#264: When the Analyst’s Toolbox Includes Assessing the Zeitgeist with Erika Olson

We all know that data doesn't speak for itself, but what happens when multiple instruments of measurement contain flaws or gaps that impede our ability to measure what matters on their own? Turning to our intuition and triangulation of what's happening in the broader macro sense can often help explain our understanding of our customers' ever-changing choices, opinions, and actions. Thankfully we had Erika Olson, co-founder of fwd. — which in our opinion is essentially the Freakonomics of marketing consultancies — join Tim, Moe and Val for this discussion to dive into some real-world examples of things that are inherently hard to measure and ways to overcome those challenges. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. Analytics topics covered conversationally
and sometimes with explicit language. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Analytics
Power Hour. This is episode number 264 and I'm Tim Wilson from Facts
and Feelings. On this episode, we're going to talk about hard things. There
are a lot of hard things out there. There's Tuvan throat singing,

(00:29):
there's tightrope walking, there's memorizing PI to 70,000 decimal places,
differential calculus, trying to get me to make a coherent point.
Right up with all of these, some would say, or at least many
marketers would say, is measuring brand. Anyone within a country mile of
marketing or marketing analytics has heard the declaration, we're spending

(00:51):
a bunch of money for branding. It's a top of the funnel investment.
It really just can't be measured. Well, on this episode, we're going to
dig into that specific hard thing, measuring brand.
My suspicion or my hope, maybe my expectation is that, well,
first and foremost we'll surface some useful thoughts about how to approach

(01:12):
measuring brand, what that means and what is and isn't advisable.
I suspect though that along the way we'll get some perspective that can
be brought to bear on measuring other things that are hard to measure.
We'll see. Joining me for this episode is Val Kroll, also from Facts
and Feelings. Val, how you doing? Have you ever tried Tuvan throat singing?

(01:34):
What would you have done if I had given you a little sample
right there? I want a, I want a sample right now.
And that other voice we just heard from down under is Moe Kiss. Who
is from, is it, was it Canvia? It's Calavania. What's your company's name

(01:55):
again, Moe? Canva. What a comedian. Well, yeah, I think just maybe need
a little bit more branding work for Canva. Canva follows me around a
lot. I'll let the team know. We should do more brand marketing this
year. You know what you need to do? You need to do some
podcast marketing is what you need to do on niche analytics podcasts.

(02:20):
Well, since all three of us have dealt with this particular challenge of
measuring brand in various ways during our careers, we thought we could
use the podcast to pick someone's brain who has really dealt with it.
And for that we reached out to Erika Olson. Erika is a co
founder of fwd, which is an insights and empathy driven brand consultancy
that has done work with a ton of well known brands including,

(02:44):
ESPN, Comedy Central, Nike, L'Oreal Paris, or is it supposed to be L'Oreal
Paris? That's why I don't do French. Smirnoff. She was listing a whole
bunch of other booze brands before the show, which I was tempted to
just rattle off all of those to really skew people as to exactly
what they work on, and many, many, many more. And today Erika is

(03:07):
our guest. So welcome to the show, Erika. Thank you. Excited to be
here. All right. So we rarely sort of start shows this way,
but in this case, I think it actually might be useful to have
you talk a little bit about what, kind of what types of work
fwd does and maybe along with that, how and where does brand measurement

(03:30):
fit in and whatever that means. Yeah. So we say we're an insights
driven brand consultancy and it's pretty vague, I think somewhat by design.
In more plain English I would say, we essentially help clients with any
questions that involve consumers or culture. And even that is quite broad.
Right? So I kind of think about it as we do a bit

(03:53):
of like diagnosing or reacting like where there's problems. And this is
going to foreshadow where some of those brand metrics come in. But lack
of relevancy, lack of recall, slowing sales. Anywhere they see there are
issues, we often help them figure out why those issues are happening,
how they might be able to reverse them, what things are contributing to

(04:15):
them or taking away from the success they're looking for. So we do
a bit of that and then we do, I would say like optimizing.
So that could be very tactical, like optimizing PAC, formula, comms, whatever
it is, tactical stuff and a little bit of target understanding.
So sort of optimizing empathy within the organization so that they can really

(04:35):
understand and know who they're speaking to and make sure those people are
receiving the message that they're trying to communicate as best as possible.
And then the last one, I sometimes call it predicting. I think that's
actually like a poor word for it. But we try to make sense
of things. So often those briefs will start with things like help us
make sense of X or how should we be thinking about Y?

(04:56):
So when a category is shifting or the world is changing,
we help them think differently about it. And oftentimes, how you have to
think about that category is misaligned with the organizational structure
that has been in place. So there's that and then a little bit
of future stuff. So like the world is changing. We know that.
How is it changing? Almost like scenario planning, some people would call

(05:17):
it. So I know that was a long list, but that's why it's
quite vague by design. One thing I do want to get an understanding
of, I've been having lots of different conversations about people, I suppose
more in the big tech company space. And you obviously had this really
interesting remit because you get to work with so many different companies.

(05:37):
What are you seeing as kind of the level of appetite at the
moment for experimentation and marketing mixed models. Are people
still on that train of thought of like, yes, I believe in brand
marketing from an ideological perspective or are you finding
clients are really like, we want to experiment and prove the value here

(06:00):
or is it such a mixed bag depending on the client?
You know, I feel actually like I've been seeing more and more briefs
come from teams that are building themselves up to be the brand marketing
team, whether that's their official designation or not within an organization.
We work with Apple, obviously huge brand marketers, they believe in that.

(06:21):
We work with Google largely on YouTube, again huge brand marketing and even
smaller ones. We've been doing a little bit of work with Instacart for
example, or booking.com or Credit Karma and all of those kind of started
as like engineer led technologies really. And they've been moved into products
which then create a brand. And I think, yeah, I would say I'm

(06:44):
seeing an appreciation for brand and even marketing generally in those industries.
Why? I don't know. I think there's just so much technology,
it's hard to market a technology or a product without it living in
an ecosystem maybe at this point. But I do, I do see that.
I think we're moving more toward brand marketing in those spaces,
at least based on what's coming our way, which is probably a bit

(07:06):
biased. I mean, a lot of those, the brands that are like totally
household brand names and it does seem like kind of a relevance or
a sentiment. They're ones that they're trying to, in many cases,
trying to be the good guys. Do you run, do you have brands

(07:27):
that are, they really need to kind of get out there. They're not
widely known and you're trying to expand their awareness or expand their
affiliation, affinity for some category because they're like, we're thought
of as a X, but really we want to be X and Y?

(07:49):
Yeah. So that's where like of the stuff that we do,
I would put almost that future facing or how do we think of
X or Y. A lot of times the impetus for that is,
we know we're a brand that's really good at X, but the world... I'll
use an example. We're a brand that's really good at being competitive,
being the best, standing for winning, but the world is moving more toward

(08:11):
expression and emotions, and sometimes those things don't always align.
So we know we're really good at this, but the world is moving
this way. So you could call it a category expansion, but it's almost
a brand expansion in some way based on metrics and measurements of some
kind somewhere. So yeah, I'm not sure if I answered the question,

(08:32):
but yeah, yes. Just to tease that out a bit, you use the
word brand expansion versus shifting perception of a brand. It sounds like
you see a real difference between those two things.
Yeah. Well, I would say brand expansion is
an action that a company can take intentionally and with a strategy.

