The ROAS Trap: How Chasing Attribution Impacts Your Marketing

CPO - 57 Todd and Kelly

Kelly Everyone. Kelly McGuire with Bougie Day Digital. Excited to get into today's topics.

Todd Hey, podcast land listeners. Kelly, happy Monday. It's Todd, your partner. Um, sorry, you're still not recovered from your cold, so we will just say for the record, your voice sounds a little funny today actually. It just sounds more deeper and more regal than it normally does. So actually I don't, I

Kelly I'll take it.

Todd sounds bad. Um, okay. So today I just sort of pin together a bunch of random sort of topics to debate and just more for us to talk about these things. And I, you know, I think about this in terms of, okay, if anybody's listening to this or whoever's listening to this, if they're in marketing, all of these things are relevant pertinent topics. Um, but they have two sides to them. I think you and I would argue oftentimes they're lopsided. Um, whether [00:01:00] that be from the marketer's perspective or maybe an agency's perspective, uh, these just seem like areas where there's friction at times. Um, and so I thought maybe we could talk about the friction. That exists in these areas, and we won't get through all of this list today, but, um, we can do a two part series on this. So I've bucketed it, uh, in a bunch of different categories. So the first category is around strategy and brand. And there's always been, and I think always now I'm the one coughing and not sick. Um, there's always been a debate on brand. Um. And this idea that, well, brand doesn't sell. It's just a signal. It just creates a signal of awareness or a consideration, but it doesn't sell. And then there's the other opinion. That brand is everything. Because as a [00:02:00] consumer, if you don't align with, and I think this might be the altruistic thinking that marketers have, if you don't align with the brand and their values. What their purpose is and what they stand for. Who cares? You just wanna know is does it solve a problem you have and is it cheap? Um, so I think the question here is if, if, if we believe or don't believe that brand sells, um, and do we believe consumers or do you believe consumers actually align with brand? Like does it matter? Or does product and price and solution matter more than brand? Um, and do marketers just sort of wish consumers cared about brand? Um, I, I just for the record, will state, I think brand is an incredibly powerful, important thing, but I might be that generation that was on the tail end of [00:03:00] the last generation that cares about that. I don't know if. My daughter cares about specific brands because of their values or their position or their purpose more than they're popular. Their hip. They provide a product at a reasonable price, and that's all she needs. I don't know. Where do you stand?

Kelly I think the, the first thought that comes to mind as you talk about this is I think there's, I think of a lot of things as like decision trees and motivating factors and trigger points and, and all the things that that drive people. And one of the first clear delineation points that comes to mind when we talk about brand for me is needs versus wants, I think. I think when you have a product or something that serves needs, I don't know that brand is as important, but I believe brand is critically important when it serves, wants, and when you're trying to create desire. Because, and, and what I mean by that is when you're, when you're serving something that has needs, it just [00:04:00] simply has to be, will it do what I need it to do? Does it solve a problem? Does it. Do something you, you're not so worried about the brand. I mean, maybe there's an element of brand if you're picking between solutions to the same needs, that may be a, a decision point.

Todd I interrupt you right there. I have a point right now to debate on this. Most people would argue they need a car. Except if you live in like Manhattan and New York, most people would argue they need a car.

Kelly No, no. So,

Todd Many people care about the brand

Kelly no, no, no, no, no. Let me be clear. You need a car in general. Most people don't need a car right now unless your car literally broke down and you can't get work tomorrow. So it's more of a want in the generality of making a, a, a, a driven decision. A around, I'll seek it out. 'cause I want a new car. Need is literally, I have a problem right now. My toilet is broken and it's overflowing. Or I have, you know, I, I literally don't have a pair of shoes. I need to go get it. Like, need to me is like the immediacy of solving a problem. [00:05:00] Want is more. It'd be nice to have the nicer car. I'd like the nicer shoes, or I enjoy the jacket. Like that's how I'm de deliberating need versus one is literally solving something that you have to choose something because it has to be solved for versus I could live without it because I either have something that's working or, or I don't need it, and.

