WEBVTT - Content Marketing as a Service 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.760 I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:05.640 going to have to start making better content. I think 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:07.160 we're gonna be talking about this for a long time. 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:10.200 When you program for everyone, you program for no one. 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:12.319 I think it's that we're purpose driven platform like we're 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.600 trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:19.200 happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:29.880 really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen. 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:33.640 Welcome back at Landia. We made it over and out. 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:38.440 Happy holidays at Landia. Happy holidays everyone. So we're in 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.680 the studio talking about all things content marketing with Linda Holiday, 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:47.360 CEO and founder of Sitia. Yes, Linda, we've known her 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:49.680 for a few years now, and I think we've both 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:54.200 been kind of fascinated with her really interesting background and 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:56.960 the product that she's created and the company she's created 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:01.040 is a SAS software as a service company that has 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:03.960 a very kind of usable interface for what I would 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:08.560 say is content marketing in this kind of new media 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:11.760 and use your interface world. And I think some of 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.240 the insights Linda has been in the space since so 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.760 it's interesting to see how her perspective has evolved as 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:23.199 obviously technology, new platforms have emerged. I think just in general, 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.479 one of the themes that we've talked about at length 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.000 over the course of this year has really been the 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:31.760 need to move towards content ecosystems and moving away from 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:34.679 the idea of campaigns and flight dates and very structural 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:37.479 channel planning and these like little spikes that go to nothing, 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:39.800 spikes that go to nothing. And I think she's going 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:42.160 to talk about some of that stuff. So with that, 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:58.040 Linda Holiday for the holidays, we'll be right back and 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:02.560 we're back in the studio. Welcome Linda Holiday, founder and 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.080 CEO of Sidia. Hi, Linda, Hi, great to be here, 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.880 you guys, Thanks for joining. So Linda tell us what 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:14.760 Sidia is and does. So it's hard to talk about 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:16.760 what City is without doing a tiny bit of a 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:21.200 backswing because it's not obvious, but the Internet has kind 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:23.000 of gone through a face shift. We used to make 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.000 pages and lots of big things and now it's all 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:28.840 a bunch of small pieces that get reorganized according to 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.079 some kind of intelligence and flow through feeds and streams. 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.560 So City is really a platform that helps big companies 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:37.720 make that kind of media. So if you're a brand 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:40.440 new company, you started making that, But if you're an 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.200 older company, you've inherited a lot of like tech dad 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:45.639 and cms s and things that aren't really well suited 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.120 for these channels. So it's a platform that big companies 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:52.840 like Ge and Comcast and Viacom used to make media 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.960 that goes across all channels. So sometimes we think of 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:59.480 ourselves as a shipping container system but for content. So 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:01.359 you make some once and we make sure we can 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:03.720 get it to everywhere and that all the metrics are 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:07.440 standardized and counted and human and intuitive. What was the 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:12.359 insight too move into a shipping container business for content? 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.960 Um One of the insights was that the format itself 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.720 was getting commoditized. Right. We used to make websites and 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.760 then somebody invented this thing called the laptop, and we're like, what, 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:25.600 we have to make another one, a smaller one, like 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.000 you couldn't actually put a desktop website on a laptop. 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:33.000 And then fast forward, we've got a gazillion channels and 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:35.560 they're all different, and so everybody's running like a million 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:38.920 teams making format changes, which is a tremendous waste of 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.600 time and money. So that was one insight that the 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:46.120 format itself was becoming commoditized, so people, different people are 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:49.320 using Sidia for different things. I remember when we were 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:51.400 talking to Ross Martin, who's been on the show. When 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.240 I first met him, he actually walked me through like 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:57.200 the Viacom innovation lab and he was showing me all 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.240 these things that they had done with Cydia, which is 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:01.640 like kind of a big deal for Viacom At the time. 