(08:55):
Whereas brand perception, they can't do that. Right? I mean, that's on consumers.
That's not something a company can do. They can do things to try
and change perception, but they can't go from A to B or this
to that. And those who think they can or that they have even
the lion's share of control in that, I think have a,
have another thing coming oftentimes. Well, Moe do you wind up dealing...

(09:20):
I look at Canva and I may have this completely wrong because I
haven't been, but Canva started as like, I think presentation, like better
presentation. It has continued to expand. Every time I turn around,
it's a collaboration platform. It's a, you know, it's your image generating
thing. I'm getting these in the wrong order, but it feels like you're

(09:41):
in a spot where Canva gets put in,
was in one bucket and then said, no, we're also in this other
bucket and now we're in this other bucket. So when you're
teams are like, are they looking at Canva? People have heard of it.
Canva. They have heard of it and they associate it with whatever this

(10:02):
particular category or use case is. Are those two separate discussions?
Yeah, we definitely look at association and I would say that expansion is
very much top of mind, like over kind of the last period of
time, you know, we are very focused on the visual suite.
But it really is about also how people use Canva at work.
Because I think predominantly, like I was a person who started using Canva

(10:26):
in my personal life. I made my wedding invite and my birthday invites
and stuff. But now it's like a core part of my job.
And that is, like Erika was saying, that's like an expansion of how
we think about the product. And the same is true of,
like, our focus on education. That's a real expansion play. But yeah,
we primarily measure all of that through our

(10:47):
brand health tracking and through category association. So that's actually
one of the questions that I had. I'm glad you brought up brand
health tracking. So it's because we're talking about this, like multiple
product lines or extensions, multiple different entry points into each of
these brands. When you think about, like measuring the health of a brand,
it's like among who and for what. Right? Because those different audiences,

(11:11):
that's probably pretty core and key to just even giving context to whatever
even that health score really is. But I'm curious your thoughts on that,
Erika, and how brands kind of grapple with those different kind of entry
points. I mean, there's so much to say about brand trackers.
They're like, great. And they're so misleading and they're deeply analytical

(11:32):
and they're incredibly vague and all of the things, it's like an and,
and, and. Well, but I salivate when somebody has a brand tracker and
keep bash brand trackers for... And I don't know if it goes toward the
wrong audience, but like, what's the... I get so excited when somebody has
a brand tracker. What's the downside of it? Why do you salivate? Yeah, I'm
curious. Okay, let's let Erika answer that and then I want to hear

(11:53):
why you salivate when people do have them.
Well, yeah, it's better than nothing. I mean, that's what I like about
it is like, okay, we have something that's not just the people inside
the building who live and breathe this brand all day. You are the
worst gauge of the brand health possible. So, let's start there.
Right? So at least there's something that pulls someone outside of

(12:15):
the email domains. But gosh. Okay, so what, I, what do I,
what question am I answering? The brand bat? Brand tracker bashing or are
we... What was Val's question? I lost it. We can get back to
Val's. Val, repeat your question. Sorry. No, no worries. It's all in the
same family. I'm just curious about the among who. Like, when you're talking

(12:36):
about the different audiences relative to the score that you get and understanding
the value of their dollar versus the other audiences you can be measuring
against, and just some of the complexities and nuances there. Yeah,
okay, sorry, I'm back on the chart. There's so many things to talk
about when it comes to brand trackers. I'm like, what do we go
to first? First of all, I think they're

(12:57):
very helpful, right? It's somewhere to start. The piece that makes me frustrated
and where I think they can go awry is how they're built and
how you think about what to track and critically how you define what
to track. I think actually people get the audience bit as far as
I've seen, pretty right. It's like demographic and they get

(13:20):
the bones. The bones are there. But it's when you start tracking words
that are vague. So like, trust is one of my favorites.
Loyalty, like all of these things. Trust is actually one that really gets
my go every time. Because almost inevitably a client with a brand tracker
will come and they'll say, well, it shows that trust is the... They

(13:44):
did some conjoint analysis that trust is going to drive sales.
Great. So we want trust in brand and that's how we're linking brand
marketing to results. Clear. Everything's clear. But then you... Then they
come and they say, okay, so this is a diagnosed problem they come
with. We need to figure out why this brand doesn't have a lot
of trust and how to get it there. Well, trust is like a

(14:04):
solar system. It's like, trust isn't binary. You don't trust something or
you don't, like, take a... I have a lip product right in front
of me. It's like, do I trust this lip product is not going
to burn my lips off? I do. Do I trust it's going to
be just about fine compared to everything else? Probably. Do I think it's
going to deliver my most luscious, amazing, never chapped lips in the middle

(14:28):
of a Chicago winter? Absolutely not. When you put a word, when you
put a big broad word like trust or loyalty or a lot of
these common tracking words or attributes onto a brand level thing. I could
barely answer that for a product level thing. When you put that on
brand, that's where I feel like it can get so big that while
I understand where the brief or the client is coming from,

(14:52):
we kind of get like, okay, well, we have to just re interrogate and
the whole project becomes, well, these 8,000 people that filled out this
quant survey, what did they think trust meant? What were they thinking?
And now you're second guessing. And now we're all ways to Friday, and
we kind of start at the very beginning. So that is A,

(15:12):
where the brand tracker can start to get, I guess, sometimes misleading,
and B, I find the audience is right, but starting to interrogate those
words and what the audiences understand by those words and the questionnaire
itself, that's where things can get quite muddy. And you often find when
you dig in that you're almost starting from square one. The instinct is,

(15:35):
we're going to use something like trust or loyalty because we want it
to be timeless. We want to be able to track this over a
long period of time. Therefore, we don't want to get specific.
This will be better, but in the process, you kind of make it
sort of less useful because then you're back to saying, well,

(15:55):
now I need to figure out what trust means. And it means different
things to different people and what the hell? Okay. So, Erika, what should
we be measuring? Great question. So I'm a strong believer that
tracking should be built from a strategy and not the other way around.

(16:17):
And what I mean by that, I think Coach is a really good
example. We work with Tapestry and the folks at, you know,
they have Coach, Kate Spade, Stuart Weitzman, and Coach has been a really
interesting one because they decided that they wanted to be younger,
appeal to Gen Z, and they were so clear about that strategy.
And they started tracking the metrics that built toward that strategy.

(16:38):
And I think they still track metrics that don't. Maybe how much Gen
X likes it or whatever. But they're so focused on very distinct and
articulate metrics around Gen Z. Like, is this brand cool? Is this brand
relevant? Do I see this brand on social media? Do I equate this
brand with, like, some of the other brands that were kind of their
North Star? Who do I think... I think they have a few different

(17:01):
talent people on their roster. Do you think of these people when you
think of this brand? So they're far more sharp and articulate,
and I think that makes them more actionable and diagnosable when it goes
wrong. There's clearly something to change that's within a far more actionable
scope than like, okay, well, we have to build trust or loyalty.