Todd But that's very, very, I mean, you're talking about a, like a very microcosm of like something that I need right now that I know I have a problem with right now. That's only a, some percentage of total consumer

Kelly It does. I mean, when I say now, I just mean in, in the generally of like, I'm def how can I try and describe it? It's, it's need is like I'm absolutely going to get something that fixes this 'cause I can't just ignore it like it is an actual need versus. Sure I want a new car, but I could live with that one for three more years if I didn't, you know, if I wasn't actively having to go to it.

Todd Okay, well, let's stick, stick with the car analogy, right? I, I need a car. Uh, at some point in time, I need a car. Let's say I'm, [00:06:00] I don't know, whatever stage of life I'm in, maybe I'm, I'm a teenager getting ready to go to college. I need a car. If I'm the parent, I did, I, I did a campaign for this in college in ad school for Volkswagen. Um, because car brands of vo brand car brands evoke certain beliefs. And so if I say Volvo, what belief does that evoke?

Kelly Well, that, that, that's the caveat that I gave is, is the one, the, the place that I think brand serves in the, making a decision around a need is when I'm choosing between different solutions that solve the same problem. So if I, if I'm selling something that, again, I'm one of the only solutions, then it, then what you're trying to do in marketing is you're trying to just let people know you exist so that when that need arises, they can choose you. If you're in a competitive marketplace, it's when that need arises, why you should choose me versus your other options. But I still think that that is very [00:07:00] functionally related, right? It's does it look, you know, does it look nicer? Does it drive faster? Does it have more bells and whistles? Does it have a better warranty? There's a, I think it's a very functional. Than it is what, what I consider brand is more that eliciting emotion and response and that's, it's interesting when you said about your daughter, because what I think about is all of the things you said, which is, is it cool, does it trend and all that? That's what I think of as brand is the thing that creates the. Almost arbitrary desire and want and, and, and buy-in and grouping, right? It's, it's, you know, it's your Lululemon. I want it because other people have it, but it's a status symbol. It, you know, it's these, it represents something. Why do I want Nike's over anything else? Like, to me, brand is really the inherent value of the brand name and eliciting that, that value exchange and that response that's outside of the functionality of the product itself. That's becomes where I think the, the conversation becomes really [00:08:00] interesting. Where do I want this purse because of its name or because it functionally is a better quality person. The next one, there's arguments. Some people go after the functionality and the quality. Some people just want the brand name, brand name for the status symbol, and it makes you part of a, a group or a crew like it. That's where the conversation I think, gets really interesting and, and to me it's more, when I think about brand, it is. How does brand again, either drive your decision making or convince you to take an action that you may not otherwise have an inherent need, or the functionality doesn't necessarily mean that it's what you would choose. It's because of the name associated with it. And again, that tends to be. A social construct, right? The idea of brand is because other people are going to see the brand. People are gonna see the car that you drive, the shirt you wear, the purse you carry around. They, I, I don't know that people would buy brand for something that no one else would ever see. That wouldn't make a lot of [00:09:00] sense. I don't know that that would be a driver. If you're gonna buy a product that is singularly to you and no one else is ever, ever gonna see, I don't know. That brand is a big driver in that type of decision.

Todd Okay, so I'm gonna take you back to a comment you made about plumbing many, many, many years ago. As you will recall, we were hired by one of the largest national plumbing companies, and our goal was to establish their brand. To be top of mind when somebody has a clogged toilet and

Kelly Yeah, you're probably not doing a lot of brand research. When your toilet's overflowing, you're probably deciding whatever comes to mind.

Todd But our job was to make sure that when somebody needs a plumber, that brand was one of the top of mind brands that came to mind in that moment. Right. So is that not the effectiveness of creating a brand?

Kelly Yeah. So again, that is, that is driving the, when a need arises, why would I pick something amongst the others? So that's where brand comes into

Todd But you have to do all this [00:10:00] brand investment before that to create the awareness so that in that moment you are one of the brands somebody's familiar with. 'cause a lot of people just pick brands in that moment because they're like, oh, I see this brand everywhere. They're always educating me on this or that and showing me this or that. So I'm gonna pick them because I trust them.

