November 18, 2020 • 54 mins
With creative agencies buying up data shops and data shops buying up creative agencies, the advertising/marketing industry is in a constant struggle over gut vs. science. And while we all continue to debate the answer, Kern Schireson (Chairman & CEO) and Ross Martin (President and CXO) created Known to put creative, strategy and data science on the same playing field.
Join us as Kern and Ross talk about why Known’s approach is a world away from the legacy model of tacking on capabilities, how to design for outcomes and intelligence, why they're pairing data scientists and creative directors, and how they're building multi-layered campaigns to deliver great consumer experiences.
Plus, this episode includes the first of a four-part mini-series on making attention actionable with Adlandia partner, Yieldmo. Please visit www.yieldmo.com for more information.
For more of the new and next in media, marketing and creativity, sign-up for Newlandia (it's free!) - a digital content and community platform from Adlandia and New Stand. www.newstand.com/newlandia
Don't miss this week's The Burning Question with Kindred CEO Ian Schafer. Follow @ischafer and @adlandiapodcast on Twitter to join the conversation.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
What's up. I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen. Welcome
back everyone. We've got two great guests on the show.
Kern Shearson, chairman and CEO of Known, and Ross Martin,
President and Chief Experience Officer of Known. So, Laura, we've
never actually talked to, and I don't know if there
is an agency or a modern marketing company that exists
(00:34):
today that is truly equal parts data, strategy, and creative.
We've had holding companies by data companies, We've had data
analytics companies by creative agencies, and they've become kind of
tacked on in parts of a whole. But really what
Known is doing is they've taken those three components that
(00:58):
are equal experts and truly created one agency that works
together on equal parts to create and bring the best
creative work and the best kind of need based marketing
to their clients and their consumers. Yeah, Alex, I think
(01:20):
it's an interesting business model that Ross and Kerner after
in bringing data and creativity to the center together. And
I think coming into the conversation with Ross and Kern
was really kind of posing a question or or had
a question of well, who wins in a tiebreaker and
you're actually going to hear this in the show. Does
(01:41):
does data lead or does creativity lead? And even as
I think over the last few episodes, we've had this
sort of tension of well, is it numbers or is
it gut? I think it's interesting to think about this
as you listen to the conversation is this an ant
or is this an oor situation? And I think this converse,
Asian has been one that the industry has been having
(02:02):
for years now, and we've been having on this show
for for three seasons, yeah, and the last ten fifteen years.
And I think that Ross and Kern are onto something
that is different, the details of which and the nuance
of which comes through in this conversation. So with that,
we'll be right back. We are back at Landia with
(02:33):
exciting partners from yield Mo. We are here with Lisa
Bradner GM of Analytics and Teddy John d E, head
of Product. So we're here to talk with Lisa and
Teddy about making attention actionable over the next four episodes
of Atlantia. Let's start from the top. What is yield Mo.
Yield Mo is a next generation marketplace powered by attention
(02:55):
analytics superior formats and real time data. So Lisa would
love for you to expand on what yield mo does
and share with our listeners how yield mo thinks about
and approaches the market. Well, I think you have to
start with you know the vision everybody has for advertising, right,
we have this perfect vision. We're advertising flows like water.
The right people see your ad, they get the right creative,
(03:18):
they're inspired, they go by your product. Every impression is
valuable and it just flows right. Doesn't quite work like that,
never has, But I think you know Programmatic. When that launched,
we were really trying to say, how do we connect
this ecosystem and make everything flow? With programmatic, We've spent
all the time talking about the pipes, like it's so cool.
(03:41):
We can deliver a lot more impressions, a lot faster,
we can reach your entire audience. But you know what,
if you're put in sewage in those pipes, you've just
wasted a whole lot of money really really quickly. So
I like to step back and say, all right, great,
we've built the infrastructure, we're great blumber, but let's talk
(04:01):
about what we're putting through those pipes. Let's make sure
it's quality. Let's make sure it's clean, let's make sure
everybody knows that it's fraud free and can be trusted,
and let's make sure we're not poisoning our own ecosystem.
What do you when you talk about quality? I think
that's such an interesting part of the conversation. Quality is
a great question. Right. As an industry, we've been sort
(04:23):
of stuck in lowest common denominator. Right, we talked about viewability,
and we talk about fraud free or you were seen
by a human not a box. But if you even
look into the definition of view ability, it is a really,
really really split second of moment where it's on the page.
It's not exactly something I think that any brand person
would say, Yeah, my brand showed up great. But it's
(04:43):
a place to start, and it was a common denominator
we could all rally around. But the reason we look
at attention at yield mode in addition to those signals
is we want to go a layer deeper to say,
all right, we know it was seen by a human being,
we know it was on the screen, and how long
did they care, were they interested? Did they signal that
(05:05):
to them it was a quality? Add experience and something
they wanted to engage further in. And the better job
we can do of matching the person, the device, the impression,
the time, and the creative the higher quality that add
experience is going to be for everybody. So how is
yield MO helping the industry navigate the pipes? We have
(05:28):
a marketplace with highly curated, high quality inventory, but it's
not a walled garden, right, anybody can play and the
data goes in, the data goes out. We are working
across the ecosystem to find the highest quality inventory, bring
our formats and our data to that and create a
(05:49):
really really great brand experience that's good for the user
tou that's in the context of what they're looking at,
and bring all that together to make sure that we're
delivering quality experiences and that the money we're spending is
going to quality publishers. Teddy, what are your thoughts on
AD experiences? Those two words actually don't typically go together,
(06:12):
but the meaning when you put those words together around
actually creating an AD experience that someone wants and potentially
even anticipated right or needed, I think actually does create
an experience. How are you guys thinking about that? Well,
that's the idea behind quality advertising is can you deliver
(06:33):
an ad experience to a user that actually influences and
allows them to make a brand decision. And that's what
we try to do it. You'll most we try to
You know, there's a great technology out there. You can
buy ads and serve them anywhere, but what is actually
making an impact? And we focus on trying to allow
marketers to seed at with with our investment and attention
(06:56):
and so they can quickly decide, well, this is working
and this isn't You do you both talk about the
kind of green spaces, what i'll call green shoots. Are
you working with brands do you identify through these different
ad experiences new white spaces and green shoot areas for
their products for audience development? And if so, how are
you thinking about that? I love this notion of green shoots. Right.
(07:19):
I've always said when you work in marketing, you're always dating,
You're never married. Right. Every time you show up it's
a chance to impress your customer and you never get
to hang out in the catch and sweatpants. Right, It's
like you've got to prove yourself every day. But you know,
I think that if you think about those fast moving
media metrics. If you can be really agile with the
ad experience and when with the data, you can recognize
(07:42):
when a green shoot is happening. And I think as marketers,
we've always gone top down, right, here are my segments,
here are the people I'm talking to. But you know,
we saw this in the pandemic. People who hadn't bought
certain brands in twenty years all of a sudden ripped
them off the shelf. So as a brand person, you've
always have to be listening for that surprise signal that
(08:03):
signals an opportunity you may not be thinking about. And
our agile data structure allows our brands to work with
us to do just that. Lisa Bradner, Teddy Jwadi from
yield Mo, thank you for being our partners, Thank you
for coming on at Landia, Thank you for having us,
(08:26):
and we are back at Landia. Welcoming back to guests.
Curren Jeerson, Chairman and CEO of Known, and Ross Martin,
president and Chief Experience Officer of Known, Welcome, guys, welcome,
thank you great to be here, so good. So the
first question everyone wants to know is what is known?
(08:49):
Known came together out of three? Really? Uh, leaving companies.
Company I found it almost twenty years ago is a
data science and advanced analytics company me UM. It's called
it was called Cheerson Associates, which is my last name.
So you can see I was not on the creative side.
You don't you don't want to hire me for naming.
(09:10):
I think I added the associates so people would think
I had associates. But that was about his That was
about as creative as a god. But this was a
company that was doing data science before it was called
data science. For a lot of the big tech companies
are our clients for twenty years, like Google and Microsoft
and Amazon. UM. So tons of PhDs and just number
(09:32):
crunctures and the other components come out of the brilliant
creative mind and strategic mind of Ross Martin, who ran
a company called Blackbird that I think somehow he must
have been strategic because he got you guys to talk
about it well two years ago. He was with us
two years ago talking about Blackbird. Let him back in.
(09:54):
I want him back in. I want current to continue
talking about knowing. But I will just stop for one
second for an ad for Atlanta to say when I
was originally on your podcast. I think I got seventeen calls,
so I think I owe you a chunk of cash.
And anybody ever, anybody who ever shows up on this podcast,
if you make it this far, you're good. Like Malcolm Gladwell, congratulations,
(10:16):
you have now made it and you have a chance
at the same kind of career that I have had
over the last few years. Because I was on this
and they add, you were the first guest to do
live poetry on Atlantia. So Kern, I hear that you
may try to want I may, I may so fastinuing
(10:39):
with known U, the third component of this, the third heat,
if you will, came out of a group called Stunt Creative,
which is really a best in class creative and production
studio at l A. Again you know, twenty years in
the business, won every award on the planet, and the
unifying belief that brought us together was this idea that
(11:03):
art and science needed to live together in a real way,
not in a big box consultancy buys global creative agency way,
and um, you know, we felt like there was a
place for these capabilities to sit around the table as equals,
as friends, as partners, um, where everybody had a superpower,
(11:28):
but we all wanted to work together to create the
right outcome for our clients. So kar and put that
into practice, right because you're doing a tremendous amount of
work with TikTok right now seeing some of the work
you're doing with the A n A around see her.
So if you look at the spectrum of work that
you have, the body of work that's out in the market,
when you bring together those three pillars data, strategy, creativity,
(11:50):
how is that manifesting? It's a great question, um So,
So I think the the process. You know, what you
see is creative, and what you see is creative that
you hopefully remember, um And that really is evocative, and
that is hitting you in a place and at a
time that makes sense, right, and that that those other
(12:13):
aspects are not what people remember, but they're part of
our process. So the place we like to start is
with the fundamental questions. And this goes back to the name.