(17:21):
It's like, okay, well that's marketing. I don't know what to tell you.
We gotta do a lot of things. Whereas when they're more narrow and
singular, I think it's a lot easier. And out of curiosity though,
do you feel like there's a compromise there with the ability to measure
long term then? Because like, your strategies change hopefully every couple
of years at least at a minimum. How do you balance that longevity

(17:43):
of measurement with being quite specific on the strategy of now?
Good question. Yes and no. I guess I just don't put that much
weight in those big vague things. I'm like, what is that even indicating
to you? Because when you scratch it a little bit, that could come
from a million different places that's all pretty reactive to the strategy

(18:07):
you're implementing at any one time. So I guess, yes, it does come
at the expense of that in my opinion. But I'm not sure how
useful that is when it gets to such an altitude that it's undiagnosable
or unattributable. Or even some of the older data. Like I'm not sure
how compared to past three years ago, like how you were even talking

(18:27):
about a second ago, Erika, about the changing ecosystem and like,
what trends are current or popular really says the context for how your
brand kind of fits in the mix. Right? So that context shifting and
changing means that that comparison is probably less valuable. I don't know,
I'm just thinking about that out loud. But that, doesn't that equate to,

(18:48):
I mean, even with easy metrics like traffic to a website and you
start hearing, you get pushback because you're moving to a new tool or
moving to something else and there's this intuit, this natural reaction
like, but this is gonna blow up our ability to track the last
seven years. And I feel like, Erika, you were just being polite because

(19:10):
it was kind of like a, yeah, who the hell cares? Who cares
how if your brand has moved on trust by X basis points over
five years? Nobody's actually looking at your sales from five years ago.
You wanna know, what have I done this year? Were you being nice?

(19:30):
I felt like you were pulling punches. Well, I just don't know what
that tells me as a marketer. Like, okay, so we're more trustworthy now
by six points than we were then. I'm not sure what to do
with that. Like, okay, so our strategy was good, but even that's like you're
looking back a bit, and if your strategy is good, you're gonna know
by sales, you don't need a trust metric. Right? Like, so,

(19:52):
yeah, I think it kind of, it's like big but vague,
and I just find those a little bit difficult to attribute or learn
from even. Maybe not learn from, but action at least. I've got to
ask then, what's your perspective on measuring brand awareness and brand
consideration? I think it's really important. I think it's really important

(20:14):
because I think you figure out where to put resources and what questions
to ask based on those things. Like, if you have low awareness but
high consideration, then it's like, okay, well, we need to get our name
out there, right? Why am I putting resources into bottom funnel stuff?
I think it shows you what you should be focusing on given limited
resources. And I think there's a playbook, a broad playbook for like,

(20:38):
awareness versus consideration versus conversion. Like, we have a ton of
great clients who, once you get someone in the brand, they stay in
the brand because the products are great, but it's really about getting
them in the brand. So then it's like, okay, and then you get
into like, you know, performance marketing and things like that. So I think
it's really helpful to figure out kind of what basket to put your

(20:58):
eggs in in that way. So you mentioned talking about, like, if the
brand is strong and it's healthy, that that's going to show up in
sales. I'm curious about the projects where the CFO's office is interested
in understanding and tying together the investment in brand or like,
even Tim was kind of teeing up in the intro to what can

(21:20):
we expect in terms of business outcomes? And so how do
you approach that conversation with organizations and what do you put in
place to help draw those connections where possible? So luckily, I'm not
usually the one that has to have those conversations. I feel like
people come to us after they've had that conversation and they have a

(21:40):
little bit of budget. So in full transparency, I don't have to,
but obviously I'm quite close to it. And I would say there's a
few things, like, I do think it's pretty hard to draw a dollar
value, but there are pretty, like, intuitive actions. When a brand is healthy,
I think you have inherent trust from the consumer versus immediate skepticism.

(22:03):
So you're playing offense, you're not playing defense, which is really nice.
And then you have lower standards for success. Right? If a brand is
vetted just with that lack of skepticism, you're already being chosen.
And so like any consumer CX issues or
any issues like that, I think you get the benefit of the doubt

(22:24):
and you're not... The switching barriers are lower. So all of those things
that are true metrics and are pretty adjacent to sales but maybe is
not like a dollar value or like a return per dollar spent type
type thing. And then the second thing I'll say is what I see
a lot which is instead of saying like, oh, this investment is working,

(22:45):
I think people often come at it from an alarmist point of view.
The argument that I see working quite often is like, what would I
say? Like, we're losing to so and so. No one knows us.
Retailers aren't wanting us, our shelf space is getting taken up.
So anything that shows an inherent inferiority on a brand level,

(23:07):
I feel like is the stronger argument to like a CFO, what are
we going to do about this? Because we're going to keep losing dollars
until we invest versus here's the return on this is
the approach I see taken more often. Yeah, I get asked very regularly
what the dollar value of one point of consideration is worth. That's a

(23:28):
question I... How do you answer that? Not well. Moe's like,
I'm nauseous. Not well. But we are actually building something out over
the next, well the next few months, that are going to be able
to help us do that. So I will keep you posted on progress
there. But it does feel like the dream. I'll let you know if

(23:51):
we pull it off. I mean, there's definitely customer value. Right.
And now we're getting a little bit away from brand, but
everyone talks about Gen Z, Gen Z and now it's Gen Alpha,
Gen Alpha and still boomers carry the majority of wealth. So there are,
like I've heard a lot of different equations like for each boomer we
lose we're going to have to acquire three Gen Z. So like,

(24:14):
all of this resource is going toward Gen Z. But
there's some customer equations like that that ladders to like, so are we
shifting our brand to be better positioned for Gen Z when really we're
trying to retain boomers? Does that equation make sense? So although it's
not a direct dollar value, I have kind of
heard that kind of equation. That's interesting. That's super interesting.

(24:35):
I like that. Well, and Moe, like with the, the one point that
has me thinking as well about, one, what does it take to
shift a lot of things it seems like here are trying to actually
shift. It's one thing to measure it, but to say what's the lag
from, we're trying to move with this population from point A to point

(24:59):
B and we're investing a lot, maybe different tactics to do that.
Even when we're measuring it, no matter how we're measuring it,
there's squishiness in what's being measured. So that seems like a challenge
that one, there's a time component saying we're going to have to run
down this path for a while to see if it moves the needle.

