Speaker 1: Afrotech is a global gathering where inclusive tech companies meet innovators.
Speaker 1: It's the only tech event you.
Speaker 2: Need all year.
Speaker 1: Get ready for Afrotech twenty twenty three in Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: November first through the fifth. We built a whole temper
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Speaker 3: Place to be.
Speaker 1: The massive corporate layoffs of twenty twenty two and twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three have affected our community in a big way.
Speaker 1: An Afrotech wants to help you get back on your
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Speaker 3: If that's your route.
Speaker 1: In an afro tech you'll make connections to help you
Speaker 1: get your next opportunity. Visit afrotech dot com slash conference.
Speaker 3: To learn more.
Speaker 1: I'm Will Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money.
Speaker 1: Chaucer Barnes' Chief marketing officer of Translation Plus United Masters,
Speaker 1: the parent company of a war Rening creative agency, translation
Speaker 1: and artist services platform United Masters in creating a new
Speaker 1: normal for the way brands and creators enlikenment and trade
Speaker 1: cultural capital.
Speaker 3: Chaucer applies tools and lessons.
Speaker 1: From every chapter of his life as a media planner,
Speaker 1: brand strategist, creative director, partnership architect, and independent musician. Chaucer
Speaker 1: has said, in the early days of translation, people weren't
Speaker 1: talking about culture in the context of advertising. This interested me,
Speaker 1: so I asked, what has changed and what impact has
Speaker 1: embracing culture had on the metrics business cares about sales,
Speaker 1: and what impact has this focus had on culture itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's definitely true.
Speaker 4: I mean I've been around a company for close to
Speaker 4: twelve years now, and when I say that, when I say,
Speaker 4: you know, culture wasn't mentioned in the in reference to advertising,
Speaker 4: it's because when we were saying it early almost Color
Speaker 4: twenty twelve, it felt really exceptional.
Speaker 2: It was a moment. It was it was an.
Speaker 4: Expression of differentiation at the time. The idea that you know,
Speaker 4: making people aware of these certain products existing at these
Speaker 4: certain price points, that these retailers had anything to do
Speaker 4: with the business of fandom or of social identity, How
Speaker 4: it's changed, and why it's changed. I guess I should
Speaker 4: start with is it's changed because people hit the ceiling
Speaker 4: of growth and they felt it. They knew it, right,
Speaker 4: So you could look at that in the kind of
Speaker 4: individual cases of think about Budweiser, right, Budweiser at the
Speaker 4: time that they got into business with translation, they completely
Speaker 4: stalled out, Here's America's beer. Only one in three twenty
Speaker 4: one and twenty seven year olds that ever tasted America's beer.
Speaker 4: And so you have these huge, kind of ubiquitous brand
Speaker 4: expectations and this wilting undercurrent or sorry, this wilting audience
Speaker 4: underneath that brand that just doesn't care. And so the sales,
Speaker 4: the metrics that they really cared about in that case,
Speaker 4: sales and their ability to move through various on premise
Speaker 4: off premise retailers, that was the forcing function that made
Speaker 4: them adopt new proxies for that success.
Speaker 2: So it's not that the metrics change.
Speaker 4: In other words, people to make beers still want to
Speaker 4: sell beer, people to make cars still want to sell cars,
Speaker 4: et cetera. It's that they see the proxy for that
Speaker 4: performance being better measured in adoption rate engagement rate. I mean,
Speaker 4: think about the idea of engagement rate as you know
Speaker 4: that came to popularity in the late or in the
Speaker 4: early teens, let's call it two thousand and eight to
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen. Somewhere the entire advertising industry had come to maturity,
Speaker 4: full maturity, without any kind of notion of what consumers
Speaker 4: on the other end of that message do. An engagement
Speaker 4: rate was the first thing anybody started to measure. It
Speaker 4: was like, all right, so I did this, and then
Speaker 4: they did that, and they did that became so important
Speaker 4: because sheer delivery. Right, this is my impression load, this
Speaker 4: is my impression count. Okay, but how many people click?
Speaker 2: Okay? But how many people took a step? Okay? But
Speaker 2: how many people shared?
Speaker 4: That grammar of consumer engagement in the work that you
Speaker 4: put forward was all part of people having to come
Speaker 4: around to the fact that you can't win without creating
Speaker 4: a rational preference for your product, service, or your brand values.
Speaker 4: And you shouldn't be trying to do that in a
Speaker 4: direct response way. You should be trying to do that
Speaker 4: in a communal way. And then there was just evidence,
Speaker 4: it was just ample evidence everywhere that the things that
Speaker 4: were dominating pop culture were no longer the fruit of
Speaker 4: a couple of gatekeepers. It was really an empowered populace.
Speaker 4: And so I think the confluence of all of those
Speaker 4: things have been a force and function for every single
Speaker 4: marketer to not get fired by appreciating that their job
Speaker 4: is not just to make everybody aware, their job is
Speaker 4: to drive affinity.
Speaker 2: And then ultimately action.
Speaker 1: You said a word, they're communal, and I think of
Speaker 1: a community in this way. So we've had this conversation
Speaker 1: a few times on this podcast where we've discussed the
Speaker 1: idea of if you're just directly trying to sell without
Speaker 1: having built a brand or community first, you might be successful,
Speaker 1: but it's not a sustainable way to build something. So
Speaker 1: what we've talked about is, if you can build your
Speaker 1: brand and build a community of people who will follow
Speaker 1: you anywhere you can sell anything. Then what do you
Speaker 1: say to that concept?
Speaker 4: Well, I do think that there are limitations on selling
Speaker 4: anything that are frankly shaped by your brand, Like the
Speaker 4: contours of your brand dictate what you can and cannot sell.
Speaker 4: I'm about to take my wife down to Nola to
Speaker 4: see what was supposed to be the last stop on
Speaker 4: a renaissance tour, and I can't imagine a bigger fan
Speaker 4: of Beyonce. To my wife, I know that they exist, right,
Speaker 4: but I can't imagine a bigger fan. Beyonce can't sell everything.
