What Super Bowl Ads Really Teach Us About Marketing

[00:00:00] Todd: a brand, a marketer should be focused on Building a brand and a customer relationship, not trying to buy a transaction because that's a very short term, shallow sort of outlook.

[00:00:36] Kelly: Hey everyone, Kelly Maguire with Vuja Dé Digital, excited to get into today's topics.

[00:00:41] Todd: Hello everyone, it's Todd Juneau, Kelly's partner at Vuja Dé, and it's Monday, the day after Super Bowl. And, well, I guess if you're a Kansas City fan like me Well, it wasn't a great day. but if you're an Eagles fan, what a great game that was.

[00:00:57] Kelly: Let's be honest, if you're anyone else that isn't a Kansas City fan.

[00:01:00] Todd: yeah. what a good day that was. but I always go into Superbowl less about the teams and all that.

[00:01:07] Todd: And I go into it thinking about the advertising, cause that's the field of work that I'm in. And I was excited to see what was on tap for Superbowl commercials. And it got me thinking about the last couple of weeks at work. Where we've been in conversations and what's come to the surface of those conversations inevitably is always about media and what its purpose is.

[00:01:29] Todd: But more, more recently, what's bubbled back up to the surface is the idea of brand or brand awareness or branding. All these things that we grew up with in the ad industry. And the efficacy or importance of it and there are some schools of thought that sort of still hang on to it's not as important. you know, digital media is so performance based.

[00:01:51] Todd: Now, well, as this row as that, we can just sell stuff online because. We can get ads to put a dollar in and get 4 out type of a thing. And there was a point in time where that seemed to work pretty well. I'll be, it was only for a few years before Meta and Apple and the likes made a bunch of changes. it got me thinking in the last couple of weeks, we were talking about this. I was like, it's interesting to hear people talking about brand again, and the need for branding and brand awareness and building a brand and building authentic. Emotional and indelible sort of impressions and connections with a product or service that you.

[00:02:29] Todd: Actually want to buy at some point in time when you need it. and not because it's what was, on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, because there's a lot of just frivolous purchasing of things, but brands that actually make connections. And I'm reading about it more. I'm seeing in the ad industry trades.

[00:02:45] Todd: There's a lot more talk about that becoming. An important thing again, and I don't think it should have ever not been an important thing, but it's coming back. So fast forward. We've had a couple of conversations last few weeks about that. Then it's Super Bowl weekend and I'm watching the commercials you know, 1 in particular sticks out to me, which is the legacy of the Budweiser Clydesdales.

[00:03:06] Todd: Always being in the Super Bowl, commercials and how I remember those. for my, almost for my childhood, to be honest. but yeah, Budweiser sales have been tanking. I think it's interesting to think about brand again. what does it really mean to people and ultimately what's media's role, in brand building?

[00:03:26] Todd: and is the Superbowl like the ultimate brand building? 30 seconds or 60 seconds. So I'm curious about your opinion about that. And then I also want to talk to you about somebody who I follow on LinkedIn. So I'm just going to throw his name out. Preston Rutherford. the guy who founded Chubbies made hundreds of millions of dollars and made a bunch of money and, now talks about marketing and something that he talks about a lot is brand building. and so he had a post recently that I want to go through. He's got 5 ideas about branding and I want to quiz you on each one of those and see what you think about them. So I want to start out with Super Bowl.

[00:03:59] Todd: and what do you think about the 30 or 60 second multi multimillion dollar spot on Super Bowl as it relates to. Branding is it the ultimate brand moment or is it a lot of money being thrown at stuff just for the hype machine? Like, what do you think about that from a true brand building moment in time?

[00:04:20] Kelly: Yeah, it makes me think about saying it's good work if you can get it right. We always kind of use the Superbowl commercial as the tongue in cheek. what do we have to build off of when we're trying to make media buying decisions?

[00:04:32] Kelly: You know, do you have Superbowl money or do you have, some other budget, right? It's just kind of this reference point in the. The zeitgeist

[00:04:38] Todd: But why do we say that, right? Is Super Bowl money really the ticket to brand? Can you buy your way there? Is that the answer?