You know, like we wouldn't be in the marketing and
advertising industry if we hadn't a long and hired about
the seven different meanings of our name. But that you know,
the first question is like what know yourself as a brand? Right, Well,
(12:39):
what do you stand for? What do you mean in
the world? Know your customers? Uh, why do they care
about you? What do they think, feel and believe about you?
And what do they need to know to understand whether
or not you fit into their life? And then how
do you make that know? How do you bring that
to life insights out, emotion and in a way that
it creates a real emotional fonts and though that that
(13:02):
is the process. So like when we sit down, whether
it's with a client, TikTok or see her or vivent
or any of these or memorial sunkettering, right, it's those
questions in that order. Um, what is this brand, what's
happening to it? How does it exist in the world,
How do we find the right audiences, how do we
connect with them in the times and places and ways
(13:23):
that makes sense? How do we bring that into being
in a way that's beautiful and evocative and and it's
great you know that people see our creative on the
world and remember it. But the process that gets it
there is really what we think drives a lot of
the impact for our clients because we're not wasting impressions,
we're not wasting the audience's time. So that's that's sort
(13:45):
of the science side that's harder to see and touch,
but is really part of why we think this stuff
works so hard for our clients. So ross last time
you were on the show, UM, we were talking all
things Blackbird. How did Blackbird come to work with Current?
So Blackbird came to work with Kern and also with
(14:07):
Jeff Kingsley, who is the chief operating officer of Sheerson
and now the president and CEO of Known, and also
came to work with Brad Roth and Mark Feldstein from
Stun because back in the day by Coom, when I
was running marketing, UM, I was their clients. Sheerson Associates
and Stun were like my secret weapons, and so I
(14:27):
knew very well what those two companies were capable of
and how fantastic they were they you know, even if
other people didn't know that yet. UM, and I was
making a living on the work they were doing. Um.
The truth is Blackbirds, as you know, it was going well.
It was two two and a half years old, and
I loved it. But every once in a while, or
(14:50):
like once in your lifetime, there's a generational opportunity to
do something really unique. And special, not just disruptive, but
game changing. So the hypothesis of known represented a generational opportunity.
If what we believe to be true UM and possible
could actually be achieved, then this this wouldn't be sort
(15:11):
of just a good business opportunity, but it would be
a game changing UM I guess inflection point for how
marketing gets done in the twenty one century. And I
know it sounds like I'm vastly overstating that, and maybe
I'm a couple of years ahead of other people getting
what we're trying to do, and it probably sounds a
little arrogant, But in the beginning, we weren't sure, right,
So we put these companies together and we started to
(15:35):
try to go to market together as a unified set
of capabilities. And think of it almost like as a
moment of Pangaea where the continents come back together on Earth,
when the marketing capabilities and advertising capabilities that never should
have been separated are actually unified and there's no fidelity
loss between them. When that happens, you actually returned to
(15:58):
being UM. Not is efficient and effective and transparent, but
you can actually align the goals of your company with
the business interests of your clients. And when you can
do that, then you provide the first meaningful alternative to
the holding company model in a long long time. That's
the opportunity that I saw. That's the opportunity that we saw,
(16:20):
And more importantly, it's it's the opportunity that dozens of
clients saw and and and really pulled us together um
to provide a comprehensive set of marketing services for them.
So a lot of holding companies would say the same thing,
what is setting known apart? What I think is setting
(16:41):
us apart is truly best in class in every discipline.
Right In some cases, and I was kind of joking
about it before, you've got companies that are pretty good
at data and analytics and process and technology trying to
glue on creative capability. And now you know exactly how
(17:04):
that relationship works. You know who is the step child
of who, and who drives? You know who's got the
bigger revenue line and what bread is butter were right,
like we all know, um. And in other cases, you've
got a creative shop or a traditional media buying company
hiring a couple of people who maybe have an undergrad
(17:25):
degree in math or economics and no a little are
or sequel and they're like, no, we have data capabilities,
or even buying a data company, which by the way,
is like the most ridiculous thing for supposedly impartial agency
to be doing. But leaving that to the side for
a second, what we thought was exciting about this in
(17:45):
kind of the cultural synergy that led up to this
combination was not just the thesis, not just the business opportunity,
but the cultural synergies and the fact that currently the
top creative director at Known Studios won't stop calling our
chief technology officer to talk about you know, non stochastic
modeling and like creative optimization. It's like, that's happening, that's
(18:11):
actually happening because the creative team is totally gigging out
on the data. The data scientists, and you know, this
is also a real, a real different thing. We've got
like postdoctoral PhD data scientists, like actual data scientists who
(18:31):
extend the analytics capability of clients like Amazon and Microsoft
and Google when they're not working on our advertising clients.
And that's that's not that's not even in the realm
of firepower at these other agencies and our creatives who
are making these moments that break culture are also best
in class and they love each other. And our strategists
are sitting there in the middle of it saying, I
(18:52):
cannot believe like the weapons that we get to deploy
both on the inbound customer insight and the creation of
breakthrough storytelling. So who gets the tiebreaker in data versus gut? Well,
there there isn't one. That's not a that's not like
it's that's just not the process that we run. The
(19:14):
like they're not at odds with each other. What happens
is are creative and strategy teams have brilliant ideas, and
as often happens in creative ideation and all the sort
of like work that leads up to an incredible campaign
is there are a bunch of things that people love.
And then there's like that final round of tweaking and
(19:37):
tuning of like do we alpha this up or down?
Like what's the color mix? How big is the like
how much do we pull into the foreground background? Like
what you know where? Like how tight is the focus
those things? It turns out you don't have to guess,
So the gut is all there like that you see
the heart I would think in our TikTok campaigns, you
(19:58):
see the heart and see her. You see the heart
in what everything our studios turns out, and like the
creative minds at work there, like that's real, that wasn't
computer generated. And then the question is of all the
thousands of different perspectives and backgrounds and sort of the
(20:21):
constellation of audience out there. Each person is a little
bit different, each platform is a little bit different. So
how do I match the absolute best version of the
creative to the right individual audience member based on everything
I can into it about them in the right place,
at the right time, in the right format, on the
right platform. That's where data takes creative and like beautiful creative, evocative,
(20:47):
creative and supercharges it. And that's where we see the
results going absolutely crazy. I want to go back to
something that you said that I think is probably if
we don't go back to his probably passed over pretty easily.
You have twenty five pH d data scientists and analytics
(21:07):
folks working with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, not on marketing creative.
We have about seventy analytics people working outside of the
marketing space. I'm just talking about like the what I
was trying to say, is of the of the advanced
degrees working in advertising? These are not people when we like,
(21:29):
you see listings out there and tors when we're not
trying to you see listings out there for you know,
data scientists or advertising analysts, and they'll say things like,
you know, Excel skills are a must. Excel skills are
not a must, right like they're there there. There are
profoundly more powerful tools. And so when we when when
(21:50):
we list a position for a data scientists, that's a
person who's coming out of uh typically like a postdoctoral
fellowship up at a leading academic institution, and you know,
the folks on that team talk about sort of rehabilitating
academics and and helping them find these new careers, you know,
(22:13):
from physics finding looking searching for the ghost particle in
in mild cubic mild blocks of Arctic ice, to trying
to identify audience signals in social and and digital environments.
And our strategy and our analytics and data science teams
are beating out their pure play competitors with clients like
(22:34):
Google and Amazon and Facebook. Can you double down on
the seamlessness of your data scientists talking to your creative leads.
Is that appairing that we need to see more of
in the market. I think it's the thing that UM, I,
at the end of the day get most excited about
in our business. And in this sort of crazy concoction
(22:57):
that that we're delivering, that's what really he got us there,
That's what got us to the point of saying, we
all have great businesses. Can you give us an example
where like you were in a creative pitch and you
you brought out data scientists and it was like, at
that point, completely unexpected for the narrative of what I'm
assuming brand marketers typically here in a creative pitch. Yeah, look,
(23:18):
it happens all the time. We were I don't want
to name the client, but we were working on a
pretty important campaign that started with a deep dive into
some micro segmentation, and um what we found in the
micro segmentation and the attributes and you've got a data
scientists sort of walking through like these are the drive
(23:41):
this is the driver model of you know, who is
likely to be persuadable of outcome air B or c
um and And what we realized in that was that
the the creative that the client wanted was something that
was really sort of edgy and sharp and fresh, and
what and what the audience wanted was to be spoken
(24:04):
to an authentic way about values, right like, and you
could see it and it just like it spun the
creative ideation around, not because that not because it's not
like not because they were being lectured by the data scientists,
but because they were discovering it together, because the data
scientist was surfacing a constellation of attributes and the creatives
(24:25):
were saying, hold on, that's not what was That's not
what was in the brief at all, Like what you're
telling me? And am I understanding this? Right? Like if
you're saying that it's suburban zip codes and it's you know,
non Apple devices and it's you know, these kinds of demos,
like that's not what they're asking for. Why are we
doing that? And like you could just feel this this
(24:48):
momentum building and jelling around a different vision of the
opportunity and and the arc of the story that needed
to be told for this brand that wasn't gonna get
told But wasn't. It wasn't a research report that was
plopped down on a desk, right it was it was
a live collaboration and and by the way, that goes
(25:08):
in both directions, you know, and I've seen creative teams
working through a pitch and coming back to the scientists
and saying like, can we test this? Does this feel right? Like?
How would we start to focus into signals and social
media to understand if I've got the right phrasing here,
the right meme, the right kind of moment and culture
like is this what it needs to be? Or should
(25:30):
I look over here? Because I can't. I'm weighing these
two options. And so sometimes it's the refinement. Sometimes it's
a kind of a revelation. And then I think what
happens after the fact. We look at the performance of
all these campaigns, even if their brand campaigns. We're running
five seconds snapshots of every exposure that happened in every
five seconds, and what are all of the what's all
(25:51):
the metadata around that? How do we understand that atomic
intersection of creative an audience and every day the path
and matching that happens, which is a collaborative process between
the creatives and the data scientists together reviewing these five
second snapshots and reviewing these sort of patterns and trends
that are coming out leads to a re racking of
(26:14):
some of the really hyper specific nuances of the creative
as it's happening in each platform and each subsegment. So
they're like, okay, all right, we gotta swap out that
art because like it's definitely like that stuff is not
working on Facebook. It's working great on you know, on
digital display, but we got like and for search, I
feel like this copy right here, let's change that one
(26:37):
word like And then the brainstorming happening with the data
scientists and the creatives at once, saying why that word,
what do we think it could be? What do we
think like what is working in other parallel platforms, and
you know what, like we literally had a moment. We're
swapping out a single word in digital display, drove the
results of that ad by one word. What you're seeing
(27:00):
is really exciting to me, and it's actually very different.
