October 13, 2021 • 53 mins
Monica Padman, Co-creator, Co-host and Producer of the ever-expanding Armchair Expert podcast umbrella joins us in Adlandia. Monica talks about why relatability is key and opens unexpected introductions. Monica also explains how creating a safe space for their guests allows the shows to explore vulnerable topics and how her work as an improv actor taught that going super specific is the greatest way to be universally relevant. She also walks us through how marketers can better tune into and collaborate with creators, and her wish list of brand partnerships. Plus, don't miss Laura and Alexa debate whether more is more when it comes to media buying models.
Our partners at Yieldmo return for part 2 of our 4-part series on how they are reimagining contextual targeting.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
going to have to start making better content. I think
we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen.
(00:28):
Welcome back at Landia. So, Alexa, recently I sent you
a picture that is circulating the Internet of a Netflix billboard,
and I thought we might start there. I have a confession.
I have to tell you something. I saw that and
I like started to sweat. When I was like two three,
Yahoo had a billboard to billboards one in Times Square
(00:52):
one in San Francisco, just like the Netflix billboard. And
guess who had to program the content on that billboard.
Guess guess who yours? Truly it was me? Every week
a new message and guess what I did? But wait,
were you changing the messaging yourself or not? It wasn't
(01:13):
climbing a ladder, Laura. I was going into the visual
of you not only concepting, but producing and actually executing.
That would be amazing. No, But I concepted the copy
and then I had to send it to the installer
who would go up and put up the letters. Right.
So this is like two thousand and three, two thousand
(01:35):
and four, I was like a bitty boo in the
agency world, and I get this call from my client
for freaking out, like the Internet had broken. And I
was like, what what's wrong? And they were like, you
put the u r L on the billboards incorrectly And
you would think like all of Yahoo went down, but
(01:55):
now but now it was a slight change of the dot.
The dot was in the wrong place for the U
r L. That was my biggest career fumble. You could
call it a fumble, or you could have asked to
see the back end visits to know whether or not
your billboard was an effective traffic driver, a truly unique
(02:17):
Alexa Christian u r L. It was a truly unique
Alexa Christian you are L. And in fact it was
a hundred percent bounced percent bounce on that U are
L shining moment. Then the Netflix copy couldn't be more
on brand Alexa. The copy said, don't give up on
your dreams. We started with DVDs, I started with incorrect
(02:43):
U R L and the full circle. I think that's
where the show begins and maybe hands today. So Alex,
we have a great guest on the show today, Monica
Padman from Armchair Expert is here, so good. But before
we get into the Monica interview, we had a really
good conversation last night. I called you last night because
(03:04):
something has been bothering me, something that actually this episode
got me thinking about in a slightly different way, and
it's in context to what's been happening in the news
with media outlets in the last two weeks and something
that Monica said and you guys will hear this in
the episode. The Armchair onm Brella has a huge, huge audience, right,
(03:29):
They do like twenty million downloads a month just on
Armchair Expert, like on their main show, which just just
to put that in context, Tom Brady came back to
play the New England Patriots Sunday Night Football doing twenty
point five million viewers. So just to give some context
as to the universe that we're talking about here, and
(03:51):
that's Armchair Experts doing that monthly. And so when we
brought that up to Monica in the episode. She was like,
we don't think about that. I don't want to think
about that. In fact, I don't even want to hear
that number. And it got me thinking about how are
we actually quantifying and more importantly qualifying what is good
(04:15):
in media? And Laura, you said something to me last night.
We've gotten in the game of more is more? But
is it is it really more is more the goal?
Because as we go into the issues that have come
up in the last week with media companies, they've been
chasing scale, the race to the bottom, and that's become
(04:38):
the measuring stick, which is how big is your audience?
Because you can sell more ads, how do you get
to more eyeballs? And what's happened is through years, right,
what you and I ended up talking about last night
was what's the solve Because as long as media is
race to the bottom, more is more volume volume volume
(05:01):
buying on a CPM. Until that changes, we are going
to see media outlets continue to put profit over great content,
over people over what's right, and we will constantly see
some form of inflation of those numbers. So, in building
(05:23):
on that, bridging last week's episode to this week's episode.
There was something that Austin said in our conversation with
Morning Brew on our last episode that really stuck out
to me and I can't stop thinking about it. When
he was talking about receiving one of their first big
(05:44):
RFPs from from a major advertiser, they RFP for a
range of budget and as part of that conversation, he
posed a question which was, well, how big does our
audience have to be to warrant your five thousand dollar
(06:07):
commitment or RFP? And it's sat with me because there's
a common denominator here that we've applied as buyers in
the industry that the same model or methodology I applied
to buying a major broadcast network would be the same
(06:29):
methodology I apply to buying a niche newsletter. When I
think about people raising their hand, subscribing to a newsletter,
spending five plus minutes with the newsletter, sharing the newsletter,
coming back the next day in their inbox, opening the newsletter,
it's a different behavior than being exposed to a thirty
(06:51):
second spot on television, But yet I buy it the
same way. Is that correct? So last night, after we
got off the phone, which you know, I went on
the Internet to try to figure out the origin of
the CPM model. I would love to have somebody in
Landia come on the show and take us through the
origins of the CPM model and why it hasn't evolved
(07:14):
into modern media. And I think the thing that we're
getting to today is the creator economy and Web three
might just be the thing that breaks the model. It
breaks the model, and it has to break the model.
It has to break the model. That's what's so exciting
about this. When we talk about media capturing audience, the flip.
(07:41):
The flip is audience voting with their wallet on that media.
I mean Twitter, tip Jar is an example of that
sub stack, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This is not, by the way,
this is not a drill. What's going to happen as
more audiences fragment and they start to find who and
(08:05):
what speaks to them, that's when you start to see
the hockey stick. That's when you start to see the growth.
That's when you buy the T shirt. It's exactly right,
it's the t shirt, it's the ticket sale. It is
a difference between monthly active users and fandom, and fandom
and the metrics that you quantify for fandom as opposed
(08:30):
to passive scale. It's just like we're talking about a
different model. It's a totally different game. Kicking us back
into the Monica episode, there are a couple of gems
in here that could be ignored and it's what hooked
me and got me thinking about this stuff last night,
(08:52):
which was volume versus specific and are those things. It's
very similar to the common station we had with Alex
and Austin, which is niche and scale are not mutually exclusive.
You can have niche and you can have scale. The
specificity specificity why specific is universal. So with that, Atlantia,
(09:16):
we hope you love this. Listen, we'll be right back
al right at Landia. We are back with our partners
that yield Mo. If you remember, we spent our first
mini series talking about how yield Mo works with brands
to make audience attention actionable and in this mini series
(09:36):
we take on how contextual targeting is being reimagined as
brands make every interaction with their consumer meaningful. Welcome Lisa Bradner,
GM of Data and Analytics from yield Mo. Thank you
so much, great to be back. Always great to talk
to you guys. Lisa, how does real time factor into
context irrelevance? Real time for contextual is critical because if
(10:00):
you don't have that audience signal that says I know
who this person is and I know the message I
gave them previously, you need those real time signals to
say and I serving the right creative or not? Is
this message hitting or not. In addition, so much media
is now integrating commerce that that window between exposure and
(10:21):
sale is getting shorter all the time. So if you're
not real time, you may miss a sale. Right, It's
not just you're missing the impression, you actually missed the
opportunity to close the sale. So being able to quickly
optimize and adjust and using machines to do that is
how you're going to increase your row as your r
o I, your sales overall. It's a critical component to
(10:44):
marketing and advertising today. And if we need to get
that close to increasing the potential of that sale conversion engagement,
what are the implications that marketers need to be thinking
about in optimizing the process. I think there's a lot
of things that and then marketing that we need to
turn on their head. I would challenge the first thing
(11:07):
we should do is take the c DJ right, the
consumer decision journey, throw it out and rethink it right.
We've always come at it from oh we you know,
Laura likes to listen to radio when she's up in
the morning, and then she comes home and checks her
phone for weather, and then she watches TV. As a marketer,
I don't know what to do with that. I suggest
that we turn it on their head and say, what
(11:29):
do I want to communicate throughout my day? What is
the right message, when, where and why for my customers
and match the media and creative to that. I think
we're really on the edge of marketers coming back and
really owning that customer experience. And instead of worrying about
(11:50):
each individual and thinking if I can just collect enough
data about you, I can get you to buy me,
they're going to take a healthy step back to saying
who is my brand, where does it belong, and how
should I show up in each of these environments and
when to do that effectively, your creative and media strategies
have to be completely linked, right. You can't build out
(12:12):
the entire creative campaign and they say, oh, yeah, I
guess we should have a media plan for this. You
should be building that media plan and then building the
creative notes that go with each step of that media plan.
So instead of having a consumer decision journey, it should
be the brand decision journey and mapping the creative and
media to match all that. Thank you, Lisa Bradner and
our partners at yield MO. Looking forward to having you
(12:34):
back for part three of our four part series Welcome
Back at Landia. We're super excited if you have a
special guest with us today. Monica Padman is joining us
in Adlandia. Monica is the co creator, co host and
producer of Armchair Expert. Welcome Monica, Monica, Hi, thanks for
(12:58):
having me. We're so excited to have you. I have
to shout out our friend Brad Grossman at Zeit Guide,
who connected us and was like it was hilarious. Actually
he texted me he said, do you know Monica Padman?