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:04.800 I was like, how do we get content out that's 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:09.080 lightweight and easy and quick and can be modifiable. Um, 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.360 they were using you know, Citia in one level. What 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:14.640 are the kind of different use cases for Citia that 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:17.760 you've seen? That's how funny because g was our first 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:21.080 client and Viacom was our second, and it was literally 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:25.520 turbines to tattoos because I love that, and so we 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.200 sold it in for content marketing, and content marketing was 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:31.479 you know, kind of hot then and should be hotter now, 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.320 but back then people were really investing in it, and 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:36.120 so we found the people who were looking to do 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.120 that kind of convert thought leadership, white papers, a lot 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:43.159 of the you know, support um content around brand marketing 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.679 and corporate marketing. And then what happened was inside. People 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:49.120 started to make all the stuff we never thought about, right, 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:54.080 so HR investor relations training, and we just like watch 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:56.680 people make these things. And because it really is multi 0:04:56.680 --> 0:04:58.720 purpose content and once you know how to use it, 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.280 it's like power pointer, keynote. Anyone can get in there 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:04.360 and make stuff. So people did. And now I'd say 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:07.240 our number one use case still is content marketing, and 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.200 the second use case would be communications, you know, pr 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.760 and so the actual product itself is really like a 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:17.320 deck that you can swipe through and get content and 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:20.359 sort of a card like format. Is that accurate? Yes? 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:24.520 And so another kind of insider observation is that the 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.200 most native motion on a phone is a swipe, not 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:32.839 a tap, right, So we made swipeable media because that's 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.760 the most ergonomically correct. Like if you think about how 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:37.680 use the phone, it's like a coffee in one hand 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.120 and the phone and the other. Right. So if that's 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:42.599 the most natural motion, like what do you what do 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:43.800 you want to do to get through a lot of 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:46.960 content fast? And the other kind of insight behind that 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:49.480 is users know what they want, like we're all really 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:53.599 great and navigating, and if you give people content that 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.160 they can get through quickly they will find what they want. 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.960 It's actually designed to help users get through a lot 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:02.479 of content fast. So if you think about how most 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:04.760 things are now just a feed and it's a column 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:07.160 and it could be a hundred feet long, and it's 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.919 kind of exhausting. But if you open up like the 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:14.279 depth or that Z axis, then you also can get 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:17.159 people to a lot of depth much faster because it's 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:21.800 actually three dimensional content, so more engagement obviously. Well it's 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.280 it's engaging because we like to you know, kind of 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:28.920 you know, surf and and brows and try and find 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.120 what we find. And it's also kind of satisfying. There's 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.239 this little like almost worry bead effect to getting through stuff. 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:38.120 If I started over, I wouldn't have done all of 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:41.200 that at once, because as a designer, I spent a 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.320 lot of time studying ergonomics and like, it's just not 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:48.320 healthy to bobble head up and down with your content, right. 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:50.200 That's not good for your neck, it's not good for 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.960 your eyes. It's better that the content move in your 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.040 head stay straight, right, that's much more human. So I'm like, well, 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.920 let's just do that, and people are like whye to 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:05.080 it's swipe because it was before Tinder, So yeah, we 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:07.599 stuck it out. And so now people understand that that's 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.120 actually a really efficient way to get through content. And 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:11.960 I see things all the time that look like Citia, 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:15.600 like the UM app Store, the Apple App Store, but 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.560 it's one card thin. I'm like, this is so inefficient. 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.440 You could get through so much more if you could 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:25.120 actually get to you know, UM app apps for language 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.640 learning and go booba boo bah boop. Right, how old 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:29.840 is Cidia? How long has it been around? We launched 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.880 in two thousand and twelve, but we were working with publishers, 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.600 and in two thousand and sixteen we switched over to 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.360 corporate customers and ge was our first customer, which we 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:44.720 launched in UM first quarter sixteen. It's interesting to think 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:49.440 about how you were starting to develop product based on 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.320 sort of the learned behavior or the evolution of behavior 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.880 for how we interact with technology that's going on what 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:59.160 seven years ago now, UM, And it's interesting to think 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.960 about how in the current marketplace UM, we're still developing 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:08.320 one size fits all formats and expecting those to travel 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:13.400 to you know, different screen sizes or played different viewing environments. 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:15.880 What have you learned over the last seven years that 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.200 you would share with our audience when thinking about how 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:21.080 to diversify format and really paying attention to the space 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:26.240 and behavior that consumers are leading with. I think the 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:30.280 hardest transition for traditional marketers is to understand that what's 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:33.680 most important now as relevance. We all grew up in 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:35.560 an era where we kind of had the mic, right, 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:38.679 and we said and they listened. You know, ten years ago, 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:43.920 ninety five percent of media was made by businesses. Now 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:47.199 it's less than half, right, So we are those of 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.600 us who are trying to put you know, commercial messages 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:51.720 out in the world are competing with a lot of 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:53.960 stuff that we didn't used to compete with. And to 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:58.240 compete in this new tent, you have to be relevant, right, 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.840 So we all cared a lot about reduction values. Me especially, 0:09:02.080 --> 0:09:04.800 I can be a real perfectionist, right. I love storytelling, 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:06.760 I love the big canvas. I spent a lot of 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:12.280 my life making television commercials, which are excruciating lee you know, perfectionists. 