Kelly I mean, that's one way, that's one way to drive consumer behavior is by being the best branded o. Other ways is, I mean, in the old days, it used to be name your brand. True. AAA Plumbing because then you're number one in the Yellow Pages, so you're the easiest to find. Another way is offering the biggest discounts or getting the best reviews, or there's all kinds of paths you can take to be the decision. Brand is one of those, and it's one of the most ownable and controllable ones, if not one of the more expensive ones.

Todd Okay, so I'm gonna rephrase it and ask you again just a, a yes or I know this is probably not a black and white yet. Or no answer, but if you, if you had to answer it, yes or no, just answer it. Yes or no. Does brand sell or does it just [00:11:00] signal?

Kelly If you're gonna make me answer, I will say brand sells, but I, I would have to give the reason why I would say that.

Todd Okay, that's good enough. Let's just stick with that. Let's go on to the next one. Um, here's a thought provoking way to frame this up. Is full funnel marketing basically just. Is it even real at this point in time in consumerism with all the different stages of a funnel and touch points in a funnel and activations in a funnel, is it, is it just sort of this convenient planning framework now that we keep sort of hanging onto that it works? Or is there something else going on in the universe that. Dictates how people buy. And this goes back to brand, right? 'cause brand would sit at the top of the funnel, um, at, at brand awareness. But do we, do you still believe that the [00:12:00] traditional funnel of awareness, consideration, purchase, intent, buy, you know, all those, do you think that still exists?

Kelly I think it's kind of a crazy question to ask because I think it's, I think it's, I think it's more important now than it's ever been because we've never been in a noisier and harder to break through and more competitive and more. Difficult to connect with and, and sort of a DD audience and attention starved audiences that there's ever been. And so to think that you can just sort of show up and win with singular tactics, I think is kind of wild. I also know where it came from and we've had this conversation for so long. There was a moment in time not that long ago that it did exist, and quite frankly, Facebook was the main driver of why that happened. We've had this conversation a lot where there was this entire ecosystem that sprouted up where you [00:13:00] could just get a product that had any kind of novelty to it, put it into market. Pretty much a singular type of advertising or, or even influencer type marketing or something like that, and it would go gangbusters and you would get unbelievable returns. That has been mirrored and replicated a little bit now with like TikTok shop and some other things that create this. I don't have to try that hard. I just have to sort of. Be somewhere at the right time with the right thing and have a right combo and I can move. It's, it's sort of the, the concept of like fast fashion versus, you know, long established brand fashion, I think encapsulates a lot of this argument. So. It is possible to not do full funnel. I don't think it is a longstanding and healthy approach to business. I think you could get short-term gains if you're very lucky and you catch a wave or you capture lightning in a bottle. I think it is luck driven and I don't think it, it, there's any control to it. I, I don't think it's a [00:14:00] way to build a business or, or have any sustainability, quite frankly. I think the opposite. I think what you'll see is you'll get brands or companies that get lucky. And then they reach a ceiling, and then they're really stuck in a place where they don't know what to do with themselves. They're like, I've, I've reached my, my pinnacle and now I've never been forced to spend money to get this before. I've never had to build a marketing funnel. I've never had to do these things. Now I want to grow and expand and my organic has sort of reached its plateau and they're at a loss. And they certainly don't like spending the dollars required to sort of make up a lot of ground that they got lucky enough to have to not grind their way into. And so. The full funnel, I think is what gives you the most control over your own destiny and the most data and understanding of how to strategically and, and in an owned way be able to grow and manage your business in that growth. Everything else, if you don't have full funnel and you don't really understand every stage is you're just kind of throwing things out there and [00:15:00] hoping it sticks and hoping you get lucky. The problem is, is sometimes you do get lucky and that creates confirmation bias where it's like, well that works. So my thing must be so great that it doesn't, it, it's better than every other brand that doesn't have to do this. And it can, it almost creates this education of like, I don't need full funnel because I did this thing and it worked well. Yeah, it worked. Now is it gonna work a year from now, five years from now? Is it gonna work when you 10 x it and grow? Like what's the breaking point? There's no knowledge base around that. Um. But the full funnel, knowing how every single, single interaction, the journey, the flow, how people consume the psychology behind things, that's what really gives you a full engine that lets you really say, okay, I can move the the needle here and I can pull this lever and I can insert this, and I can create my own momentum, versus just hoping for Gus of Wind.