Speaker 4: She can't sell anything, and we've seen ample evidence of that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Beyonce can move the stock ticket for LVMH, She's done it.
Speaker 4: But Beyonce can't get rid of at Ivy Park merchandise.
Speaker 4: Beyonce can't sell a twenty five dollar bikini for H
Speaker 4: and M, no matter how great she looks in it.
Speaker 4: I remember seeing when H and M and Beyonce got
Speaker 4: into business. We were still in midtown, and they had
Speaker 4: these beautiful, you know, out of home units and it's
Speaker 4: Beyonce laid out in a swimsuit, Like, who's.
Speaker 2: Mad at that?
Speaker 4: But the truth of the matter is that the brand
Speaker 4: that she has built and what it is that people
Speaker 4: are responding to, she is fulfilling a need. She is
Speaker 4: Princess Diana for this generation. And nobody wants Princess Diana
Speaker 4: to wear a twenty five dollar bikini. Nobody's influence When
Speaker 4: Princess Diana, where's a twenty five dollar bikini? Doesn't matter
Speaker 4: how good she looks that's not the point. The point
Speaker 4: is Tiffany and Beyonce absolutely h and M and Beyonce
Speaker 4: absolutely not.
Speaker 2: And I think it's I think it is.
Speaker 4: There is a there's a degree of elasticity that any brand,
Speaker 4: whether it's you as a person or you as a
Speaker 4: corporate giant with just this just a logo and a wordmark,
Speaker 4: there's a certain degree of elasticity that you can accommodate.
Speaker 4: And then where you see people go wrong is when
Speaker 4: they try to stretch beyond that and they either alienate
Speaker 4: the people that originally embrace the brand. I think we've
Speaker 4: seen that. I'm sure your views will remember, uh, a
Speaker 4: certain beauty brand that came to market looking a lot
Speaker 4: different than the way that they grew up.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: And then I also think that there is there is taste, right,
Speaker 4: so are there beyond taste? There is expertise, and someone's
Speaker 4: perceived expertise in a given space really licenses them to
Speaker 4: be a credence bearer for other things that they may
Speaker 4: be selling or maybe just referring you to. But the
Speaker 4: but the corpus of what you're saying one agree with,
Speaker 4: which is take your audience everywhere you can by yourself,
Speaker 4: never let a platform, never let a third party be
Speaker 4: an intermediary in between you and your audience, and you
Speaker 4: will have not just fans, you will have customers, and
Speaker 4: you'll figure out from those customers what you are licensed
Speaker 4: to broke.
Speaker 2: Her to them.
Speaker 1: I like that And I didn't prepare this question, but
Speaker 1: you got me thinking about you know, we do see
Speaker 1: Beyonce as like a princess Diana, but then I think
Speaker 1: about you got me thinking about Rihanna. Like, Rihanna can
Speaker 1: probably sell anything. If she came out with notebooks for school,
Speaker 1: she could probably sell a million to those a day,
Speaker 1: and you know, and she's shown it in various vertical verticals.
Speaker 1: And she could also probably also move the stock ticket
Speaker 1: on Lvmas.
Speaker 2: So what is what is what's the difference? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think Rihanna actually does have more elasticity to her brand.
Speaker 4: I think that is tied to the fact that Rihanna
Speaker 4: is not as exceptional talent as Beyonce.
Speaker 2: Hot take. One of the things that we admire about Rihanna.
Speaker 4: Is that as gorgeous as she is, as tasteful as
Speaker 4: she is, as poised as she is as this that
Speaker 4: the other that raw talent does not feel supernatural Beyonce does,
Speaker 4: and so there's an accessibility to her that I don't
Speaker 4: think beyond you know, it's like.
Speaker 2: The Serenas of the.
Speaker 4: World, the Beyonces, and I think there's probably we might
Speaker 4: not have long enough to get into, but there's probably
Speaker 4: something with a gender line here as well.
Speaker 2: But there are.
Speaker 4: Certain people who who's undeniable talent or untraceable set of
Speaker 4: skills puts them so far out of reach that they
Speaker 4: get to be respected, admired and aspired to, but they
Speaker 4: do not feel approachable, followable, and ultimately they don't have
Speaker 4: brands to say I can do that.
Speaker 2: They have brands to say wouldn't that be dope? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I feel like overall, Rihanna is a little bit
Speaker 4: closer to the ground, and I also think frankly, she
Speaker 4: has shown a level of investment in all of these
Speaker 4: other businesses that she's been running that is unlike Beyonce.
Speaker 4: Beyonce will I'm not gonna say well she will always
Speaker 4: be that would be unfair, But Beyonce is still an entertainer,
Speaker 4: right and very much like Jay, Rihanna has taken on
Speaker 4: the mantle of being a mobile and so there's just
Speaker 4: naturally more license in that identity, she might have got
Speaker 4: famous for being a kind of okay saying and a
Speaker 4: great entertainer, but today she's known as a.
Speaker 1: Mobile Yeah, it was probably Snapchat as a distribution channel
Speaker 1: who changed advertising for everybody when they got rid of
Speaker 1: the edited, you know, makeup produced thing. Are are we
Speaker 1: have we grown tired of traditional advertising produced content in
Speaker 1: that way? Or is it just no creativity?
Speaker 2: You know? I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't have a tendency to I don't think that
Speaker 4: most people. And this is tough when you're twenty years
Speaker 4: steeped in this industry, you know, you live your whole
Speaker 4: life and like your friends that drop.
Speaker 2: By then we're all kind of all the same in
Speaker 2: that respect.
Speaker 4: But my hunches and most people don't make those distinctions
Speaker 4: about advertising versus the content versus influencer stuff versus what
Speaker 4: their neighbor is making. Good is good is good? And
Speaker 4: to the extent that you can add polished to good,
Speaker 4: like the high auction values to good, I think it
Speaker 4: just makes it better. It might make it more visible,
Speaker 4: it might make it more sticky, it might allow for
Speaker 4: more layers of your storytelling, brand development to come forward.