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:14.680 But now like that doesn't matter so much. It matters 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.360 more that you get there when the party is going on, right, 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.280 Like attention is a stock market now goes up and 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:22.680 down so fast. Right, So if you can't make things 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.840 as a as a commercial entity fast enough to get 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.200 in on whatever people are interested in, you're going to 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.600 be irrelevant. So you know, I would say we need 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:33.920 What we've learned is people have to really dial up 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.480 how fast they jump in and how they find the 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.640 right connection between their products and their content and their 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:43.680 customers or potential customers interest. Do you see that translate 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.800 in your product, like do you see brands or creatives 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.679 using or publishers using your platform the wrong way? And 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:55.360 what would you advise in terms of you know, evolving 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.200 content to even just fit within the product you've created. 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.160 I think it is a pretty big learning curve, right. 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:04.600 I kind of think of it as going from baseball 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:08.600 to soccer, right, So everybody's on that, on that learning curve. 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:10.920 Companies like Viacom, of course, that have a lot more 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:15.960 customer um touch points learn faster right there in a 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.160 lot of social channels, They've got a lot of teams, 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:21.360 so there's more shared learning. Business to business customers have 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:23.600 been really good at content marketing for a long time, 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:28.600 so they actually understand not going right for the jugular immediately, 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:31.040 but they have to kind of earn some attention and 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.719 credibility by being useful to their customers before they try 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:37.480 to close a sale, so they are farther ahead in 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.680 some surprising ways. A lot of the traditional you know 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.280 CpG companies are trying to go too far, too fast, 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.280 and they scare their customers. Yeah, you know, what's your 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:50.800 perspective and what are you hearing from some of the 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:55.240 kind of big old companies that are really trying to 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.880 transform and how are you helping them do that? With Sidia, 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:02.880 maybe can sexually as well as you know from the 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:08.680 executional standpoint on using the interface. So we have B 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:10.600 two B and B two C customers and they have 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:13.679 different kinds of challenges. Right, the B two B customers 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.880 have had a lot of attention and they've been able 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:21.320 to use things like white papers and UM conferences and 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:25.080 now UM they're just realizing that their customers are also 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.320 in control. When I was in healthcare, we used to say, 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:29.959 you know, you would go to the doctor, that was 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.679 a healthcare consult. Then all of a sudden, you went 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:34.839 to the internet. You went to the doctor. You went 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.360 to the internet, that was a healthcare consult That's happened 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:42.000 to all B two B just recently. So they used 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.360 to control access to their product information and you had 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:47.440 to like talk to their sales people. And so now 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:49.720 those sales people walk in if they can get in 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:52.959 at all, and they can't, Like there's a disaster. That's 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.120 pretty underreported that B two B sales people really can't 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:58.600 get the FaceTime with their customers they used to. But 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.240 that customer has also done a tremendous amount of research. 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.920 Their procurement people have helped, and when that salesperson walks in, 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:07.559 it's a firing squad. It's more shark tank than let 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.040 me tell you about our new product. So it's a 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:12.520 tremendous change, and they're trying to figure out how do 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.439 we put smaller pieces of content? How do we tell 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:18.439 big stories and small pieces so that we're pushing all 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:22.000 that relevant information into the places where our customers are 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.000 doing their own, you know, kind of self exploration around 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.240 our products. And that's a really hard transition to make 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.000 because again they have the microphone and now they don't. 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:36.000 The customer has it. How does your platform as a 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:43.600 technology solution, how is that kind of either disrupting or 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:47.160 replacing kind of the standard content management? And I don't 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.920 mean content management systems. But even again, the content management 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:55.839 philosophy or is it content marketing and advertising are kind 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.320 of converging and right, both of those teams bring something 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:03.640 different to the marriage. Right, So um, the advertising people 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.880 think in terms of campaigns, and I think now the 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.280 more appropriate mindset is always be publishing. Like our customers 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:13.520 are always on and we have no idea where they 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.320 are in their product discovery journey, so we have to 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.160 be out there and all these channels all the time. 