(25:21):
And the needle is kind of fluctuating at one spot and it's,
we're hoping it's going to fluctuate at some other spot. Running into this
kind of precision challenge of we're measuring it, next month we're going
to look at it again. I guess this is back to brand trackers
with kind of a expectation that it's giving some perfect measurements of

(25:45):
something that is, it's not giving a perfect measure of something that's
difficult to measure. How do you kind of set expectations or coach to
say, are we doing the right thing? Are we getting the signals back
that what we're doing is actually working? But I think that's why like,
I don't know, this, some of this knowledge is a little bit out

(26:06):
of date. But a lot of the companies like where we've,
you know, taken talent from or whatever, they're basically running hold
out experiments. That's kind of their tactic to measurement. But then they
have gone, okay, we've done that experiment. We just now fundamentally believe
in brand marketing and we're going to keep spending on brand marketing until

(26:28):
we run our next experiment in 12 months or two years or whatever,
like versus because like, I mean ultimately brand experimentation is really
hard. Right? And I think the thing that I always come up against
is, well, we want to buy nationally because it's cheaper. So as soon
as you want to run an experiment, you can't do a national buy.
You have to buy at local levels and that becomes more expensive and

(26:48):
more difficult to execute. So like, it seems like what some companies do
is, I'm going to run this experiment. We as a company are going
to believe that brand marketing works based on these experiment results
and then we will revisit and run another experiment down the line.
I'm curious, Erika, is that something that you've kind of been exposed to
or less so? I would say less so. I think, yeah,

(27:14):
I think we wouldn't get a client coming to us if they didn't
believe in brand marketing because we're not engineers. And I talked a lot
about what we do do, what we don't do, we do not do
any quant in house nor do we do any execution. I don't think... It's

(27:34):
maybe a little bit of a hot take, especially amongst you three,
but I tend to think your gut is a little bit of an
important measurement when it comes to brand as well. Like I said, you're
in the building and you shouldn't be a measurement of how the brand
is doing. But you're also someone who's hyper aware of every time the
brand is mentioned, everywhere you see it or don't see it,

(27:57):
every person who kind of you are third degree connected to who's heard
of your brand or not. I do think that's an important metric and
it's one that is an amalgamation of all the things.
You have a better sense of where it should be and if it's
not there, that's a problem. You have a good sense of where you
would be surprised to see it pop up. And if you do see

(28:19):
it there, you're like, okay. Or even like, this person in this space
has heard of this. That feels like a really important data point.
So I do think we're really smart as humans in ways that sometimes
quant tools of all kinds cannot measure. But I would say people don't
get to us because we can't really optimize. I guess we can optimize

(28:41):
a little bit. But that point, you're in the weeds of optimizing product
and that you're in like RNI land at that point. So most people
that come to us to varying degrees believe in brand marketing or at
least want to see what it can do and are excited to figure
it out. And you know what I find? Like, it's so...
I feel like quant sometimes is so much more subjective than qual.

(29:02):
And I know that's the opposite of what most people would say,
but I feel like quant, if I said the sky is purple because
this quant survey says 40% of the sky is actually purple,
everybody would say, okay. And then in qual, if I went up to
you and I said, I've taken all these data points in,
and I think about 40% of the sky is purple, people say,
no, it's not. I live in the same world you live in.

(29:24):
We're looking at the same sky. And I feel like people kind of
know when it's not true. And so I do think, I guess that
that is the lesson that has sort of taught me this. Humans are
pretty good barometers of some brand metrics, relevancy, probably one of
them. If it's in the spaces it's supposed to be, if it's moving

(29:47):
in a direction they want it to move. I don't... I think I
ruined the question. No, no. No, not at all. But yeah. But so,
when you go back to a business after a piece of work and
you're like, this either went well or it didn't
go well, what do you share back? How do you... What's part of
that narrative that you talk to the business about? So I would say

(30:09):
when we're doing our jobs well, we find the answer. And the answer
is often an insight about people or the world, and it's explaining why
something is happening that they're seeing or why something's going to happen.
And like I said, it's qual, it should feel pretty intuitive. Sometimes I
think when we do our jobs really well, people don't appreciate it because
they're like, yeah, of course, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, exactly.

(30:33):
Oh, yeah, that makes sense. But then, we try to give that answer
but what we try to do as part of the narrative,
and I think this helps both understanding and adoption and then actionability,
is giving context. So it's not just, here's this thing in the moment
that you should know to be true. It's, here's this thing and we're
going to surface it as an answer or helpful data point to your

(30:55):
question, your issue, the opportunity, whatever. And here's the context.
Here's how we got here. Here's what's happening that's making this thing
be true. Whether it's the world is moving this way, we see that... Luxury,
we'll take that. I think sometimes examples are a little bit easier.
Yes, I love. I want to hear about this. It's like we have
a lot of brands in various categories that play in luxury or a

(31:17):
really High price point. And I think there was a moment where they
were like, what's going on? Luxury marketing is changing, and we're kind
of seeing it, but we're kind of not. And it was this moment,
and we looked around in the world, and it was when that movie.
What was it called? Was it called Parasite? It won the Best Picture. And
it was when Bernie Sanders was really having a run. And it's like,

(31:40):
there is this notion in culture right now that's a little bit like,
eat the rich. And then you are the, you know, signal of rich.
And so how do we evolve what this means that isn't just money?
Does it mean taste? Does it mean access? Does it mean,
like, can we evolve this? So what we try to do is say,
well, people don't want to look ostentatiously rich. Okay, clear. But why?

(32:04):
And then we try to explain it. We try to give data points
around that so they can understand what's going on and kind of what
this looks like outside of their bubble. And then we try to say,
so this is going on. This is what we're seeing that's explaining whatever
you came to us with. And here's what we think you should do.
Here's some examples of brands out of category or in category that have

(32:24):
done that. Or you flip it on its head. Like, look at Gucci.
They've since changed designers, but when Alessandro was Gucci, he was having
fun. That was like the Harry Styles era. It was, he made shirts
that said Gucci with a Y, right? He's just having fun with it.
And all of a sudden, it's not this, like, untouchable, better than thou
brand. It's this fun, playful, very maximalist kind of cultural icon.

(32:49):
And so that's what we try to do, we try to give that spectrum. I've
got to ask. I promise, after this, we can stop talking about luxury
fashion. But is this also where, like, the quiet luxury movement came from?
I was just gonna ask. Yeah, that's exactly. I was just gonna ask
that. Yeah, 100%. It's like, look around us, right? Even we won't go
here, but even what just happened with the UnitedHealthcare CEO and all

(33:12):
of the cultural conversation that's spawning. I think we really are in this
era as wealth bifurcates, I think people are feeling really resentful and
really treated unjust by the system or by a person or by capitalism
or whatever it is. And I think it's really interesting as brands who
obviously operate in a capitalist system, how do they react to that?