Todd So a lot of the work that we're really focusing on is on the front end. Uh, obviously media is, is a big part of what we execute on, but a lot of the. Thinking, critical thinking is [00:16:00] on the front end in communication strategy, thinking about user journeys, thinking about the ui, ux, about the creative, about the message, about the audiences. That stuff all sort of needs to, I think, be built to go through a full funnel experience, customer experience, which I think you're lobbying for is still the most valuable long-term business building framework. Um. So many people, I don't know if they sidestep that or if they just supersize it and skip through it really quick. I, I'm not really sure, but it, it leads me to the next topic, which is, you know, I remember, if you remember back in 2015, we got labeled as a performance marketing company. I was like, that's a, we've talked about this. That's a weird word to call us because when is it not about performance, but. The topic or the question I wanna pose is do, do you think [00:17:00] given all that stuff that's gotta happen on the front end before the ad ever really appears, but in line with the full funnel and in line with maybe brand mattering or not mattering it the last 10 years seems like it's been this just race to ROAS though. But everything's been roas and I wonder if that's sort of stripped out. The soul and the creativity of what advertising was, um, in the Mad Men days. Maybe if you want to give it that credit and or does it even need that anymore? Does advertising, maybe the better way to ask this question is, does advertising even need a soul anymore? Or is it just ones and zeros and algorithms that are manipulating human behavior and that's all it needs to be.

Kelly I mean, again, it's, oh man, there's so many different ways we can go in this conversation because

Todd Keep it around ROAS like is the pursuit of roas, has it [00:18:00] killed everything else because we're just in this pursuit of roas and that is just not allowed us to do all the other stuff.

Kelly I think to a degree it has, right? It puts blinders on, you know, investments that have more wide reaching impacts and setting yourself up for growth and. I think it creates more focus on the short term and the cash flow of things versus again, the medium and the long term. I think, you know, I think the, you know, you referenced the Mad Men days and it's a different world then, right? Like I said, it's a noisier world to break through. I mean, you could, it was easier to capture lightning in a bottle because if something took off, you weren't competing with a hundred thousand other things that are trying all the tricks and the trades and all these other things that are trying to do this. And it's like, you know, we've gotten more. More vehicles to have conversations with consumers, but that again, it just creates fragmentation, noise, ad blindness, you know, lack of trust and authenticity and, and skepticism and, and, and [00:19:00] all of these things. One of the reasons why I think Amazon does so well is they just, they captured everyone. Just being like, okay, this can be my default. I can handle so much in here. I don't have to trust and learn all these other websites. I can just do it all right here. And I think that they, they benefited from that sort of aggregator of, of everything in one place. 'cause people get tired of. So many different directions. I mean, you can do it on mobile and desktop, you can do it, you know, there's so many places, ways, messages, vehicles. Now there's social commerce now there's, you know, there soon there's gonna be, you know, purchase items in directly in chat GPT just by asking for it and not even going to website. Like it's, it's just wild. The, the fragmentation of experience and user behavior. And so trying to get ROAS in this noisy thing is, again, you're just, you're capturing the last mile. It kind of ties to the full funnel thing. It makes me think of this sort of marketing cartoon that I saw not that long ago. And it was a picture of, you know, someone who clearly had just run like the entirety of a marathon [00:20:00] and that was labeled as like full FU funnel marketing. And then they were handing off the baton right at the finish line to last click attribution, which is usually like Google and he and them getting across the line and be the hero. Oh. When all the work was led up prior and, and doing that. And it's just, it's so true that it's like, okay, like. You can be that last thing in the funnel, but we always talk about this. Would I have clicked on that ad if I hadn't seen the streaming TV ad, or if I hadn't driven past the billboard, or if my friend hadn't told me about it, would I have just ignored the Facebook ad as I scrolled by if I hadn't heard about it from a friend or seen it in someone else's hands? Like there's so many things that play into the psychology of why things happen. To assume that you're gonna put up one search ad or one meta ad, and that's gonna go from, I've never heard of you or know about you whatsoever. To, I'm gonna click on your ad and make a purchase. Like it's just, even if you can get that done, it is so limited at how long it's gonna last and how much, how many people are gonna be willing to do that.[00:21:00]

