend and content marketing guru Robert Rose to be transported away with a cocktail and a marketing.

Ian Truscott  1:08:19  
Good evening. mowbot What are you doing?

Robert Rose  1:08:21  
Ah, hello, my friend and welcome to oh my goodness, gracious. It's so noisy in here. I mean, far tonight? It is it is I mean, it's just like a cacophony in here. You've got you've got some rock band in the

Robert Rose  1:08:43  
you know, cmo this week. I mean, that's crazy. Wow.

Ian Truscott  1:08:49  
Give them a moment to finish this track. And then maybe we can continue.

Robert Rose  1:08:53  
There you go. There you go.

Ian Truscott  1:08:55  
There you go. Ah, wow. That's finished.

Robert Rose  1:08:58  
There you go. That's very, very nice. Um,

Ian Truscott  1:09:02  
so just a rock man this week, but you're letting me off lately?

Robert Rose  1:09:05  
I am letting you off. Yes, exactly. Right. You know. So I'm wonderful cocktail for you another sort of a, you know, feeding off of the the one we did last week. Yeah, another one where you can sort of decide how much you want to DIY this. But you are familiar with a Bailey's a nice a nice Bailey's Irish Cream. Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Ah, so what we have here and that's also you know, a fun one for a breakfast drink. If you're looking for a cocktail. I find a Bailey's. Who isn't it always nice. Now, here's the thing we like to make here in the bar at the rock star cm. We'd like to really make that on our own. And, and so we DIY it a little bit. So it starts of course, you know, you've got to go with an Irish whiskey here. So my favourite editor is a Jameson And so you have a little Jameson Irish whiskey and then you mix in and this is going to go into a blender, a little half and half. And then again, depending on the way you like to sweeten things, I don't like things too sweet. So you can do a sweetened condensed milk and add that in there which will sweeten things considerably or sweeten as you like to sweeten as I like to say, and then add a little bit of cocoa powder to that and blend it all up into a lovely, creamy texture. And there you go, you have an Irish Bailey's cream. That is lovely and homemade.

Ian Truscott  1:10:40  
Wow. So I need to get the blender out. And

Robert Rose  1:10:43  
that the the blender of some kind. Yes, of course.

Ian Truscott  1:10:46  
Yeah, you'd be surprised to know that. I don't have the blender on my rockstar cmo bar. But I do have a cocktail shaker cup in which I'm going to put some ice did you put ice in that?

Robert Rose  1:10:58  
No, there's no ice in that. There's I mean, it's cold. We do put a little ice in there for the blending to make it a little creamy to blend it all up together, but just generally no.

Ian Truscott  1:11:08  
Rice. All right. Anyway, so I've I've put that in there. Now then I am going to choose a particular whiskey I'm fond of which is called gin.

Robert Rose  1:11:20  
Ah yes.

Ian Truscott  1:11:23  
Some nice Hendrick's gin. And I'm just going to slip into this year. Thank you. Couple of slugs in there. And then you said half and half. Right?

Robert Rose  1:11:39  
Indeed half a half and then a little either condensed milk or however you want to sweeten and then a tablespoon of cocoa powder to get nice sort of chocolate creamy taste.

Ian Truscott  1:11:51  
Hmm. I'm going to go for that. Absolutely. Almost faithfully, because what I like to sweeten things with is extra driver mousse. And I should put a little bit of extra drag for moving. Okay, too much extra for me. But I don't want to get into the game of porn and more gin, more of a moose watching. Right. I'm gonna stare at it till it's really cold. I know that you didn't really do that. But we can pretend this the blender.

Robert Rose  1:12:23  
It's Yes. It's a slow bland, manual bland, if you will. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  1:12:28  
The waft of this English whiskey across my desk. Yes. Again. I used to go city thing again. Oh it's freezing. Right? Give us Oh, that's delicious. Robert.

Robert Rose  1:12:50  
Yeah. What did you really good? I well, I you know, it basically Bailey's cream was is is there. But yeah, it's Irish whiskey, you know, cream, you know, whatever you'd like to call

Ian Truscott  1:13:01  
it. Show that's been trademarked. So when you give it it's

Robert Rose  1:13:07  
good as it leaves Irish cream? Yes.

Ian Truscott  1:13:10  
Well, I'm enjoying this Bailey's Irish Cream. She'll probably try one of these in 2022. Every week.

Robert Rose  1:13:16  
I really go. There you go. It's delicious.

Ian Truscott  1:13:19  
And while we're sipping these gorgeous Bailey's creams, but I'm not getting much cream out this on that sweetness. What would we where would we be waggon transport us to?

Robert Rose  1:13:32  
Well, I think we have to make our way up to the Central California coast again. And I know it's a place we've been spent some time since we've been there. But getting up there would be lovely this time of year because it isn't the perfect time of year in California for that. So either Carmel or Monterey. There's a lovely place just off of you know, of course, the made famous by John Steinbeck and Cannery Row up in Monterey. But there are some beautiful little restaurants and bars in that in that part of the world where we could find ourselves, you know, huddled up with a nice, you know, Bailey's and maybe have a little breakfast amid a sort of a breakfast cocktail, if you will.