Speaker 4: But at the core of this there's plenty of advertising
Speaker 4: that is indistinguishable from content, and it's just pure value, right,
Speaker 4: It's editorial value, it's intellectual value. And there's plenty of
Speaker 4: content that is.
Speaker 2: Not really anything more than advertising.
Speaker 4: Right Tho, the dividing lines between them is really more
Speaker 4: an industry thing than it is a consumer thing. In
Speaker 4: other words, who paid for it, how is it distributed?
Speaker 4: Is it paid to be distributed? And if so, who's
Speaker 4: behind that? Those are all questions that have very real
Speaker 4: that create these very real synapses, sorry, distinctions between these
Speaker 4: categories like this is an ad and this is content,
Speaker 4: and this is something else, this is an obituary, and
Speaker 4: blah blah blah. But for most people, you know, think
Speaker 4: about the way that you consume media, right, You're consuming
Speaker 4: media on a couple of whether you're scrolling through it
Speaker 4: or you're kind of browsing through it, like on YouTube,
Speaker 4: you're bumping into content that has all of these different
Speaker 4: types of motivations at all points in your day. And
Speaker 4: I think this stuff is sticky. It kind of doesn't
Speaker 4: matter if Coca Cola is behind it or your homeboy
Speaker 4: is behind it.
Speaker 2: The stuff is sticky, is sticky.
Speaker 4: I think that equalization is part of, you know, our
Speaker 4: central thesis.
Speaker 2: This is why.
Speaker 4: Your attention minutes you will your attention minutes are increasingly
Speaker 4: budgeted by you. You don't have to interact with content
Speaker 4: you don't want to increasingly sell, and so so content
Speaker 4: that wants to sell you something has to get more
Speaker 4: persuasive and more worthy of your attention. I think that's
Speaker 4: probably a good thing. And that's certainly the end of
Speaker 4: the pool that we like to swim. Man Like, I'm
Speaker 4: not here to tell you about the pepperone chini muffin
Speaker 4: is coming from Papa John Like, that ain't even my business.
Speaker 4: I'm here to put something in front of you that
Speaker 4: makes you feel seen or heard in the way that
Speaker 4: you didn't feel before. I want to put something in
Speaker 4: front of you, or put you in an environment, or
Speaker 4: give you an experience. It gives you something noteworthy to
Speaker 4: talk about at various functions you go to that's worthy
Speaker 4: of you taking a picture or taking a video within
Speaker 4: and bragging that I was there. That's the business that
Speaker 4: all of us who are trying to push culture forward
Speaker 4: for whatever economic reward, that's what we're that's what we're
Speaker 4: here to do.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't I don't think. I don't think a
Speaker 4: really really well done cheesy pool for her pizza hut
Speaker 4: or her little diseases is changing anybody's mind about what
Speaker 4: pizza they get to buy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I started doing public speaking, I learned this.
Speaker 1: You know, hack or tip or whatever you want to say.
Speaker 1: It's you talk to one person at a time, no
Speaker 1: matter how many people are in the room. You make
Speaker 1: connections with one person at a time, and therefore everybody
Speaker 1: else in the room connects. Why is that do you
Speaker 1: think from a marketing and advertising perspective? And does it translate?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? It does in my practice.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that I use to evaluate work,
Speaker 4: and I've been very public about this is a reciped
Speaker 4: It was given to me by y'all Sinbek, not given
Speaker 4: to me like hand to hand, given to me because
Speaker 4: I was always a fan most and he goes it's
Speaker 4: commonplace in different, intimate and distant, fresh than in the infant,
Speaker 4: Fresh than the infant.
Speaker 2: Is what everybody thinks of is creativity.
Speaker 4: It's like they de viv makes something memorable, commonplace in
Speaker 4: different We saved for a different podcast. But what you're
Speaker 4: really talking about is intimate and distant, right the intimacy.
Speaker 4: The reason that these two things need to be in
Speaker 4: balance with one another is because things ultimately do have
Speaker 4: to scale, right, So you do you are ultimately on
Speaker 4: the hook to address that total audience. But the focus
Speaker 4: on the one person and making them feel like there's a.
Speaker 2: Connection is.
Speaker 4: In our practice, the one of the things that differentiates,
Speaker 4: i should say our practice from a lot of others.
Speaker 4: So a lot of advertising is about, hey, let's find
Speaker 4: the most neutral thing, the biggest tent that the most
Speaker 4: people can get under. So you start looking for you
Speaker 4: create all of these segments that may or may not
Speaker 4: have you know, real value to people in terms of
Speaker 4: way that they live their life.
Speaker 2: Right. So like I got the soccer moms, and I
Speaker 2: got the football dads, and I got the like black kids,
Speaker 2: and I got.
Speaker 4: The Latin people in wheelchairs, do this, that and the other.
Speaker 2: And then you try to come up with a message
Speaker 2: it cuts across all of those.
Speaker 4: Categories and you're like, this is meaningful to everybody, right,
Speaker 4: and this is how you get that big top creative
Speaker 4: and everything. This is like the majority of what you
Speaker 4: see on the Super Bowls, like everybody gets everybody knows
Speaker 4: the words too sweet Caroline First of all, nah be
Speaker 4: we don't know the words this week, Caroline, but you know,
Speaker 4: let's go that hege hegemonic privilege, privilege, right. The desire
Speaker 4: to create these things that are designed to fit some
Speaker 4: fanciful average of people is fundamentally flawed in our opinion.
Speaker 4: And so when we study the greats and the people
Speaker 4: to really lead culture, it's never I shouldn't say, it's
Speaker 4: never in sync. Was a great example of this. Britney
Speaker 4: Spears is a great example of this. You got a
Speaker 4: team of people that can observe patterns, they seem to
Speaker 4: be working all these other channels, put them together into
Speaker 4: one package and it looks like this and you present it.