[00:04:45] Kelly: And so for me, I think, it's a window into a conversation. That we've had a lot, which is what is performance marketing versus brand marketing and what does that mean? And we've had a lot of these conversations with clients and prospects lately, and it does kind of get me thinking around that.

[00:05:03] Kelly: 1 of the things in 1 of the meetings that we had recently is we were hearing different capabilities and different experiences and different things in different environments and trying to compare ourselves and where do we land as an agency and what we do and what we're tasked with and all of that.

[00:05:17] Kelly: And a thought went through my head that I wouldn't say it's simplest form, but in a different way of looking at what we are tasked with in a marketing role or a media buying role or a marketing role, depending on where you want to fall on the spectrum there is essentially, we're trying to be behavioral change agents, We're trying to create a movement in the behavior of people. That would not otherwise happen if we were not investing these dollars.

[00:05:45] Todd: So don't go too far down that rabbit hole because I'm going to quiz you one by one on those.

[00:05:49] Kelly: will, why I say that is because when you think of it in those terms, where it opens up the thinking towards is what happens when you're moving. Human behaviors. And what are the steps that go through the different behaviors that someone can engage in that lead to what goes into performance marketing, which is the outcomes that drives business it is moving the needle.

[00:06:15] Kelly: I do think that we had different of the environment when we had peak Facebook ads where You could hit people in a certain way in a certain moment that could get people to go from never heard of you to buying in a journey that was not seen before. That was very unusual, and it trained this expectation in this behavior of spend a dollar, get a dollar 1 or more back in immediacy.

[00:06:43] Kelly: and that's where a lot of this direct to consumer came from. It's a lot of that, that behavioral. Again, that was driven by a point in time in an environment that I think was unique, and I think it papered over what is now coming back around, which is what is historically gone into great companies and great businesses, which is that idea of brand, which is that idea of being able to break through and being able to connect with consumers on a short and long term basis and understand The value that a brand or a product brings to the market that creates that.

[00:07:15] Kelly: Why that, why should I care? Why should I pay attention? Why should I believe? And what I see a Superbowl commercial being is that breakthrough is that almost that snowball, right? And you can do it without a Superbowl commercial, but you might be starting with a tiny little snowball. That's going to take a while to get there.

[00:07:32] Kelly: A Superbowl commercial is you're starting with a giant boulder and it just allows you to kind of move that momentum because that's really what we're creating. When we're trying to do that behavioral shift is we're creating momentum. So rather than trying to move people one by one or point of need by point of need, you're trying to create momentum and connection in larger scales.

[00:07:52] Kelly: And I think what a Super Bowl commercial does is, you have significant eyeballs on, you have the ability to anchor or seed an idea or a hook or a point of memory that you can then follow up on and create movement. You will get more people to recognize your brand or your logo or your product or more interest or intrigue so that.

[00:08:12] Kelly: When they do a search later, or when they see a Facebook ad later, or when they see a call to action in an advertising campaign after the fact, they are now anchored in their experience. They have recall, they have understanding and awareness that allows them to pay attention and to notice versus just scroll past or ignore in a much different capacity.

[00:08:32] Kelly: Now, how effective that is obviously has to do with a lot of factors. You're targeting how good the people spending your money are, how good your Super Bowl commercial was. it's why. There's also a lot of different ways you can deliver that initial message. It can be humorous. It can pull on your heartstrings.

[00:08:48] Kelly: It can be controversial. it's gotta be something that creates that starting point to build marketing environment off of. So that's a long way to say is I understand why Superbowl commercials is sort of this shining light of pinnacle advertising experience because. It's one of the only environments where you collectively have such a large amount of people paying attention, such a large swath of different types of people.

[00:09:13] Kelly: you're not getting just one type of person who would normally watch football. You get such a large percentage of the population and a veritability of the types of people being exposed that you can move so much faster and build off of that so much better with that great big starting point.

[00:09:31] Kelly: That great big. headstart that it gives you

[00:09:34] Todd: Yes, all of the above. So Let me ask you just a yes or no question. Do you think Superbowl ads are worth the investment from a brand building perspective, brand awareness perspective?

[00:09:48] Kelly: that is so far from a yes or no question.