Ian Truscott  1:14:15  
Wow, I can't imagine drinking nice at breakfast, but maybe that might be because of my ingredients.

Robert Rose  1:14:20  
i Yeah, it may be it may be the limitation your boss may be having something to do with the

Ian Truscott  1:14:27  
thing when we call this the eight hour time differences in my

Robert Rose  1:14:30  
Hindi. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  1:14:34  
That sounds that sounds lovely. And while we're sipping these babies, first thing in the morning, preparing for some the day ahead. What would we be discussing?

Robert Rose  1:14:45  
Well, it's something that's been on my mind over the last, you know, it really sort of came up over the last couple of different client engagements that I've had, which is this so you're familiar with the phrase and It's fascinating the origin of this right? Are you familiar with the phrase, you know, building the aeroplane while flying it, right? I mean, oh

Ian Truscott  1:15:06  
my god. I mean, every job I've had, we've used that expression, you come in as a new CMO, and it's like, you know, you need to build the aeroplane while it's flying. Okay, yes, it means don't fuck anything up, right?

Robert Rose  1:15:19  
Yeah, yes, that's exactly it. And the funny thing is that, you know, so it may have originated earlier than this, it's really hard to find an origination of that of that phrase. But certainly, it was the technology in Silicon Valley, sort of attitudes of the early 2000s, that made it popular, the idea of building the aeroplane while flying it, and that's, you've got it exactly right, it's usually invoked when you're trying to do something new or innovative, and you can't screw anything up to the existing process as you do it. And the funny thing is, is that it often comes up, when I'm working with clients on content strategy, or content marketing strategy, or even just digital marketing strategy. You know, inevitably, what comes up is, you know, after as, after we do the audit and look at their, you know, their challenges, etc, is a to do list right at the to do list, and you know, of things that they need to change. And so the fascinating thing is, is that, we look at doing these things, and we realise that we can't mess anything up as we do these things, they can't shut anything down, while they implement all these new things, they still have to publish articles and publish blog posts and write programme materials and launch campaigns and feed content to existing channels and do all these things. And everybody gets really frustrated, because, quote, unquote, we have to fly the plane as as you know, at building it. And I send say, and this has, you know, it comes with a little bit of a, you know, a head tilt. But I say, don't even try, stop trying to do that. Wow. And the idea is, is what I sort of have come up with my own little metaphor, cliched phrase, if you will, which is don't try to fly the aeroplane, while you're, you know, building the new one, instead, let the existing planes fly and build an aeroplane factory. So that, wow, air pads that are coming out, are basically the things that you're trying to do. And, you know, just as an example of this, you know, I was I was working with this company recently, where, okay, so they were going to look at this new content marketing approach. And basically, what they got permission to do was sort of fix or modified the PR newsroom as a new sort of way to do content marketing. And but the thing is, the newsroom nor the website itself, quite frankly, where the newsroom set really suited itself to content marketing, the technology was wrong. The team members who were managing that thing were the wrong skill set. It was, you know, on the wrong workflows and the wrong governance. And, you know, everything about it was just, you know, off. And, you know, it was not unlike sort of saying, you know, to the team, hey, we need you to bring us into the jet airliner age, but we need you to repair this propeller plane. And while it's in the air and do that, and basically, the the answer was, let those planes fly and start looking at the team, the process the technologies as a new way to start to approach this idea, rather than trying to fix the aeroplane in the air. In other words, you know, let it be, you know, over there, creating a new thing for the moment. And then ultimately, slowly let it replace the planes that are in the air with the new plan. That's, that's a better way to do this than it is to try and fix things while they're in the middle of that flight.

Ian Truscott  1:18:51  
Yeah, I love that analogy, because particularly, I think, when you're working under that environment of fixing the plane while it's flying is, obviously that analogy means that you can't chop the wings off, because then you'll crash, right? And so there's always these sacred things, which is, we'll get to that later. You know, the new wings will do later, because right now, if we do them will crash. So I think that's yeah, I'm facing a couple of things like that at the moment with looking at a rebrand and things like that. And there's some things that are working quite well right now. But I'm pretty sure not going to work. Well, in a year's time theme. Is there going to need messing with and that might, the altitude of the plane might dip a little bit. Yeah, it's one of the wings and so yeah, so what so when you talk about I mean, the problem then for people isn't it is some of that analogy is what how you define what the aeroplane is. And it's sometimes about resources, though, isn't it? Is that how do you how do you draw resources out of the flying plane without it crashing in order to build the plane factory?