(33:32):
How do they sell a product in this environment? That's the stuff that
we grapple with. Those things are really important when it comes to marketing
and comms and talent. And I don't know if you guys ever get
into semiotics, but the semiotics of luxury, right? It used to be gold.
It used to be Palace of Versailles. And we've really, the cultural pendulum
has shifted to neutrals and whisper, and no logos. And if you know

(33:57):
you know, and it's access, you know, it's knowledge, it's taste.
It's all of these things that maybe money can't buy. So, yes. Yes. TLDR,
yes. And so, okay, a way to stay on this topic but like,
in the spirit of the show. That's sneaky, Moe. I like that.
Yeah, yeah. So, like, let's say you're working with a brand who wants

(34:18):
to make this transition. How would you measure with that brand that they've
done that successfully? That they've gone from that kind of, I don't know,
gaudy or splashing their logo everywhere to that, really, the neutrals,
you can't really notice the logo, if you know you know. How do

(34:39):
you know when the brand's done that well?
So a lot of different ways. I don't know if any of them
would be a tool. You guys might know better than me.
But I would say one, where it's appearing and who's wearing it.
So the cultural sort of heads of quiet luxury, let's say Sophia Richie,
let's say Hailey Bieber, let's say some of these influencers who are very

(35:03):
wealthy and showing the Upper East Side moms how to dress,
this kind of thing. So I would say, one, is it appearing in
the spaces and amongst the people who are driving the narrative or driving
the conversation or driving what that looks like in culture? So the spaces
it's in, the people who are wearing it. Two is, I would say
sales. I mean, sales is, I keep coming back to this,

(35:23):
and it's so silly, but if this is where the world is going,
then if people start buying it more, I think you're doing it right.
And three, is looking at, and Val, this comes out to kind of
what you were saying, but figuring out the people who like this quiet
luxury and making sure you're tracking them and what they think about your
brand. So you're sort of isolating off this variable of taste,

(35:45):
finding the people who have this taste, whether it's like by tracking competitive
brands, spend, demographic, where you live, whatever, whatever, and figuring
out what they think. Those would be my top three, I would think,
kind of off the top of my head. And so do you work
with your clients? Sorry, guys, I promise I will shut up after this. No,
this is great. And so, do you work with your clients and basically

(36:06):
be like, right, if we achieve these three things, then that's success. Is
that what you do at the start of your
project plan or engagement? No, because we don't really... I saw it in
the show notes, but it really is like turning an aircraft carrier. These
things are sometimes in pods. Sometimes we say, you can't do that.

(36:28):
If you are a brand known for being green and pink,
you're not going to be a brand known for being neutrals,
at least in the next, like five years. You just seem like you
woke up and decided you were someone else today, and there goes all
your authenticity. There goes everything. So I think you have to be very
careful and delicate and intentional with what's possible.

(36:49):
So sometimes that means not chasing a score, right? It's like, well, you
could win on this score, but then you're winning the fight at the
expense of the war. And so we'll say, here's what you should
aim to sound like, here's what you should aim to look like,
here's who you should aim to engage. Here are the spaces you should

(37:09):
aim to be in. So we try to give them a lot of
fodder, whether it's an external agency or internal teams. And those could
be everything from comms to PAC to which retailers you appear in, to PR,
product placement, everything like that. Anywhere a consumer or culture
would see your brand, we try to give them
North Stars of what that looks like. And then on the other side, here's

(37:33):
what to avoid. We love a this, not that. Like, you want to
be quiet, you don't want to be loud. You want to whisper,
you don't want to shout. You want to sneak around, you don't want
to stomp, things like that. Because I think it just helps people understand
sort of what you're going for in a world where there's not one
metric to define it. So that's what we do and then do we
come back in five years and say, did we do it?

(37:54):
Honestly, no. Some. I mean, we have ongoing client engagements, but usually
the strategy changes at that time. Well, we talked about trackers as a
measurement. A lot of this seems like, do you... Is there a more
timely kind of a focus group or a small panel at times that
if you're trying to affect a shift where it doesn't give

(38:20):
you a tracker level of a measure, but sitting down with 10 people
in a well facilitated and trying out some pieces of saying,
have we moved anyone on this or did we get our selection for
our focus group? And everyone's still like, no, you're a pink and green
brand. That is ridiculous. Does that fit into it, into the mix? Absolutely,

(38:46):
absolutely. This is where you can get really precise down to like,
we have a campaign and sometimes we even get, a company will hire
us when they have like three agencies pitching for a rebrand or a
campaign. And they'll say, okay, here's the initial kind of storyboards
or whatever the deliverable is. And they say, can you guys look at

(39:07):
this yourselves and take it to focus groups, take it to consumers,
whatever you think the right methodology is, and tell us which feels in
the direction we're trying to go in. And there they can give a
pretty qualitative idea of what they want to go in. They say,
okay, well, we care that people say we look cool. We care that

(39:28):
people say it looks like a brand for someone who's in high school.
We care... I'm making these up, right? But they can so clearly articulate
what they want people to say. And then so we look for that
and we understand why people are saying those and we try to understand
the very distinct, like, even codes. Right? Like, I remember we did this

(39:48):
one thing, I won't say the brand, but there was... They wanted to...
It felt like an antiquated brand and they wanted to be relevant,
refreshed. And I remember they made one direction and the people in the
room had blow up furniture. It was kind of, you know that blow
up furniture. It's kind of gross and not comfortable, but it looks really
cool on film. And I remember people were like, it looks cool because that

(40:11):
looks like a cool bedroom, that looks like a '90s bedroom. You know, '90s
is in. Everyone wants '90s. And so it was those little tiny creative
executions that at that point, at that granular level, you're able to point
to and you're able to say, okay, this helps it look '90s and
'90s is in. This is doing this. This girl is chewing gum and
that makes it feel really casual and a little bit transgressive in a

(40:32):
way that mirrors what a 17 year old does. So you can find
those little bits if you do something on like a very tactical level,
whether that's like comms or a campaign or copy you can do that
with. And then you start to build those things up and you start
to build toward understanding why maybe a score changes for one direction

(40:52):
versus another. But that's what we need is that ability to point to,
okay, here's the seven things that this articulation had that this one didn't
that is actually driving people to see it as younger and cooler,
and all these scores that you want to see move to move your
brand in the direction you're looking for. I'm curious your thought with
all of that shared, like where my mind goes is like,

(41:14):
what is your assessment or how do you think about when those brand
refreshes go south? I'm thinking about last year's Jaguar rebrand as front
of mind for me and I cannot get enough of content about it.
But because you can just imagine that there were so many people in
so many rooms discussing it that there was perhaps data or qualitative or
quantitative that said this is the direction to go and why.

(41:35):
But how does that kind of come to be or what is your
assessment when things like that happen? I'm just curious. Oh man,
I don't know. But the comments section is so good, right? I could
scroll on those comments forever. Always, always the comments. How they
come to be, well, I kind of respect

(41:56):
when that happens because at least someone took a swing. At least someone
was like, I believe... I actually come from a fashion background.
I worked in fashion before I did any marketing stuff. And I always
thought fashion is so different in that it's driven by a creative,
it's driven by someone with a vision. It's not driven by consumers.
Right? Someone is selling a vision. They are an artist, literally an artist

(42:18):
creating art that people wear. And they're selling a lifestyle, they're
selling an identity. And fashion is so driven by a creative at the
top and then kind of watered down so that people buy it at
like Nordstrom or whatever. But I often think it's interesting that brands,
consumer brands, car brands, those don't really behave like that. Everything's

(42:41):
so bottom up. We need so much data and so much reassurance. And
even then it's like, oh, we changed this from, this big to this
big. And it's like, you didn't even do anything. But I've always really
respected fashion brands in that way. And Val, I think that's my answer
is like, at least Jaguar took a swing. Yeah, people are talking about them.