Speaker 4: But look around you. Now look at the titans of
Speaker 4: pop culture. Now, did they grow out of very very
Speaker 4: specific niches.
Speaker 2: Yes? Did they come stop with something that was appropriate
Speaker 2: for all or did.
Speaker 4: They recruit a small hive, have that hive grow and
Speaker 4: influence and have that high that ultimately advocate on their
Speaker 4: behalf That this is something you need to be turned
Speaker 4: on to.
Speaker 2: I don't care whether you're talking about Drake bad Bunny.
Speaker 2: This that the other.
Speaker 4: The modern marketers desire to create something that is pre
Speaker 4: rinted for the broad majority of people is a fundamental flaw.
Speaker 4: There's nowhere you can look in pop culture, including especially
Speaker 4: in America, our politics. You can look across Europe see
Speaker 4: the same thing.
Speaker 2: In politics.
Speaker 4: It's getting more niche, it's getting more specific. And so
Speaker 4: to the degree that you can build something that is
Speaker 4: in service of a small but responsive group, you can
Speaker 4: ultimately scale that the same way that you can make
Speaker 4: eye contact with somebody in a room and you can
Speaker 4: scale the import of what you're saying to everybody in
Speaker 4: that room. And there's no greater example of that than
Speaker 4: what the agency has been able to do with beats
Speaker 4: I mean, like resuscitating beats. A lot of people don't
Speaker 4: know it. Beats by Dre was bound for the scrap heap.
Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't. It wasn't doing well as a business.
Speaker 4: And so when you have this moment where we get
Speaker 4: to defribrillate the brand and speak on behalf of black
Speaker 4: youth and do this piece of work called you Love
Speaker 4: Me that really resets and asks the question at all
Speaker 4: that everybody black, certainly, and then everybody that really was
Speaker 4: paying attention was had on the tip of their tongues
Speaker 4: like you love black cults, why don't you love black people?
Speaker 4: Where you can turn the brand in that kind of
Speaker 4: megaphone for the youth segment of twelve percent of the
Speaker 4: American population. There are plenty of people in advertising that
Speaker 4: would tell you, oh, we're being too tight, like this
Speaker 4: isn't for can't we get it like a little room
Speaker 4: year so it can include everybody? And you start whittling
Speaker 4: it down and you affect the purity of that message,
Speaker 4: and you can't create the level of advocacy that three
Speaker 4: years later, you look and Beats is now in the
Speaker 4: Verizon Holiday Bundle, and Paul G. Bodi and women from
Speaker 4: SNL are out there selling Beats as a carrot to
Speaker 4: get you to buy a two year Verizon plan in
Speaker 4: flyover states.
Speaker 2: You will ultimately be able to achieve.
Speaker 4: Marketplace dominance through an ethnic insight, a cultural insight, or even.
Speaker 2: In some cases, geographic insite.
Speaker 5: It is about, it is not about.
Speaker 1: Afro Tech is a global gathering where inclusive tech companies
Speaker 1: meet innovators. It's the only tech event you.
Speaker 3: Need all year.
Speaker 1: Get ready for afro Tech twenty twenty three in Austin, Texas, November.
Speaker 3: First through the fifth. We built a whole.
Speaker 1: Temper you can use to help you get your employer
Speaker 1: to sponsor your trip.
Speaker 3: And enjoy experiences built for every stage your career.
Speaker 2: Whether you're a.
Speaker 1: College student looking for your next internship, or if you
Speaker 1: work in avention capital looking for your next business to
Speaker 1: invest in, and if you're looking for a co founder
Speaker 1: or people that's join your team, there's no better.
Speaker 3: Place to be.
Speaker 1: The massive corporate layoffs of twenty twenty two and twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three have affected our community in a big way,
Speaker 1: and afro Tech wants to help you get back on
Speaker 1: your feet with skill development, making it easier to switch industries.
Speaker 3: If that's your route.
Speaker 1: In an afrotech, you'll make connections to help you get
Speaker 1: your next opportunity. Visit afrotech dot com slash conference to
Speaker 1: learn more. Where would you say the concept of influencer
Speaker 1: is going.
Speaker 2: Down the rabbit hole?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, first and foremost, I think there was a
Speaker 4: time where it was obviously influencers were an alternative media channel.
Speaker 4: Increasingly and certainly collectively, they are becoming the pre eminent
Speaker 4: media channel if you compare it to what can raise
Speaker 4: audiences hold their attention and oh, by the way, because
Speaker 4: there's all these intermediaries also you know, cut the feed
Speaker 4: or create the space for Coke home Depot or whoever
Speaker 4: else wants to talk talk in between them. And as
Speaker 4: as a result of that, it became a career for
Speaker 4: a lot of people, and certainly became a career aspiration
Speaker 4: for a lot of people. I think increasingly, being an
Speaker 4: influencer is going to be an ingredient and a lot
Speaker 4: of people's kind of economic recipe. Right, So you might
Speaker 4: it'll be one thread that you're probably braiding together with
Speaker 4: other ways that you earn for a lot of people,
Speaker 4: and that could be because of some standard expertise they have, right,
Speaker 4: Like maybe you're teaching piano. Maybe you're teaching piano not
Speaker 4: just you know, putting the chords on YouTube, but maybe
Speaker 4: you have like clients that are in some private room
Speaker 4: with you and you're listening to who knows, but expertise
Speaker 4: like that just sheer popularity. But I do think that,
Speaker 4: like we just said about brands writ large, whether as
Speaker 4: big as Rihanna Beyonce, increasingly what will happen with influences
Speaker 4: is the things that influences do to proverbially clout chase,
Speaker 4: in other words, the things that they trace that they
Speaker 4: already see or working, and they replicate what is already working,
Speaker 4: and they just put that little spin on it. So
Speaker 4: it's theirs that's gonna the bottom is going to fall
Speaker 4: out of that. AI is going to eat the bottom
Speaker 4: out of that period. AI could eat the bottom out
Speaker 4: of the entire porn industry for oh, we know the
Speaker 4: original digital strategies and influences. By the way, I think
Speaker 4: we're at a tipping point. I think it's right for
Speaker 4: young people to be thinking about the moves that they
Speaker 4: make as being part of a permanent record. I think
Speaker 4: it is important for people to start to think about
Speaker 4: the audiences that they're able to create on wherever they
Speaker 4: publish or wherever they present their brand as needing some
Speaker 4: other kind of.