I wrote back, No, why would I know, Monica Padman.
So you're gracious enough to come on the show and
talk to us about audio podcasting talent and the breakout
(13:22):
show that you and Dak Sheppard have created, and I
don't want to Actually it's not even a show anymore.
It's a network yeah, it's a true network. So Laura
and I have read all of the things, right, like
how you and Dax kind of got started. I think
people can read about that. It's a great story arguing
about serial dak saying I'm really interested in podcasting. You
(13:45):
guys have created something amazing. I think there's a lot
of magic in the relationship that you have. Obviously you
have a really strong perspective about the programming of the show,
how you edit the show, how you produced the show,
the shows that you've selected. It as the kind of
network has started to really mature all of those things.
So that's the kind of stuff we want to talk about.
(14:06):
But before we get into that, really talk about when
I was reading I think it was the l A
Times article that was profiling the show and really got
deep into a little bit more detail. And one of
the things that they said was Monica presented Dax with
the business plan. So Dax said, I want to do this,
and you presented him with a business plan. But nowhere
(14:29):
could I find what the business plan actually said. So Monica,
what was in the business plan? Well you probably haven't
found details on that, because that's a really h that's
really fancy way of saying what happened by saying that
I proposed a business plan. Really what happened is he said,
(14:50):
I kind of want to do a podcast. It goes
really nonchalant, and I was like, okay, let's do it.
I'll figure it out. So that was kind of the
business plan I suppose. Um. And then from there, from
there I was like, oh, I gotta I guess I
gotta figure it out. UM. So I approached via my therapist.
(15:15):
This is so bizarre, but my I found my therapist.
It's not gonna their podcast. I was listening to this
amazing podcast called Totally Lame that I used to love
so much, and it's it's no longer a recurring podcast,
but it was so good and my therapist was on
it randomly before she was my therapist, and I heard
(15:37):
her and I was looking for a therapist. So I, like,
you know, reached out to like hello at totally lame
dot com whatever they're like general email was, and I
was like, can I have the email for this therapist?
And they sent it to me and so she's my
therapist now. Um. And then I sort of reverse engineered
that and reached out to my therapist, and I was like,
(15:58):
can you please connect me to Elizabeth? That totally lame.
I'd like to pick her brain on this. So she
did and I met with her, and then I sat
in on a recording and like watched how they did
it UM, and I left and I thought, Okay, we
can do this. UM might be easy to bring in
(16:22):
a third person who can like do the sound board
and I don't have to worry about that. So we did.
We brought on Rob and then from there we kind
of really got into the weeds on what we wanted
the show to be. You know, I have a lot
of opinions. Dax has a lot of opinions. Luckily, in
(16:43):
business they often align. In many other ways they never align,
which is part of the fun, but in business they do,
so you know. He he considers himself an armchair expert,
which is a hilarious phrase. He learned an anthropology and
call it into it where you think you know everything
about everything. I must say, it's a really compelling like
(17:06):
you get it instantly right, which just as marketers were
always thinking about how do you communicate directly without having
to kind of click in Well, yeah, I mean I
think generally and ax is just really really really good
in general at naming stuff, um, you know, titling scripts
and everything. So that's that's sort of his whealhouse in general.
But um, it is true like I think in marketing.
(17:31):
And I also was a double majored in theater MPR,
so I took a lot of marketing classes as well
and lived in that world for a bit. And so
I just think relatability is, yeah, the key. It's the
key across the board. And everyone knows someone who's an
(17:55):
armchair expert or who themselves is considers themselves an arm
track expert, like I know it all essentially, Um, everyone
has one of those in their life. So you can
immediately click into that when you hear it. I think
that's sort of one of the powerful things about that
title in general, um and and titles overall that attract me.
(18:18):
It's like if your brain can connect into something personal,
you're like you're half the battle is done. I think. Well,
also a level of accessibility to yeah exactly. I think
you just like described everything a marketer is trying to do.
By the way, like period, like you can get all
this fancy shit, but that's what a marketer is trying
to do ultimately, how do I relate my product whatever
(18:42):
that is to you exactly? And now where it's getting
cool is in fans and community and creativity and opening
that stuff up I think with more players hopefully right uh,
in places we didn't expect them. So, Monica, you had
the business plan, which is I'll figure it out to
(19:04):
meet Rob. Rob joins the team. How did you begin
to think about the thesis for the show and how
you were going to program it? And was there a
playbook that you kind of set out to deliver on
or was it iterative? And as you grew you sort
of learned where the sweet spot was. I think both.
So we both loved Sam Harris's podcast It's now called
(19:27):
Waking Up with Sam Harris. We loved that show and
and and love that show still, UM and a lot
of our debates were centered around Sam's podcast every week,
and we love that format. It was just an interview show,
you know, but Sam is a genius. I think by
like real metrics, he's he is a genius, and so
(19:52):
his questions were not normal, you know, they were very specific,
in very different, very unique to his brain, which lad
these interviews into such um interesting territory, I think, And
so we just wanted to replicate that, not replicate what
(20:16):
Sam did, but replicate an interview show that's very authentic
to us and what we think about in the way
our brains work, which is a lot of vulnerability and honesty.
Those are kind of the main tenants. And you know,
decks coming from a a so focused on progress not perfection, Um,
(20:41):
the journey, not the result. You know, all of those things,
and any aligned with all those things too, just cause,
and so that has always been what we've been been
interested in talking about. Like you know, we always say
we're not interested in the day you won the Emmy,
but the two weeks after when you're out of work
and you don't know what to do, because that's the
(21:02):
thing we can all relate to. So um. Yeah, so
we always knew, like intellectually this is the show, but
we didn't really, of course, know what the show was
until we started it, until we started testing it out
and doing it, We didn't know what we were doing
at all. Um. The first episode was with Kristen and
(21:24):
I didn't say anything. I sat there, I had no words, like,
I didn't know, We didn't know, We didn't know what
it was going to be. And we had Chris Hardwick
on pretty early on in the show and he gave
some great advice which was like, yeah, do a little research,
but don't be afraid to not not look at it,
(21:45):
because that for our first few were like a little
bit more regimented in that way because it was like
real question. You know THATX had a list of questions
and he wanted to get to them and it felt
a little more confined planned. Yeah, and I think us
doing the fact check kind of helped with that because
that is a space where we could really be us
(22:07):
and not even could really be us. We had to
be like we just didn't even have an option. We're
just the two of us in a room. It's gonna happen.
We're gonna argue, we're gonna laugh, we're gonna make jokes. Uh,
we're gonna get mad at each other. Like you know,
these are all just the realities of our friendship. And
there's no We're not good at hiding it or making
it look pretty. I mean you can tell, you can
(22:29):
really tell on our fact checks the ones where we
have just had a fight. Um, we tried to be
We try to put it aside and be professional and
have fun on on the factor. But I mean, we're
just not good at it. Like we are very much
um animals of our emotional state, which is normally good
(22:51):
and fun, but you know, we have our moments. So
so anyway, once we started doing that, which was I
think off the first episode, but once we started to realize, oh,
this is fun, like this organic chatter is where the
as you say, magic is, we started incorporating that a
little bit more into the actual interviews and just realizing, like,
organic is the way to go. How did you guys
(23:14):
go from okay? So episode one right now you have
like over twenty million listeners. That's a monthly number. It's bloggers,
it is, I know. So my question is, what was
the trajectory, if you know, like generally right, like what
was the trajectory? And could you guys feel astride from okay?
(23:36):
This feels good to us programming wise, cadence, our cadence,
our relationship and the show downloads and success. That's so
funny that you bring all this up because as you're
saying those numbers, there's a part of me that wants
to like put my fingers in my ears. And not
(23:57):
hear it, because I really think the reason our show
works is that it's very intimate. And the reason it
is is again, like I said, like we're best friends,
so when we're when we're together, we just feel like
it's us and the person. Definitely not thinking about numbers
(24:21):
like twenty millions. None of that is in our heads
at all. It's three three people, me, him and our guest.
And again, to give everyone their due credit, we launched
our show with Kristen, as I just said, And so
you know that people want to hear Dax and Kristen.
That's that is a truth. So it was not lost
(24:47):
on us that that would probably have like a fair
amount of people come to see us. But the fact
that they stuck around, um was a shock to us.
We were so thrilled and excited by it, and um grateful,
so grateful for it. But really we just want to
(25:10):
I mean it sounds so cliche, like I wish there
was a not cliche way to say, you just got
to do what you like doing, But it's the truth.
Like the reason we wanted to do this is because
it's just fun to talk to people and learn from people.