Todd So I'm gonna try and sum up all of that particular conversation around brand and with the idea of. Again, is brand. Is brand in the way we knew it. Brand loyalty, you know, brand everything. Is it, is that pretty much dead in a lot of ways? And should marketers just focus on sort of the convenience and the frictionless experience that gets to the numbers and they just focus on that and just get to the bottom line as quick as possible, or? Is there an alternative to that, which maybe was the past and that's the future.

Kelly I, I think that if I really have to think about it, I think there's more of an ebb and a flow to the way that it should be done than it used to be like before. I feel like maybe, maybe you could grind it out and make all the investments to build this amazing brand and this story. Eventually you could then worry about sales [00:22:00] coming in and, and kind of picking it up. I don't know that you can do that in this day and age. I don't know that I would do that In this day and age, I feel like we live in a, in a rapid prototyping and a rapid proof of concept world where if you have a good idea and you really think you're solving a problem where you've, you've done something better, you, you've created a product that people have a reason to love and like, and has a fit. I think that you can validate that in a smaller group, in a controlled environment with your marketing. You can test that with one audience and one market and, and a couple of things. You can gather your data and your information and then you can make smart decisions as you scale and grow. And that's that whole test and learn, that test and hypothesis process where. evolve the two together, you get your marketing engine going, you know where it connects. You learn from the audience, the unexpected, you adapt. You tell your brand story. You use that validation to grow your brand, to get some of the validation, to get the reviews online. You then showcase and get more eyeballs on those positive reviews, [00:23:00] those client testimonials. You go to a new market, you expand and growth. So I think that ebb and flow of the marketing and the growth and letting them work back and forth. That's, that's really to me, more the right way to do things this day and age versus saying, I'm gonna spend tens of millions of dollars building a brand and just hope I get it right and people will buy it. Or I'm gonna build a product, not worry about brand, and just hope that I can market it and sell it without building any brand. I would do more of a strategic back and forth and kind of prove it, learn, grow, scale, grow, learn. Because then they work and they build, and it's this kind of building blocks thing. That's not the easiest way to do it, but I feel like that's the most controlled and strategic way. The environment and just like, just like rapid prototyping software or you know, design and things. You can go to market, you can prove it and, and honestly some of these things may not work. You may find that there's not a market or a demand or it's too hard to explain and to connect and you're not overly invested, or you can pivot a little bit faster before you can go in. So many of the success stories that, that [00:24:00] we hear of that feel like these overnight successes have. A history of 10 years of grinding it and pivoting it and learning before, you know, they turned into the overnight success that, that everyone thinks that they are.

Todd Yeah, a lot of times you don't see behind the scenes. Um, you mentioned rapid prototyping several times, and that's a good segue into the next thing I wanna talk about, which is creative. Um, do you think, believe in, don't believe in fear, not fear, the evolution of the ability to proto rapidly prototype creative now, especially in the digital advertising. And it'll, and it's probably now worked its way into, you know, full sight sound in motion because of all the new AI tools. Do you think the ability to rapid prototype, visual message, sight, sound, in motion, all [00:25:00] that stuff in an advertising environment driven by an algorithm tied to audience data of. You know, scroll, stop, eyeball speed, all these different things. Do you think that, and I think I, I know what my answer would this be? Which would be the answer would be yes. Do you think that's killing maybe the older versioning of what creative is supposed to be in the first place and how it's supposed to function? And, and do you I like, I have this fear that there's, so, there's such rapid prototyping of, of. Visual art, the visual arts of advertising now, because it's being driven by an algorithm that's telling us in real time whether or not people are reacting to it, that that the old way of thinking about creative and coming up with a great creative idea is gone. Do you think that that's the case?