So what people aren't doing. People aren't actually going off
of their web metrics or their basic campaign metrics, or
they've got isolated first party data and analytics. What you're
(27:21):
doing because you're talking about the whole thing and the
right stuff at the right time and that's easy to say,
but lots of folks when they're talking about data and analytics,
they're talking about campaign metrics. And something we talked about
was the hypothesis that more brands, more companies, more marketers
(27:42):
need to build a multi layer hypothesis hypotheses and run them.
That's exactly right. The campaign is the beginning right day.
What if you were to ask me, uh, the night
before a big campaign launches, like, is this gonna work tomorrow?
I'll say, I don't know if it's going to work
tomorrow morning, but I think it has a better chance
(28:04):
of working by mid day or later in the day
because of what we learned in the morning, right Like,
the very beginning of a persistent optimization loop is the
most exciting time because what you're doing is treating everything
that's going out in the world as a social experiment
that you get to learn from. And the more quickly
you can metabolize that information and act on those insights
(28:26):
with the help of machine learning and an AI, the
more quickly you can optimize. Whether it's the creative, the channel,
the time, the messaging, the copy itself, the beating algorithm,
it's all of those. That's why we say, for a
campaign like the one we are about the launch on Sunday,
if you were looking from our control room, you'd see
(28:48):
ten to twenty permutations going out at the same time,
and we're gonna learn a lot from each one of
them in real time. Can you tell us about the
campaign that's going out Sunday. Yeah, So we took on
a new client where the Agency of Credit's Vivint, the
I V I n T Home security UH company, and
and it's a smart home company essentially, and you know
(29:08):
it's it's it's becoming a loud, noisy competitive space, especially
during the pandemic. This is a company that is hot
as hell, like they are performing incredibly well. It's a
publicly traded company, but current multi multibillion dollar company four
percent on aided awareness, right like just you just haven't
heard of it because it is loud, it's noisy out there.
(29:29):
But but that's about to change. And um, we've got
a really fun campaign or as Ross would say, campaigns
um that that's going to support them out there in
the world coming up with and there's gonna be some
time pole placements and I want to come back to
also like the art of this is not lost. The
core creative is super funny, you're gonna see it. And
(29:49):
what's the right sequencing of creative and how do you
move people from awareness to advocacy to intent? Right like that,
those things, like they're massive differences based on what they
see in what order, even if all the creatives great,
what what's what's really really interesting about this moment in
time for Adlandia fans, right because the marketing and advertising
(30:11):
community listens to this podcast religiously. Here's the thing, like
there we're sort of seeing a bifurcation in the CMO land, right,
Like there are cmos who are you know, are just
not ready for this stuff, Like they don't really need
to care that much and they're just sort of managing
as they did before. But there's a new breed of
(30:33):
cmos and marketing leadership. For example, you mentioned TikTok. We
couldn't do what we do if if they didn't have
Nick Trent in that seat leading that team, if they
didn't have a team that was just excited about the
marriage of art and science as we are. We couldn't
do it with just any client. And what's fantastic about
the clients that we've been able to assemble. It's not
(30:55):
that they're all big brand, awesome names, which many of
them are, but they are all of sort of the
future economy of marketing. These are all human beings who
understand everything we are talking about on this podcast right now,
and they do it. That's why the marketing flywheel can
actually happen. TikTok's a unique example because it's such a
gigantic global platform and there's so much happening to create
(31:17):
culture every minute, but the same can be sort of
done for so many brands and so many categories, and
one by one we're proving that. So talk a little
bit about data as it relates to strategy, because so
much of what we've seen in the headlines in our
industry is thinking about your tech stack, your data stack
as being means to find an audience, right when I
(31:38):
think about the world of programmatic and addressable, But very
rarely in this industry are we privy to the conversation
of data science as it relates to creative optimization in
the work, not the delivery of it in the work.
So it's a it's a great question because I think
the thing that's so often missed on the kind of
(31:59):
Apple location of data to advertising is this reality that
bad advertising and badly targeted advertising is paid for by
the audience. Right, that's just a tax that you had
to pay when they showed like Ross's kids are, you know,
junior high school in high school, when somebody shows him
(32:21):
a Pamper's ad that he pays for, that it didn't
fund the content he was watching and they wasted his time.
And so not showing Ross that Pampers at his service, um,
showing Ross an ad for a product that I thinks
unless you tell me otherwise, Showing Ross an ad for
a product that he's genuinely interested in in a category
(32:41):
that he's exploring. I'm not talking about retargeting, but like
that's intuitively applicable to Ross's life. That is informative, that
is funny, that is joyful, that's that's not a tax
on Ross's attention, that's additive to the experience. And so
what we try and do is stay in that zone.
And like I sometimes I do get excited as like
(33:02):
a nerd about you know, all the things we can
learn from all of the signal that's coming out of
our lives. I also I want to be really measured
as a human being about the question of how would
I feel about that the application of that whether or
not it's legally obtained, whether or not it's gdp R compliant, Like,
(33:24):
how would I feel about the application of that data
point to what's happening in my media consumption experience right now?
I hear you. I think that's awesome. I think you
guys are setting up for a post cookie world, which
I don't actually think a lot of companies, at least
a lot of cmos are not thinking about yet. Unquestionably,
we actually just did a project in the publishers side
(33:46):
of our business for one of the largest publishers on
the planet that I want that I'm on name here.
That was Cookieless World. That was basically, how do you
build a smart and virtuous ad business um and how
do you part anticipate as a platform of scale in
a cookuous world. So the people on that side are
starting to think about it, But I agree that wave
(34:08):
hasn't really hit the cmos yet. They're like, they're gonna
get pulled into it, and I'm glad we're on the
forefront of it, but it's not sort of broadly out
there yet. So what is known want to be known for? Like,
what is the influence you want to have on this
industry short term? Long term? I'll tell you there are
two things. UM. So they're like there's the part of
(34:33):
me that's just excited about seeing the alchemy of you know,
ardent science in like a real partnership of equals UM
in doing this stuff and breaking down some of the
barriers in the way that people when professionals talk to
each other like it's a real thing and we shouldn't,
(34:55):
you know, Like people are bigger than those boxes of
data scientists and creative director and that's that's just an
amazing thing to watch and to watch happen in the
world of modern marketing as people get more fluent and
more dynamic in how they use this stuff. There's also
the competitive oppositional like grumpy business person in UM and
(35:21):
I get incredibly frustrated when I see structures in place
that are self serving and designed to impede the intellectual
metabolism of an environment like this. And I think unintentionally,
but over many, many decades, we've created a structure in
(35:45):
the traditional media planning and buying environment that deliberately holds
back the evolution of the industry and and the passion
that I had for like going all in, Like guess what, like,
you own a data science and analytics company in you
(36:07):
don't need like nobody said you should really merge with
a creative agency, right, Like That's like that's everybody wants
to be a data science and analytics company in for
all the wrong reasons. But that's that's like a good
place to be. And the thing that I think made
me and all the other partners in that company want
to go all in on this was having the deep
experience we had on the publisher side seeing all the
(36:30):
amazing investments publishers and platforms are making to expose their
inventory and novel ways, and then also on the on
the client side seeing next generation marketers like Ross talked
about making massive strides to do things differently and in
a smarter way, in a more efficient way, and then
watching this thing just get stuck because the economic models
(36:54):
for how these transactions get handled and processed are broken.
Look like when I was working at Viacom with an
incredible group of people who are trying to do things
a different way and trying to bring media out into
the marketplace in a different way. And and the whole problem, though,
(37:14):
is if they go transparent, If the platforms and publishers
are transparent and advanced and integrated, and they expose their
inventory brank banks with real time discoverable pricing, which even
TV companies do now for television, and you've got data savvy,
aggressive marketers on the other side, like, how do I
(37:35):
make money as a media buying platform? Like I'll tell
you how we make money. We say, oh, that's cool,
Like we have incredible data scientists. We're happy to have
them support your team, work with our creative folks. Optimize
the ship out of this not by not by telling
you you can't buy it on your own, not by
telling the upfront scary. The upfront is so scary you
(37:57):
can't go in there. We have to value and so
like that passion for adding actual, real hard value to
this ecosystem made us realize that, like, you have to
have all these things together, You've got to really do
it right and and it's all or an nothing. We
need to be the place where the best people on
(38:17):
the planet come to do the best work of their lives.
How are you training talent? How are you training future marketers?
That's hard. In fact, I think it's one of our
greatest challenges because it's really difficult for us to recruit
as you can imagine the kind of talent that's required
as at this level from other agencies. We do a
lot of recruiting out of the top colleges and universities
(38:38):
and you know post doc programs in the world. Um.
Many of the people who come and work and known
just aren't from this industry, and the perspective and the
brilliance that they bring is what's sort of rejuvenating everything. UM.
And then you know, world class creative talent and strategic
talent like hard to find and incredibly in demand. UM.
(39:02):
But but we we've been lucky so far in that
we've built a culture that people want to be part of.