We both always say that we in our retirement, we
want to go back to college. UM. And this in
(25:33):
a way is that is just like learning from each
person without the you know, final exam, which is you know,
it's just the best part of all those things, especially
our Thursdays. Those are always my favorite. UM. We have
like professors on and the most you know, scientists, the
most insane insane people. Bill Gates like, why are you
talking to us? Bill Gates? Laura and I are in
(25:55):
the in the business right of creative, the commercial side
of creative, and all the time people ask us, but
prove prove it, prove the proof that it works. Prove
that it works, prove that it works. I would love
to see We talk about metrics all the time, like
how are you measuring it? Why does it matter? I
would love to see a metric that said. Bill Gates
(26:15):
asked the two people right to have a conversation about humanity,
the future of humanity. Yeah, Monica, was there a point
in the journey since this started that you knew this
was going to go from having these debates that sounds
like you were normally having off the mic anyway, to
(26:37):
like full fledged business platform. Was there that moment for
you I can't say there was an exact moment so
much as in fact, I am sort of slow, like
you know, at the beginning, like I'm very scared to
(26:59):
be like let's do this this, this, this, this and
this and this, and you know, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
let's let's slow down. Let's do this for a bit,
let's make this amazing, let's bring people in with this,
and then let's talk about the next thing, and then
let's do that for a bit, and let's and it's scary,
you know, because everyone feels like their time is limited.
(27:20):
Um and but but I feel it's really important to
like take the time to build and earned people's trust
before you move on to the next thing. So there
was a lot of talk at the beginning about like
and let's do this also and this and this, and
I was like a big voice of I think we
(27:41):
need to go slower than that. And then you, I
don't know, you just feel it, like I think there's
a moment where you're like this is steady, this feels steady,
let's add something to the list. Or if someone comes
to us and and the opportunity feels really special, chal
or fun, really it's that it's like, oh, is this
(28:03):
something we are going to like doing right now, Let's
let's pursue it. Um. And like with our live shows
that that happened fairly early on, and it because mainly
we were like, oh yeah, traveling to places and getting
to do this like on a stage. How fun. UM.
I always felt like this, how cool would it be
(28:28):
if we could be a gimblet where there's lots of
shows and we're not on all the shows or on
some of the shows, and we get to produce them
and we get to have a platform for really cool voices.
Like I've always thought about that, and we've we've slowly
grown more and more and more towards it, and hopefully
(28:48):
we'll continue to UM. So that was kind of just
like an overall thing I had it in floating around,
but it definitely wasn't like a main focus until Pieza
started to fall into place a little bit. I want
to talk about how do you choose your guests? Sometimes, Lauren,
I have a method to our medness and sometimes we're like,
just like you were, like that person is freaking cool
(29:08):
and they need to they need to come on the show.
They need to be known or we need to talk
to them about something different that they don't actually talk
about publicly, like you know those types of things. Do
you have like a method or a creative brief so
to speak, on who you bring on the show. No, actually,
we are really open. In fact, we would just want
(29:30):
to talk to as many uh, just diverse people, people
from different backgrounds, different experiences and and and that's why
even on Mondays, you know, we have a ton of
obviously actors and musicians and those celebrities, and but we
don't ask them about their movies or we don't ask
(29:52):
them about their celebrity. You know, we asked them about
their childhood, the relationship with their parents, you know, things
that that make them different and interesting because everyone is
so we we do not have a method. We reach
out to people that we like or we find interesting
or you know, we watch we watch something on TV
(30:13):
and we're like, that person is awesome, let's reach out
to them. We have people reach out to us at
this point for projects. You know, that's been a nice
alignment for promotion for people. Um. But yeah, we have
no like, we have no rules about who we will
or won't have on And again, like I said, In fact,
we like to have everyone on, even people who you know.
(30:37):
It's We've had some guests where some of our audience
is like, why do you have that person on there
in trouble or you know those types of things that
we're like, yeah, but they're still a person and we
want to know their story and and maybe their story
will inform whatever decision they made. You know, we're just
interested in those those nitty gritties. But yeah, no, there
(30:59):
really isn't a h a method. There is a method
to the shows we put under our umbrella. It's important
to us to have shows that kind of fit in
with our ethos, which is like vulnerability working on oneself,
(31:20):
like nurture versus Nurture is the family therapy show where
Dr Wendy Mogul talks to parents and she is a
family therapist, so she gives them a therapy session. You
get to listen in on it, and it is incredible.
I don't have kids, and I it's like my favorite thing.
I look forward to editing um because you know, and
(31:42):
I've been saying this a lot lately, I just think
it's increasingly true. The more specific you get, the more
universal it is. And I think that's in marketing big
time as well, because I think there's a thought of like,
you gotta you gotta reach the masses, you gotta reach everybody,
and it's like, you know, actually you're reaching everybody by
by honing in on this very specific detail because weirdly,
(32:04):
the details are what our brain can connect to. And
I also learned that in improv. It was like one
of the first rules I learned was like, don't call
it um a basketball, call it a Spalding basketball, so
that the audience can literally pick they know exactly what
(32:25):
you're talking about. They can smell the Spalding basketball. Yes,
and everyone is immediately on the same page. It's not
like I'm thinking of the basketball from my house and
never the end of the basketball from your house. It's
like no, no, no, now we're we all know um.
And and so again it's universal. You know, it's interesting
when you talk about the specificity. At the top of
(32:45):
the show, Alexa said, you know, if your program for everyone,
you program for no one. Can you click in on
that a bit further? So, are there shows or examples
you can give us where the universal, you know, element
of it was? That was a proven thesis well, yeah,
I mean I think the biggest one is Monica and
Jessla Boys. So when when I started that podcast, I
(33:09):
was really hesitant. You know. Well, of course I was
hesitant because it's it's me and my love life, which
is so so scary what am I doing? But but
I was also like, who is going to relate to this?
Like this is so bizarre. This is because that was
you know, me and my friend Jess and and I,
(33:30):
you know, serially under date and he serially overdates, and
he's gay and I'm straight and we're just opposites, but
you know, and we approached dating in a completely different way.
And it was like, let's and we're single and we
don't want you know, we we eventually want to find
a a partner, and so it was like, let's talk
(33:52):
about that and let's have experts on to help us
through basically our issues. And we did, and we had
challenges at the end of each episode that we had
to then uh complete by the following episode. It was
it was so fun, but it felt really specific. I mean,
we we were talking to estro Perel and she's telling,
(34:13):
you know, we're talking about the moment when I was
well at the swimming pool and the boys said this
to me, you know, it's all like it's me and
it's just and it's not universal at all. And I
was like, oh my god, nobody is going to relate
to this, like is anyone gonna listen? And then of
course what you learn is like I mean, really, what
(34:33):
you learn is like you're not unique. Everyone experiences the
same stuff and everyone was like, oh my god, that's
me or I connect with this, and even like so
many married people, which that was like the most flattering
what was learned. It's like, oh god, like people can
really relate to this thing that feels so deeply personal
(34:54):
and that was really eye opening for me and just
made me feel like, oh yeah, And that's why Wendy
show you Know again, same thing. It's two parents talking
about they're very specific children and growing up in Sweden
one of the episodes, and then when you hear it
and you're like, oh my gosh, like I can learn
from that because I know that it's just beauty. It's
kind of it's beautiful, like it's beautiful to know we
really are all way more connected than we think. M hmm.
(35:17):
I love that. What is the experience of um bringing
brands into the fold, and are there things we might
be surprised as marketers to know that on your end
as creators, you're open to our not. Yeah, so our
revenue is solely on ads, so we you know, we
(35:40):
have to do We approve all the ones that we
read obviously UM, and we we don't approve a lot
of them UM that come to us. And then we
really have to feel like, oh, this is something I
believe in or this is something I can get behind
and everyone's really awesome. Did they send us the product?
We get to like really get tactile with it and
(36:01):
know it. We do some integrated sponsorships in the fact checks.
Those are a little bit more and uh, what's intense?
I guess not really, but we just get a little deeper.
And especially for those, we have to make sure it's
like it's a company we like and we believe in
(36:22):
their product, and we just talk really honestly about it.
And I also think that's part of it. The advertisers
we work with know that our ads are gonna be
organic and very specific to us. If we can read
a copy point for you if you'd like, but it's
(36:44):
not gonna connect like what connects are, like the fun stories.
There was this whole saga with Dax in this raccoon
like real thing that was happening nightly, and you know,
we were able to tie that into Ring because it
Ring was up of this story. And so the more
opportunities we have to do that, the better the advertising
(37:08):
is for everyone, for us, for them, And like, yeah,
so we didn't integrated add with Google home um for
a while. We did it over a bunch of fact
checks and it was really fun because we would ask
Google facts um and it was just it just led
(37:29):
us so much fun. And once that ended, we were
both like, I missed that. Well. I was listening to
the episode you did with Brad and you were doing
a host read um for door Dash I believe, but
you were talking about your Christmas Eve Eve ritual of
McDonald and I'm like, well, I understand this was an
(37:50):
ad for door Dash. I'm going like, where's McDonald's with
the Christmas Eve Eve special? Exactly? Well, Well, that's really
funny because what must have happened is and I don't remember,
but my guess is we did a door Dash ad
totally regular, in which we talked about getting McDonald's um.
