What’s changed in marketing (and what hasn’t)

Ryan Barry:

Hi everybody and welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. I'm here as always with the lovely Patricia Montesdeoca, and the lovely Kelsey Sullivan, who's recently relocated to Quincy, Mass. Little stint in Boston now. Kind of like a South Shore border for you, but not quite South Shore yet, Kelsey, is it?

Kelsey Sullivan:

Yeah. I like it though. We got the Marina Bay.

Ryan:

Marina Bay is a vibe in the summertime, for those of you who visit New England in the summer. It's a wonderful place to go and hang out.

Kelsey:

I know.

Ryan:

Moving though is tough. Are you settled yet?

Kelsey:

I was just telling Patricia, we have no more boxes to unpack.

Ryan:

That's a big win.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

That's a big win, yeah.

Ryan:

Wow. That's a nice feeling. I think I have to say putting laundry away and moving, one and one A of least favorite things for this guy to do. If I ever make it in life, I'm going to hire somebody just to do my laundry for me because it is-

Patricia:

Unloading the dishwasher is mine. I don't like unloading the dishwasher.

Ryan:

Oh really?

Patricia:

I don't know why. Or ironing, those are my two. One and one A, unloading the dishwasher and ironing.

Ryan:

Patricia, you'll relate to this because you have two daughters, but I got two boys and they're only a couple years apart. I can't tell they're freaking clothes apart.

Patricia:

Oh God no.

Ryan:

I'm putting one kid's pants somewhere, the other kids. And then my oldest son's like, "Dad, these aren't mine. What the heck?" Anyways.

Patricia:

My son and my husband, they're the same size. So I put everything in a neutral place and I say, "You guys figure," I don't mind. I do the laundry, I fold and I put it all there, and they figure it out because I won't do it. I can't.

Ryan:

I'm stealing that from you. Anyways, a little moan from us. Kelsey's settling in nicely. And we are here today to bring to you part two of our discussion with Mark Ritson. Part one was, I would argue, a masterclass on how to do marketing that people love.

Patricia:

Oh yeah.

Ryan:

Understanding the market from the customer's eyes. Wow, how few companies do that. And the ones that do, they sell a lot of shit and they got a great retention, and they grow, and their marketers get promoted and all that good stuff. Today's conversation with Mark was equally fun. And we talked about the things in marketing that don't change and the things in marketing that do change. And we also find out why he doesn't like Gary V. Should we get into the conversation?

Patricia:

Let's do it.

Ryan:

All right.

Ryan Barry:

All right. I've taken a lot of your time, but if you don't mind I'm going to take a little more of it because I'm having fun.

Mark Ritson:

I'm enjoying this. Come on.

Ryan: All right. Good. So let's talk about, I'm going to use a phrase that's going to trigger you I think, modern marketing, digital marketing. And what I want to do is have a chat with you about what's the same and what's actually different. And we can rip apart the word digital marketing I hope, because I fucking hate it. But talk to me about what's the same and what's actually different with the way marketing actually works today from what you see.

Mark:

Yeah. So the digital thing's easy. I did it with... I was on some university podcast last week with lovely 21 year olds and they're talking about digital marketing and I said to them, "Well, give me an example of digital marketing?" They're like, "TikTok." I'm like, "Okay." Now give me an example of the traditional marketing you're talking about. And she's like, "Oh, outdoor." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's 80% digital." You have to find me another one. She's like "Radio." I'm like, "Yeah. Radio in the UK now is 65% digitally delivered." It's like, hey, why are we even using the D word? 

Having said that, there are changes going on. I see the world of marketing in sort of three pieces. There's the diagnostics bit that you guys do where you're understanding the world, then there's the strategy piece where we're coming up with a strategy. And then there's the tactical piece where we execute the plan. That's how I structure all my marketing.

The tactical piece is always changing. And I don't believe it's changing more now than in 1990. I just don't, I think it's changing in different ways, but if you live through Malibu Friday and the arrival of websites and the '90s were a peculiar time. Sales promotion, and PR and all that really started to get... 