So if you think about every new person that joins
our company, they're sort of recoding the d N a
person by person that's Adam by Adam right, and they're
adding us their own apps to this operating system and
they're making it better. And that's sort of happening now
(39:23):
at a pace that I don't know that we could
have imagined a year ago, especially given you know, how
is gone. But We've been very fortunate, and I think
now the most important thing is healthy growth. What do
you both think it takes to break through going into
I think Ross and I and and Mark and Brad
and all the you know, creatives and scientists at talk
(39:46):
about this a lot, and we talk about it in
the context of some of our values right around sort
of authenticity, UM and honesty. There's no doubt and we
we recently you know, you talked about we feel like
I felt like there was a real UM has been
a real hard reset in the culture and and there
(40:08):
are a lot like a lot of things have changed,
need to change, will change UM coming out of this experience,
and I'm an optimist about where it all ends. But
we also felt like we needed to reset and put
our finger back on the pulse of what was happening
in the world. So we ran this huge self funded
study of the human condition in UM that we just recently.
(40:31):
What did it say? It said that in a in
a sort of a universal experience and phenomenon, it's hitting
different people very differently. UM and UH. The kinds of
things that are UH, that are allowing some people to
survive and thrive are not the things you think, it's
(40:54):
not your economics standing. Um, it's not even necessarily your
career um or your position. Um. It looked to us
through this sort of qualitative and quantitative segmentation that it
had to do with your relationships, your strong ties, your
relationships with people in your life, your sense of purpose,
(41:17):
and your sense of place and connection to your community.
And that all makes sense, right when you break it
out like that, that that all makes sense. But it wasn't
necessarily how we were lensing, and it wasn't how our
clients we're seeing it. It wasn't about the tropes of
in extraordinary times, right, And there's a lot of deeper
data there too, But but those things all struck us
(41:37):
as like foundational human authentic building blocks of who you
are and why you are and so first and foremost
who we're trying to ask ourselves those questions for any
creative it's like, does this is this real? Does this
speak to anyone? I think you know you always want
to do that in the process, but I think it's
(41:58):
like it's twice as important right now to get back
to for any given brand, like what is your purpose?
What is your place in the lives of your audience,
your consumers, your constituency um and how do you want
to talk to those people. Alexa hit this home in
our Malcolm Gladwell episode and referencing David versus Goliath scenario
(42:20):
of not losing sight of those relationships with our consumer
and what matters to them. And I'm gonna throw this
back to your partner, Ross, because I've had the really
great honor of getting to know Ross a few years
ago and talking to him and understanding when he was
building Blackbird that and Ross, you correct me if I'm wrong,
(42:43):
but you were always in the pursuit of truth, and
as a marketer, I think maybe that's the that's the
whole point. You bring up a great point, and it's
it's sort of an extension of what Kerment was just
saying that, like that that is sort of the the
dark side of what we're learning about ourselves as a society,
(43:04):
especially here in America, is that like, there is no
Laura and Alexa. Right, there's Laura and there's Alexa, and
you happen to do this show together, but the truth
is so different, or maybe just a little different, but
it's different for each of you. And so if I
want to reach your heart and make a connection. If
(43:27):
I want to change what you think, if I want
to get you to turn right when you're normally going
to turn left, I actually have to find the central
human truth of you. And I can't rely, as I
did before, on my own bias on shallow punditry, on
assumptions about who you are. Because you're two white women
of a certain age who live in the East Coasts,
(43:49):
and that's what we used to do. We actually did
that for decades. We cannot afford to waste the marketing
dollars on that kind of carelessness and waste the time
and attention of that audience, of that audience, when the
tools are all available to us. They are now at
our finger trips. There is no more excuse for not
(44:11):
knowing that. I think we mic drop that. So we'll
start with current. Because Karrent has never played the game.
Kerrent killed by d I Y. I think you've heard
it from me a few times, Like I would get
rid of anybody out there who has gotten themselves boxed
(44:33):
into a corner where they're where they're fighting against progress
in this industry, where they're pushing back on efficiency and
opportunity in in progress UM and that that's not that's
not one company, and that's not one category. But like
in any category, there's a bunch of UM. So let's
get rid of them because like that, we don't have
(44:53):
time and and and the clients deserve better. I'll tell
you what I think we've talked about. We feel like
we can and should buy doesn't sound like the right word,
but but but who we want to go find and
partner with and bring in. We think that there's outside
of the US, there's a bunch of tremendous creative assets,
(45:16):
creative companies out there who are doing beautiful, amazing work
in each of their regions and countries, and who are
also increasingly trying to scratch the data action Like who
could be incredible additions to our team, incredible extensions of
our DNA as Ross said UM as we serve more
(45:37):
and more global clients, right, so getting into local markets
with best in class creative for those markets I think
makes sense for us. And what I want to keep
d I y NG is the process and the culture
that connects this thing together. And you know, we talk
(45:57):
a lot about the operating system of our clients, but
also they an operating system and a belief system for ourselves.
And that's the thing we need to never stop building it.
Ross killed by d I y I'm gonna kill hate.
I'm gonna buy time. I'm gonna build empathy, Ross Kern,
(46:19):
known dot is. If people want to get in touch
with you to remix data, science and creativity, how do
they get in touch with you? Hello at known dot
is and we will say hello back, Ross Kern. Poets
of progress? Did you know that I have been for
for years since I first met Ross, I've been calling
(46:40):
him a business poet. Here is a business poet. I mean, Ross,
come on, give us something, Ross, just something to close
the episode with something from your book. Let's put it
a little plug here. Ross is a published poet. The
cop who rides alone, Ross Martin. It started to thunder.
I began to wonder why do we mow our lawns?
Then it hit me. The nice lines are pretty when
(47:01):
they wake up freshly cut it dawn. Maybe they want
to keep growing, but man's too ignorant to stop mowing,
So lawns are cut each day because man doesn't care
about cutting nature's hair, even if nature doesn't want it
that way. I love it Did you write that when
you were fifteen? Yeah? Did I do that in the
last episode? No, but I remember you talking and he's
(47:21):
always triing that out. I only got one poem and
I was fifteen. Can and order, Yes, this opportunity less
opportunity Our data side just five out of six. Data
Side just will tell you that that is the best title.
Can we just say congratulations on this season and this
(47:45):
is the podcast. So we're just so grateful to be
part of you your world here on a small part,
but thank you so much. You will be coming back.
Thank you guys, to Laura coming out of this conversation.
The things that shine through for me one, we as
(48:08):
marketers and especially cmos, tend to continue to look at
the vanity as you call them, vanity metrics. Right, So,
what's happening on your website, what's happening in your purchase funnel,
what's happening da da da da. But those are surface metrics,
that's surface data and analytics, rather than having creatives and
(48:29):
data scientists briefed together, starting together and going to find
out what could be known. It's interesting in how Ross
and currenter positioning their value prop right, and that it's
less so about um one or the other, but how
these two things work together, the ability to understand patterns
(48:51):
using data and breakdown at the individual levels. What I
took away down to the individual level what creative serves
Alexa versus what creative serves Laura and I think marrying
that you know this idea of we think so much
in the creative spaces art director meets copywriter, but is
the new critical pairing data scientists and creative director. Yeah,
(49:14):
I love that. And when you think about designing, designing
both product designing, designing both products and campaign or message
right against triggers that are about the needs that are
filling the needs and understanding the triggers of the consumer first,
(49:37):
designing that upfront that should be your brief with a
bunch of hypotheses, a bunch of opportunities right to test.
And too often I think, you know and Ross kind
of hit on this too often. I think we talk
about campaigns and there that that alone is something that
starts and ends. And what Ross and Kurn were saying
(49:59):
is that this just keeps going, This just keeps learning.
And in order to do that, you have to get
out in the market. You have to actually have a
hook to start reeling in. If you don't have that
hook out there and you're not testing multiple iterations, I'm
not just talking about messaging and creative, I'm talking about ideas.
(50:19):
I'm talking about products. And so is the question that
the CMO becomes more of a growth marketer or is
the question that the CMO becomes more of a product person.
Is that where we're headed. Yeah, it's interesting when you
think about the word programmatic. So much of the emphasis
has been on the automatic part of that word. But
(50:41):
really what I heard is using data science to really unpack,
unbundle the journey, really think about the message that's going
to resonate in that journey, and really thinking about programming
the automation versus automating the programming all of that, you know.
And on that note, one of the things that Kern said,
(51:03):
and he kind of said it quietly, right, it was
like a point was about sequencing. We don't actually think
about sequencing enough. This is about design up front. Designing
up front the path you're going to take someone, and
it has multiple iterations, and it has multiple turning points.
(51:23):
They could take someone down depending on their behavior, depending
on where they are in their interesting consideration, and I
think that you know, the industry is separated the tools, right,
the data science and the analytics and the metrics and
point KPIs and those types of things with good creative
(51:44):
but those things, as Ross and Kern said, they go
hand in hand. Well yeah, I mean so much of
what I've experienced throughout my career is the creative leading
that messaging and then using the data science to target
audiences right, to go out and find the audience to
deliver that message. But by pairing those two things together
(52:06):
from the onset, you start thinking less like a planner
and more like a programmer designing the journey versus planning it.
Kern really got to that when he was talking about
bad advertising is like attacks on the consumer. They thought
that was a fascinating That was a great way of
saying it. It was a great way of saying it.
(52:27):
And I think, so it's less of people been paying
with their time. People are paying with their time, And
I think it's less about what you want to sell
someone and more about how are you reaching someone and
making sure that there's value and what you are selling them.
There's like this this thing going off in my brain,
(52:48):
going wait a minute. If you look at a standard
reporting dashboard in media, one of the metrics you will
often find is time spent. But we don't measure the
sentiment of the time in so I may capture somebody's
attention for thirty sixty seconds, but was that a good experience?
What was that time well spent? Right? So central question,
(53:12):
what do you want to be known for? That is
the question? And speaking of questions, Alexa, We're going to
be introducing a new segment on Atlantia called The Burning
Question with Kindred CEO Ian Schaefer so Atlanta. Each week
we're gonna be teaming up with Kindred to pose a
provocative question to our listeners that explores how popular culture
movements affect brand decisions. And we're gonna be asking those
(53:35):
questions on Twitter and then some of the responses from
the Atlantia community will be read on air and discussed
in the podcast in addition to having I and share
his perspective. So week one question has the fear of
cancel culture lad brands and the people behind them to
develop faux food. Fear of fffing up is the appeal
(53:56):
to everyone, the new appeal to no one. This popular culture,
Eat Corporate Culture for breakfast, tweet at Atlantia Podcasts and
see c I Shaefer Ian Shaeffer to get into the conversation,
and we may have you on one of our next
episodes to discuss Laura hit it with the list of
(54:17):
all of our friends and family at I Heart who
have been so good to us and helped us get
back on air. Big thank you to Bob Connal, Carter, Andy,
Eric Gayle Val, Michael Jen. We appreciate you. Thank you
so much for this opportunity. We'll see you in two weeks.