(38:12):
And then after that we did do a McDonald's integration
and we expounded on our Christmas Eve ritual, but none
of it was made up, Like I think the door
Dash ad it must have been where we came up
with the idea to do it, and then the McDonald's
ad was the like full through we did it. I
(38:32):
love Laura's point of the reasons you're saying, like the intimacy,
the personality, the perspective, all this stuff, but also to
start to like even launch new kind of products and
collapse and fun stuff like that totally. And it depends
on the show, like if it's a cooking show or something,
(38:54):
or the or the host love cooking. I mean even
even us. So I got really into cooking this year,
and um, we talked about it a lot on the
fact checks and and there was this whole debacle where
my apartment ended up smelling like fish for like a week,
and we talked about that. It was a whole thing
like did Monica's apartment smell like fish or not? Like
(39:14):
you know, and that that is an opportunity anytime you
have something on your in your show that people are
commenting on. I think brands need to pay attention to
that and be like whatever, if there's like a deodorant
spray that is following that thread, that's an opportunity for
(39:40):
them to be like we want to get involved, we
want to send some product, we want Monica to talk
about it. Did they get to hurt the fish? Smell out?
You know, little things like that. Just paying attention to
the hooks of these different shows where people are laughing
and are interested, Like I think writing those waves is
(40:00):
the best. So question is there a place And Ryan,
our producer, and I were talking about this, and I
love this question where armchair umbrella turns into a dare
I say a products is but a product that's tangible
or something outside of audio, something outside of and not
(40:21):
merch right like right now you guys are doing and
I love your merch ps. And I definitely think the
Monica shirts probably the best. Um and also like the
hot dogs from the Live show. But um, but but
you know, is it does it become something where people
can touch it, feel it, experience it, you know, in
a in a different way? Yeah, I mean, uh, currently
(40:47):
the Live show, as you as you just brought up,
is the version of that is the different thing that
you can get close to, UM and it feels different,
like those shows are are different. There's a Q and
a you know, and it's different energy. So that's us
like kind of connecting a little bit more directly with
our audience. UM. And again we move on to the
(41:12):
next step when we feel we're ready to or we
feel like our audience wants it, or there's a space
for us. And so yes, I guess is the is
the overall answer is yes, I can see expansion in
different realms perhaps down the road. UM. But and you know,
(41:34):
we we've had discussions about some other putting our hands
in some other pots um that are fun and organic
to us. But it's um, nothing set in stone right now.
But we yeah, we keep you know, we're keeping everything
on the horizon. Okay, three ideas ready, here, here's theater
(41:55):
in it absolutely like I'm thinking like jobs raymore flat again,
Like there has to be an actual armchair that is
the armchair expert, right, Like there has to be a
furniture one. So that's one second idea. I mean, there
has to be a coffee table book with all of
the amazing interview experts. Like I just like if I'm
(42:17):
sitting on my armchair. That has to be the coffee
table book and you know the third place i'd go.
And Alex and I've been talking a lot about, you know,
sort of the future of education, thinking about curriculum. I
feel like anywhere you turn, like especially in the tech
business space, even in the media space, people are having
like short form classes, right. Yeah, Like I totally imagine
armchair expert curriculum, Like how do I come in and
(42:40):
get like, you know, six classes and meeting these people?
But I just think that the tone and like how
you're approaching it, it's a really interesting way to think
about learning um while having like edutainment, I guess is
the way I'm thinking about in a way that's beyond audio.
But what you said about improv hits so many things
on the business side, so many things on the creative side.
(43:02):
And the point that you hit about specificity for relationships,
like point to the thing that you want them to imagine, right,
be very specific and then let their imagination go. Yeah,
has been actually probably a subconscious thought in everything at
(43:23):
least I've done in my career that was creative. Right
for a commercial on the commercial side, it was like
I know I want this thing, and this thing is
the thing that seems to be the tuning fork, but
everything else, you know, it starts to become really exciting.
One thing I want to I do want to add
real quick. I also have been in thirty plus commercials
(43:49):
as an actor. That really is like for the acting space,
that's pretty much been my bread and butter. So I'm
really really familiar with that world. To mention, I also
write commercials for Kristen and I'm on set for those.
So UM worked with many different ad agencies on all
(44:10):
of those and and I um, we just did so.
Kristen has a CBD skincare line called Happy Dance, and
UM we worked with Wide and Kennedy on those and
it was so fun and so creative and so great
and they really get specificity. Um, they really understand it
(44:36):
in a way that others don't. But you see a
lot of these agencies make a lot of mistakes in
that arena when you're on set, like trying to go
as generic as possible when it's like no, no, no, no no,
that's not funny. This is funny, and it's hard. It's hard.
This is there's a lot of money on the table
(44:57):
for a lot of people, and I think, going general,
I feel safe, and it is, but it's not the
thing that's going to make you rise above everyone else.
So Monica specifically in the brand universe, let's put it
out into the brand universe. Who is top three brands
you would love to work with? I really want to
(45:21):
work with a clean makeup brand that has many different
shades UM. I think that's really missing in the makeup space.
There are brands that do and I you know, but
some brands have like four foundation colors and that's not realistic.
(45:45):
It's just not life UM and it and it makes
people feel excluded. And I connected at I really connect
to feeling like, oh, I need my skin to be
wider because there's not I mean because of a million reasons.
But also I walk into north room and I don't
see my color represented. UM. That must mean my color
isn't good enough to be represented. You know, these are
(46:07):
the things that sort of go through your head. So
I personally am just like dying to be a part
of a brand that UM works to negate some of that. So, yeah,
let's say a clean, diverse makeup brand. I really want
to work with a cookie brand because I'm obsessed with cookies.
I am a girl Scout bomb now. But I think
(46:29):
you would be like, Girl Scouts should come and do
something with Monica for Like, I would love it, Girl
Scouts of America. I really would love that. Like that's
like so cool girls. You know, I have learned, like
learning about themselves, skills independence exactly. Yeah, I love it.
(46:49):
I love that. Not to stay in the beauty space,
but I my hair is kind of the only thing,
the only part of me that I have ever had
any confidence. And of course I started out not having
any compliments in it, but at some point I was like, oh,
like this was something something I can work with. My
first actually my first commercial ever was an herbal Lessence
(47:12):
commercial and I was a mermaid in it with these
two other girls, and it was so fun. It was
like one of the craziest shoots to this day that
I've ever ever been a part of. UM and uh
and one of the girls they're both amazing actresses and
one um is on was on Westworld and the other
has her own awesome, amazing career, and I was like,
(47:32):
oh my god, we need to remake that commercial now,
um revisit these mermaids. I think that'd be so fun anyway,
So I'm trying to make that happen. I'll put that
out there before we go. We play a game with
all of our guests. Bye bye bye. What would you
get rid of? What would you buy or acquire? And
what would you do yourself? God? Can I I had
(47:55):
not to get like so deep and so political, but
this is where I am right now. Can I want
to say by two guns, I don't no more, no
no more. Yeah, They're not for me. Guys know what
would you buy acquire? Well, I'm going to I would
like to buy um enough wrapping paper to fill up
(48:18):
an entire nice size room. I want a wrapping paper room,
So I'd like to buy all the stuff for that.
I'd like to buy the wrapping paper. I'd like to
buy all the ribbons. And you know, I'm looking at
you Hallmark here is looking at you craft room, but
specifically wrapping. And what would you do yourself? What would
(48:42):
be by Monica that you haven't done or are not doing?
I mean I kind of already wasted it on the
other thing I just said about representing a makeup line.
I would love to do that myself. I would love
to be a part of a makeup line that has
a lot out of diversity of color um represented in it.
(49:05):
Sorry that's a repeat, but it is the truth. If
people want to get in touch with you to build
any of these ideas, talk podcasts, integrate on any of
your amazing shows, how can they get in touch with you? Um?
I would say Instagram is probably the best way, and
then I can redirect to whoever it needs to go to,
most likely will just be me at mL padmin. Well,
(49:29):
thank you so much, thank you, thank you. You know
what I love about what Monica said around the specificity
piece was not just what she said, It is a
right on that actually specific is universal when you're talking
(49:52):
to a certain group of people, when you're in a
certain community. But the thing that I love of that
she was saying that I think we can kind of
abstract a bit is this idea of improv. So improv
is this give and take. It's, you know, putting yourself
(50:12):
in an environment with other actors or other people or
the audience, and you're playing off that environment that context.
Modern media is exactly that. And I even think about
how yield Mo has been on the show and has
been talking about context and talking about being relevant. That's
(50:34):
exactly what they're talking about. They have the instrumentation, they
have the technology to do that, and sometimes I think
that conversation and ad tech gets obscured by the tech
rather than this deep understanding of you have to play
on the field to even be in the game. Modern
(50:56):
media at this point is all about that, and it
really it really goes back Laura to like even people
talking about performance marketing. Performance marketing has been again largely
this race to the bottom. But performance marketing done well
and done in a way that understands today's context, is
(51:22):
exactly about putting out MVPs of messages, putting out things
for people to grab react to and then give you
feedback on. And I think that that's exactly how marketers
could start thinking about instead of having the typical process
(51:42):
of brief RFP, creative concepts, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And this
one shot waterfall process is really to think about how
you start to improv experiment in the context and the
audiences that you want to be a part of, that
you want to reach, that you want to buy your product,
(52:05):
and that that turns things from broadcast to dialogue turns
things from ownership on the corporate brand side two ownership
in the audience's hands. I think this line, and I've
said it many times on the show, still hold. It
is one thing to buy impressions, It is another thing
(52:28):
to make one. This has got me thinking about eminem
eight mile, your buyer, your marketer, lose yourself in the moment.