Speaker 2: Collecting trade other than.
Speaker 4: Ones that are controlled by Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you name it, you name it.
Speaker 4: Daniel Eck is increasingly important, and I think the jury
Speaker 4: is still out, so I'll take a rold listen.
Speaker 2: In the United Masters.
Speaker 4: Right now, it is impossible to know what kind of
Speaker 4: formats are going to present themselves in music in the
Speaker 4: coming five to seven years.
Speaker 2: It's just impossible.
Speaker 4: But when we say that we believe that independence should
Speaker 4: be the default setting for the music industry all around
Speaker 4: the world, it should matter less. Right, So you think
Speaker 4: about the last couple of format changes. Just think about
Speaker 4: the fact that when the ring tone you seem old
Speaker 4: enough will to remember the ring tone era, when ring
Speaker 4: tones came to be, that was an entirely net new
Speaker 4: revenue stream that should have been enjoyed by this industry.
Speaker 4: As you can well imagine, it really just went to
Speaker 4: the rights holders in that case. And at that time,
Speaker 4: the rights holders were almost never, almost never the people
Speaker 4: that actually created the thing that you love. Then, when
Speaker 4: you get to streaming, right, streaming is in that new
Speaker 4: format change, the negotiation and you've seen I'm sure you've
Speaker 4: seen this, right, the negotiation of what a stream is
Speaker 4: worth was handled by effectively three companies. And now when
Speaker 4: you look forward, so now imagine a world where both
Speaker 4: Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny Toby Wigway, like.
Speaker 2: All these.
Speaker 4: Millions of people on United Masters and tens of millions
Speaker 4: who are using platforms like United Masters to get their
Speaker 4: work to the world.
Speaker 2: Imagine a world where they all own their work, or
Speaker 2: at least this portion of their work.
Speaker 4: Now you can't have a ringtone era that purposefully excludes
Speaker 4: them in a future state. So I can't tell you
Speaker 4: what the ringtone is about to be. I can tell
Speaker 4: you it's coming, and I can tell you that the
Speaker 4: creative class is better armed by owning their data, their
Speaker 4: relationships with their audiences, owning their IP and frankly, really
Speaker 4: figuring out how they can do something other than trace
Speaker 4: what has already worked, and really lean into the creative
Speaker 4: in creative class then ever before, I think the best
Speaker 4: prepared are going to satisfy those three checkboxes.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 4: The rest of it is the rest of it. I'll
Speaker 4: watch it play out. I don't know how influencers are
Speaker 4: going to go, but I know just raw titillation is
Speaker 4: just this algorithmic a task as poking holes in a
Speaker 4: legal document. And if AI can eat the entire legal
Speaker 4: profession or eighty percent of it, you can eat this too.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 3: Let's go a level deeper.
Speaker 1: There is you know, I think about ten years ago,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, you asked kid what they want to do,
Speaker 1: they would have said, you know, I want to be
Speaker 1: in the NBA or the NFL. Today they want to
Speaker 1: be I show speed or logan Paul or Jake Paul right,
Speaker 1: and you know, so people we often create content with
Speaker 1: the goal in mind to be found, to be discovered.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like chasing the A and
Speaker 1: R back in the day. You want to be found
Speaker 1: by somebody at a record label who could give you,
Speaker 1: you know, a shot. So posting to social inconsistency on
Speaker 1: social and delivering quality content is one leg of the stool.
Speaker 1: How can we be more strategic in creating opportunities? Though
Speaker 1: a while we're creating content.
Speaker 4: More strategic than what than we are, because I would
Speaker 4: say kind of a bull market, right, kind of everybody
Speaker 4: got everybody got podcast, everybody can be logan Paul right now,
Speaker 4: that I shouldn't say everyone, I should say anyone can
Speaker 4: be right. So when you say more strategic.
Speaker 1: And creating things that actually get the attention to the
Speaker 1: guy goes, Okay, Geico now wants to be a part
Speaker 1: of this movement that I'm doing or you know you
Speaker 1: mentioned home Depot. But so it's one thing to create
Speaker 1: content and have a podcast out enough I mean to actually
Speaker 1: make money from that podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So you know I want to underline one
Speaker 4: one of the or one of the I suppose dependencies
Speaker 4: underneath what you're saying. You know, Soldier Boy doesn't get
Speaker 4: enough credit.
Speaker 1: He does over here, he does over here.
Speaker 2: Oh no, But but Soldier.
Speaker 4: Boy was really the first time you had something that
Speaker 4: was really popular also directly pay I mean, like the
Speaker 4: notion that's spread on YouTube and that the absence account
Speaker 4: was on and that the mere consumption of this thing
Speaker 4: in this other media channel. You got to remember, like,
Speaker 4: he's a guy that probably made that under the assumption
Speaker 4: that one day, hopefully somebody liking him TV would take right,
Speaker 4: Like in TV, it ain't pay you for every time
Speaker 4: they spun getting jiggy with it, right, they're like, yo,
Speaker 4: you're welcome. And so that I did it, your promotional
Speaker 4: asset could actually be your revenue inlet.
Speaker 2: That was kind of that new and add sense.
Speaker 4: And all these platforms that are with one hand I'm
Speaker 4: kind of wagging my finger at like, don't let them
Speaker 4: own your audience. They also enabled so many people to
Speaker 4: never have to figure out, never have to learn anybody
Speaker 4: at Geico's name, right, because you can flip a switch
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden your content is monetized. You
Speaker 4: might not have ultimate control over it, and you're certainly
Speaker 4: not getting the lion's share of the revenue. But the
Speaker 4: point is you can go off and you can go
Speaker 4: back and invest in your craft and your craft alone
Speaker 4: knowing that some money is coming in and you ain't
Speaker 4: have to do nothing to throw a switch.