Kelly I don't, I think it needs to have. Evolve in a [00:26:00] strategic way. I, you know, we used to joke about, you know, the days of creative saying, well, it's the color of the button, or, you know, the font that you use. And I used to joke that, that that shouldn't matter 'cause it doesn't make enough difference. But for the longest time it would make a difference in those types of things. I think the old days of, I have a vision for my product or brand and I'm gonna make it, and then I'm gonna force it onto the world and assume that they're gonna accept it the way I intend them to is probably not the right process. I think that needs to be more of informed and iterative and involved, but I don't think that it should be just left to happenstance or whatever the market's telling you. Um, I, I believe that there's a lot of information and a lot of learning that can be done, and so. Just like different people have different tastes around movies that they like, things they find funny, products and brands that matter. I think generally most brands and products are gonna have an appeal to more than just one group of people. And so the [00:27:00] ability to properly adapt your narrative and your story and your value proposition. To the things that matter, to groups of people who share characteristics, I think can be incredibly valuable if it's done really right and and intentionally. But I do still think you need a core consistent heart of your, of your brand and your story. I don't think individual personalization would make sense because I think people still collectively buy into brands and do so. And, and there's group things, right? You like movies that other people like movie who I don't, I mean, some people might want to go to a movie theater completely by theirself, but for the most part we're social creatures and we like to have social validation and see that we're part of something as well. So I think there's a middle ground to it. I think that there's just this ability to have a constant feedback loop and to be nimble enough to. Iterate and, and segment and create variations to your story. That, again, it all feels part of the same core and heart, but there's little variations, a little choose your own adventure that fits [00:28:00] for, you know, the athletes versus, you know, the, the moms versus men versus female, younger, older, higher income, lower income, things that. Why I choose the things I choose or what connects the dots for me, or what I resonate with, or what grabs my attention might be a little bit different than you. Even if we both can benefit from the product equally, and the ability to factor that into decision making and creative, I think can be incredibly powerful. And one of the limitations to that historically has been creative can be very expensive and take a long time going and doing photo shoots and editing and changing. All that can be incredibly expensive. So to have. 50 variations of a, of a essential story might be impossible before. Well, now you can probably evolve and iterate to that and say, okay, here's the core theme. You know, you can use AI to mold it a little bit for this audience and mold it a little bit to that. And I think we'll see that more and more with the visual AI component. I see that already with the text part of ai, where you know a lot of the. A lot of my use of AI right now is, [00:29:00] is, is training a system and a setup and say, this is my audience. This is what they've responded to. This is how they speak, this is their, their history. Now let's craft a story and a narrative that fits that personality and, and the tones and it, it's gonna help choose the right, you know, sentence structures and ideations and things that just will read better, will, will, will be better. And I think that you can do that visually more and more as these tools get more and more powerful.

Todd Well, the question is though, is that making the idea of creative, again, the, the visual imagery, the sound, the, the copy, you know, everything that goes into advertising, is it making it solace because it is just so informed and created by data signals that it's not? It's not rooted or grounded in the idea that, like, again, if we go back to brand, like this is our brand, these are the values we stand for, this is [00:30:00] the brand personality tone and, and such that we want to evoke and we want to, you know, and, and as a result, our brand products are these services or products and, and they'll be great for people that solve problems. I don't know that any of that matters anymore because it seems to me like AI now is really gonna shapeshift creative and messaging into just data signals. It's no longer gonna be about a master creative brief for a brand and what that brand stands for. It's just gonna be whatever, whatever signals tell. You know, the visual IMA imaging system, AI system, that this is what drives the most sales within a particular audience cohort. Just do more of that. And then, and then, so the whole idea of creative is just, it's gone. It doesn't exist anymore.