Laura hit it with the list of all of our
friends and family and my heart who have been so
good to us and helped us get back on air.
Big thank you to Bob Conal, Carter, Andy, Eric Gayle Val,
(52:50):
Michael jen We appreciate you. Thank you so much for
this opportunity. We'll see you in two weeks.
I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
going to have to start making better content. I think
we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen.
(00:28):
Welcome back at Landia. So, Alexa, recently I sent you
a picture that is circulating the Internet of a Netflix billboard,
and I thought we might start there. I have a confession.
I have to tell you something. I saw that and
I like started to sweat. When I was like two three,
Yahoo had a billboard to billboards one in Times Square
(00:52):
one in San Francisco, just like the Netflix billboard. And
guess who had to program the content on that billboard.
Guess guess who yours? Truly it was me? Every week
a new message and guess what I did? But wait,
were you changing the messaging yourself or not? It wasn't
(01:13):
climbing a ladder, Laura. I was going into the visual
of you not only concepting, but producing and actually executing.
That would be amazing. No, But I concepted the copy
and then I had to send it to the installer
who would go up and put up the letters. Right.
So this is like two thousand and three, two thousand
(01:35):
and four, I was like a bitty boo in the
agency world, and I get this call from my client
for freaking out, like the Internet had broken. And I
was like, what what's wrong? And they were like, you
put the u r L on the billboards incorrectly And
you would think like all of Yahoo went down, but
(01:55):
now but now it was a slight change of the dot.
The dot was in the wrong place for the U
r L. That was my biggest career fumble. You could
call it a fumble, or you could have asked to
see the back end visits to know whether or not
your billboard was an effective traffic driver, a truly unique
(02:17):
Alexa Christian u r L. It was a truly unique
Alexa Christian you are L. And in fact it was
a hundred percent bounced percent bounce on that U are
L shining moment. Then the Netflix copy couldn't be more
on brand Alexa. The copy said, don't give up on
your dreams. We started with DVDs, I started with incorrect
(02:43):
U R L and the full circle. I think that's
where the show begins and maybe hands today. So Alex,
we have a great guest on the show today, Monica
Padman from Armchair Expert is here, so good. But before
we get into the Monica interview, we had a really
good conversation last night. I called you last night because
(03:04):
something has been bothering me, something that actually this episode
got me thinking about in a slightly different way, and
it's in context to what's been happening in the news
with media outlets in the last two weeks and something
that Monica said and you guys will hear this in
the episode. The Armchair onm Brella has a huge, huge audience, right,
(03:29):
They do like twenty million downloads a month just on
Armchair Expert, like on their main show, which just just
to put that in context, Tom Brady came back to
play the New England Patriots Sunday Night Football doing twenty
point five million viewers. So just to give some context
as to the universe that we're talking about here, and
(03:51):
that's Armchair Experts doing that monthly. And so when we
brought that up to Monica in the episode. She was like,
we don't think about that. I don't want to think
about that. In fact, I don't even want to hear
that number. And it got me thinking about how are
we actually quantifying and more importantly qualifying what is good
(04:15):
in media? And Laura, you said something to me last night.
We've gotten in the game of more is more? But
is it is it really more is more the goal?
Because as we go into the issues that have come
up in the last week with media companies, they've been
chasing scale, the race to the bottom, and that's become
(04:38):
the measuring stick, which is how big is your audience?
Because you can sell more ads, how do you get
to more eyeballs? And what's happened is through years, right,
what you and I ended up talking about last night
was what's the solve Because as long as media is
race to the bottom, more is more volume volume volume
(05:01):
buying on a CPM. Until that changes, we are going
to see media outlets continue to put profit over great content,
over people over what's right, and we will constantly see
some form of inflation of those numbers. So, in building
(05:23):
on that, bridging last week's episode to this week's episode.
There was something that Austin said in our conversation with
Morning Brew on our last episode that really stuck out
to me and I can't stop thinking about it. When
he was talking about receiving one of their first big
(05:44):
RFPs from from a major advertiser, they RFP for a
range of budget and as part of that conversation, he
posed a question which was, well, how big does our
audience have to be to warrant your five thousand dollar
(06:07):
commitment or RFP? And it's sat with me because there's
a common denominator here that we've applied as buyers in
the industry that the same model or methodology I applied
to buying a major broadcast network would be the same
(06:29):
methodology I apply to buying a niche newsletter. When I
think about people raising their hand, subscribing to a newsletter,
spending five plus minutes with the newsletter, sharing the newsletter,
coming back the next day in their inbox, opening the newsletter,
it's a different behavior than being exposed to a thirty
(06:51):
second spot on television, But yet I buy it the
same way. Is that correct? So last night, after we
got off the phone, which you know, I went on
the Internet to try to figure out the origin of
the CPM model. I would love to have somebody in
Landia come on the show and take us through the
origins of the CPM model and why it hasn't evolved
(07:14):
into modern media. And I think the thing that we're
getting to today is the creator economy and Web three
might just be the thing that breaks the model. It
breaks the model, and it has to break the model.
It has to break the model. That's what's so exciting
about this. When we talk about media capturing audience, the flip.
(07:41):
The flip is audience voting with their wallet on that media.
I mean Twitter, tip Jar is an example of that
sub stack, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This is not, by the way,
this is not a drill. What's going to happen as
more audiences fragment and they start to find who and
(08:05):
what speaks to them, that's when you start to see
the hockey stick. That's when you start to see the growth.
That's when you buy the T shirt. It's exactly right,
it's the t shirt, it's the ticket sale. It is
a difference between monthly active users and fandom, and fandom
and the metrics that you quantify for fandom as opposed
(08:30):
to passive scale. It's just like we're talking about a
different model. It's a totally different game. Kicking us back
into the Monica episode, there are a couple of gems
in here that could be ignored and it's what hooked
me and got me thinking about this stuff last night,
(08:52):
which was volume versus specific and are those things. It's
very similar to the common station we had with Alex
and Austin, which is niche and scale are not mutually exclusive.
You can have niche and you can have scale. The
specificity specificity why specific is universal. So with that, Atlantia,
(09:16):
we hope you love this. Listen, we'll be right back
al right at Landia. We are back with our partners
that yield Mo. If you remember, we spent our first
mini series talking about how yield Mo works with brands
to make audience attention actionable and in this mini series
(09:36):
we take on how contextual targeting is being reimagined as
brands make every interaction with their consumer meaningful. Welcome Lisa Bradner,
GM of Data and Analytics from yield Mo. Thank you
so much, great to be back. Always great to talk
to you guys. Lisa, how does real time factor into
context irrelevance? Real time for contextual is critical because if
(10:00):
you don't have that audience signal that says I know
who this person is and I know the message I
gave them previously, you need those real time signals to
say and I serving the right creative or not? Is
this message hitting or not. In addition, so much media
is now integrating commerce that that window between exposure and
(10:21):
sale is getting shorter all the time. So if you're
not real time, you may miss a sale. Right, It's
not just you're missing the impression, you actually missed the
opportunity to close the sale. So being able to quickly
optimize and adjust and using machines to do that is
how you're going to increase your row as your r
o I, your sales overall. It's a critical component to
(10:44):
marketing and advertising today. And if we need to get
that close to increasing the potential of that sale conversion engagement,
what are the implications that marketers need to be thinking
about in optimizing the process. I think there's a lot
of things that and then marketing that we need to
turn on their head. I would challenge the first thing
(11:07):
we should do is take the c DJ right, the
consumer decision journey, throw it out and rethink it right.
We've always come at it from oh we you know,
Laura likes to listen to radio when she's up in
the morning, and then she comes home and checks her
phone for weather, and then she watches TV. As a marketer,
I don't know what to do with that. I suggest
that we turn it on their head and say, what
(11:29):
do I want to communicate throughout my day? What is
the right message, when, where and why for my customers
and match the media and creative to that. I think
we're really on the edge of marketers coming back and
really owning that customer experience. And instead of worrying about
(11:50):
each individual and thinking if I can just collect enough
data about you, I can get you to buy me,
they're going to take a healthy step back to saying
who is my brand, where does it belong, and how
should I show up in each of these environments and
when to do that effectively, your creative and media strategies
have to be completely linked, right. You can't build out
(12:12):
the entire creative campaign and they say, oh, yeah, I
guess we should have a media plan for this. You
should be building that media plan and then building the
creative notes that go with each step of that media plan.
So instead of having a consumer decision journey, it should
be the brand decision journey and mapping the creative and
media to match all that. Thank you, Lisa Bradner and
our partners at yield MO. Looking forward to having you
(12:34):
back for part three of our four part series Welcome
Back at Landia. We're super excited if you have a
special guest with us today. Monica Padman is joining us
in Adlandia. Monica is the co creator, co host and
producer of Armchair Expert. Welcome Monica, Monica, Hi, thanks for
(12:58):
having me. We're so excited to have you. I have
to shout out our friend Brad Grossman at Zeit Guide,
who connected us and was like it was hilarious. Actually
he texted me he said, do you know Monica Padman?
I wrote back, No, why would I know, Monica Padman.
So you're gracious enough to come on the show and
talk to us about audio podcasting talent and the breakout
(13:22):
show that you and Dak Sheppard have created, and I
don't want to Actually it's not even a show anymore.