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.480 So if you put in your head that isn't always 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:24.240 be publishing model, then you would say, I need a 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:27.240 platform that supports that kind of behavior from our content 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.439 marketing and our advertising team. So that's what City is. 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:33.200 But I would say most of our customers still think 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:35.679 in terms of campaigns, and campaigns are great, like they 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:39.439 organize your effort, they give you, you know, some meaning 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:41.760 that you can actually dial up for bursts of time. 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:45.640 It's also good. But software as a service is actually 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:50.000 of foreign concept to advertisers and marketers because we've been 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:54.000 taught to think about just launching something, not maintaining and 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:58.000 holding things. You know, this concept of frequency from you know, 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.560 reach in frequency, like you had to act. She build 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:05.960 a certain amount of um memorability by repeating your message, right, 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.280 So that was how you kind of made a little 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:10.960 bit of a permanent impact on a customer. You guys 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:13.200 do all these amazing events and they happen in there 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.400 like a month, right, and then you let all of 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:18.680 that awareness go down to zero again, and then you 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.120 have to build it up from scratch at the next event. 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:24.040 So we would say you should think of that as 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:26.760 a platform and it should have some kind of maintenance 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.720 level of activity all the all year, and then you 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.000 have a party like once a year, you know, where 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:34.720 you really you know, punctual for all that thing out right, 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.320 and get all the drama, but keep it going during 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:39.400 the year, because when you let it go down to nothing, 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:41.880 you have to rebuild it from nothing. Yeah, we've talked 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:43.840 a lot on the show about the idea of impact 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:47.680 and attention being the new retrequency, and this idea of 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.720 these mic drop moments being supported by communication that happens 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.200 in between them. And so I think the idea of 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.560 communications planning and channel planning and the role of messaging 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.880 has never been more important to agree. I think one 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.200 of the things that we haven't really talked about is 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.680 what is the infrastructure? And I've become like nerdy obsessed 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:11.360 with this because like everybody talks about mar tech and 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:14.160 your tech stacks and your this and your that, but 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:17.200 really talking about how there has to be kind of 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:20.640 a transformative maybe even like a layer or two things, 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:26.320 um that allow that engine to run. It's all bespoke, right, 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:29.280 and it's all like you know, these kind of bespoke 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:33.080 islands of things. And I think that even if the 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:37.200 holding companies want to be successful at this kind of stuff, 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.680 they need to have not only a perspective, but they 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.320 need to have a foot into the technology space to 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:45.760 really enable this stuff. What are your thoughts on that. 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:51.560 I would like technology to go away for you guys, 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.760 for marketers. Yeah, like you should just be thinking about 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:59.800 your contents, your strategies, and technology is a burden, right. 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.520 I remember back to when everything you thought of didn't 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:04.560 have to go through some giant I T loop that 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:08.040 made it more expensive and more time consuming. Right. You 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:09.800 could just make stuff and you could get it into 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:13.960 the world. And while the world spelled up, we slowed down. Right, 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:16.280 that's a mismatch. There's one thing there that I think 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.720 It's really exciting, is that right now? In general, it 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.600 actually still is in the I T loop in terms 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:24.400 of like, if you're a marketer and you want to 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:29.680 have some kind of metrics, analytics and you want to 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:33.880 get things out quickly, you are still effectively going through 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:36.960 some version of your I T or you're outsourcing it. 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:38.880 You're going to a publisher who can get it done 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.160 very quickly. You're going somewhere else who can get you know, 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:43.240 to someone who can get it done very quickly. What 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:49.560 the power of the marketer actually owning that hasn't really 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:52.720 happened yet in the industry. There are some marketers I 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:58.840 think who are more tech savvy marketers, um, but you're 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.360 seeing like the rise of that digital officer. Really, I 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.919 think that's kind of spraying that on. But you know, 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:06.960 what does that look like? What does that look like 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:09.760 when the marketer takes it. What has happened and I 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:13.359 don't think people have even noticed it is its Instagram 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:17.600 because Instagram is something marketers can do without tech, and 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:19.480 so I think a lot of the success of that 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:21.399 plain that a little bit like what you could just 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:24.440 leave here and post something you don't need anybody's permission 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:27.240 you don't need any you know, roadmaps, you don't need 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:29.800 to get in a queue. You're just done right. So 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.760 I think the user friendliness of Instagram is at least 