(43:01):
I'm so tired of brands acting. Yeah, you did something interesting,
you tried, you put yourself out there, you did something different.
Time will tell how it'll go. And I tend to think history
looks more favorably on these things than we think it's going to.
Their swing was big. It was a big one. Maybe bigger than I

(43:23):
would have taken, but I don't know. How does it go wrong?
I think someone has conviction. I think someone has conviction and they
sell their vision and someone lets them run with it. And like I
said, I think both quant and qual are more subjective than people think.
So I'm sure they found numbers and quotes that supported whatever they wanted
to do somewhere and they were off to the races and here we

(43:43):
are. But that seems like that is part of it, is that it's
really, you're making the case for human thought and rationalizing and trusting
the brains of saying, we've picked up these nuggets, we put them all
together and does it make sense? The pitfall is that winding up in
an echo chamber where you think you found some glorious insight and you're

(44:07):
like, if you put this in front of like, one Gen Z intern,
they would literally fall off their chair laughing. And so it seems like
that's finding ways to say, how could we measure, how could we triangulate,
how could we validate? We had this idea. I have no idea how
to fix, I mean, what Jaguar could have done. I love that you're

(44:28):
saying the big swings. For whatever reason, it's making me think of JCPenney
back, I don't know, was it five or ten years ago when
they were struggling, but they kind of just changed their logo?
Like, they didn't... It seems very much like they didn't. And I may
not be remembering the facts of that correctly. They tried to make this
kind of surface level branding, visual change and that... I mean,

(44:54):
they were struggling. They needed to take a big swing and they kind
of took a surface level big swing that kind of fell flat.
So I don't know. It feels like it's making the case for take
qual, take quant, take a mix of people,
make sure they've got the psychological safety to be set up to
challenge and push back, but not push back so hard that

(45:18):
no big swings get taken because they get smacked down. That's messy.
Compromised out. Yeah. I think the thing that's kind of resonating or rolling
around in my head at the moment. Right? Is
sounds like we need to package the learnings in quite an intuitive way.

(45:40):
But the one bit that I'm kind of trying to reconcile is
it then gets really hard to challenge those beliefs down the line once
they become kind of deeply held within the company. And maybe this is
kind of what Tim's saying as well, of once you start to inherently
believe something as an organization, then when you have a learning a year

(46:02):
later that kind of contradicts that, it makes the presenting of that contradicting
idea really challenging because people hold on so deeply. Is that,
like, have you experienced that working with brands? I have, I have,
I have. And it's a hard thing. It's even hard for me.
I think about a lot about this in life. I think we all

(46:24):
do this as humans, too. I've been really challenging myself to say,
what do I hear over and over again that every time I hear
it, I dismiss it? It's so easy to lose sight of how quickly
you dismiss the same thing over and over again. And I have an
example of this. We work for a lot of different beauty clients,

(46:48):
and for a long time, beauty has been framed by various brands all
over the beauty category, broadly hair, skin, makeup, whatever, as expression.
Right? It's a woman's expression. It's not a societal obligation. We're
not in the '50s. She doesn't have to do it to make her
husband happy. It's like, we talk about this, beauty as agency.

(47:09):
I do it because I like to do it. You're worth it.
We have all of these product names and slogans and positionings that are
based off of this, beauty is women's expression. And I just,
I started to be like, all the time, everyone wants no makeup makeup.
Everyone wants to look natural. Everyone want... I am hearing over and over

(47:32):
again that people are like, no, I'm not expressing myself through beauty.
I don't want to participate. I'm looking as good as I have to
look to go to work. Or to be in a social setting.
And I'm like, I don't think it's expression, guys. Guys, we keep hearing
this over and it's like, I even realized I was starting to already
know how I dismiss it in my head. And I was like,

(47:55):
why? I'm hearing this all the time. I have to stop and interrogate.
Like, hang on, this isn't true. We just keep telling ourselves this and
people are telling us over and over and over and over and we're
not listening. So I think one of the things, one of your answers
Moe is, I actually think you can see this with the US Election, right? Like,
pollsters, we got it so wrong. And I feel like we're hearing the

(48:17):
same thing over and over and over, and no one kind of believes
it. And everyone dismisses it with this, that, and the other number or
this or that. And it's like, no, we heard it. We heard it
coming and we dismissed it and we mitigated it and we made it
smaller than it is and it wasn't. And so, yeah, I guess, like, when

(48:38):
you keep throwing something at the wall and you just see it increasingly
not stick, you have to be really aware of that and listen to
it. How are you building that into... I mean, that is phenomenal because
the thing I always think about is, like, when you come to work
and you're not normally wearing makeup, and then someone's like, you look
great. And you're like, because I'm wearing makeup. Most days I just look
like a trash fire. It's like, you're right. That's not an expression for

(49:00):
me. That's me doing the bare minimum. But how are you building that
into your workflow or your mindset each day so that you come at
those deeply held beliefs and have a new perspective to challenge them?
How do you hold yourself accountable? That's like my favorite part of my
job is that I, we're... Everyone calls us an agency. I think that's

(49:23):
just because an easier thing to say in this industry. But technically we're
a consultancy. We don't make anything. We don't act as an agent on
behalf of anyone. We don't make anything for them. And so I think, A, I
don't live in the building of any of my clients. I don't live... We
work with a lot of different industries and verticals. So that's the other
thing. You start to hear the same sentiment across industries, right? You

(49:49):
start to kind of see the same patterns of behavior and reasonings for
making a decision this way or the other. And then you realize,
oh, this is a human thing. This isn't a beauty thing or a
media thing or a tech thing. This isn't a product thing.
This is a human thing. And people are choosing all the things based
on this variable or this thing that's changed or this thing that's now
of greater importance to them in the world. But I can... My job

(50:12):
is to just be really curious and come in and actually listen and
tell that story to clients. And if they listen, great, hopefully they do.
That's what they pay to do. So hopefully they listen. But sometimes it's
tough news, right? I think pandemic is a really good example. A lot
of things change. We, Tim said we work with a lot of alcohol

(50:32):
clients and alcohol consumption and occasions really changed pre and post
pandemic. And some alcohol brands out there stood for clubbing and partying
and very high energy oontz oontz occasions. And those aren't happening as
much anymore. And that's more of an easy one to see and an
easy truth to face because you kind of see it in sales,

(50:54):
you see clubs closing and we ourselves as humans, you're like,
yeah, wait, I go out less or I go home earlier,
I'm drinking less. You see it all around you. So at some point
you have to be like, wait, this has changed. And I have to,
I can either listen and learn or I can continue to push back,
but pushing back is not going to serve me in the long term.
So on like the expression, I mean, I can't help but hear

(51:17):
you having a hypothesis that's counter to kind of an accepted truth,
which is, I don't think it's about expression.
Presumably you could validate that. How would you go about, and maybe you
have already done this, that, like, I think we've got this generally accepted
truth that may be flawed. Do you first have to

(51:39):
get somebody to pay you to go validate your idea? Or
how would you go about... That seems like that's something that wouldn't
be that hard to say, I just need a big enough sample and
I just need to do a well designed, unbiased set of questions and
find out that, yeah, there are people who see it as expression. How

(52:00):
would you go about validating that hypothesis? So we'd always... I kind
of start, and this is how our company approaches it, with that context
bit. People's opinions at large don't just change. Something is changing
them. So if I can find that thing that's changing them that can
explain why this shift might be happening. You can always find people to

(52:23):
tell you the thing you think is true, right? So I don't want
to rely on that. I try to explain it and see if that
makes sense. So I think one of the... There's a few things.
So like with this example in particular, it's like, what has changed?
And I think one thing that's changed is now you see all these
stats that women are graduating college at a higher rate than men.