[00:09:51] Todd: I know, but I just want to yes or no. Do you think they are or they're not? So

[00:09:56] Kelly: afford it and you can do it well, but I mean, again, there's so many caveats on what percentage of your budget does that represent? What is your product? What are you trying to accomplish? Like all of those things, but all things being equal, if you had unlimited budget and all the right things in place, absolutely.

[00:10:12] Kelly: A super bowl commercial is an incredible starting point for any kind of. Behavioral change. You're trying to create.

[00:10:18] Todd: let's, keep going from that. So I'm going to read a quote, that Preston had in one of his, Posts and it's from Warren Buffett and Warren Buffett says that brand is the number one thing that he looks for. It is the only moat protecting profits from competition. And that's Warren Buffett's name.

[00:10:36] Todd: And I arguably he's a pretty successful guy. Jeff goes on to say that he believes Amazon's most valuable asset isn't their selection or shipping. It's the brand that Amazon has created. So I thought those were a couple of interesting

[00:10:49] Kelly: think you could see lots of examples. I think it's a big reason why Google one, right? Is you had the terminology of Google it. You didn't, no one ever

[00:10:57] Todd: They became a verb. Their brand is not even a brand.

[00:10:59] Kelly: yeah, once you have, I mean, there's also business case examples of it going the opposite direction where Xerox ruined their brand.

[00:11:06] Kelly: their brand reputation where you would say Xerox it and they, somehow lost the foothold of what that meant, but so it's not a and I'll be all, it can be messed up as well, but yes, there's a component of that where to me, the way that I would articulate that is the difference between spending to create a sale versus spending to create a customer, you know, a customer is someone that's going to come back to you.

[00:11:27] Kelly: That's going to naturally experience. And you're going to have that lifetime value versus the. Yeah. I have a need. You have a solution. We're going to match right then and there. and the next time you're just going to keep repeating that and hopefully you're getting me at the right time.

[00:11:39] Todd: Yeah. Well, all right. So that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to go through, these five things that Preston, posted about, cause I think it's great and I want to get your opinion on it. So the 1st 1 that he talks about is what's called the 95 5 rule and that being the new 60 40 rule.

[00:11:55] Todd: so the key points of this is that only 5 percent of buyers and you talk about this all the time, only 5 percent of buyers are generally in market to buy a product or service at that moment. or in any given moment, and that marketing increases the probability, of what comes to mind when a buyer does go in market to buy something.

[00:12:15] Todd: and so that, you focus on the 95 percent because 5 percent are ready. So that's great if you can capture them, but the 95 percent aren't ready. How do you address the 95 percent that aren't ready,

[00:12:27] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, we've seen this. We have a couple of other analogies that we've seen in use. I mean, we've seen Google use their Zmod. There's our moment of truth, How do you nurture it? I think some one of the analogies that we've used in a lot of these conversations is the idea of an apple orchard, Where you can pick your low hanging fruit, There are people that are in need, ready to go. You just kind of have to tip them over the edge. But that tends to be the lowest point of the funnel and a finite universe. And if you focus too heavily there, you sacrifice the longterm, which is the opportunity to grow that where that 95 percent represents that planting of the orchard, the development of the opportunity, the getting people in place with all of the things that they need to know in order to get through the steps to.

[00:13:12] Kelly: Being convinced to part with their dollars. And that to me is what presents the opportunity to buy against, to say at some point, someone will be at a mindset with the resources at hand and the willingness to buy and the readiness to spend the time it takes to get through there. And yes, you need to show up when that happens so that they don't get distracted.

[00:13:35] Kelly: We live in an environment with very distracted, very easily. Diverted attention. and so you want to capture and not lose that. This is why brands have to buy their brand terms on search, even though everyone hates doing that, because it feels like wasted money. But the reality is, is it's too easy for that traffic to get diverted or stolen away or not get to the point that you really want them to be.

[00:13:56] Kelly: But really, in order to get people to even pay attention and go through that, they have to go through that. That traditional funnel that we always talk about. First of all, they need to know you exist. What have they ever even heard of your name or your logo or what you do? do they know where and how to buy?

[00:14:12] Kelly: Do they know what the options available to them are? Do they know what to do? Or are you just sort of dumping people into a pool the deep end and hoping that they struggle to swim and find their way to you? So. it's training and creating habits and creating efficient paths to the outcomes that you want.