Speaker 2: So layer one.
Speaker 4: Of that was what enabled a lot of the media
Speaker 4: escape they were seeing today. And it's really really important
Speaker 4: that everybody not think that they need to go stand
Speaker 4: next to the CMO of this or.
Speaker 2: That or the other in order to have fruitful careers.
Speaker 4: Like that's still a very viable path to be able
Speaker 4: to monetize through these third parties.
Speaker 2: You're not going to get the lion's share, but that's
Speaker 2: a real.
Speaker 4: Thing as you move up and you want to catch
Speaker 4: somebody's eye. Look, one of them is the obvious one, Right,
Speaker 4: have a hit. Obviously, very very easy.
Speaker 2: To say, but successful is success.
Speaker 4: Right, success is a crowded room, and you got to
Speaker 4: remember that in most cases, you got to think about
Speaker 4: if brand marketers are the people that you really want
Speaker 4: to chase down. It's a very conservative environment, right. This
Speaker 4: is why sports is so replete money, Like people throw
Speaker 4: money in sports all the time because it's so many
Speaker 4: different places to throw money in, right, do a league deal,
Speaker 4: you do a team deal, you buy an agency to
Speaker 4: make you some stuff.
Speaker 2: You do an.
Speaker 4: Athlete deal and then the athlete shows up at the thing.
Speaker 4: You do a naming rights deal at an arena. You
Speaker 4: can There's so many different ways to park money, and
Speaker 4: most of those are tied to all of these other
Speaker 4: people's financial uh reward. And you know that they're not
Speaker 4: going to lose. Cia is not going to lose lose
Speaker 4: an artist might an artists wrote them, shake them dice,
Speaker 4: throw it up against the wall all the time, and
Speaker 4: they've seen that over and over and over, right, So
Speaker 4: it's just a natural. It doesn't feel it's safe to
Speaker 4: invest in music. And frankly, increasingly other creators and other
Speaker 4: formats twitch streamers like how many people got to how
Speaker 4: many kids from Connecticut got to say the N word?
Speaker 4: Before people start to like, chill on that space, right?
Speaker 4: Or what is kai kaisat in Union Square the other day?
Speaker 4: A second ago he was like, oh, yeah, we want
Speaker 4: to work with him, he's edgy, And now it's.
Speaker 2: Like, oh riot yeah.
Speaker 4: And so there is a there's a great degree of
Speaker 4: grooming that goes in and even knowing how to deal
Speaker 4: with a brand like that of that statue and and
Speaker 4: most of them are not going to rock with you
Speaker 4: until you achieve a certain level of prominence. Now are
Speaker 4: they exceptions to that rule, Sure, but the rule is
Speaker 4: shorter to say than the exceptions. And sorry, I want
Speaker 4: to I'm gonna give a real answer. This the last
Speaker 4: thing I will mention. If indeed the gatekeepers that you
Speaker 4: want to get to are people that you want to patronize,
Speaker 4: you like brands, the only advice I can give you
Speaker 4: is just remember that they're real people. Like if you're
Speaker 4: really the creative entrepreneur, it really feels like there's something
Speaker 4: that Tender or Geico or twenty three and me should be.
Speaker 4: That's a story you should tell, and you really want
Speaker 4: to get to them. And you tried the LinkedIn thing,
Speaker 4: and you tried to you put the ePK together and
Speaker 4: you wrote the thing and blah blah blah bah blah.
Speaker 4: You know, look those people out, Look those people up
Speaker 4: on all those other platforms. Those are real people behind
Speaker 4: all behind all of those corporate all that corporate signings.
Speaker 4: Those are real people that have real preferences, and if
Speaker 4: you want to find them, they are not hard to
Speaker 4: find because guess what marketers are self promotion and so
Speaker 4: you need to spend time figuring out what it is
Speaker 4: that they like and what they think about Beyonce and
Speaker 4: Rihanna and so on and so forth, and you know
Speaker 4: you're can customize off of that.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 4: There is no magic app and there is no shortcut.
Speaker 4: And now in a hyperconnected world, almost everybody is accessible.
Speaker 4: You know, figure out who their trust circle is, penetrate
Speaker 4: that trust circle.
Speaker 2: Love that.
Speaker 4: Dame and Jay did it. In the nineties, man, nobody
Speaker 4: was playing on radio. They start sending champagne bottles.
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about the five c's because
Speaker 1: you talked about you know, you got to have a hit.
Speaker 1: That's the easiest way, the first way to get in.
Speaker 1: And you think, so content, cretence, customization co incentives for seas.
Speaker 1: I I do my research. It's for seas. And so,
Speaker 1: how so you talked about this, miss I missed, missed
Speaker 1: the fifth when content.
Speaker 4: Content is your idea that you want to spread, right,
Speaker 4: credence right right?
Speaker 1: You got carriers, carriers, that's what I missed. Customization co incentives. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So how do you know when something's going to be ahead.
Speaker 2: Man, come on, bro yo, If I knew that, I would,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Speaker 4: You don't, You don't, right, But what you can what
Speaker 4: you can recognize are the early symptoms, and you can
Speaker 4: nurture those symptoms, right. And what you can do is
Speaker 4: prepare yourself so that when you get a little bit
Speaker 4: of lyft off, it can become a lot of lyft
Speaker 4: off because you're.
Speaker 2: Not trying to figure this out for the first time.