Kelly The, the analogy that comes to [00:31:00] mind for me is. And again, I'm not a creative person, so I have no idea how

Todd neither am I,

Kelly by a creative person, but I, I would almost liken it to, if, if before the creative person was the athlete, now they're the coach and they evolve into that. Right now they're guiding it. Now they're providing the, the frameworks. They're still very, very responsible for the outcomes. They're just maybe gonna be less on the court doing it versus being the one sort of coaching a guiding and making sure those outcomes get there and arguably. I mean, a lot of people would say the coach is more important than the player in a lot of ways. So I think that, that there still has to be the heart, there still is the, the Simon Sinek's Why of a brand. You still have to feed the engine and give it guidance and give it consistency. And, and so I still think there's a lot of creativity into that and creating sort of the reference points that, that, that iteration comes off of. But yeah, I mean, I think that end product is gonna get further and further away from being in the soul control over kind of creative people individually.[00:32:00]

Todd Thing. I didn't go into the creative side of advertising. I wasn't good at it anyway. Um, alright. So.

Kelly I mean, it's not that much different on the paid media side of things as well. I mean, as far as audience targeting and decisioning and ad formats and things like that. It's not, it's going a similar way as well.

Todd well, that will be for the next series, uh, continuation of this. I want to talk about, obviously ai, how it's starting to encroach into media, media management, media measurement. Um, is it, is it task or is it brain? Um. I wanna talk about the agency model and, and where does that go relative to, you know, I'm seeing the headlines now that are, that are saying AI is gonna replace media buying, for example, entirely in the next year. Like, you won't need a media agency. There'll be AI systems that you just basically have a look at your website, your product or service you sell. [00:33:00] Tell it who your ideal customer profile is, and it will do it automatically for you. I wonder if that's true. Um, again, is it, is it more task management or is it strategic human smarts? Um, so we'll talk about that and a little bit more about technology and data. So my last question for you is not the last ad you can remember seeing. Um, did you see the news over the weekend about, um, all of the talent agencies wanting to sign this ai? Actress, and do you have an opinion about that?

Kelly I did see it. Um, I think it's interesting around sort of talent agent and, and how that works in, in terms of that. I think my most interesting takeaway that I read throughout all of that was the inherent sort of defensiveness of like, people don't wanna watch just AI yet. And that struck me as very assumptive in that. Sure, maybe not yet, but at the end of the day, I think consumers [00:34:00] will like whatever's quality and best. I don't know that, I don't know that there's gonna be backlash just because it's ai. It would only be if the AI is not good enough to. Truly deliver a quality product. But at the end of the day, I think if it you, good AI actress that you couldn't really tell the difference in, in, you know, and immersed you in the story the same way an act actor, actress does, uh, I, I think the general public would accept it overall

Todd How far away do you think we are in a timeline from the first feature length movie coming out that is all ai, meaning none of the

Kelly we already have that wasn't that avatar.

Todd No, I mean, there's still real actors in there. I mean, those were, you know, there were, there were, you know,

Kelly No, I mean, I'm joking, but like there's, I mean there's

Todd you think that's

Kelly CGI, no, I mean there's definitely CGI movies and it's getting

Todd I don't, I don't mean that. I mean completely ai. So this actress, right? When do you think the first movie is gonna come out? Where all the actors are ai, like this [00:35:00] actress, the males, the females, the leaves, the supporting, the extras, all that and all of the scenery, everything that the movie shot in and around. None of that's real. The whole thing is fake.

Kelly I think you have to quantify that question. When's the first one to come out or when's the first one to come out that will see blockbuster success? Those are wild

Todd I I, no, I'm more after. When do you think the first full length movie, theatrical movie will come out? That

Kelly I don't,

Todd ai.

Kelly I don't, I don't know why we'd all be all that far from, from that, whether or not it would get like blockbuster or level success or, or, or that

Todd come out? A year, six months, two years. What do you think?

Kelly I would say within two years, and maybe that's being too long.

Todd I think within the next two years for sure. Alright, well, uh, lots to talk about on the next, uh, next chat. I'll keep this going for us and um, have a good [00:36:00] day.