It's a network yeah, it's a true network. So Laura
and I have read all of the things, right, like
how you and Dax kind of got started. I think
people can read about that. It's a great story arguing
about serial dak saying I'm really interested in podcasting. You
(13:45):
guys have created something amazing. I think there's a lot
of magic in the relationship that you have. Obviously you
have a really strong perspective about the programming of the show,
how you edit the show, how you produced the show,
the shows that you've selected. It as the kind of
network has started to really mature all of those things.
So that's the kind of stuff we want to talk about.
(14:06):
But before we get into that, really talk about when
I was reading I think it was the l A
Times article that was profiling the show and really got
deep into a little bit more detail. And one of
the things that they said was Monica presented Dax with
the business plan. So Dax said, I want to do this,
and you presented him with a business plan. But nowhere
(14:29):
could I find what the business plan actually said. So Monica,
what was in the business plan? Well you probably haven't
found details on that, because that's a really h that's
really fancy way of saying what happened by saying that
I proposed a business plan. Really what happened is he said,
(14:50):
I kind of want to do a podcast. It goes
really nonchalant, and I was like, okay, let's do it.
I'll figure it out. So that was kind of the
business plan I suppose. Um. And then from there, from
there I was like, oh, I gotta I guess I
gotta figure it out. UM. So I approached via my therapist.
(15:15):
This is so bizarre, but my I found my therapist.
It's not gonna their podcast. I was listening to this
amazing podcast called Totally Lame that I used to love
so much, and it's it's no longer a recurring podcast,
but it was so good and my therapist was on
it randomly before she was my therapist, and I heard
(15:37):
her and I was looking for a therapist. So I, like,
you know, reached out to like hello at totally lame
dot com whatever they're like general email was, and I
was like, can I have the email for this therapist?
And they sent it to me and so she's my
therapist now. Um. And then I sort of reverse engineered
that and reached out to my therapist, and I was like,
(15:58):
can you please connect me to Elizabeth? That totally lame.
I'd like to pick her brain on this. So she
did and I met with her, and then I sat
in on a recording and like watched how they did
it UM, and I left and I thought, Okay, we
can do this. UM might be easy to bring in
(16:22):
a third person who can like do the sound board
and I don't have to worry about that. So we did.
We brought on Rob and then from there we kind
of really got into the weeds on what we wanted
the show to be. You know, I have a lot
of opinions. Dax has a lot of opinions. Luckily, in
(16:43):
business they often align. In many other ways they never align,
which is part of the fun, but in business they do,
so you know. He he considers himself an armchair expert,
which is a hilarious phrase. He learned an anthropology and
call it into it where you think you know everything
about everything. I must say, it's a really compelling like
(17:06):
you get it instantly right, which just as marketers were
always thinking about how do you communicate directly without having
to kind of click in Well, yeah, I mean I
think generally and ax is just really really really good
in general at naming stuff, um, you know, titling scripts
and everything. So that's that's sort of his whealhouse in general.
But um, it is true like I think in marketing.
(17:31):
And I also was a double majored in theater MPR,
so I took a lot of marketing classes as well
and lived in that world for a bit. And so
I just think relatability is, yeah, the key. It's the
key across the board. And everyone knows someone who's an
(17:55):
armchair expert or who themselves is considers themselves an arm
track expert, like I know it all essentially, Um, everyone
has one of those in their life. So you can
immediately click into that when you hear it. I think
that's sort of one of the powerful things about that
title in general, um and and titles overall that attract me.
(18:18):
It's like if your brain can connect into something personal,
you're like you're half the battle is done. I think. Well,
also a level of accessibility to yeah exactly. I think
you just like described everything a marketer is trying to do.
By the way, like period, like you can get all
this fancy shit, but that's what a marketer is trying
to do ultimately, how do I relate my product whatever
(18:42):
that is to you exactly? And now where it's getting
cool is in fans and community and creativity and opening
that stuff up I think with more players hopefully right uh,
in places we didn't expect them. So, Monica, you had
the business plan, which is I'll figure it out to
(19:04):
meet Rob. Rob joins the team. How did you begin
to think about the thesis for the show and how
you were going to program it? And was there a
playbook that you kind of set out to deliver on
or was it iterative? And as you grew you sort
of learned where the sweet spot was. I think both.
So we both loved Sam Harris's podcast It's now called
(19:27):
Waking Up with Sam Harris. We loved that show and
and and love that show still, UM and a lot
of our debates were centered around Sam's podcast every week,
and we love that format. It was just an interview show,
you know, but Sam is a genius. I think by
like real metrics, he's he is a genius, and so
(19:52):
his questions were not normal, you know, they were very specific,
in very different, very unique to his brain, which lad
these interviews into such um interesting territory, I think, And
so we just wanted to replicate that, not replicate what
(20:16):
Sam did, but replicate an interview show that's very authentic
to us and what we think about in the way
our brains work, which is a lot of vulnerability and honesty.
Those are kind of the main tenants. And you know,
decks coming from a a so focused on progress not perfection, Um,
(20:41):
the journey, not the result. You know, all of those things,
and any aligned with all those things too, just cause,
and so that has always been what we've been been
interested in talking about. Like you know, we always say
we're not interested in the day you won the Emmy,
but the two weeks after when you're out of work
and you don't know what to do, because that's the
(21:02):
thing we can all relate to. So um. Yeah, so
we always knew, like intellectually this is the show, but
we didn't really, of course, know what the show was
until we started it, until we started testing it out
and doing it, We didn't know what we were doing
at all. Um. The first episode was with Kristen and
(21:24):
I didn't say anything. I sat there, I had no words, like,
I didn't know, We didn't know, We didn't know what
it was going to be. And we had Chris Hardwick
on pretty early on in the show and he gave
some great advice which was like, yeah, do a little research,
but don't be afraid to not not look at it,
(21:45):
because that for our first few were like a little
bit more regimented in that way because it was like
real question. You know THATX had a list of questions
and he wanted to get to them and it felt
a little more confined planned. Yeah, and I think us
doing the fact check kind of helped with that because
that is a space where we could really be us
(22:07):
and not even could really be us. We had to
be like we just didn't even have an option. We're
just the two of us in a room. It's gonna happen.
We're gonna argue, we're gonna laugh, we're gonna make jokes. Uh,
we're gonna get mad at each other. Like you know,
these are all just the realities of our friendship. And
there's no We're not good at hiding it or making
it look pretty. I mean you can tell, you can
(22:29):
really tell on our fact checks the ones where we
have just had a fight. Um, we tried to be
We try to put it aside and be professional and
have fun on on the factor. But I mean, we're
just not good at it. Like we are very much
um animals of our emotional state, which is normally good
(22:51):
and fun, but you know, we have our moments. So
so anyway, once we started doing that, which was I
think off the first episode, but once we started to realize, oh,
this is fun, like this organic chatter is where the
as you say, magic is, we started incorporating that a
little bit more into the actual interviews and just realizing, like,
organic is the way to go. How did you guys
(23:14):
go from okay? So episode one right now you have
like over twenty million listeners. That's a monthly number. It's bloggers,
it is, I know. So my question is, what was
the trajectory, if you know, like generally right, like what
was the trajectory? And could you guys feel astride from okay?
(23:36):
This feels good to us programming wise, cadence, our cadence,
our relationship and the show downloads and success. That's so
funny that you bring all this up because as you're
saying those numbers, there's a part of me that wants
to like put my fingers in my ears. And not
(23:57):
hear it, because I really think the reason our show
works is that it's very intimate. And the reason it
is is again, like I said, like we're best friends,
so when we're when we're together, we just feel like
it's us and the person. Definitely not thinking about numbers
(24:21):
like twenty millions. None of that is in our heads
at all. It's three three people, me, him and our guest.
And again, to give everyone their due credit, we launched
our show with Kristen, as I just said, And so
you know that people want to hear Dax and Kristen.
That's that is a truth. So it was not lost
(24:47):
on us that that would probably have like a fair
amount of people come to see us. But the fact
that they stuck around, um was a shock to us.
We were so thrilled and excited by it, and um grateful,
so grateful for it. But really we just want to
(25:10):
I mean it sounds so cliche, like I wish there
was a not cliche way to say, you just got
to do what you like doing, But it's the truth.
Like the reason we wanted to do this is because
it's just fun to talk to people and learn from people.
We both always say that we in our retirement, we
want to go back to college. UM. And this in
(25:33):
a way is that is just like learning from each
person without the you know, final exam, which is you know,
it's just the best part of all those things, especially
our Thursdays. Those are always my favorite. UM. We have
like professors on and the most you know, scientists, the
most insane insane people. Bill Gates like, why are you
talking to us? Bill Gates? Laura and I are in
(25:55):
the in the business right of creative, the commercial side
of creative, and all the time people ask us, but
prove prove it, prove the proof that it works. Prove
that it works, prove that it works. I would love
to see We talk about metrics all the time, like
how are you measuring it? Why does it matter? I
would love to see a metric that said. Bill Gates
(26:15):
asked the two people right to have a conversation about humanity,
the future of humanity. Yeah, Monica, was there a point
in the journey since this started that you knew this
was going to go from having these debates that sounds
like you were normally having off the mic anyway, to
(26:37):
like full fledged business platform. Was there that moment for
you I can't say there was an exact moment so
much as in fact, I am sort of slow, like
you know, at the beginning, like I'm very scared to
(26:59):
be like let's do this this, this, this, this and
this and this, and you know, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
let's let's slow down. Let's do this for a bit,
let's make this amazing, let's bring people in with this,
and then let's talk about the next thing, and then
let's do that for a bit, and let's and it's scary,
you know, because everyone feels like their time is limited.