[00:14:29] Kelly: And these are the vehicles that marketing and good marketing can really fulfill. You can understand what does it take someone to have a need and discover you? What does it take them to go from discovery of you and convince themselves that it's a worthwhile investment? What are the distractions along that path?

[00:14:47] Kelly: What are the considerations and the hurdles? Is there bad sentiment? Is there bad reviews? Is there positive endorsement from celebrities? These are all the things in the components you have to think about and figure out what do you want people to be exposed to and to learn about? And what do you want to counterbalance and offset that might prevent them from going through?

[00:15:06] Kelly: Maybe they think it's expensive. Maybe they think it's not actually going to live up to those promises. You really have to think about what goes into someone making that behavioral change, that decision, and start to address what you can to kind of ping pong along that so that no one, diverts early.

[00:15:22] Kelly: it's something that I think becomes a critical part of making the decisions of why and how and where you invest. And they becomes really important when you're trying to do what I would call challenger budgets, When you're trying to do this where you have to maximize your return in order to have the availability of the next dollar to control this market.

[00:15:41] Kelly: It's easy, again, it's relatively easy to do this when you have Super Bowl money. When you have Coca Cola money and you can just a Red Bull money and you can jump people out of space just to create some awareness and intrigue and draft off of it. When you have to work bottom up and be scrappy with your dollars.

[00:15:57] Kelly: You have to be able to take chances, but calculated chances that allow you to learn and pivot and spend the next dollar better so that you can get to what you want to be. Otherwise you can just burn through a bunch of big ideas and it's. You might as well put it on a roulette table. It's 50 50 of that's whether or not you're going to get any kind of outcome from it.

[00:16:16] Todd: That's 50 percent of my marketing works. I never know what 50 percent it is. so let's talk about, there's, is there some optimal split between. maybe the brand marketing and more of the activation or performance marketing, our mentor and our original agency coined the phrase brand response.

[00:16:33] Todd: And it was never that branding or performance were mutually exclusive of each other, but they actually lived together in the same ecosystem. And so we're often also challenged with figuring out, well, what's the right balance of brand and performance. So how do you think about that? do you Start out with a point where you, you're pretty reasonably sure that like, this is usually the best place to start, but data is going to shift this sort of mix very quickly. Or how do you tend to think about if you had an advertiser and you've got a full funnel budget and set of objectives, like, what's, is there a split that comes to mind?

[00:17:09] Kelly: So I like this question because it allows me to answer that follows a theme and a lot of what our podcasts talk about and what we try and emphasize, which is some people will have you believe that there is a blueprint, a rule of thumb, this is what you do. And this, that's fundamentally against what I believe, which is every.

[00:17:27] Kelly: every product, every moment in time is unique to what is best set up for that. And has to be considered in that way. Now, there are not rules of thumb, but there are generalities that you kind of start in considerations you think about. But there are nuances and variables that have to be factored in, in my opinion, to every brand.

[00:17:48] Kelly: And this is where you need the creative and the critical thinking to evaluate every situation uniquely and say, what do I believe the existing market demand is? What is the chain? Is the patterns that exist in the marketplace that suggest people actively want this product or what I would sometimes say is one of the hardest and worst case scenarios for a product is when you are solving a problem that consumers don't even yet know about or isn't well known.

[00:18:17] Kelly: Now you're paying to both point out the issue and convince people that you are a good solution to that issue. And we've run into clients where this is a big challenge of them. They're like, Hey, we have this question. Yeah. Product and it solves this problem. And the first thing we have to look at is it makes sense when you tell me about it, but if a lot of people aren't sitting there with this pain point, thinking about this problem, you first have to illuminate the problem and then sell the solution to it, which is a two part marketing problem, which becomes very expensive.

[00:18:47] Kelly: And so I go back to, you have to look at. What's the competition level, what's the marketing temperature, if you will, that's going, what is, do you have positive or negative momentum? Do you have anything that helps you break through your own version of the Super Bowl commercial? I'm going to keep using this.

[00:19:03] Kelly: Do you have a celebrity endorsement? have you won an award? Are you well rated online? Do you have something that gives something, gives people something to anchor on, to believe in that we can use media to generate exposure to and to get people to pay attention? And to then generate that first party data to Zen, then say, people now know about us.