So I think the tactical world is always changing and metabolizing and moving, you get different levers you can pull. The strategy thing's been the same for literally 2000 years, strategy has not changed a peg. Target position objectives strategy. Now, again it's different for each client, but the principles of strategy will never change. It comes from a Greek word that gives you a clue how old this is.

And then you've got the world of the customer and insights. I think that changes as you know literally by a day, the customer's always moving and changing. And I think to be fair, the tools by which we understand them are probably the area I've seen the most change in the last four or five years. In that automation, the role of panels now automatic recruitment, that world's changing fast. 

There's a change there and there's probably less of a change for me in the tactical world than we were told about. If you look at the latest data, it's pretty clear that I believe personalization is a lot of piss. I think it's nonsense. I think it's a status symbol. I just don't think it has much of a role to play. I think it's about to be found out to be one of the great bullshit topics of all time.

Ryan:

And do you think it's bullshit hinges on a cookie-less world or regardless?

Mark:

You can make that argument, but when we were living with cookies, it was equally bullshit. It was just people and look, they don't know whether you're a man or a woman, Ryan. Forget about first party stuff for a second. This digital thing we were sold is whole shit, contextual advertising in the tests is outperforming this personalized messaging business two to one. There's a great case study from New Balance where they're like going to launch a new running shoe, they just put it up on billboards where people go running, the end.

Ryan:

And when you say contextual advertising, it's just putting it in places where there's high traffic of people.

Mark:

Well, there you go. The digital buffoons of taking it and going now contextual is using algorithms to search the content of an online piece of media, and placing ads next to it automatically based upon the content. I would say to you that's a very fucking long way around. And what you should be doing is run a digital online magazine, place a digital display ad because we know that works better. We were sold a massive bag of shit. Personalization does not work for the most part. We have a big job persuading people that segmentation has a role to play versus mass marketing. Byron Sharp has demonstrated very clearly that when you're building brands, if you have the budget, you want to target everyone in the category. It's much more effective..

Ryan:

Everyone in category. Yeah.

Mark:

My take on it is that if Zappi wants to build this brand even more, it wants to aim at every single market research potential client in the world building brand. But then target specific segments for product sales and activation, two speeds. So mass marketing for brand, target segments for activation in sales, that's how I play. But the personalization bit, I think never in the history of marketing have we've been sold such a pop. It's great in theory, doesn't stack up. And nevermind your point about cookies, we never could really work out whether you were a man or a woman, or how old you were, or where you actually really lived. It never worked properly.

Ryan:

Yeah. There is something interestingly annoying about remarketing too. Like I remember I posted on Facebook, I want a new backpack. And my man I got inundated with backpack ads to the point where I still haven't bought a backpack. Do you know when that happened? 2019.

Mark:

I did it with toilets and I had to get a downstairs toilet. Fuck, for two months I just got toilet ads. But you know what that is? That's the fucking way that they get them ROIs. It's not an accident. It's not bad. They're just trying to go right, if he bought a toilet at any point, we can claim…Yeah. I gotcha. There's a role for it. There's a role for the way digital media works. 

I work with YouTube, and I'm a big fan of YouTube. I see YouTube fitting into the traditional TV model beautifully and also we get in these demographic gaps now under 40. TV's still a great medium, the greatest, but it is in decline. So YouTube filling those demographic gaps is very nice. And then YouTube is a shorter term activation video medium is also very nice. And you can target it to particular segments. I'm not saying it's personalized, but you can target a particular segment of people.

Ryan:

And that's what I was going to ask you, because I think your visceral reaction stems from the place of a principle, that if you know the market and you're clear on your segment, your marketing is relevant to those people. And mass marketing to the category means the people who you're speaking to are going to see you more than trying to find you and me in a haystack. Is that sort of the crux of the point if you do those-

Mark:

I've already got a target segment in my strategy before I do my comms. A lot of digital marketers are like, we'll use comms to work out who our target is. And we'll test and learn. And they're like, you don't have to do that segmentation thing anymore, because we can test and learn and find them and identify them. And I'm like yeah, again, if marketing is only advertising you can, but you know what? 