(52:46):
And I think, okay, well, that means women have a lot of power, right? We,
women are getting jobs, women are getting higher paid jobs than men.
And at the same time, you see this kind of, we won't get
into it totally, but you see a lot of cultural writing about this
like, crisis of masculinity. At a high level, I'm like, okay,

(53:07):
I'm seeing headlines, I'm seeing cultural fodder that would suggest there
is a power shift happening. And of course, beauty is an expression of
femininity. It's always been tied to womanhood. And so it would make sense
that if you see one big thing changing, that another thing
that's adjacent to it is also changing. So I start by trying to

(53:28):
make sense of it and seeing if it tracks and trying to find
holes or like, but then why would that happen? So it's kind of
a cultural puzzle a little bit, kind of with the luxury example, TUMI. So
I start by making sense of like, what's happening out there and are
we seeing other, like, you could consider them data sets, right? Whether
it's movies that are doing really well, whether it's figures that are rising

(53:50):
in popularity, everyone is glomming on to something about these various
cultural figures or people or things or media. And why is that?
And what do they have in common? And then I'll go like, ideally
we start talking to people. Experts are always a good thing,
like journalists, people who have a bird's eye view and are not in

(54:12):
the corporate weeds, but who are very analytical of shifts. We maybe talk
to experts and then we might talk to consumers. Then if we really
see some sentiments making their way to us from regular people,
then we would figure out how to size it and see if it's
really a thing or is this confirmation bias. And we've just set up
this whole project to confirm something that wasn't true. That's really

(54:35):
interesting. I have to ask because I feel like Tim's going to move
to wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and say we're going to
wrap, so then Val can say, but I have one more question. So
I think it's more rare than common in my experience to find a
company or a brand who uses competitive benchmarking successfully to say,

(54:55):
oh, well, we want to be like that. I mean, I did a
lot of CX and optimization experimentation work in my previous role,
and there was a jewelry company that wanted to do some competitive research.
And even the list of competitors that they gave us, I was like,
I did a spit take. I'm like, are you serious? You really think
that those are your competitors? So I'm just curious about some of

(55:17):
the helpful ways that you've seen organizations use competitors or competitive
intelligence in that way to kind of drive what they choose to do
or choose not to do or where they choose to play or not.
Oh, good value. You asked a question that has a short,
little answer, that's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quick little... I think you're
so right, Val, and I have experienced that so many times where even

(55:40):
as part of the screening process to figure out who we're going to
talk to, the whole time we're like, yeah, yeah, the competitive set.
The competitive set. And then we write the competitive set. And people are
like, wait, no, no, no. And you're like, oh, we are way far
apart right now in what you think you are and what the world
thinks you are. But so validation complete there. But where I do see
it as really helpful and some of it is interrogating. I think I

(56:03):
said in the lead up to this, a lot of times brands will
come to us and say, I want to be Nike or I want
to be Apple. And it's like, okay, what are they trying to say
there? And those companies right now, for example, Nike, right? They're
going through a lot. There's a lot written out there, and their earnings
are not great. Those companies aren't necessarily doing well financially.

(56:25):
And so it's like, what are they trying to say? And I think
they always want to be... They have high awareness and they're generally
considered aspirational. So I guess it's like A, trying to figure out what
the competitive set they're giving you is trying to do. And it's taking
that step to say, okay, maybe you aren't that, but let's try and
find a metric or some way to understand that delta and figure out

(56:49):
how you might close that delta, whether it's being more aspirational or
have greater awareness or being the leader of a category or having a
hero product or whatever it might be. But I do think the other
way that I wanted to say, which I've always found really brilliant and
really helpful from my end, is when you use competitive tracking or benchmarking
to figure out your strengths and weaknesses and use that to inform

(57:13):
back to where we started, Moe, using that to inform sort of brand
expansion, category expansion, business expansion, even putting resources
toward R&I in the areas where whether it's true or not,
sometimes it's just because of the name or the PAC or your retail
strategy, somewhat inadvertently you have a niche strength somewhere that
people believe and if consumers believe it, it's true. Right? There you

(57:36):
go. All you have to do is, if people believe something,
then it's fairly true because it informs their experience. So I've often
found competitive benchmarking really interesting when you use it to sort
of build on a strength that the public already thinks you have,
versus trying to turn it around or fill a gap or something like
that. So what I heard, Moe, is that Canva someday might have the

(57:58):
user experience as positive as Microsoft PowerPoint. I mean, keep going
for that. Have you thought about Clippy, Moe? Just bring Clippy in. I
just, really my face, I want to convey to the listeners my face
right now. Strive for that Microsoft user experience.
Okay. Well, on that wisecrack, we do need to start to wrap and

(58:25):
I feel like there are a million more questions. 1,
based on the last discussion, I want to know if anybody was tallying
how many times I mansplained during this episode and hopefully it's a small
number. I'm sure some lovely listener will let us know. That would be
great. Back to the comments. Please write in,
directed to Tim Wilson. Get into those comments. This is really,

(58:49):
I've got my brain is going in many many different directions and I
want to ask another 20 questions but unfortunately, we are up against the
clock. So before we wrap this up, we do like to do a
last call, go around, have everyone share something that related to the
topic or not that is interesting or they were intrigued with.

(59:11):
And Erika, you're our guest. Would you like to go first?
Oh, the guest has to start? That's cruel, guys. Moe, I'll get, I'll
give one that, actually, I was thinking of when we were talking about
luxury and this pendulum swing from maximalist to quiet luxury. I've actually
been following this artist and redecorating my apartment, and his name's

(59:32):
Tony Kelly. I think on Instagram, he's like, tonykellyworld. And I keep
thinking he has such a unique aesthetic for this time. It's like,
it's very evocative. It's sometimes a little sexual. It's very repetitive.
It's very colorful, but not in a way that's like, in your face. And
he's starting to do more commercial work. And I keep thinking he's like,

(59:53):
a great creative mind for luxury right now. And it's like,
really serving. Yeah, it's serving the aesthetic of the moment, like,
where I think luxury is going, and none of that is metriced out.
I have nothing other than my human brain to say that.
But take a look, because it's really interesting, and I just,
it's a little bit of a throwback, but a little bit new,

(01:00:13):
a little bit colorful, but not too crazy. That's mine. My oohing was
that I just opened it on Instagram and was like, hopefully everyone does
the same thing because it is really interesting. Like, yeah, I wouldn't
have picked that as the direction, but it's really,
yeah. Evocative. Feels right. Right? See, that's the thing. It's like,
oh, yeah, I could see it. It's an insight. I'm so uncomfortable.