[00:19:23] Kelly: People have engaged with us. What do we need to show them as the next step to get them to where we want them to be? And again, yes, there are things that typically work and that you can know about industries, but ultimately it's evaluating each brand and product and what their opportunity and challenges are and creating solutions and decisions of.

[00:19:43] Kelly: Hey, you need to really nurture the market and make sure there's lots of people that understand your problem before we try and sell to them. Or no, there is a lot of people in a lot of talk about this and you have the best solution. We just need to get you in front of them quickly and make the path of purchase easy.

[00:20:00] Kelly: There's all different ways that you can. Invest your dollars on different things that make sense for you in that moment, in that time,

[00:20:07] Todd: Well, it's interesting about that is what we most often encounter is a marketing person or C suite, a CMO person who just believes that their product is the greatest thing ever. And it solves, X, Y, Z problem or provides X, Y, Z benefit. And that, of

[00:20:22] Kelly: as they should, who starts a product or company thinking they don't have something unique or valuable or good.

[00:20:27] Todd: Yeah. But everybody thinks that everybody should just instantly adopt and buy their product or service because of course they have that problem. Why wouldn't they buy, my product or brand? I, it's just surprising

[00:20:38] Kelly: from this. We think this all the time as well. When we've done different things that there's no possible way that someone goes in not believing that they have something worth buying. Well, I should say the vast maturity should go in not believing that they have something worth buying. And then.

[00:20:52] Kelly: To kind of rain on the parade and be like, not everyone is sitting there with your mindset and your mentality and your position and your knowledge base and your experience or any of these things that make them care about what you've built. And that is what marketing is meant to do. It is meant to foster the environment necessary to make your product viable.

[00:21:12] Kelly: And there's a lot of things that can mean just. Making people know about it to literally educating them into even what they should be upset about before they need a solution to it. And that's a big, big spectrum with a lot of dollars associated depending on the environment around it.

[00:21:27] Todd: yeah, a a lot of times people don't even know they need a product or service because they don't they're not even aware of the problem that it solves until you make them aware of that. So, I want to talk about 1 of the things we face in this sort of when we approach things with the belief that a full funnel sort of marketing and media mixed strategy is needed, which means there's.

[00:21:46] Todd: A portion of whatever that split is, wherever we start, there's a portion of that that sits at the upper funnel. And the idea of being able to measure that is instantly what the conversation always becomes about as well. that's not going to lead to somebody clicking and buying. How do we measure that?

[00:22:02] Todd: And I think there are a lot of ways to measure that. by and large, what we're trying to. Like you say, we're trying to influence sort of attitudinal behaviors and recall of. Things. And so I want to talk about when we're trying to do that, that's the objective. That's where the investment strategy goes.

[00:22:21] Todd: We're trying to create awareness, attitudinal shift in perceptions, recall, things like that. That's not an immediate revenue producer. That's not an immediate sale. So in your experience, either in the past or where are you seeing things in the future going that connect the dots between I made, you Upper funnel.

[00:22:43] Todd: I need to make people aware of my product and service and the rest of it's going to be, you know, giving them consideration reasons why it solves a problem and ultimately it gives them a call to action to buy it. But. What's the measurement strategies that you think are the ones that key in on for the upper funnel things?

[00:23:02] Todd: Is it looking at downstream things like search, search, share impressions and volumes increasing or changing? Is it, lift studies? what are all the mechanisms that you think can validate somebody putting an investment in upper funnel brand building? Media and creative when it's not going to yield something right away.

[00:23:21] Todd: So how do we make somebody feel comfortable and confident that don't worry? We're going to look for these things downstream and if we see those things we'll know this is working and it will pay off Better long term than your analogy of if we just pick all the fruit at the bottom of the orchard.

[00:23:36] Todd: Eventually, it's all gone

[00:23:38] Kelly: Yeah, I think this becomes another really important part of the conversation, which is. Taking that step back and understanding that ideal marketing is is a bigger picture component of a business strategy where it is influencing the overall outcomes of the business, and it's not just a. Again, a cost center of dollar in dollar out or dollar one out as simple as that and being able to understand that you have to be able to take a macro look at the overall positioning of your business in your market and the things that drive it and create correlation and connections that help you understand the momentum and the movement of your overall opportunity and it.