My segmentation wasn't really about comms. It was about the pricing and the product development and everything. You can't do that with a fucking optimized digital marketing media plan. It's like you don't get it. It's bigger than that.

Ryan:

It makes a lot of sense to me. And also I noted that there's a lot of statistics about TV on the decline and digital being this catchall. But I do call it a bit of bullshit. So we don't have cable at my house. We use Hulu live, which is for the purpose of my children's experience, TV. But the ads I see are not called TV ads anymore. They're called digital ads. But you know what they actually are? They're TV spots. They've just bought programmatically and served my internet device.

Mark:

And by the way, how shit ass are they? They're not targeted at all. It's like Amazon, the kings and queens of this, go and look at the products they're recommending to you on Amazon. This isn't shit, oh my God, I want that. It's just shit you bought before or you'd never buy.

Ryan:

That's right.

Mark:

That's how good all this personalization bullshit is. So the only thing with TV is, I've been a defender now for 10 years, all the research tells us it's the most effective medium. And all the research also tells us is that if you escape middle-aged well paid executives like me and you, and look at the whole market, people are still watching a ton of shit on TV. Less than they were before and certainly going into some form of... The famous line is TV is not dying it's having babies.

But where we end up, I don't know. But the thing that I do know is we'll never have a medium as good again as network cable TV. That giant funnel that Bill Burr talked about where you could put an ad into the funnel and it would hit 75% of American households will never happen again. And so we'll miss it when it's gone. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Look, the television is the screen on your wall. And I'm interested in what Netflix do in the sense that they'll probably fuck it up. But you have a really interesting opportunity to create a different kind of advertising. And one of the things I've learned on my journey is... YouTube has great data on this. If you take a TV ad to your point and you just put it on YouTube, it performs much worse than a natively produced video. I love podcasts where the... There's a guy called Russell Brand. I don't know if he's famous down you way, he's a-

Ryan:

Is he an actor?

Mark:

Yeah. He's an actor, but he's famous in England because he did one of the first great podcasts like 10 years ago.

Ryan:

Wow. I like him. I've seen him speak with his guys, he's funny.

Mark:

He's funny. And his podcast was great. And it was wild, him and his producer. But one of the things he would do is he was given advertisers to read out on his air and he would rip them apart and spend 20 minutes just taking the piss out of sponsoring companies. And then in the end they stopped him because they were just like, we can't. And for me it's like, if you understood marketing you would've paid for that. It was-

Ryan:

You would've been there.

Mark:

Radio and podcast. So for me that's the Netflix moment. Are they smart enough to go one brand per day sponsoring all of our programs?

Ryan:

Just the day.

Mark:

Yeah. Why follow a model built by Proctor & Gamble in 1951 when there were three channels and six programs. You can do it differently now. You can sponsor the home screen. You can have a short video. You know that they've seen video once you film video two, video three. There's a chance to do something native and less annoying for the customer, and much more lucrative for Netflix if they're smart.

Ryan:

Yeah. And also to your point about the product, that's the smart way to do it without up my experience because I don't want 30 second spots when I'm in that environment.

Mark:

Oh, but you and I could say, "Hey, did you see such and such, OSB wax is the brand on Netflix today." And you're like, really? Yeah. It's a pretty good product. Like you could build that.

Ryan:

It's brilliant. What I like about your point about this buzzword of digital, it resonates with me because it's just a different vehicle. But people are still people, markets are still markets and strategy is still going to win. So I respect it and this is the way we reach people will change slightly.

Mark:

But I think what's missing from our younger generation sounds foggy now, is they don't realize it was always changing before.

Ryan:

Anyway.

Mark:

The '80s and '90s weren't some fixed marketing fucking... That's not how it played here. Sales promotion changed the world of marketing in the '90s. It's an amazing story that we've always been changing.

Ryan:

Yeah. But it's just the mechanism. That's the thing, people are still the same and you still need to understand them, and how your product can integrate with them. That's the thing.