Speaker 4: But look, there will always be The reason that casinos
Speaker 4: work at all is because the slot machine makes the
Speaker 4: same amount of noise, whether you hit for five million dollars,
Speaker 4: the same exact noise, right. And you know, I don't
Speaker 4: think knowing what is a hit has everything to do
Speaker 4: with how you're defining a hit, of course, right, So
Speaker 4: like knowing you got to hit. There's a great piece
Speaker 4: of footage. I'll send it to you. You might have
Speaker 4: even seen this, like Lil NASAs the day he releases
Speaker 4: Old Town Road and he goes gets his pizza. He
Speaker 4: got these crummy blinds behind him. You could tell like
Speaker 4: everybody's had that apartment and he's in right there eating
Speaker 4: pizza and whatnot. And he comes back, He's like, yoh,
Speaker 4: so I'm gonna check in with you in a year.
Speaker 4: Boom and he comes back and yeah, he's got the
Speaker 4: white mink on right.
Speaker 2: First of all, that could have been engineered. I will
Speaker 2: say it required.
Speaker 4: That level of ambition is required for anybody's going to
Speaker 4: program like you gotta believe that. We watched that same
Speaker 4: recipe with Kanye West most I mean probably most notably,
Speaker 4: Like you gotta believe that. And hopefully you know, we
Speaker 4: as a class people who are who are gonna benefit
Speaker 4: in so many ways from from a viable creative class.
Speaker 4: Hopefully we don't see that and try to dim everybody's life.
Speaker 4: But the point is, like some people just really feel
Speaker 4: that way. I'm gonna be the next you name it
Speaker 4: for everybody else like myself, you can't know if you
Speaker 4: got to hit per se. I just heard a great
Speaker 4: story about a record that I'm in love with right now.
Speaker 2: It's by a band called Dirry. They're not even on the.
Speaker 4: Platform, this band called Dirry. This guy's been working, he's
Speaker 4: been a journeyman musician for twenty years. It's a garage
Speaker 4: it makes like a garage rock product kind of he's
Speaker 4: been doing it forever, right, and he's never really the
Speaker 4: needles never really moved for him. And he releases this
Speaker 4: snippet and it starts to take off on TikTok, and
Speaker 4: the snippet is wild Side. The snippet goes the bridge
Speaker 4: to the snippet is I'm just as broke as the
Speaker 4: day I was born, but I still make it work
Speaker 4: like everybody else does. It's all just a cruel joke,
Speaker 4: and everybody knows there's no way. I mean, it's that dark.
Speaker 4: It starts getting adopted on TikTok because people people, people
Speaker 4: can relate to that. People go through dark things themselves,
Speaker 4: so it could be just as trivial as like I
Speaker 4: put the I put my drink too close to the
Speaker 4: ledge and it fell off, and people are using that
Speaker 4: that sound to be like to signal regret. But it
Speaker 4: lifts off so much that this guy decides he's gonna
Speaker 4: release it as a full song because he's chasing performance,
Speaker 4: because he's studying enough to know, yo, I got I
Speaker 4: got the similance to something here like these are the
Speaker 4: right conditions that I need to pursue. I need to
Speaker 4: take a next step, right he decides to write the
Speaker 4: next song, but on the way to write the song,
Speaker 4: only way to deliver the song to record the third verse,
Speaker 4: he realizes on the ride over there, oh my god,
Speaker 4: it's working. I feel great actually, And so the third
Speaker 4: verse of the song is you know, the third act
Speaker 4: of Rudy or Rocky or Black Panther.
Speaker 2: I mean it, just it. He turns it so.
Speaker 4: That it is this positivity anthem, and he releases that,
Speaker 4: and now the record really takes off. Say that to
Speaker 4: say this, the tenor of that song changed from when
Speaker 4: he first released it as a snippet to when he
Speaker 4: released it as a song, and the only difference was
Speaker 4: what happened and the response that he got in between.
Speaker 4: That's what changed his entire outlook and therefore changed the
Speaker 4: artist self. You can't know if you got to hit,
Speaker 4: but you can know if you feel something and if
Speaker 4: other people feel something, and whether or not to invest
Speaker 4: more energy right there at that spot. And that's what
Speaker 4: I would tell everybody that song. I think I listened
Speaker 4: to that song over and over. I think this guy
Speaker 4: could burn down Coachella with that song. I don't know
Speaker 4: if he ever will, but I know he made it
Speaker 4: to my inbox. I now care about his story, I
Speaker 4: now care about his brand, and hopefully that's hit enough
Speaker 4: for him. But he did, he played the game the
Speaker 4: right way. You see some response, you invest, you change
Speaker 4: what it means or sorry, you follow your own license,
Speaker 4: you obey your own license to change what it means
Speaker 4: because you're in a different place. You present that to
Speaker 4: people and they respond even more so to it, including CMOSA.
Speaker 4: You know major distributes like I don't, I don't. I
Speaker 4: don't have a cheat code for having a hit. I
Speaker 4: have a cheat code for working really hard when you
Speaker 4: see promises signals.
Speaker 1: So I interviewed Marcus Collins on a couple of episodes ago,
Speaker 1: well this.
Speaker 2: Is why you know the cookbooks. So well, here's my
Speaker 2: co author. That's that's my brother.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So I asked him. I'm like, so Marcus
Speaker 1: and I am going close. I'm I need you to
Speaker 1: send me some questions like what should I ask Chausa?
Speaker 1: And so he sent me some questions to ask you. So,
Speaker 1: so the first one, the first one is what responsibility
Speaker 1: do marketers bear who leverage culture as an influence as
Speaker 1: a way to influence commerce? What responsibility do they have?
Speaker 2: A huge and significant one and is one of the more.
Speaker 4: Advertising specifically is one of the final we talked about
Speaker 4: how you consume content today. Advertising in particular is one
Speaker 4: of the few creative disciplines that gets you, whether you
Speaker 4: want it or not. It's got an final standard out
Speaker 4: and the onus that that puts on someone is so
Speaker 4: crazy when you consider that we got I mean, just
Speaker 4: look at what is going on in Congress right now.
Speaker 4: You can completely independently live in a totally separate bubble.
Speaker 2: Of reality writ large. And so if you are gonna
Speaker 2: if you are.