[00:24:23] Kelly: I highlight that because the further you get from investing a dollar to the action that you want the more variables get introduced that may not even be marketing related that prevent that journey from being completed. And this is becomes really important because. You not only open up the conversation on how do you measure it and how do you understand if those investments are viable, but forces you to look at your overall business set up and whether or not you are properly set up to capitalize on those middle and upper funnel investments.

[00:24:58] Kelly: If you're bringing a lot of horses to the water. But you have a website problem and a conversion problem or a reputation problem or a pricing challenge or a competitive challenge, all these things that can get people distracted on those journeys or, or easily come into creating this doubt and this reason for them to leave or not convert the, being able to look at that and analyze that and understand that data that that produces.

[00:25:26] Kelly: To identify those, this isn't an overall marketing engine, right? This isn't just performance media buying. This is understanding how do I invest in giving myself the opportunity? How do I make sure that I am properly set up to capitalize on that opportunity? And how do I look at the ROI and what that looks like for growth in future investments and future decisions?

[00:25:45] Kelly: And that becomes really important. And so you have to be able to understand how much is available to me for that quick return. How much do I need to look at that bigger journey? But am I looking, do I have the right messaging, the right creative, the right, again, website, am I selling in all the right places?

[00:26:01] Kelly: You throw in other variables. If your business is operated through third party retailers, where you don't have first party understanding where it's like, I have to get people. Wanting my product, but they have to go to a different store or a different location and interact in a different way that I don't even get direct visibility into for that measurement.

[00:26:19] Kelly: So all of that brings me back around to answering your question, which is, you have to look at proxy signals, things that indicate movement that are positive towards the outcomes you want that can be everything from. Impressions and market to targeted users to engagement rates to social sentiment and conversations to branded search volume to website traffic to overall correlation, mixed media modeling that shows business results correlated in time based on, historical regression analysis on the relationship between investments and business outcomes in totality.

[00:26:53] Kelly: can be lift measurement between test and control markets. There's lots of ways that you can develop access to data that tells you when you're spending dollars. How is the market reacting to that? And how are things shifting for or against what I ultimately need people's behavior to be to get me more opportunity for that ROI.

[00:27:14] Kelly: So again, this is where you need critical creative thinking. You need people that can understand the technologies that are available. The math. That it takes to to develop algorithms and regression analysis that may connect these dots with a certain levels of data significance, just people that have the mentality to think about if I go and get 100 million impressions on a Super Bowl commercial, what does that mean?

[00:27:38] Kelly: And what do I expect to happen over the next day, week, month, year? And how will I look for whether or not I'm seeing those outcomes? And how do I have control over getting the outcomes that I want? If I look at that as a starting point. So again, this is part of the marketing thinking that has to go into why we spend these dollars and what the next best thing is that has to exist.

[00:27:59] Kelly: And that's where the partnership of critical thinking, creative thinking, experience talent comes into, which is far beyond. Yeah, I have someone that's buying Google ads for me and bidding on keywords on my behalf. I mean, it's a big difference between what, those can be.

[00:28:14] Todd: Yeah, I mean, I liken that to, you know, your marketing being focused on trying to buy a transaction versus trying to develop a customer relationship, like you said early on, that is going to last the lifetime of my. Sort of brand customer experience versus buying one transaction in my media specifically

[00:28:31] Todd: designated for that

[00:28:32] Kelly: it's the buying a transaction and a customer, it's also how much control over the outcomes do you want to have, are you just throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping something sticks and leaving people to their own devices, or are you truly trying to have the ability to guide and nurture people through each thing that you believe will result in what you want?

[00:28:51] Kelly: so how much control or randomness do you want to have in your marketing and the outcomes?

[00:28:58] Todd: I'm just going to throw it all against the wall. Who cares? All right, let's wrap up. So, I think the takeaway is that our belief is you, a brand, a marketer should be focused on Building a brand and a customer relationship, not trying to buy a transaction because that's a very short term, shallow sort of outlook.

[00:29:17] Todd: I think that's where we stand on that. So last question is, I normally ask you what's your, what's the last ad you recall, but this time we'll just ask, did you have, did you watch the Super Bowl? And if you did watch it, is there a commercial that stood out to you that you thought was funny or good?