Mark:

Well, but you are making a much deeper point there which is as much as the tactics change, you still need your strategy first. No matter what they tell you, you still need the answers to those questions. Who's my target? What's my position? What are my objectives? That's never going to change. It's never ever going to change. And having those before you get... The biggest sin in marketing is they're into tactics before they've got their strategy. 

Ryan:

100%. Let's think of... I have an idea of a thing I want to do. Oh, okay. How does it fit? Yeah. It's-

Mark:

Yeah. It's dumb. And if you just rewind it back into your, well, I've got a great idea. Let's do this. And you're like, okay, let's go back there on strategy. Oh no, it's stupid. Let's not do it. That should happen nine times out of 10. But if there isn't a strategy there to stop that, off we go.

Ryan:

Yeah. You're absolutely fucked. Okay. I got two more questions for you or maybe three. I have one that I've been wanting to ask you. We'll see if I do ask you, because I think it's a funny one. We're officially in a recession here in America. I think the markets they're unique. And I've noticed brands freeze before they need to. So many brands that I see stopped innovating, stopped marketing, and then still saw earnings increases because people still need to have a beer, have a chocolate, and wash themselves. 

What's your advice for how brands should navigate uncertain waters in a time of massive inflation, with a degree of uncertainty of when the bottom actually even hits on this thing?

Mark:

No, it's going to be a long market.

Ryan:

So what are you advising people to do right now?

Mark:

So there's two things, because we've got inflation and we've got recession simultaneously.

Ryan:

Good times.

Mark:

The inflation point is what we said earlier. Manage price rises well. I wrote a column about it, there's a very standardized literature on how to communicate about a price increase. It starts with calling it a price increase. Tell us what it's going to happen, explain why it's happening in simple terms, and the consumer will accept it. So there's a way to communicate a price increase. So get on top of that literature because everyone's going to be doing it and if you do it badly, it'll hurt. That's the inflation message. The recession message is different. So we've had research for 100 years now about recessions. It's not even that uncertain waters in the sense, I don't know many areas that are more predictable in terms of what marketing should do.

It's very straightforward and yet no one's going to do this. We've looked at recessions all the way back to 1920. And what happens is the companies that maintain their marketing spend and specifically their brand spend on top of funnel stuff, don't do that much better than companies that pull back during the recession. 

But as soon as the recession ends because of excess share of voice and dynamics in the market, in every instance, what happens is those companies that have maintained brand spend come out of the recession booming. Target did it during the GFC, P&G did it during coronavirus. And no matter what your competitors do, when the recession ends they can't catch up. And so it's kind of intuitive. What I'm saying is maintain your spend especially on the brand building stuff that hasn't got immediate sales.

And what many companies do is they go, oh can't do that. We need sales. So what we'll do is we'll keep doing the performance marketing activation stuff. And what I'm saying is, if you're in a category that isn't affected by recession staples maintain that as well. If you're in a category that is affected by recession jewelry, cut that back, but maintain that. Now, that's easier said than done, some companies won't have the funds. But as we say in marketing, tough shit, you are going to struggle after the recession ends. So this isn't a personal opinion, it's data built from 100 years of analysis. Maintain your spend if you can, because you will benefit at the other end of it tremendously.

Ryan:

It's great advice, validating too.

Mark:

No one's going fucking to do.

Ryan:

Yvonne, who's our CMO is going to listen to this and she's going to smile because that's her plan. We're going to spend more right now, are you kidding me. But in some businesses that may require making harder choices to not spend money elsewhere. But what do you want to look like in 2026 is the question you should be asking yourself.

Mark:

You're spot on, Ryan. There's a great paper, I'd recommend everyone read it for free on Harvard Business Review. It's called Breaking Out of the Recession or something, or Smashing Out of the Recession. He's an economist by training. He studied all the companies that came out of the last recession, GFC in better shape than when they went in. And he did a little checklist of, one of the things was obviously spending money on brand building. 

But to your absolute point, it was working out where do I take money out? And where do I invest it? Product innovation, marketing brand building should be prioritized even though that's the very thing most companies have done. And all the companies that did that and he looked at the target in great detail, set themselves up for 10 years of success.

Ryan:

Blew afterwards.

Mark:

Yeah.