(01:00:34):
This is like I'm still stuck in the early '90s, I think,
with my aesthetic. It's back around. It's back around. Yeah. It's coming
back around. This is your time to shine. You're good. Well, Moe, you've
already, if we can get you off Instagram for a minute,
what's your last call? Well, the problem is I've got three,
but they're all very, very quick. Okay, so the first one I've mentioned

(01:00:56):
before, but if you did have your ears prick up talking about luxury
brands, I definitely recommend going back to the Acquired Podcast episode
on LVMH. It's phenomenal, and it's what piqued my interest in this topic
because I am not a luxury brand girl. The second. Wait,
what kind of... What's your favorite drink? Bubbly? It's champagne. That's
not a luxury brand. That's a lifestyle choice. That's a luxury lifestyle.

(01:01:23):
Pure expression. Okay. The second is that Canva Create is coming up,
it's at SOFI Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 10.
And it's going to have a bit of, a bit more of a
data focus this year. If you are interested, I'm hoping to be there
myself. I'm not 100% sure yet, but you can get tickets at Canva

(01:01:47):
and it should be really fun, really fun brand event. And then the
last one, which is my real last call, is I did listen to
a really fun podcast the other day. It was actually Trevor Noah's podcast
and it's called Adam Grant Gives Trevor an intellectual Wedgie.
But the thing that was really fun about it is they were basically

(01:02:09):
talking about, like, what happens when your values are tested or
how you deal with prejudice. And one of the things they discuss is
like the new Heineken. Well, it's not new anymore, but an old Heineken
commercial where people were talking about their political beliefs. And
I don't know, I just like, Trevor Noah is obviously very,
very funny. And we all know I'm obsessed with Adam Grant.

(01:02:29):
So it was like a really fun play of two of my favorite
people hanging out. And I'm done. I'm done. I'll put down the mic
and hand it over to Val. You did me proud. Triple. Yeah, it's
awesome. Val, what about you? So I recently listened to a podcast.
It was Manuel da Costa of Effective Experiments was the guest.
It's called the Product Process Gap. How to stop this leak in your

(01:02:52):
organization's budget. And I think we've kind of seen over the past couple
years that more product organizations are really getting into experimentation,
especially digital product teams. And so now that we have less of that
center of analytics or center of excellence kind of running experimentation,
it's this more decentralized model. And so these product teams are kind
of running into some of the same hurdles that those centralized team saw

(01:03:15):
like five years ago. And I think the way that he reframed the
tripping points that they're experiencing, it's really interesting. And
I think he gave some really tactical advice for those product teams and
how they can kind of stop the bleed, as he kind of talks
about. And also there was, I had heard this forever ago and had
forgotten about it. But who's familiar with the term harking? H A R

(01:03:37):
K I N G. Like harking back? Like a bird? I just know
it in the... Harking. Hypothesizing after results are known. I forgot about
that. But it's so good. It's really good. And so it's like this
fallacy of that after you see the results, then you kind of back
yourself into the why and how dangerous that can be. And so anyways,
it's a nice, concise like 30 minute episode that's like chock full of

(01:04:00):
good stuff. So highly recommend that lesson. Wow. All right, Tim,
how about you? So I am going to actually recommend a YouTube video.
And this was, I was at a Columbus Data Analyst Wednesday event and
was talking to a lady named Lauren Van Sloun who she and her
partner met as gamers. And we were... I'm not a gamer.

(01:04:22):
So she wound up sending me, there's a video called what games are
like for someone who doesn't play games. And it's like a 20 minute
video. And this guy who's like a lifelong gamer had his wife and
he picked three different categories of games and two games per.
And he kind of made this super cut and was pointing out all
the reasons that people who don't game at all are just completely lost.

(01:04:46):
And it's kind of funny. It made me feel better about how lost
I am if I ever do pick up a controller. And it was
just kind of an interesting analysis of he, I mean, talking about how
even some of the documentation, in game documentation
actually winds up not being that helpful. There's a presumption that you

(01:05:06):
have a level of expertise that you likely got because you started gaming
at a point where someone was like walking you along
to do it. So it was just a... I rarely make it through
an entire YouTube video of any length. And the fact that I watched
a 20 minute video over like three sittings was pretty... I'm excited for
that. My husband is a gamer and I never, never touched any systems.

(01:05:30):
I don't even know the right words to say. I don't even know
the right word to say just there. But
I'll walk past him playing a game, at a certain point he'll be
like chasing a horse. And so then that becomes like the horse chase
game. I'm like, oh, you playing horse chase? He's like, that's not,
it's not horse chase. He's like, I chased a horse for five seconds
one time and you happen to see it. So, I can't wait to
watch that. I think it's called a console, right? Like, I think that's

(01:05:53):
the... Yeah, yeah. Well, he even, he had her play some that were
kind of keyboard PC games. He had her play some that were with
controllers and talked about how there are conventions for different buttons.
They're like, yeah, they're not going to tell you to sprint.
You can sprint. So like play... I don't know. It was...
Enjoyable. Yeah. It was enjoyable, so completely I felt somehow better about

(01:06:17):
my lack of eye hand coordination from watching it. Anyway, of course no
show would be complete without a huge thank you to Mr.
Josh Crowhurst, our producer who does all of the editing and fun stuff
behind the scenes that make this come across coherently. And as always,

(01:06:38):
we'd love to hear from you, dear listeners. You can find us on
the Measure Slack group or you can find us on our LinkedIn page,
or you can just good old fashioned email at [e-mail] or
comments on our YouTube channel. Feel free to reach out. You could even
leave us a rating or review on whatever podcast platform you listen to

(01:07:00):
us on. That is our once per six months request for ratings and
reviews on podcast platforms. But I know I can speak for both of
my cohosts, Moe and Val when I say, no matter how hard it
is to measure what you're measuring, keep analyzing.

(01:07:21):
Thanks for listening. Let's keep keep the conversation going with your comments,
suggestions and questions on Twitter at @AnalyticsHour, on the web at AnalyticsHour.io,
our LinkedIn group and the MeasureChat Slack group. Music for the podcast
by Josh Crowhurst. So smart guys wanted to fit in. So they made

(01:07:41):
up a term called analytics. Analytics don't work.
Do the analytics say go for it no matter who's going for it
it? So if you and I were on the field, the analytics say
go for it. It's the stupidest, laziest, lamest thing I've ever heard for
reasoning in competition. Rock, Flag and Whisper luxury.