Speaker 4: Gonna occupy spaces that definitionally I mean, for example, out
Speaker 4: of home, Like I ain't talking about commercials more, out
Speaker 4: of home is something you got to negotiate. If you're
Speaker 4: gonna be in the world with out a home, billboards
Speaker 4: and so on and so forth, you've got to negotiate
Speaker 4: what it says, whatever is what's presenting you with. And
Speaker 4: that is an awesome responsibility because it's one of the
Speaker 4: few places in which it's It's inarguable nobody gets to
Speaker 4: to choose to unsee what you just presented, but people
Speaker 4: can choose to unsee almost everything else. But I would
Speaker 4: argue even people that don't know that they are in
Speaker 4: the push culture forward business still are they still are?
Speaker 4: You know, look at bud Light. Bud Like, bud Light
Speaker 4: was one of the artifacts of Trump is America and
Speaker 4: it is now a rejected artifact because of these decisions
Speaker 4: that were that were made. And you can think whatever
Speaker 4: you want to think about how.
Speaker 2: You might have, as.
Speaker 4: A senior employee of ABM BEV or at bud Light,
Speaker 4: handled it or prevented it. The truth of the matter
Speaker 4: is that huge things that mean the same thing to
Speaker 4: a lot of people at one time are very very
Speaker 4: very rare, and they're so rare that you can watch
Speaker 4: it break. So all of a sudden, bud Light means
Speaker 4: this to so many people. It's like it's fun and
Speaker 4: it's football, and it's this, that and the other, and
Speaker 4: it's like, no, it's not.
Speaker 2: It belongs to us.
Speaker 4: And if you give it to anybody else, if you
Speaker 4: let anybody, if you acknowledge anybody else, we don't have
Speaker 4: a problem in here, right. So, just the bigness of
Speaker 4: that brand alone is something that is delicate and rare,
Speaker 4: and so the.
Speaker 2: It is a tight rope exercise.
Speaker 4: It is a tight rope walk to have anything that
Speaker 4: huge in pop culture, and it's one that I, you know,
Speaker 4: I feel really great about being able to nudge broad
Speaker 4: pop culture in the direction of values that I share
Speaker 4: and I'm able to unearth from these humongous corporate giants who.
Speaker 2: Don't know to write that down.
Speaker 4: In other words, beats right, like we were just telling them,
Speaker 4: we were just talking about the Beat story. It is
Speaker 4: terrifically meaningful to me that we have proven over a
Speaker 4: thousand or so days that you can completely resuscitate a
Speaker 4: brand globally at retail by focusing on and speaking.
Speaker 2: On behalf of black youth.
Speaker 4: Not all you do, but starting there as the lynchpin
Speaker 4: for everything else you're gonna do, to the point where
Speaker 4: this is now so hot that you know your retailer
Speaker 4: is all excited and your partners are all excited too.
Speaker 4: It's not even just it's flying off the shelves. It's
Speaker 4: like Verizon executives knowing that this is hot all of
Speaker 4: a sudden. Again, that's a great that's a great story
Speaker 4: for the agency.
Speaker 2: But what I love about it is that it licenses.
Speaker 4: Somebody else who works somewhere else to be able to
Speaker 4: follow in those footsteps and go, hey, maybe you know
Speaker 4: those values they don't. That doesn't have to just be
Speaker 4: reserved for black youth that could be deaf athletes.
Speaker 2: Somewhere, somebody's gonna.
Speaker 4: Be able to present that case of beats and be like, Yo,
Speaker 4: they went from absolutely cold to being the number one
Speaker 4: gen Z brand and being able to sell out all
Speaker 4: over the globe because they focused on this one thing. Now,
Speaker 4: this is what I'm trying to tell you about these
Speaker 4: deaf athletes, and to the extent that I can enable
Speaker 4: that just in my own success, I'm terrifically proud. But
Speaker 4: I will tell you somebody's got to figure out They
Speaker 4: just haven't figured it out just yet. Somebody's got to
Speaker 4: figure out how to treat trumpest men with the same
Speaker 4: care to day've treated other small groups. It is a culture,
Speaker 4: and it has It is a network that has correspondent rituals, artifacts,
Speaker 4: languages that express underlying beliefs, and people that are cracking
Speaker 4: it are only kind of sort of cracking it. Eventually,
Speaker 4: somebody's gonna create a multicultural offering that is specifically for
Speaker 4: trumpet men.
Speaker 2: You gotta be ready for that too.
Speaker 1: I've got one minute left. He gave me two more,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna do one more in an interest of time.
Speaker 1: He asked, what does the future of advertising look like
Speaker 1: when there are so many factors eroding at its core
Speaker 1: offering creativity?
Speaker 2: What does the future of ties look like?
Speaker 1: Say it again, what does the future of advertising look
Speaker 1: like when there are so many factors eroding at its
Speaker 1: core offering creativity?
Speaker 4: Look, I reject that thesis creativity is not being eroded
Speaker 4: at all. The rights of a very small, highly trained
Speaker 4: feud to suggest that they have brought creativity to bear,
Speaker 4: and they and they alone, you know, have access to it.
Speaker 2: That's what has eroded. And you know, as proud as
Speaker 2: I am of any.
Speaker 4: Standing staff that we have here and their ability to
Speaker 4: go out and do this work on behalf of great
Speaker 4: brands will not.
Speaker 2: I see artists in pipeline all the time that have
Speaker 2: ideas that are black level ideas.
Speaker 5: I'm talking lying monster ideas, and they have shown I
Speaker 5: just feel really grateful that I have and pay attention to.
Speaker 6: The creative class that never comes up under the roof
Speaker 6: of any advertising agency or any marketing discipline or not,
Speaker 6: and I get to study them if I get structed
Speaker 6: as much game from a seventeen year old managed to
Speaker 6: make it into my feet as I ever got from
Speaker 6: Dan Widen my.
Speaker 2: Steve Style.
Speaker 1: Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity afro
Speaker 1: Tech on the Black Effect podcast Networking I Hire Media.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with
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