Ryan:

It makes sense if you have the stomach for it, because it does mean you might be signing up to a few more bumpy quarters. One of my biggest tensions with business is short-termism kills us.

Mark:

Well, and it's the idea that you would keep your brand spend while maybe your short term sales are being hit by the recession. It's a tricky one. As you say, you've got to kind of hold your nerve a bit. But hey, it's not fucking complicated stuff. Be a strong woman, strong man about it. Believe in us, believe in marketing. I'm always interested when I work with marketing teams and we've done something and it works and it's like they're surprised. They're like, huh, this really worked. 

They look at me like, oh you're not even surprised. I'm like, no, this is what we knew was going to... This is why we did it, you idiot. And I'll tell you another good story. Whenever the CMO or the brand manager introduces me to a CEO, it always happens at some point. They say, "Oh yeah, come and meet Ryan." And they always ask the same question because they don't know what the fuck to say. They're like, oh, you're a marketing professor. 

Why did you focus on marketing? And I always say the same thing, because it makes enormous amounts of money. And the CEO looks at you and goes, I like you. You're a different kind of marketing person. It's not I have passion for fucking brands or social media advertising or I'm curious. It's like it makes enormous amounts of money. And the CEO's like, keep him.

Ryan:

Keep him around. We like this. Yeah. That's why the CEO's doing it folks. I'm going to ask you a question that I wasn't going to ask you. It's a potentially uncomfortable question.

Mark:

Great.

Ryan:

I'm well aware of your tension with Mr. Hustle Gary Vee, but I've never had-

Mark:

Oh yeah. The Vee guy.

Ryan:

So it's interesting because market orientation would suggest many people, myself included have over the years learned some things from you. Learn some things from him. Learn some things from other people. I want to understand your beef a little bit. And we can edit this later if you want.

Mark:

No. Look, I think it's a great question. And there's a couple of things and I'll preface it. I think he's a spectacularly good dude. And I've written an article called Gary Vee is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong about the media. The first paragraph is that I think he's a lovely dude. I think he treats people with respect. And I think if I was that famous, I'm not sure I'd handle it as well as he's handled it. So it's not personal. That's the first point. Good dude. But a lot of what he says about marketing is stupidly wrong. And he's got less wrong in the last 10 years than he used to be. But the guy was playing wrong a decade ago, like advising brands not to go on TV, it's stupid.

The lesson of media very simply is the more channels you can afford. The more effect you will have, there isn't a superior medium. Whatever he says, I think the best way to make Facebook work is to put some of the budget on TV, the end. Facebook thinks that. So a lot of the things he said, I was just like, look... Like he has the thing about who watches TV ads, even when they come on, I go on my phone. And I'm like, yeah. And there's data there if you're on your phone when the TV ads come on, your actual proven recall is higher than if you weren't on your phone. Be smarter than that. You can't take insights from your own living room.

Ryan:

It's a data point. I get it.

Mark:

And he's trying to make a point that's not right. And he has such influence. And he has more influence than all the business schools of America put together on marketing. But the other reason I went heavily after him is, was just strategic. So I just applied basic brand principles. So when you're a smaller brand, which is what I am and was, I can position myself to Ryan Barry by saying, I'm all about this, this and this. Or I can also in addition to that position against someone and go, I'm the opposite of that. And that puts me on the same platform as him, which instantly gives me tons of salience, and also an inflection point because he's digital I'm traditional, because he's tactical I'm strategic. You see what I mean?

Ryan:

Yeah, totally. I fucking love that.

Mark:

I'm always interested because sometimes I get cheap because I've made so much money from Mini MBA. And people are like, you've got thousands of people doing that program. And I'm like, yeah. Imagine if I use my marketing skills to promote the products I make, why are you unhappy with that? Imagine, so I was absolutely positioning myself against him for personal game.

Ryan:

I fucking love it. I appreciate you. So this is a good segue. So there's a woman named Emma Vazquez who is part of the production team of this podcast and anything we do at Zappi's marketing. And I would say she's been a constant shepherd for our brand since 2015.

Mark:

God bless her.