Robert Rose  1:19:58  
Yes, well, you know, so there's no doubt. And and the thing is, you know, as you one of the things that typically comes around when you're trying to build something innovative and the and the innovative thing there could be defined as a whole new process. It could be a whole new platform, you know, on a whole new strategy, a whole new product, a whole new, like you're talking about a new brand. And, you know, the the operating word there is new, right? And what we often want to do is leverage the things that we have, as, you know, as ongoing things as we roll out the new thing. In other words, the question becomes, ah, well, we've sunk so much resource, say money, right? Time in learning typically sunk so much into that, how do we, you know, the question becomes, how do you how do you fix that old thing? While it's still working? And instead of trying to just say, you know, what, at some point is just not going to be necessary? Or, oh, yeah, it can be changed, you know, because it's not that you don't ever fix something while it's flying. That, you know, in this particular case, the example I gave, they, ultimately, when they did launch the new thing with the new team, and the new workflow process and the new technology, they said, great, and then they went in and altered the old newsroom to reflect its role. It's, it's new, it's new roll to feed traffic into this into this new resource. And so it's not that you never fix the thing that's existing in flying. But the thing is, is that trying to transform something into something new, is often not always, but often, sort of a, a way to make sure that the new thing isn't nearly as optimal as it can be. And so and so it is, and and typically will create a pushback or a false wall, if you will, on people, because it is much more difficult. This, I can say, with a lot of confidence in businesses having seen it, it is much more difficult to change processes, change culture, change existing platforms than it is to create new. Yeah, and it because people just don't want to change, right? Because what it requires is to tell these people that what they've been doing for so long has been wrong. And so that's when you get oh, what do you mean wrong? And oh, why? You know, this thing is working here. And oh, this thing is the head, you know, for example, just go tell the sales department that you're going to delete all the content on the website that hasn't been visited in the last eight months, you're going to delete all of it, you're going to take your website from 5000 pages to 100 pages. And because the top 100 pages are the only oh my gosh, watch the watch everybody's hair go on fire. Right. Yeah, all of that. And the reason is, is because you're asking them to change theirs. They're saying, Ah, what what if what if, you know, instead of saying, Hey, we're going to launch a new website, and this new website is going to be 100 pages big and it's going to include all the wonderful things now? We'll go. Right, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  1:23:22  
Yeah. And the objective is to help people get, you know, the journey through the website is simpler and cleaner, and they'll get to CPAs quicker and all that, you know, so you can talk about the benefits can you rather than them being in this forest of content and lobbyists, right, yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. But I think also, there's a, with us marketers, and especially with the talk about agile and iterative improvement and stuff, we're kind of driven to want to see the benefits much sooner, aren't we? Which is why it's very difficult to say, look, I'm gonna create this new thing, and we're gonna we're gonna have this old thing, which nobody likes for another three months. And it's like, what can you improve that card? We hate it, you know? And you're like, No, three months time, and it's gonna it's gonna be slick as hell am I gonna do this? Oh, but can't you just look, I hate this thing. And then a temptation to, to get pulled into that and make iterative changes, and never really get to where you need to be so strong.

Robert Rose  1:24:20  
That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah,

Ian Truscott  1:24:23  
yeah. Nice. Excellent thoughts, Robert, and I know that we're coming up for time because you have a very important client meeting. And I And where can people listen, read other thoughts such as this?

Robert Rose  1:24:38  
Ah, you can check us out at content advisory dotnet, our sparkly polished up site,

Ian Truscott  1:24:45  
splendid. And when people spin the dial on the interwebs, where they're gonna find you, my friend, you'll

Robert Rose  1:24:49  
find me on all the social media channels and including our new sparkly YouTube channel which has been updated and all of that where you can see a lot of presentations and videos and interviews. and all those kinds of things as but in addition also on LinkedIn and Twitter,

Ian Truscott  1:25:07  
nice, I left to add your YouTube link to the show next because I don't think I've got that on there. So I will include that as well have it and we'll see you in the bar next week, my friend,

Robert Rose  1:25:15  
you will indeed

Ian Truscott  1:25:17  
well enjoy the rest of your day mate and I'll see you next week

Ian Truscott  1:25:34  
Thank you, Robert some great advice as we are all building the plane while it's flying. So that's a wrap on episode 98 of the Rockstar cmo effing Marketing Podcast, part of the Marketing Podcast Network. You made it this far. Thank you for dropping a dime into your podcasting jukebox, selecting our track and driving along with us. I've been your host Ian Truscott. Thanks again to Jeff Ted, John and Robert for sharing their insight please follow them say hello and check out all the links we discussed in the show notes which you can find on your favourite podcast app or at Rockstar cmo.fm. You can also find all our previous episodes does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? Let us know we are Rockstar cmo on LinkedIn or Twitter. And please drop a rating or review in your favourite podcast app or just keep listening. I'm glad you're here. Next week, Jeff and I will explore the piece Rebecca beastman cmo reputation returns to discuss corporate social responsibility. And we'll kick back with Robert in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar. Until then, stay safe. Have a great week. And hope you'll again join us here next week on Rockstar cmo

Transcribed by https://otter.ai