[00:29:32] Todd: Do you think there's a commercial that somebody ran that they're thinking is going to? Somehow there's going to be a million sales today from it. what did you think of the commercials? If you saw any of them,

[00:29:42] Kelly: Yes, did watch watched a lot of the commercials. and a lot of them stood out to me. I think the thing that comes to mind for me right now that I thought was interesting were the commercials that had what I recognized as a long lead up with a big payoff to the Super Bowl commercial. The one that comes to mind for me is the Uber Eats one with the Matthew McConaughey that keeps talking about how football is a conspiracy to get people to again, it's not that I love that or it's out of this world, but there was so much variability and lead up an investment with a big payoff coming into it.

[00:30:16] Kelly: that I thought that was really interesting. There was another one. I think the homes. com one. I had seen a lot of social posts

[00:30:22] Todd: Jesus Christ, dude, homes. com. How many spots did they run in the super bowl? Oh my God. Funny, really good and funny, but wow.

[00:30:31] Kelly: yeah, and I had seen a lot of lead up to it on Hey, we're gonna announce something on this date. It's coming that things will never be the same and so again that pre planning that bigger component of it. that's what struck me is the, is the thing, the forethought and the, thinking lead up and then the big payoff.

[00:30:49] Kelly: And then what will be very interesting is kind of what I said, which is the snowball effect, which is it presents an opportunity, but what is the after effect? what is the cultivation of all of that kind of presence and seed building? Look like what is the strategy to turn that into a cool and interesting outcome and actually translate that to business outcomes and behavioral shifts that would not have otherwise work.

[00:31:14] Kelly: So it's a great setup. I'd be really curious what the performance aspect coming out of that looks like. And honestly, I wouldn't know this, but it'd be interesting to know that the difference in, I mean, that is an unbelievable amount of money that went into that setup. I wonder if they have just as much or way less or way more that is meant to then turn that into great homes dot com.

[00:31:37] Kelly: You got me. I'm thinking about it. We're talking about it right now, but that's actually got a result in someone using that website for money driving action that goes to the bottom line. That offsets all of that investment. What does that look like? How are you capturing people when they have a point of need where that service is viable to solve their problem that they choose you and that they get there and you get a community of people that all use it because a couple of people use it for that reason.

[00:32:03] Kelly: They got the word of mouth from it. again, it's all these ripple effects that marketing can have. If you can take a step back and have that big pitch picture thinking around it.

[00:32:12] Todd: Yeah. Well, I thought the homes. com ads were. Very creatively well done and I had not thought about that company, but I am thinking about it now, but I don't need them. So, I'm in the 95 percent category right now. If I don't need you right now, but maybe, later in the, future, I won't need you.

[00:32:27] Todd: So thanks for, sharing your thoughts on brand. it's an interesting thing that's come back to the surface and I'm very happy that it's come back to the surface because I really disliked the era that we were in where. Everybody just expected us to put a dollar in and give them five bucks back out.

[00:32:44] Todd: I just never thought that was going to have any life stability or, or sustainability to it whatsoever from a marketing standpoint. And if it did, I don't know that I don't know how long I would stay doing this.

[00:32:56] Kelly: a lack of accountability in what people were doing. Like, I feel like if you're trying to build a long term brand, you are accountable to the quality of your product and the positioning of your company in the marketplace and how you treat people and the experiences you build.

[00:33:09] Kelly: And, I think it's, the capitalistic component of, if you have to earn that business, the outcomes for everyone are a little bit better versus You operate in this space. You like this. It's kind of the fast fashion thing, right? If you're able to just spring something up, you don't have to be worried about the environmental effects and the reputation it creates or you know what it takes to get in there.

[00:33:29] Kelly: You're just gonna spring something up. You're gonna make a lot of money and you're gonna be like, okay, that was a big win. I think it's just better for everyone. If If the businesses that are trying to get our resources are accountable for how they go about doing that because they have to do more than just make a product and get in front of us at the perfect time.

[00:33:47] Todd: I agree. I think brand building is, is important and that's the part of marketing and advertising that I enjoy and hope to see more of. So good to see you. And, I will talk to you next Monday about something totally different.

[00:34:00] Kelly: Sounds great. Thanks everyone.