Ryan:

And Zappi … is something I'm personally very proud of. And that couldn't be where it is without her. Emma Vazquez, I forwarded her a link to the Mini MBA program. Those of you watching this interview on YouTube, you've been seeing a logo the entire time by design by the way. There it is. She went through Mark's Mini MBA program and it was so impactful for her personally, her own words and her as a marketer, that I've now recommended the program to many other people. One day I'll actually have time to go and do this myself.

Mark:

No, you won't.

Ryan:

But I probably won't. I just need to hire more Emma's. I got to get in your alumni program. So Mark, if people want to get more information about Mini MBA, where do they go? What's your advice for the right people to join and how to think about the time commitment and everything else? Let's hear a little promotion here.

Mark:

Little spiel.

Ryan:

I've never given anybody the opportunity to pitch on-

Mark:

You're a good man, Ryan. You didn't tell me I was going to do this. It's very nice of you. So I was a marketing professor for 25 years. I taught MBAs in marketing at London Business School, MIT, and other schools. And then about five years ago I created an online version. Partly I was just so... As we've been talking about it, just so disappointed with how little anyone knew about marketing that worked in marketing. And business schools aren't helping by saying, come and do 100 grand MBA for two years. That's not the way to fix the problem. So I created this course online. It's a very special kind of online training. Our net promoter score is plus 80 from participants.

Ryan:

Wow.

Mark:

Yeah, it's pretty good. We can make it higher. And there are two courses. There's the Mini MBA in marketing, which is basically the MBA level marketing course I used to teach. And we run it over 10 weeks, fits into a busy marketer... If you are a marketer and you never got the proper training, come and do the course. It'll fill in gaps. It will also confirm what you already know. And we know everyone comes out of it going, that's one of the best things I've ever done. And it's not for kids. Average age is 41. It's grown up applied marketing. And I do the Mini MBA in brand management, which is more advanced, which is based on my brand management course for anyone that manages a brand.

And to be honest, we're now 75% corporate. Some of the world's biggest companies, Google for example, P&G, put their marketers on the courses. So we train some of the best marketers in the world. So if you want to do it for the last 10 weeks, people enjoy them. We have fun. But they're better than anyone else's courses, so that's why we're winning back to our point of our product.

Ryan:

Product, it has to work.

Mark:

Exactly. And changing it, Ryan, to your point. Every cycle, feedback, change.

Ryan:

Yeah. Novel concept folks.

Mark:

Interesting.

Ryan:

Mark Ritson, what a pleasure. I had so much fun tonight. I've been looking forward to this. I thought we were doing this next week, and when I looked at my calendar Sunday, I was pumped and then sort of nervous. It's just been a pleasure to cross paths with you. You're somebody who I've learned so much from over the years. When you do get to Boston, you and I are going to Treehouse. We're going to tie one on-

Mark:

Oh mate, look, I'm serious about this now. I lived in Boston for a year and a half. I love that town. And I think we need a trip to Julius.

Ryan:

It's the right thing to do.

Mark:

IPA Julius. And then I think we must go to Fenway. It's a long time since I've been to Fenway and I miss that old place. I could really enjoy an evening in Fenway for sure.

Ryan:

This sounds like a plan. You let me know when you're coming and I will be your way sometime soon, probably early next year. So we'll reciprocate.

Mark:

Oh no, there's a two stage plan forming here. I'm looking forward to this.

Ryan:

I like this. Everybody, thank you for listening. Season five, here we go. Mark, thank you.

Mark:

Peace.

[Music transition to takeaways]

Ryan:

That was fun. And I do apologize after the fact for all of my curse words. I promise I've met my quota for season five, plus or minus another 10 or so. I got to give myself a couple of curse words in here people. But that was a lot of fun. Patricia, what'd you think?

Patricia:

It was a lot of fun. You two are hilarious. There is so much information. I forget that I'm the one supposed to be doing the wrap up, so I have to listen twice, but it was a lot of fun.

Ryan:

Actually I think because of Mark, we get a hall past this episode. We can swear as much as we want.