What's up. I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen. Welcome
back everyone. We've got two great guests on the show.
Kern Shearson, chairman and CEO of Known, and Ross Martin,
President and Chief Experience Officer of Known. So, Laura, we've
never actually talked to, and I don't know if there
is an agency or a modern marketing company that exists
(00:34):
today that is truly equal parts data, strategy, and creative.
We've had holding companies by data companies, We've had data
analytics companies by creative agencies, and they've become kind of
tacked on in parts of a whole. But really what
Known is doing is they've taken those three components that
(00:58):
are equal experts and truly created one agency that works
together on equal parts to create and bring the best
creative work and the best kind of need based marketing
to their clients and their consumers. Yeah, Alex, I think
(01:20):
it's an interesting business model that Ross and Kerner after
in bringing data and creativity to the center together. And
I think coming into the conversation with Ross and Kern
was really kind of posing a question or or had
a question of well, who wins in a tiebreaker and
you're actually going to hear this in the show. Does
(01:41):
does data lead or does creativity lead? And even as
I think over the last few episodes, we've had this
sort of tension of well, is it numbers or is
it gut? I think it's interesting to think about this
as you listen to the conversation is this an ant
or is this an oor situation? And I think this converse,
Asian has been one that the industry has been having
(02:02):
for years now, and we've been having on this show
for for three seasons, yeah, and the last ten fifteen years.
And I think that Ross and Kern are onto something
that is different, the details of which and the nuance
of which comes through in this conversation. So with that,
we'll be right back. We are back at Landia with
(02:33):
exciting partners from yield Mo. We are here with Lisa
Bradner GM of Analytics and Teddy John d E, head
of Product. So we're here to talk with Lisa and
Teddy about making attention actionable over the next four episodes
of Atlantia. Let's start from the top. What is yield Mo.
Yield Mo is a next generation marketplace powered by attention
(02:55):
analytics superior formats and real time data. So Lisa would
love for you to expand on what yield mo does
and share with our listeners how yield mo thinks about
and approaches the market. Well, I think you have to
start with you know the vision everybody has for advertising, right,
we have this perfect vision. We're advertising flows like water.
The right people see your ad, they get the right creative,
(03:18):
they're inspired, they go by your product. Every impression is
valuable and it just flows right. Doesn't quite work like that,
never has, But I think you know Programmatic. When that launched,
we were really trying to say, how do we connect
this ecosystem and make everything flow? With programmatic, We've spent
all the time talking about the pipes, like it's so cool.
(03:41):
We can deliver a lot more impressions, a lot faster,
we can reach your entire audience. But you know what,
if you're put in sewage in those pipes, you've just
wasted a whole lot of money really really quickly. So
I like to step back and say, all right, great,
we've built the infrastructure, we're great blumber, but let's talk
(04:01):
about what we're putting through those pipes. Let's make sure
it's quality. Let's make sure it's clean, let's make sure
everybody knows that it's fraud free and can be trusted,
and let's make sure we're not poisoning our own ecosystem.
What do you when you talk about quality? I think
that's such an interesting part of the conversation. Quality is
a great question. Right. As an industry, we've been sort
(04:23):
of stuck in lowest common denominator. Right, we talked about viewability,
and we talk about fraud free or you were seen
by a human not a box. But if you even
look into the definition of view ability, it is a really,
really really split second of moment where it's on the page.
It's not exactly something I think that any brand person
would say, Yeah, my brand showed up great. But it's
(04:43):
a place to start, and it was a common denominator
we could all rally around. But the reason we look
at attention at yield mode in addition to those signals
is we want to go a layer deeper to say,
all right, we know it was seen by a human being,
we know it was on the screen, and how long
did they care, were they interested? Did they signal that
(05:05):
to them it was a quality? Add experience and something
they wanted to engage further in. And the better job
we can do of matching the person, the device, the impression,
the time, and the creative the higher quality that add
experience is going to be for everybody. So how is
yield MO helping the industry navigate the pipes? We have
(05:28):
a marketplace with highly curated, high quality inventory, but it's
not a walled garden, right, anybody can play and the
data goes in, the data goes out. We are working
across the ecosystem to find the highest quality inventory, bring
our formats and our data to that and create a
(05:49):
really really great brand experience that's good for the user
tou that's in the context of what they're looking at,
and bring all that together to make sure that we're
delivering quality experiences and that the money we're spending is
going to quality publishers. Teddy, what are your thoughts on
AD experiences? Those two words actually don't typically go together,
(06:12):
but the meaning when you put those words together around
actually creating an AD experience that someone wants and potentially
even anticipated right or needed, I think actually does create
an experience. How are you guys thinking about that? Well,
that's the idea behind quality advertising is can you deliver
(06:33):
an ad experience to a user that actually influences and
allows them to make a brand decision. And that's what
we try to do it. You'll most we try to
You know, there's a great technology out there. You can
buy ads and serve them anywhere, but what is actually
making an impact? And we focus on trying to allow
marketers to seed at with with our investment and attention
(06:56):
and so they can quickly decide, well, this is working
and this isn't You do you both talk about the
kind of green spaces, what i'll call green shoots. Are
you working with brands do you identify through these different
ad experiences new white spaces and green shoot areas for
their products for audience development? And if so, how are
you thinking about that? I love this notion of green shoots. Right.
(07:19):
I've always said when you work in marketing, you're always dating,
You're never married. Right. Every time you show up it's
a chance to impress your customer and you never get
to hang out in the catch and sweatpants. Right, It's
like you've got to prove yourself every day. But you know,
I think that if you think about those fast moving
media metrics. If you can be really agile with the
ad experience and when with the data, you can recognize
(07:42):
when a green shoot is happening. And I think as marketers,
we've always gone top down, right, here are my segments,
here are the people I'm talking to. But you know,
we saw this in the pandemic. People who hadn't bought
certain brands in twenty years all of a sudden ripped
them off the shelf. So as a brand person, you've
always have to be listening for that surprise signal that
(08:03):
signals an opportunity you may not be thinking about. And
our agile data structure allows our brands to work with
us to do just that. Lisa Bradner, Teddy Jwadi from
yield Mo, thank you for being our partners, Thank you
for coming on at Landia, Thank you for having us,
(08:26):
and we are back at Landia. Welcoming back to guests.
Curren Jeerson, Chairman and CEO of Known, and Ross Martin,
president and Chief Experience Officer of Known, Welcome, guys, welcome,
thank you great to be here, so good. So the
first question everyone wants to know is what is known?
(08:49):
Known came together out of three? Really? Uh, leaving companies.
Company I found it almost twenty years ago is a
data science and advanced analytics company me UM. It's called
it was called Cheerson Associates, which is my last name.
So you can see I was not on the creative side.
You don't you don't want to hire me for naming.
(09:10):
I think I added the associates so people would think
I had associates. But that was about his That was
about as creative as a god. But this was a
company that was doing data science before it was called
data science. For a lot of the big tech companies
are our clients for twenty years, like Google and Microsoft
and Amazon. UM. So tons of PhDs and just number
(09:32):
crunctures and the other components come out of the brilliant
creative mind and strategic mind of Ross Martin, who ran
a company called Blackbird that I think somehow he must
have been strategic because he got you guys to talk
about it well two years ago. He was with us
two years ago talking about Blackbird. Let him back in.
(09:54):
I want him back in. I want current to continue
talking about knowing. But I will just stop for one
second for an ad for Atlanta to say when I
was originally on your podcast. I think I got seventeen calls,
so I think I owe you a chunk of cash.
And anybody ever, anybody who ever shows up on this podcast,
if you make it this far, you're good. Like Malcolm Gladwell, congratulations,
(10:16):
you have now made it and you have a chance
at the same kind of career that I have had
over the last few years. Because I was on this
and they add, you were the first guest to do
live poetry on Atlantia. So Kern, I hear that you
may try to want I may, I may so fastinuing
(10:39):
with known U, the third component of this, the third heat,
if you will, came out of a group called Stunt Creative,
which is really a best in class creative and production
studio at l A. Again you know, twenty years in
the business, won every award on the planet, and the
unifying belief that brought us together was this idea that
(11:03):
art and science needed to live together in a real way,
not in a big box consultancy buys global creative agency way,
and um, you know, we felt like there was a
place for these capabilities to sit around the table as equals,
as friends, as partners, um, where everybody had a superpower,
(11:28):
but we all wanted to work together to create the
right outcome for our clients. So kar and put that
into practice, right because you're doing a tremendous amount of
work with TikTok right now seeing some of the work
you're doing with the A n A around see her.
So if you look at the spectrum of work that
you have, the body of work that's out in the market,
when you bring together those three pillars data, strategy, creativity,
(11:50):
how is that manifesting? It's a great question, um So,
So I think the the process. You know, what you
see is creative, and what you see is creative that
you hopefully remember, um And that really is evocative, and
that is hitting you in a place and at a
time that makes sense, right, and that that those other
(12:13):
aspects are not what people remember, but they're part of
our process. So the place we like to start is
with the fundamental questions. And this goes back to the name.
You know, like we wouldn't be in the marketing and
advertising industry if we hadn't a long and hired about
the seven different meanings of our name. But that you know,
the first question is like what know yourself as a brand? Right, Well,
(12:39):
what do you stand for? What do you mean in
the world? Know your customers? Uh, why do they care
about you? What do they think, feel and believe about you?