(27:20):
Um and but but I feel it's really important to
like take the time to build and earned people's trust
before you move on to the next thing. So there
was a lot of talk at the beginning about like
and let's do this also and this and this, and
I was like a big voice of I think we
(27:41):
need to go slower than that. And then you, I
don't know, you just feel it, like I think there's
a moment where you're like this is steady, this feels steady,
let's add something to the list. Or if someone comes
to us and and the opportunity feels really special, chal
or fun, really it's that it's like, oh, is this
(28:03):
something we are going to like doing right now, Let's
let's pursue it. Um. And like with our live shows
that that happened fairly early on, and it because mainly
we were like, oh yeah, traveling to places and getting
to do this like on a stage. How fun. UM.
I always felt like this, how cool would it be
(28:28):
if we could be a gimblet where there's lots of
shows and we're not on all the shows or on
some of the shows, and we get to produce them
and we get to have a platform for really cool voices.
Like I've always thought about that, and we've we've slowly
grown more and more and more towards it, and hopefully
(28:48):
we'll continue to UM. So that was kind of just
like an overall thing I had it in floating around,
but it definitely wasn't like a main focus until Pieza
started to fall into place a little bit. I want
to talk about how do you choose your guests? Sometimes, Lauren,
I have a method to our medness and sometimes we're like,
just like you were, like that person is freaking cool
(29:08):
and they need to they need to come on the show.
They need to be known or we need to talk
to them about something different that they don't actually talk
about publicly, like you know those types of things. Do
you have like a method or a creative brief so
to speak, on who you bring on the show. No, actually,
we are really open. In fact, we would just want
(29:30):
to talk to as many uh, just diverse people, people
from different backgrounds, different experiences and and and that's why
even on Mondays, you know, we have a ton of
obviously actors and musicians and those celebrities, and but we
don't ask them about their movies or we don't ask
(29:52):
them about their celebrity. You know, we asked them about
their childhood, the relationship with their parents, you know, things
that that make them different and interesting because everyone is
so we we do not have a method. We reach
out to people that we like or we find interesting
or you know, we watch we watch something on TV
(30:13):
and we're like, that person is awesome, let's reach out
to them. We have people reach out to us at
this point for projects. You know, that's been a nice
alignment for promotion for people. Um. But yeah, we have
no like, we have no rules about who we will
or won't have on And again, like I said, In fact,
we like to have everyone on, even people who you know.
(30:37):
It's We've had some guests where some of our audience
is like, why do you have that person on there
in trouble or you know those types of things that
we're like, yeah, but they're still a person and we
want to know their story and and maybe their story
will inform whatever decision they made. You know, we're just
interested in those those nitty gritties. But yeah, no, there
(30:59):
really isn't a h a method. There is a method
to the shows we put under our umbrella. It's important
to us to have shows that kind of fit in
with our ethos, which is like vulnerability working on oneself,
(31:20):
like nurture versus Nurture is the family therapy show where
Dr Wendy Mogul talks to parents and she is a
family therapist, so she gives them a therapy session. You
get to listen in on it, and it is incredible.
I don't have kids, and I it's like my favorite thing.
I look forward to editing um because you know, and
(31:42):
I've been saying this a lot lately, I just think
it's increasingly true. The more specific you get, the more
universal it is. And I think that's in marketing big
time as well, because I think there's a thought of like,
you gotta you gotta reach the masses, you gotta reach everybody,
and it's like, you know, actually you're reaching everybody by
by honing in on this very specific detail because weirdly,
(32:04):
the details are what our brain can connect to. And
I also learned that in improv. It was like one
of the first rules I learned was like, don't call
it um a basketball, call it a Spalding basketball, so
that the audience can literally pick they know exactly what
(32:25):
you're talking about. They can smell the Spalding basketball. Yes,
and everyone is immediately on the same page. It's not
like I'm thinking of the basketball from my house and
never the end of the basketball from your house. It's
like no, no, no, now we're we all know um.
And and so again it's universal. You know, it's interesting
when you talk about the specificity. At the top of
(32:45):
the show, Alexa said, you know, if your program for everyone,
you program for no one. Can you click in on
that a bit further? So, are there shows or examples
you can give us where the universal, you know, element
of it was? That was a proven thesis well, yeah,
I mean I think the biggest one is Monica and
Jessla Boys. So when when I started that podcast, I
(33:09):
was really hesitant. You know. Well, of course I was
hesitant because it's it's me and my love life, which
is so so scary what am I doing? But but
I was also like, who is going to relate to this?
Like this is so bizarre. This is because that was
you know, me and my friend Jess and and I,
(33:30):
you know, serially under date and he serially overdates, and
he's gay and I'm straight and we're just opposites, but
you know, and we approached dating in a completely different way.
And it was like, let's and we're single and we
don't want you know, we we eventually want to find
a a partner, and so it was like, let's talk
(33:52):
about that and let's have experts on to help us
through basically our issues. And we did, and we had
challenges at the end of each episode that we had
to then uh complete by the following episode. It was
it was so fun, but it felt really specific. I mean,
we we were talking to estro Perel and she's telling,
(34:13):
you know, we're talking about the moment when I was
well at the swimming pool and the boys said this
to me, you know, it's all like it's me and
it's just and it's not universal at all. And I
was like, oh my god, nobody is going to relate
to this, like is anyone gonna listen? And then of
course what you learn is like I mean, really, what
(34:33):
you learn is like you're not unique. Everyone experiences the
same stuff and everyone was like, oh my god, that's
me or I connect with this, and even like so
many married people, which that was like the most flattering
what was learned. It's like, oh god, like people can
really relate to this thing that feels so deeply personal
(34:54):
and that was really eye opening for me and just
made me feel like, oh yeah, And that's why Wendy
show you Know again, same thing. It's two parents talking
about they're very specific children and growing up in Sweden
one of the episodes, and then when you hear it
and you're like, oh my gosh, like I can learn
from that because I know that it's just beauty. It's
kind of it's beautiful, like it's beautiful to know we
really are all way more connected than we think. M hmm.
(35:17):
I love that. What is the experience of um bringing
brands into the fold, and are there things we might
be surprised as marketers to know that on your end
as creators, you're open to our not. Yeah, so our
revenue is solely on ads, so we you know, we
(35:40):
have to do We approve all the ones that we
read obviously UM, and we we don't approve a lot
of them UM that come to us. And then we
really have to feel like, oh, this is something I
believe in or this is something I can get behind
and everyone's really awesome. Did they send us the product?
We get to like really get tactile with it and
(36:01):
know it. We do some integrated sponsorships in the fact checks.
Those are a little bit more and uh, what's intense?
I guess not really, but we just get a little deeper.
And especially for those, we have to make sure it's
like it's a company we like and we believe in
(36:22):
their product, and we just talk really honestly about it.
And I also think that's part of it. The advertisers
we work with know that our ads are gonna be
organic and very specific to us. If we can read
a copy point for you if you'd like, but it's
(36:44):
not gonna connect like what connects are, like the fun stories.
There was this whole saga with Dax in this raccoon
like real thing that was happening nightly, and you know,
we were able to tie that into Ring because it
Ring was up of this story. And so the more
opportunities we have to do that, the better the advertising
(37:08):
is for everyone, for us, for them, And like, yeah,
so we didn't integrated add with Google home um for
a while. We did it over a bunch of fact
checks and it was really fun because we would ask
Google facts um and it was just it just led
(37:29):
us so much fun. And once that ended, we were
both like, I missed that. Well. I was listening to
the episode you did with Brad and you were doing
a host read um for door Dash I believe, but
you were talking about your Christmas Eve Eve ritual of
McDonald and I'm like, well, I understand this was an
(37:50):
ad for door Dash. I'm going like, where's McDonald's with
the Christmas Eve Eve special? Exactly? Well, Well, that's really
funny because what must have happened is and I don't remember,
but my guess is we did a door Dash ad
totally regular, in which we talked about getting McDonald's um.
(38:12):
And then after that we did do a McDonald's integration
and we expounded on our Christmas Eve ritual, but none
of it was made up, Like I think the door
Dash ad it must have been where we came up
with the idea to do it, and then the McDonald's
ad was the like full through we did it. I
(38:32):
love Laura's point of the reasons you're saying, like the intimacy,
the personality, the perspective, all this stuff, but also to
start to like even launch new kind of products and
collapse and fun stuff like that totally. And it depends
on the show, like if it's a cooking show or something,
(38:54):
or the or the host love cooking. I mean even
even us. So I got really into cooking this year,
and um, we talked about it a lot on the
fact checks and and there was this whole debacle where
my apartment ended up smelling like fish for like a week,
and we talked about that. It was a whole thing
like did Monica's apartment smell like fish or not? Like
(39:14):
you know, and that that is an opportunity anytime you
have something on your in your show that people are
commenting on. I think brands need to pay attention to
that and be like whatever, if there's like a deodorant
spray that is following that thread, that's an opportunity for
(39:40):
them to be like we want to get involved, we
want to send some product, we want Monica to talk
about it. Did they get to hurt the fish? Smell out?