Patricia:

Oh, I'm good then. I'm good. I'm good. I love it.

Ryan:

Kelsey said it's okay. It's fine. Yeah, it's fine.

Patricia:

If Kelsey said it's okay then it is okay. She is the boss.

Ryan:

She's the boss around here.

Patricia:

So you guys talked about what's changed. You also talked about what's not changed. But you also talked about a third thing, which is why I'm going to talk about three things in my wrap up. Some things that change and stay the same at the same time. So just to throw a little confusion in there, what's changed or what's not changed? Where do you want me to go first? Things that stay the same or things that change, you choose?

Ryan:

The constants, the things that stay the same.

Patricia:

The constant. The things that stay the same, strategy and recession. Strategy, I didn't know I learned this from you, is a word that comes from the Greek, which means general, which means strategos. I hope I'm saying that right. Anybody who's Greek, please pardon me, right? It's different for each business, but the principles are always the same. The principles will never change. And recession is something else. I come from a Latin American country. I know about this. Recession is always the same. You have to understand that it's always the same. You always have to hold on tight, continue investing, and come out stronger on the other end. But those two things always stay the same. Are we in agreement with that?

Ryan:

Agreed.

Patricia:

Agreed. What things change? Inflation prices. Of course the inflation prices have to change. It's inevitable. Be honest with consumers, tell them. I love it, call a spade a spade, and then communicate clearly. Another thing that changes is how we understand the world. How we go about it. Not the understanding of the world, but the process. It changes literally day by day because the consumer and the customer are always moving. And that's something that we know and that's how we maintain ourselves up to date. That's, for example, automation. We need to evolve. And there are things that change and sometimes they last about three to four years, and sometimes they're out of date in six months. So how we approach the world and how we find our insights, that's always changing.

And the third thing that's always changing are the tactics, of course. The tactics daily are up and coming. It matches everything that's going on today. It can't be the same tactics that they were 20 or 30 years ago. They have to be the tactics that were valuable and relevant this morning, right? So the tactical world is always changing and metabolizing and moving, I love that word. So you can have different levers you can pull. But if you have the strategy that's solid and stays the same, then your tactics have all this room to move. And I loved how that perspective worked out.

Ryan:

Bang.

Patricia:

Bang. Now the third one, I have to say is my favorite. Some things that can change and stay the same at the same time, simultaneously, to use a nice big word. Newspapers, magazines, news programs. They used to be in print and TV, right, or radio. That's the way I remember seeing movies where everybody's gathered around a radio and listening intently. That's just not like the way it is today. But at the end of the day, news is news is news. We're still listening to news, we're still absorbing news. It's just given to us in a different medium, but it's still the same. So it's different and the same. So I love that, right?

Now, the second one, TV. TV has declined and continues to grow. It's been in vogue, but it's out of style. It's still the most effective medium, right? It's not dying, it's having babies. I loved that saying. He said that. I'm like, I want that one. And he talked about YouTube. I had never thought about TV having babies, but that's exactly what's happening, right? We used to have three channels or two channels. Here in Columbia, we had only two, I think it was. And I don't know how many there were, like six in the US. Right now we have gazillions, but it's the same thing. It's still the TV and it's just kind of sprouted, what is that mythical creature that you cut its head off and it sprouts more heads? Hercules fought it. Your kids would probably know. 

Ryan:

Hold on, I heard there's a website that's organized all of the world's information. It's called Google.com. Is it Medusa?

Patricia:

No, Hercules kills it in the beginning of the movie. And he's in this pit and he cuts it off and they keep sprouting more. Anyway, this is what TV has done. TV has maintained itself the same and different because it's having babies. And that was brilliant to me. Hydra. Thank you very much, Kelsey.

But just to wrap up, the things that change and stay the same at the same time is advertising always needs to be adapted to the medium, but advertising will always have the same message and the same objective. That's something that can't be copy pasted. So those are my three for today. 

Ryan:

I have a timely tangent that you two know about.

Patricia:

Go for it.