And what do they need to know to understand whether
or not you fit into their life? And then how
do you make that know? How do you bring that
to life insights out, emotion and in a way that
it creates a real emotional fonts and though that that
(13:02):
is the process. So like when we sit down, whether
it's with a client, TikTok or see her or vivent
or any of these or memorial sunkettering, right, it's those
questions in that order. Um, what is this brand, what's
happening to it? How does it exist in the world,
How do we find the right audiences, how do we
connect with them in the times and places and ways
(13:23):
that makes sense? How do we bring that into being
in a way that's beautiful and evocative and and it's
great you know that people see our creative on the
world and remember it. But the process that gets it
there is really what we think drives a lot of
the impact for our clients because we're not wasting impressions,
we're not wasting the audience's time. So that's that's sort
(13:45):
of the science side that's harder to see and touch,
but is really part of why we think this stuff
works so hard for our clients. So ross last time
you were on the show, UM, we were talking all
things Blackbird. How did Blackbird come to work with Current?
So Blackbird came to work with Kern and also with
(14:07):
Jeff Kingsley, who is the chief operating officer of Sheerson
and now the president and CEO of Known, and also
came to work with Brad Roth and Mark Feldstein from
Stun because back in the day by Coom, when I
was running marketing, UM, I was their clients. Sheerson Associates
and Stun were like my secret weapons, and so I
(14:27):
knew very well what those two companies were capable of
and how fantastic they were they you know, even if
other people didn't know that yet. UM, and I was
making a living on the work they were doing. Um.
The truth is Blackbirds, as you know, it was going well.
It was two two and a half years old, and
I loved it. But every once in a while, or
(14:50):
like once in your lifetime, there's a generational opportunity to
do something really unique. And special, not just disruptive, but
game changing. So the hypothesis of known represented a generational opportunity.
If what we believe to be true UM and possible
could actually be achieved, then this this wouldn't be sort
(15:11):
of just a good business opportunity, but it would be
a game changing UM I guess inflection point for how
marketing gets done in the twenty one century. And I
know it sounds like I'm vastly overstating that, and maybe
I'm a couple of years ahead of other people getting
what we're trying to do, and it probably sounds a
little arrogant, But in the beginning, we weren't sure, right,
So we put these companies together and we started to
(15:35):
try to go to market together as a unified set
of capabilities. And think of it almost like as a
moment of Pangaea where the continents come back together on Earth,
when the marketing capabilities and advertising capabilities that never should
have been separated are actually unified and there's no fidelity
loss between them. When that happens, you actually returned to
(15:58):
being UM. Not is efficient and effective and transparent, but
you can actually align the goals of your company with
the business interests of your clients. And when you can
do that, then you provide the first meaningful alternative to
the holding company model in a long long time. That's
the opportunity that I saw. That's the opportunity that we saw,
(16:20):
And more importantly, it's it's the opportunity that dozens of
clients saw and and and really pulled us together um
to provide a comprehensive set of marketing services for them.
So a lot of holding companies would say the same thing,
what is setting known apart? What I think is setting
(16:41):
us apart is truly best in class in every discipline.
Right In some cases, and I was kind of joking
about it before, you've got companies that are pretty good
at data and analytics and process and technology trying to
glue on creative capability. And now you know exactly how
(17:04):
that relationship works. You know who is the step child
of who, and who drives? You know who's got the
bigger revenue line and what bread is butter were right,
like we all know, um. And in other cases, you've
got a creative shop or a traditional media buying company
hiring a couple of people who maybe have an undergrad
(17:25):
degree in math or economics and no a little are
or sequel and they're like, no, we have data capabilities,
or even buying a data company, which by the way,
is like the most ridiculous thing for supposedly impartial agency
to be doing. But leaving that to the side for
a second, what we thought was exciting about this in
(17:45):
kind of the cultural synergy that led up to this
combination was not just the thesis, not just the business opportunity,
but the cultural synergies and the fact that currently the
top creative director at Known Studios won't stop calling our
chief technology officer to talk about you know, non stochastic
modeling and like creative optimization. It's like, that's happening, that's
(18:11):
actually happening because the creative team is totally gigging out
on the data. The data scientists, and you know, this
is also a real, a real different thing. We've got
like postdoctoral PhD data scientists, like actual data scientists who
(18:31):
extend the analytics capability of clients like Amazon and Microsoft
and Google when they're not working on our advertising clients.
And that's that's not that's not even in the realm
of firepower at these other agencies and our creatives who
are making these moments that break culture are also best
in class and they love each other. And our strategists
are sitting there in the middle of it saying, I
(18:52):
cannot believe like the weapons that we get to deploy
both on the inbound customer insight and the creation of
breakthrough storytelling. So who gets the tiebreaker in data versus gut? Well,
there there isn't one. That's not a that's not like
it's that's just not the process that we run. The
(19:14):
like they're not at odds with each other. What happens
is are creative and strategy teams have brilliant ideas, and
as often happens in creative ideation and all the sort
of like work that leads up to an incredible campaign
is there are a bunch of things that people love.
And then there's like that final round of tweaking and
(19:37):
tuning of like do we alpha this up or down?
Like what's the color mix? How big is the like
how much do we pull into the foreground background? Like
what you know where? Like how tight is the focus
those things? It turns out you don't have to guess,
So the gut is all there like that you see
the heart I would think in our TikTok campaigns, you
(19:58):
see the heart and see her. You see the heart
in what everything our studios turns out, and like the
creative minds at work there, like that's real, that wasn't
computer generated. And then the question is of all the
thousands of different perspectives and backgrounds and sort of the
(20:21):
constellation of audience out there. Each person is a little
bit different, each platform is a little bit different. So
how do I match the absolute best version of the
creative to the right individual audience member based on everything
I can into it about them in the right place,
at the right time, in the right format, on the
right platform. That's where data takes creative and like beautiful creative, evocative,
(20:47):
creative and supercharges it. And that's where we see the
results going absolutely crazy. I want to go back to
something that you said that I think is probably if
we don't go back to his probably passed over pretty easily.
You have twenty five pH d data scientists and analytics
(21:07):
folks working with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, not on marketing creative.
We have about seventy analytics people working outside of the
marketing space. I'm just talking about like the what I
was trying to say, is of the of the advanced
degrees working in advertising? These are not people when we like,
(21:29):
you see listings out there and tors when we're not
trying to you see listings out there for you know,
data scientists or advertising analysts, and they'll say things like,
you know, Excel skills are a must. Excel skills are
not a must, right like they're there there. There are
profoundly more powerful tools. And so when we when when
(21:50):
we list a position for a data scientists, that's a
person who's coming out of uh typically like a postdoctoral
fellowship up at a leading academic institution, and you know,
the folks on that team talk about sort of rehabilitating
academics and and helping them find these new careers, you know,
(22:13):
from physics finding looking searching for the ghost particle in
in mild cubic mild blocks of Arctic ice, to trying
to identify audience signals in social and and digital environments.
And our strategy and our analytics and data science teams
are beating out their pure play competitors with clients like
(22:34):
Google and Amazon and Facebook. Can you double down on
the seamlessness of your data scientists talking to your creative leads.
Is that appairing that we need to see more of
in the market. I think it's the thing that UM, I,
at the end of the day get most excited about
in our business. And in this sort of crazy concoction
(22:57):
that that we're delivering, that's what really he got us there,
That's what got us to the point of saying, we
all have great businesses. Can you give us an example
where like you were in a creative pitch and you
you brought out data scientists and it was like, at
that point, completely unexpected for the narrative of what I'm
assuming brand marketers typically here in a creative pitch. Yeah, look,
(23:18):
it happens all the time. We were I don't want
to name the client, but we were working on a
pretty important campaign that started with a deep dive into
some micro segmentation, and um what we found in the
micro segmentation and the attributes and you've got a data
scientists sort of walking through like these are the drive
(23:41):
this is the driver model of you know, who is
likely to be persuadable of outcome air B or c
um and And what we realized in that was that
the the creative that the client wanted was something that
was really sort of edgy and sharp and fresh, and
what and what the audience wanted was to be spoken
(24:04):
to an authentic way about values, right like, and you
could see it and it just like it spun the
creative ideation around, not because that not because it's not
like not because they were being lectured by the data scientists,
but because they were discovering it together, because the data
scientist was surfacing a constellation of attributes and the creatives
(24:25):
were saying, hold on, that's not what was That's not
what was in the brief at all, Like what you're
telling me? And am I understanding this? Right? Like if
you're saying that it's suburban zip codes and it's you know,
non Apple devices and it's you know, these kinds of demos,
like that's not what they're asking for. Why are we
doing that? And like you could just feel this this
(24:48):
momentum building and jelling around a different vision of the
opportunity and and the arc of the story that needed
to be told for this brand that wasn't gonna get
told But wasn't. It wasn't a research report that was
plopped down on a desk, right it was it was
a live collaboration and and by the way, that goes
(25:08):
in both directions, you know, and I've seen creative teams
working through a pitch and coming back to the scientists
and saying like, can we test this? Does this feel right? Like?
How would we start to focus into signals and social
media to understand if I've got the right phrasing here,
the right meme, the right kind of moment and culture
like is this what it needs to be? Or should
(25:30):
I look over here? Because I can't. I'm weighing these
two options. And so sometimes it's the refinement. Sometimes it's
a kind of a revelation. And then I think what
happens after the fact. We look at the performance of
all these campaigns, even if their brand campaigns. We're running
five seconds snapshots of every exposure that happened in every
five seconds, and what are all of the what's all
(25:51):
the metadata around that? How do we understand that atomic
intersection of creative an audience and every day the path
and matching that happens, which is a collaborative process between
the creatives and the data scientists together reviewing these five
second snapshots and reviewing these sort of patterns and trends
that are coming out leads to a re racking of
(26:14):
some of the really hyper specific nuances of the creative
as it's happening in each platform and each subsegment. So
they're like, okay, all right, we gotta swap out that
art because like it's definitely like that stuff is not
working on Facebook. It's working great on you know, on
digital display, but we got like and for search, I
feel like this copy right here, let's change that one
(26:37):
word like And then the brainstorming happening with the data
scientists and the creatives at once, saying why that word,
what do we think it could be? What do we
think like what is working in other parallel platforms, and
you know what, like we literally had a moment. We're
swapping out a single word in digital display, drove the
results of that ad by one word. What you're seeing
(27:00):
is really exciting to me, and it's actually very different.