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:38.040 half the reason it's become so popular for marketers. Interestingly, 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.040 you're solving for future facing problems sitting on the tech 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.960 side and the design side, but you've had a career 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.200 on the agency side and you've seen what it takes 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.400 to think about or put in place solutions that will 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:53.760 help brands. Can you talk about your background and how 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:56.760 you've navigated to end up in developing a company like 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:01.680 City of Well backing up from year UM, I kind 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:04.320 of had the problems you're talking about, right, and I 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:06.760 called it death by a thousand cuts. You know. The 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.919 proliferation of all these channels made UM figuring out what 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:15.320 to do and doing it well almost impossible. And if 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.160 you already have scale, you need a solution. Like it's 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:21.760 great for the disruptors because they can pick a channel 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.680 and do it well, and so the barrier to entry 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:28.440 came way down. But if you're selling you know, um, 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.919 deodorant or cars or whatever, and you're already trying to 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:35.280 talk to millions and millions of people. You had a 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:39.399 much tougher challenge, which was managing all that complexity. And 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:42.480 there has to be something for business at scale to 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:46.120 make it simpler to take advantage of the benefits of scale. 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.240 And I know, you know it's kind of fashionable to 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:53.199 kind of um disparaged scale, but that's what everybody wants. 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:55.520 Here's the thing that I love that you just said. 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.639 That is really right, Like it's not fashionable to talk 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.880 about scale. The reason it's not fashionable to talk about 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:04.879 scales because scale represented the one size fits all model. 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:09.480 The point is every DTC brand wants scale that no 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:11.119 one's gonna say to you, I don't want to grow, 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:13.480 I don't want to be selling to millions of people. 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:16.720 They will say to you, I want to maintain what 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.760 keeps me special and I want to grow my relationship. 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.760 So I'm looking at a lifetime value of always A 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.600 lot of big companies got really far away from their customers, 0:19:26.640 --> 0:19:30.600 you know there you know our media, habits, our tastes, ingredients, 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.800 you know, so many things changed all at once, and 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.960 a lot of smaller companies drove trucks through that. Well, 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.000 what do you think the people that you're mentioning like 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:43.200 a Casper. They've done a great job at doing content marketing. 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:45.359 I don't know what they would say, but at least 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.640 doing you know, speaking to their audience and knowing who 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.240 their audiences and then backing it up in their product 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.520 experience and all of that. But like, what's next. I'm 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:57.960 nodding furiously because I don't really see a response from 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.320 the traditional mattress makers. And this has been going on 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:04.560 for years now. This Casper didn't launch last week, right, 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.159 So I think a lot of these companies, you know, 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.720 they're too big to change, and so I do think 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:14.160 a lot of these disruptors are going to eat some lunches. 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:18.320 What does the future of content marketing look like? I 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:20.880 think we're ready for the second wave of content marketing. 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:23.080 You know, the first time around, we all thought it 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:25.159 was a panacea and that we would just make this 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.960 instead of advertising and everything would be great. And it's 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:31.960 not easy. It's hard, Like there aren't many I've heard 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:33.520 you guys say there aren't many people who know how 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.000 to land the plane, right, So, um, it's a different 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:40.080 skill set. And one of the barriers is that inside 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:42.560 the company, you know, the CFO and the rest of 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.640 the people you're accountable to expect you to bring in 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:47.720 a certain kind of business for a certain kind of 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.560 spend in a certain amount of time. And content marketing 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.639 doesn't work like that, right, And so there has to 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.919 be like a resetting of expectations inside and some patients 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:00.480 for people who knew the former metho that to learn 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.040 the new method and execute it well. And so now 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:05.560 we really have to do it because I'm sorry, but 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.680 the Internet doesn't like advertising very much. I think that's 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:11.720 also the issue, you know, and speaking on the media side, 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.199 like starting with a channel mix before you even have 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:17.359 an idea, you know, and thinking about I'm going to 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:21.920 go out and create, um this media mix and allocate 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:24.960 percentages of my budget and then I'm supposed to fill 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.320 it fill it with content that might look the same 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:31.119 across the entire ecosystem. That's been the model. And I 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.040 think what we're all sort of, you know, alluding to 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:36.320 is maybe we need to take a step back and 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:39.200 realize that channels are just tactics to deploy this bigger 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:42.560 content message or idea of what we're working towards. It 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:47.280 actually starts with the customer because people don't understand that 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:51.879