Ryan:

Things in life that change and don't change. Change is one of the only constants. You talk about death and taxes, but things are changing, you can bet on it. Everything changes. Businesses change, climates change, the way people consume information, as you just talked about, change. So it's inevitable. Now what I like about a lot of what Mark says is people, the underpinning of people don't change. That's why business books and marketing books from the 1930s are still relevant today. 

But what's fascinating to me is as much as change is constant, one thing about people that doesn't change is they don't like to change. And I think that's an extremely tough thing when the markets move as fast as they move today. When you can win and lose overnight, when you can get disrupted overnight. And so my friends that are listening that work in business, be the one to disrupt yourself, else, you will be disrupted. That's all I've got.

Patricia:

Talk about dropping the mic, Ryan.

Ryan:

Disrupt yourself or be disrupted. I'm telling you right now. And then you can pretend you quiet quit or whatever. But seriously, that's why I asked every guest, what did you learn? What did you have to unlearn? Because there's a reason for that. Because things that worked yesterday might not work today.

Patricia:

You know what I think, Ryan? I think that-

Ryan:

Yes, what do you think, Patricia?

Patricia:

I think that we need to unpack that a lot more. We have a lot to say about that. And you just dropped quiet quitting on me. And you know how visceral a reaction I have on the quiet quitting thing?

Ryan:

Yeah, I don't even want to, you know what, we'll give it a little bit of air time. It's just a new vogue term. Give me a break, okay? Some people's jobs are just jobs to them. That's fine. Some people don't want to be entrepreneurs like you are, and that's okay too. 

And fundamentally, you know what, if somebody's intrinsically not motivated to the thing their company needs them to do, chances are they're going to quiet quit. And that's not necessarily on the employer or the employee. It's the job of the employee to be really clear of what they need and then for the employer to determine if that works for them.

Patricia:

Lack of chemistry.

Ryan:

Yeah, you could trace any broken down relationship I've seen between a business and an employee down to their purpose being out of alignment. Because everybody's great at something, everybody's motivated by something, right?

Patricia:

Lots to unpack there.

Ryan:

What I don't like about this quiet quitting is that I think it completely alienates a generation of people. So I'll tell you a story about somebody, and I don't know if she even listens to this podcast. Gen Z, I believe, is who we're picking on with quiet quitting. 

There's a woman who works at Zappi, her name is Emma Haskell. I want to say 25, 26, I don't know how old she is. She's a boss. This lady kicks ass every single day. She didn't quiet quit. So I don't like when we sweep and generalize people because equally I'm sure there's people in their fifties that are like, you know what, I'm coasting. I'm trying to play nine holes at 4:00 PM every day. And that is what it is. Anyways, next time you pick on Gen Z remember Emma Haskell because she's a boss and you're going to be working for her one day.

Patricia:

Oh yeah.

Ryan:

Yeah, that's right. Anyway, our next episode is really good. We actually already recorded it. And it's with Jing Mertoglu, who is a really, really wonderful woman, a great leader, an incredible advocate for consumer insights, and is actually doing a lot of the things that Mark talked about at Beam Suntory. 

If you don't know about Beam Suntory, they're a spirits business and they're really riding the wave of high end whiskey. And so in a premium category during a recession, thinking through how they do what they do, it's a really wonderful conversation about where insights is and where it's going, and we're really excited to share it with you. So don't miss it. 

We have some amazing interviews lined up for this season. I'm not going to tell you anymore about them because build up the hype and all, you feel me? But you have plenty of time to listen to other episodes. Tell your friends, and make sure you give us a little review on Spotify and Apple Music. We do appreciate it.

Patricia:

And let us know if you have anything you want to talk about.

Ryan:

Yeah, we are already scheduling out to season six, believe it or not. So you got ideas, we want to hear them. Anybody who's doing amazing things in customer centric marketing, consumer insights, consumer data, we want to hear their stories. Ladies, it's been fun, as always.

Patricia:

As always.

Ryan:

Our listeners, I don't get to see you or your wonderful reactions, but hopefully when we're in your headphones that you're getting some value because that's our vision for this podcast. Thank you all for listening. Have a wonderful day.

Patricia:

Bye.

Ryan:

Peace.