So what people aren't doing. People aren't actually going off
of their web metrics or their basic campaign metrics, or
they've got isolated first party data and analytics. What you're
(27:21):
doing because you're talking about the whole thing and the
right stuff at the right time and that's easy to say,
but lots of folks when they're talking about data and analytics,
they're talking about campaign metrics. And something we talked about
was the hypothesis that more brands, more companies, more marketers
(27:42):
need to build a multi layer hypothesis hypotheses and run them.
That's exactly right. The campaign is the beginning right day.
What if you were to ask me, uh, the night
before a big campaign launches, like, is this gonna work tomorrow?
I'll say, I don't know if it's going to work
tomorrow morning, but I think it has a better chance
(28:04):
of working by mid day or later in the day
because of what we learned in the morning, right Like,
the very beginning of a persistent optimization loop is the
most exciting time because what you're doing is treating everything
that's going out in the world as a social experiment
that you get to learn from. And the more quickly
you can metabolize that information and act on those insights
(28:26):
with the help of machine learning and an AI, the
more quickly you can optimize. Whether it's the creative, the channel,
the time, the messaging, the copy itself, the beating algorithm,
it's all of those. That's why we say, for a
campaign like the one we are about the launch on Sunday,
if you were looking from our control room, you'd see
(28:48):
ten to twenty permutations going out at the same time,
and we're gonna learn a lot from each one of
them in real time. Can you tell us about the
campaign that's going out Sunday. Yeah, So we took on
a new client where the Agency of Credit's Vivint, the
I V I n T Home security UH company, and
and it's a smart home company essentially, and you know
(29:08):
it's it's it's becoming a loud, noisy competitive space, especially
during the pandemic. This is a company that is hot
as hell, like they are performing incredibly well. It's a
publicly traded company, but current multi multibillion dollar company four
percent on aided awareness, right like just you just haven't
heard of it because it is loud, it's noisy out there.
(29:29):
But but that's about to change. And um, we've got
a really fun campaign or as Ross would say, campaigns
um that that's going to support them out there in
the world coming up with and there's gonna be some
time pole placements and I want to come back to
also like the art of this is not lost. The
core creative is super funny, you're gonna see it. And
(29:49):
what's the right sequencing of creative and how do you
move people from awareness to advocacy to intent? Right like that,
those things, like they're massive differences based on what they
see in what order, even if all the creatives great,
what what's what's really really interesting about this moment in
time for Adlandia fans, right because the marketing and advertising
(30:11):
community listens to this podcast religiously. Here's the thing, like
there we're sort of seeing a bifurcation in the CMO land, right,
Like there are cmos who are you know, are just
not ready for this stuff, Like they don't really need
to care that much and they're just sort of managing
as they did before. But there's a new breed of
(30:33):
cmos and marketing leadership. For example, you mentioned TikTok. We
couldn't do what we do if if they didn't have
Nick Trent in that seat leading that team, if they
didn't have a team that was just excited about the
marriage of art and science as we are. We couldn't
do it with just any client. And what's fantastic about
the clients that we've been able to assemble. It's not
(30:55):
that they're all big brand, awesome names, which many of
them are, but they are all of sort of the
future economy of marketing. These are all human beings who
understand everything we are talking about on this podcast right now,
and they do it. That's why the marketing flywheel can
actually happen. TikTok's a unique example because it's such a
gigantic global platform and there's so much happening to create
(31:17):
culture every minute, but the same can be sort of
done for so many brands and so many categories, and
one by one we're proving that. So talk a little
bit about data as it relates to strategy, because so
much of what we've seen in the headlines in our
industry is thinking about your tech stack, your data stack
as being means to find an audience, right when I
(31:38):
think about the world of programmatic and addressable, But very
rarely in this industry are we privy to the conversation
of data science as it relates to creative optimization in
the work, not the delivery of it in the work.
So it's a it's a great question because I think
the thing that's so often missed on the kind of
(31:59):
Apple location of data to advertising is this reality that
bad advertising and badly targeted advertising is paid for by
the audience. Right, that's just a tax that you had
to pay when they showed like Ross's kids are, you know,
junior high school in high school, when somebody shows him
(32:21):
a Pamper's ad that he pays for, that it didn't
fund the content he was watching and they wasted his time.
And so not showing Ross that Pampers at his service, um,
showing Ross an ad for a product that I thinks
unless you tell me otherwise, Showing Ross an ad for
a product that he's genuinely interested in in a category
(32:41):
that he's exploring. I'm not talking about retargeting, but like
that's intuitively applicable to Ross's life. That is informative, that
is funny, that is joyful, that's that's not a tax
on Ross's attention, that's additive to the experience. And so
what we try and do is stay in that zone.
And like I sometimes I do get excited as like
(33:02):
a nerd about you know, all the things we can
learn from all of the signal that's coming out of
our lives. I also I want to be really measured
as a human being about the question of how would
I feel about that the application of that whether or
not it's legally obtained, whether or not it's gdp R compliant, Like,
(33:24):
how would I feel about the application of that data
point to what's happening in my media consumption experience right now?
I hear you. I think that's awesome. I think you
guys are setting up for a post cookie world, which
I don't actually think a lot of companies, at least
a lot of cmos are not thinking about yet. Unquestionably,
we actually just did a project in the publishers side
(33:46):
of our business for one of the largest publishers on
the planet that I want that I'm on name here.
That was Cookieless World. That was basically, how do you
build a smart and virtuous ad business um and how
do you part anticipate as a platform of scale in
a cookuous world. So the people on that side are
starting to think about it, But I agree that wave
(34:08):
hasn't really hit the cmos yet. They're like, they're gonna
get pulled into it, and I'm glad we're on the
forefront of it, but it's not sort of broadly out
there yet. So what is known want to be known for? Like,
what is the influence you want to have on this
industry short term? Long term? I'll tell you there are
two things. UM. So they're like there's the part of
(34:33):
me that's just excited about seeing the alchemy of you know,
ardent science in like a real partnership of equals UM
in doing this stuff and breaking down some of the
barriers in the way that people when professionals talk to
each other like it's a real thing and we shouldn't,
(34:55):
you know, Like people are bigger than those boxes of
data scientists and creative director and that's that's just an
amazing thing to watch and to watch happen in the
world of modern marketing as people get more fluent and
more dynamic in how they use this stuff. There's also
the competitive oppositional like grumpy business person in UM and
(35:21):
I get incredibly frustrated when I see structures in place
that are self serving and designed to impede the intellectual
metabolism of an environment like this. And I think unintentionally,
but over many, many decades, we've created a structure in
(35:45):
the traditional media planning and buying environment that deliberately holds
back the evolution of the industry and and the passion
that I had for like going all in, Like guess what, like,
you own a data science and analytics company in you
(36:07):
don't need like nobody said you should really merge with
a creative agency, right, Like That's like that's everybody wants
to be a data science and analytics company in for
all the wrong reasons. But that's that's like a good
place to be. And the thing that I think made
me and all the other partners in that company want
to go all in on this was having the deep
experience we had on the publisher side seeing all the
(36:30):
amazing investments publishers and platforms are making to expose their
inventory and novel ways, and then also on the on
the client side seeing next generation marketers like Ross talked
about making massive strides to do things differently and in
a smarter way, in a more efficient way, and then
watching this thing just get stuck because the economic models
(36:54):
for how these transactions get handled and processed are broken.
Look like when I was working at Viacom with an
incredible group of people who are trying to do things
a different way and trying to bring media out into
the marketplace in a different way. And and the whole problem, though,
(37:14):
is if they go transparent, If the platforms and publishers
are transparent and advanced and integrated, and they expose their
inventory brank banks with real time discoverable pricing, which even
TV companies do now for television, and you've got data savvy,
aggressive marketers on the other side, like, how do I
(37:35):
make money as a media buying platform? Like I'll tell
you how we make money. We say, oh, that's cool,
Like we have incredible data scientists. We're happy to have
them support your team, work with our creative folks. Optimize
the ship out of this not by not by telling
you you can't buy it on your own, not by
telling the upfront scary. The upfront is so scary you
(37:57):
can't go in there. We have to value and so
like that passion for adding actual, real hard value to
this ecosystem made us realize that, like, you have to
have all these things together, You've got to really do
it right and and it's all or an nothing. We
need to be the place where the best people on
(38:17):
the planet come to do the best work of their lives.
How are you training talent? How are you training future marketers?
That's hard. In fact, I think it's one of our
greatest challenges because it's really difficult for us to recruit
as you can imagine the kind of talent that's required
as at this level from other agencies. We do a
lot of recruiting out of the top colleges and universities
(38:38):
and you know post doc programs in the world. Um.
Many of the people who come and work and known
just aren't from this industry, and the perspective and the
brilliance that they bring is what's sort of rejuvenating everything. UM.
And then you know, world class creative talent and strategic
talent like hard to find and incredibly in demand. UM.
(39:02):
But but we we've been lucky so far in that
we've built a culture that people want to be part of.
So if you think about every new person that joins
our company, they're sort of recoding the d N a
person by person that's Adam by Adam right, and they're
adding us their own apps to this operating system and
they're making it better. And that's sort of happening now
(39:23):
at a pace that I don't know that we could
have imagined a year ago, especially given you know, how
is gone. But We've been very fortunate, and I think
now the most important thing is healthy growth. What do
you both think it takes to break through going into
I think Ross and I and and Mark and Brad
and all the you know, creatives and scientists at talk
(39:46):
about this a lot, and we talk about it in
the context of some of our values right around sort
of authenticity, UM and honesty. There's no doubt and we
we recently you know, you talked about we feel like
I felt like there was a real UM has been
a real hard reset in the culture and and there
(40:08):
are a lot like a lot of things have changed,
need to change, will change UM coming out of this experience,
and I'm an optimist about where it all ends. But
we also felt like we needed to reset and put
our finger back on the pulse of what was happening
in the world. So we ran this huge self funded
study of the human condition in UM that we just recently.