You know, little things like that. Just paying attention to
the hooks of these different shows where people are laughing
and are interested, Like I think writing those waves is
(40:00):
the best. So question is there a place And Ryan,
our producer, and I were talking about this, and I
love this question where armchair umbrella turns into a dare
I say a products is but a product that's tangible
or something outside of audio, something outside of and not
(40:21):
merch right like right now you guys are doing and
I love your merch ps. And I definitely think the
Monica shirts probably the best. Um and also like the
hot dogs from the Live show. But um, but but
you know, is it does it become something where people
can touch it, feel it, experience it, you know, in
a in a different way? Yeah, I mean, uh, currently
(40:47):
the Live show, as you as you just brought up,
is the version of that is the different thing that
you can get close to, UM and it feels different,
like those shows are are different. There's a Q and
a you know, and it's different energy. So that's us
like kind of connecting a little bit more directly with
our audience. UM. And again we move on to the
(41:12):
next step when we feel we're ready to or we
feel like our audience wants it, or there's a space
for us. And so yes, I guess is the is
the overall answer is yes, I can see expansion in
different realms perhaps down the road. UM. But and you know,
(41:34):
we we've had discussions about some other putting our hands
in some other pots um that are fun and organic
to us. But it's um, nothing set in stone right now.
But we yeah, we keep you know, we're keeping everything
on the horizon. Okay, three ideas ready, here, here's theater
(41:55):
in it absolutely like I'm thinking like jobs raymore flat again,
Like there has to be an actual armchair that is
the armchair expert, right, Like there has to be a
furniture one. So that's one second idea. I mean, there
has to be a coffee table book with all of
the amazing interview experts. Like I just like if I'm
(42:17):
sitting on my armchair. That has to be the coffee
table book and you know the third place i'd go.
And Alex and I've been talking a lot about, you know,
sort of the future of education, thinking about curriculum. I
feel like anywhere you turn, like especially in the tech
business space, even in the media space, people are having
like short form classes, right. Yeah, Like I totally imagine
armchair expert curriculum, Like how do I come in and
(42:40):
get like, you know, six classes and meeting these people?
But I just think that the tone and like how
you're approaching it, it's a really interesting way to think
about learning um while having like edutainment, I guess is
the way I'm thinking about in a way that's beyond audio.
But what you said about improv hits so many things
on the business side, so many things on the creative side.
(43:02):
And the point that you hit about specificity for relationships,
like point to the thing that you want them to imagine, right,
be very specific and then let their imagination go. Yeah,
has been actually probably a subconscious thought in everything at
(43:23):
least I've done in my career that was creative. Right
for a commercial on the commercial side, it was like
I know I want this thing, and this thing is
the thing that seems to be the tuning fork, but
everything else, you know, it starts to become really exciting.
One thing I want to I do want to add
real quick. I also have been in thirty plus commercials
(43:49):
as an actor. That really is like for the acting space,
that's pretty much been my bread and butter. So I'm
really really familiar with that world. To mention, I also
write commercials for Kristen and I'm on set for those.
So UM worked with many different ad agencies on all
(44:10):
of those and and I um, we just did so.
Kristen has a CBD skincare line called Happy Dance, and
UM we worked with Wide and Kennedy on those and
it was so fun and so creative and so great
and they really get specificity. Um, they really understand it
(44:36):
in a way that others don't. But you see a
lot of these agencies make a lot of mistakes in
that arena when you're on set, like trying to go
as generic as possible when it's like no, no, no, no no,
that's not funny. This is funny, and it's hard. It's hard.
This is there's a lot of money on the table
(44:57):
for a lot of people, and I think, going general,
I feel safe, and it is, but it's not the
thing that's going to make you rise above everyone else.
So Monica specifically in the brand universe, let's put it
out into the brand universe. Who is top three brands
you would love to work with? I really want to
(45:21):
work with a clean makeup brand that has many different
shades UM. I think that's really missing in the makeup space.
There are brands that do and I you know, but
some brands have like four foundation colors and that's not realistic.
(45:45):
It's just not life UM and it and it makes
people feel excluded. And I connected at I really connect
to feeling like, oh, I need my skin to be
wider because there's not I mean because of a million reasons.
But also I walk into north room and I don't
see my color represented. UM. That must mean my color
isn't good enough to be represented. You know, these are
(46:07):
the things that sort of go through your head. So
I personally am just like dying to be a part
of a brand that UM works to negate some of that. So, yeah,
let's say a clean, diverse makeup brand. I really want
to work with a cookie brand because I'm obsessed with cookies.
I am a girl Scout bomb now. But I think
(46:29):
you would be like, Girl Scouts should come and do
something with Monica for Like, I would love it, Girl
Scouts of America. I really would love that. Like that's
like so cool girls. You know, I have learned, like
learning about themselves, skills independence exactly. Yeah, I love it.
(46:49):
I love that. Not to stay in the beauty space,
but I my hair is kind of the only thing,
the only part of me that I have ever had
any confidence. And of course I started out not having
any compliments in it, but at some point I was like, oh,
like this was something something I can work with. My
first actually my first commercial ever was an herbal Lessence
(47:12):
commercial and I was a mermaid in it with these
two other girls, and it was so fun. It was
like one of the craziest shoots to this day that
I've ever ever been a part of. UM and uh
and one of the girls they're both amazing actresses and
one um is on was on Westworld and the other
has her own awesome, amazing career, and I was like,
(47:32):
oh my god, we need to remake that commercial now,
um revisit these mermaids. I think that'd be so fun anyway,
So I'm trying to make that happen. I'll put that
out there before we go. We play a game with
all of our guests. Bye bye bye. What would you
get rid of? What would you buy or acquire? And
what would you do yourself? God? Can I I had
(47:55):
not to get like so deep and so political, but
this is where I am right now. Can I want
to say by two guns, I don't no more, no
no more. Yeah, They're not for me. Guys know what
would you buy acquire? Well, I'm going to I would
like to buy um enough wrapping paper to fill up
(48:18):
an entire nice size room. I want a wrapping paper room,
So I'd like to buy all the stuff for that.
I'd like to buy the wrapping paper. I'd like to
buy all the ribbons. And you know, I'm looking at
you Hallmark here is looking at you craft room, but
specifically wrapping. And what would you do yourself? What would
(48:42):
be by Monica that you haven't done or are not doing?
I mean I kind of already wasted it on the
other thing I just said about representing a makeup line.
I would love to do that myself. I would love
to be a part of a makeup line that has
a lot out of diversity of color um represented in it.
(49:05):
Sorry that's a repeat, but it is the truth. If
people want to get in touch with you to build
any of these ideas, talk podcasts, integrate on any of
your amazing shows, how can they get in touch with you? Um?
I would say Instagram is probably the best way, and
then I can redirect to whoever it needs to go to,
most likely will just be me at mL padmin. Well,
(49:29):
thank you so much, thank you, thank you. You know
what I love about what Monica said around the specificity
piece was not just what she said, It is a
right on that actually specific is universal when you're talking
(49:52):
to a certain group of people, when you're in a
certain community. But the thing that I love of that
she was saying that I think we can kind of
abstract a bit is this idea of improv. So improv
is this give and take. It's, you know, putting yourself
(50:12):
in an environment with other actors or other people or
the audience, and you're playing off that environment that context.
Modern media is exactly that. And I even think about
how yield Mo has been on the show and has
been talking about context and talking about being relevant. That's
(50:34):
exactly what they're talking about. They have the instrumentation, they
have the technology to do that, and sometimes I think
that conversation and ad tech gets obscured by the tech
rather than this deep understanding of you have to play
on the field to even be in the game. Modern
(50:56):
media at this point is all about that, and it
really it really goes back Laura to like even people
talking about performance marketing. Performance marketing has been again largely
this race to the bottom. But performance marketing done well
and done in a way that understands today's context, is
(51:22):
exactly about putting out MVPs of messages, putting out things
for people to grab react to and then give you
feedback on. And I think that that's exactly how marketers
could start thinking about instead of having the typical process
(51:42):
of brief RFP, creative concepts, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And this
one shot waterfall process is really to think about how
you start to improv experiment in the context and the
audiences that you want to be a part of, that
you want to reach, that you want to buy your product,
(52:05):
and that that turns things from broadcast to dialogue turns
things from ownership on the corporate brand side two ownership
in the audience's hands. I think this line, and I've
said it many times on the show, still hold. It
is one thing to buy impressions, It is another thing
(52:28):
to make one. This has got me thinking about eminem
eight mile, your buyer, your marketer, lose yourself in the moment.
Laura hit it with the list of all of our
friends and family and my heart who have been so
good to us and helped us get back on air.
Big thank you to Bob Conal, Carter, Andy, Eric Gayle Val,
(52:50):
Michael jen We appreciate you. Thank you so much for
this opportunity. We'll see you in two weeks.
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