(40:31):
What did it say? It said that in a in
a sort of a universal experience and phenomenon, it's hitting
different people very differently. UM and UH. The kinds of
things that are UH, that are allowing some people to
survive and thrive are not the things you think, it's
(40:54):
not your economics standing. Um, it's not even necessarily your
career um or your position. Um. It looked to us
through this sort of qualitative and quantitative segmentation that it
had to do with your relationships, your strong ties, your
relationships with people in your life, your sense of purpose,
(41:17):
and your sense of place and connection to your community.
And that all makes sense, right when you break it
out like that, that that all makes sense. But it wasn't
necessarily how we were lensing, and it wasn't how our
clients we're seeing it. It wasn't about the tropes of
in extraordinary times, right, And there's a lot of deeper
data there too, But but those things all struck us
(41:37):
as like foundational human authentic building blocks of who you
are and why you are and so first and foremost
who we're trying to ask ourselves those questions for any
creative it's like, does this is this real? Does this
speak to anyone? I think you know you always want
to do that in the process, but I think it's
(41:58):
like it's twice as important right now to get back
to for any given brand, like what is your purpose?
What is your place in the lives of your audience,
your consumers, your constituency um and how do you want
to talk to those people. Alexa hit this home in
our Malcolm Gladwell episode and referencing David versus Goliath scenario
(42:20):
of not losing sight of those relationships with our consumer
and what matters to them. And I'm gonna throw this
back to your partner, Ross, because I've had the really
great honor of getting to know Ross a few years
ago and talking to him and understanding when he was
building Blackbird that and Ross, you correct me if I'm wrong,
(42:43):
but you were always in the pursuit of truth, and
as a marketer, I think maybe that's the that's the
whole point. You bring up a great point, and it's
it's sort of an extension of what Kerment was just
saying that, like that that is sort of the the
dark side of what we're learning about ourselves as a society,
(43:04):
especially here in America, is that like, there is no
Laura and Alexa. Right, there's Laura and there's Alexa, and
you happen to do this show together, but the truth
is so different, or maybe just a little different, but
it's different for each of you. And so if I
want to reach your heart and make a connection. If
(43:27):
I want to change what you think, if I want
to get you to turn right when you're normally going
to turn left, I actually have to find the central
human truth of you. And I can't rely, as I
did before, on my own bias on shallow punditry, on
assumptions about who you are. Because you're two white women
of a certain age who live in the East Coasts,
(43:49):
and that's what we used to do. We actually did
that for decades. We cannot afford to waste the marketing
dollars on that kind of carelessness and waste the time
and attention of that audience, of that audience, when the
tools are all available to us. They are now at
our finger trips. There is no more excuse for not
(44:11):
knowing that. I think we mic drop that. So we'll
start with current. Because Karrent has never played the game.
Kerrent killed by d I Y. I think you've heard
it from me a few times, Like I would get
rid of anybody out there who has gotten themselves boxed
(44:33):
into a corner where they're where they're fighting against progress
in this industry, where they're pushing back on efficiency and
opportunity in in progress UM and that that's not that's
not one company, and that's not one category. But like
in any category, there's a bunch of UM. So let's
get rid of them because like that, we don't have
(44:53):
time and and and the clients deserve better. I'll tell
you what I think we've talked about. We feel like
we can and should buy doesn't sound like the right word,
but but but who we want to go find and
partner with and bring in. We think that there's outside
of the US, there's a bunch of tremendous creative assets,
(45:16):
creative companies out there who are doing beautiful, amazing work
in each of their regions and countries, and who are
also increasingly trying to scratch the data action Like who
could be incredible additions to our team, incredible extensions of
our DNA as Ross said UM as we serve more
(45:37):
and more global clients, right, so getting into local markets
with best in class creative for those markets I think
makes sense for us. And what I want to keep
d I y NG is the process and the culture
that connects this thing together. And you know, we talk
(45:57):
a lot about the operating system of our clients, but
also they an operating system and a belief system for ourselves.
And that's the thing we need to never stop building it.
Ross killed by d I y I'm gonna kill hate.
I'm gonna buy time. I'm gonna build empathy, Ross Kern,
(46:19):
known dot is. If people want to get in touch
with you to remix data, science and creativity, how do
they get in touch with you? Hello at known dot
is and we will say hello back, Ross Kern. Poets
of progress? Did you know that I have been for
for years since I first met Ross, I've been calling
(46:40):
him a business poet. Here is a business poet. I mean, Ross,
come on, give us something, Ross, just something to close
the episode with something from your book. Let's put it
a little plug here. Ross is a published poet. The
cop who rides alone, Ross Martin. It started to thunder.
I began to wonder why do we mow our lawns?
Then it hit me. The nice lines are pretty when
(47:01):
they wake up freshly cut it dawn. Maybe they want
to keep growing, but man's too ignorant to stop mowing,
So lawns are cut each day because man doesn't care
about cutting nature's hair, even if nature doesn't want it
that way. I love it Did you write that when
you were fifteen? Yeah? Did I do that in the
last episode? No, but I remember you talking and he's
(47:21):
always triing that out. I only got one poem and
I was fifteen. Can and order, Yes, this opportunity less
opportunity Our data side just five out of six. Data
Side just will tell you that that is the best title.
Can we just say congratulations on this season and this
(47:45):
is the podcast. So we're just so grateful to be
part of you your world here on a small part,
but thank you so much. You will be coming back.
Thank you guys, to Laura coming out of this conversation.
The things that shine through for me one, we as
(48:08):
marketers and especially cmos, tend to continue to look at
the vanity as you call them, vanity metrics. Right, So,
what's happening on your website, what's happening in your purchase funnel,
what's happening da da da da. But those are surface metrics,
that's surface data and analytics, rather than having creatives and
(48:29):
data scientists briefed together, starting together and going to find
out what could be known. It's interesting in how Ross
and currenter positioning their value prop right, and that it's
less so about um one or the other, but how
these two things work together, the ability to understand patterns
(48:51):
using data and breakdown at the individual levels. What I
took away down to the individual level what creative serves
Alexa versus what creative serves Laura and I think marrying
that you know this idea of we think so much
in the creative spaces art director meets copywriter, but is
the new critical pairing data scientists and creative director. Yeah,
(49:14):
I love that. And when you think about designing, designing
both product designing, designing both products and campaign or message
right against triggers that are about the needs that are
filling the needs and understanding the triggers of the consumer first,
(49:37):
designing that upfront that should be your brief with a
bunch of hypotheses, a bunch of opportunities right to test.
And too often I think, you know and Ross kind
of hit on this too often. I think we talk
about campaigns and there that that alone is something that
starts and ends. And what Ross and Kurn were saying
(49:59):
is that this just keeps going, This just keeps learning.
And in order to do that, you have to get
out in the market. You have to actually have a
hook to start reeling in. If you don't have that
hook out there and you're not testing multiple iterations, I'm
not just talking about messaging and creative, I'm talking about ideas.
(50:19):
I'm talking about products. And so is the question that
the CMO becomes more of a growth marketer or is
the question that the CMO becomes more of a product person.
Is that where we're headed. Yeah, it's interesting when you
think about the word programmatic. So much of the emphasis
has been on the automatic part of that word. But
(50:41):
really what I heard is using data science to really unpack,
unbundle the journey, really think about the message that's going
to resonate in that journey, and really thinking about programming
the automation versus automating the programming all of that, you know.
And on that note, one of the things that Kern said,
(51:03):
and he kind of said it quietly, right, it was
like a point was about sequencing. We don't actually think
about sequencing enough. This is about design up front. Designing
up front the path you're going to take someone, and
it has multiple iterations, and it has multiple turning points.
(51:23):
They could take someone down depending on their behavior, depending
on where they are in their interesting consideration, and I
think that you know, the industry is separated the tools, right,
the data science and the analytics and the metrics and
point KPIs and those types of things with good creative
(51:44):
but those things, as Ross and Kern said, they go
hand in hand. Well yeah, I mean so much of
what I've experienced throughout my career is the creative leading
that messaging and then using the data science to target
audiences right, to go out and find the audience to
deliver that message. But by pairing those two things together
(52:06):
from the onset, you start thinking less like a planner
and more like a programmer designing the journey versus planning it.
Kern really got to that when he was talking about
bad advertising is like attacks on the consumer. They thought
that was a fascinating That was a great way of
saying it. It was a great way of saying it.
(52:27):
And I think, so it's less of people been paying
with their time. People are paying with their time, And
I think it's less about what you want to sell
someone and more about how are you reaching someone and
making sure that there's value and what you are selling them.
There's like this this thing going off in my brain,
(52:48):
going wait a minute. If you look at a standard
reporting dashboard in media, one of the metrics you will
often find is time spent. But we don't measure the
sentiment of the time in so I may capture somebody's
attention for thirty sixty seconds, but was that a good experience?
What was that time well spent? Right? So central question,
(53:12):
what do you want to be known for? That is
the question? And speaking of questions, Alexa, We're going to
be introducing a new segment on Atlantia called The Burning
Question with Kindred CEO Ian Schaefer so Atlanta. Each week
we're gonna be teaming up with Kindred to pose a
provocative question to our listeners that explores how popular culture
movements affect brand decisions. And we're gonna be asking those
(53:35):
questions on Twitter and then some of the responses from
the Atlantia community will be read on air and discussed
in the podcast in addition to having I and share
his perspective. So week one question has the fear of
cancel culture lad brands and the people behind them to
develop faux food. Fear of fffing up is the appeal
(53:56):
to everyone, the new appeal to no one. This popular culture,
Eat Corporate Culture for breakfast, tweet at Atlantia Podcasts and
see c I Shaefer Ian Shaeffer to get into the conversation,
and we may have you on one of our next
episodes to discuss Laura hit it with the list of
(54:17):
all of our friends and family at I Heart who
have been so good to us and helped us get
back on air. Big thank you to Bob Connal, Carter, Andy,
Eric Gayle Val, Michael Jen. We appreciate you. Thank you
so much for this opportunity. We'll see you in two weeks.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.