Wild Gravity's Hacking Advertising: The Unfiltered Truth About of Advertising Companies EP78

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Ad agencies sell this myth that you know you need all of these
people to create a world class ad, and the reality is it's just
not true, especially with all oftoday's technologies.
The video production game has been completely democratized and
it's completely possible to create world class advertising

(00:22):
without all of those people. You don't need so many people on
set. A big ad agency will literally
have 100 people on set. And the reality is they don't
even make the ad. They think of the ads, they
create the concepts for the ad, but when it's time to make them,
they farm the production work out to a production company.
And I'd like to talk about this in corporations overall.

(00:44):
After working in corporations for the greater part of 10 or 15
years, I was like, there's only about 5% of the people here that
are doing the actual work, right?
And 95% of the people are scrolling along.
They're just going to meetings. They're managing other people.
They're responding to emails, making status reports about the

(01:06):
people that are actually doing the work.
That's the reality. And when Eli Musk bought
Twitter, right away, he was firing people one after another.
And we were like, God damn, the how many people do you really
need there? And he realized that you didn't
need most of those. He took out like 80 or 70% or
80% of everybody. Is that you can skip the big

(01:26):
addict and sees and go direct toproduction and save yourself a
ton of money. Mile so so yeah, they they,
they, they make you do all the steps with the with different
procedures when everything couldbe done at one-on-one spot and
even easier. To that's right.
And then a lot of times the ad agencies are doing work that's
not even to your benefit that it's work that benefits the

(01:51):
agency. Meaning agencies don't really
care if they're selling your product.
Agencies are in the business of selling themselves.
And then when you get into like television advertising, radio
out of home, it's really a lot harder to track those individual
metrics. You don't know if anybody is

(02:11):
buying directly from your television ad or all you're
dealing with is secondary metrics at that point.
So it's great to have that grounding to know what actually
works and doesn't work from digital before I started getting
into broadcast. And probably when people are at
home watching television, like you can't know how many people
of the family are really watching the TV compared to like

(02:34):
a a cell phones now that you know exactly that person is a
girl 32 years old, she's interested in our product or
whatever. So for sure like TV can never be
as precise as cell phones now oror social medias that are just
right on point there. That's exactly right.
And actually to your point, you don't know, even if you know

(02:56):
that they're watching the ad, you don't know that they're
watching the ad. Like everybody's got cell phones
in their hands while they're watching TV.
So yeah, there's really no hard metrics there.
Everybody's over focused on breakthrough breakthrough,
right? Just shock factor.
You see this in gum commercials all the time, right?
Because what else do they have to talk about?

(03:16):
And so they just do crazy, crazythings to make the commercial
breakthrough. But then that's great.
But if the, you know, if they fall flat on the rest of the
metrics, then the ad didn't do anything.
For example, I'm sure you've hadpeople do this all the time
where they're like, I saw the greatest ad on TV last night and
they started to describe it and you're like, oh, who was it for?
And they're like, I don't know. Exactly right.

(03:39):
That's not a good ad, that ad, exactly.
Exactly. The the criteria would be like
who's actually doing the work right?
There's there's so many layers of account people and creative
people and a lot of them are just managers, right.
A lot of them are not doing the actual work, especially I would
say the biggest, the biggest part of that is the account

(04:02):
managers. Like on our accounts, we would
have a VP account director and then an account director and
then an account supervisor, thenan account manager, then an
account executive, and then associate account executives.
Like let me tell you, if you area client and you have associate
account executives on your account, you are paying for

(04:25):
stuff you do not need. Well, I think there's an over.
I mean, there's way too much allowed in the system, right?
There's just way too many peoplethat are doing stuff that is not
necessary or not in the client'sbest interest for sure.
And then the other thing is the way the basic setup of the
industry is that the, you know, the ad agencies think of the

(04:46):
ads, but they don't produce them.
So they farm out that work to production companies.
Now production company is going to do all the filming, the
editing, sorry, not the editing,all the, all of the filming.
And they'll create the raw footage and then it's going to
go to a 3rd company, which is a post production company.
Now they're gonna do all of the editing, right?
They're gonna get it into near final Shape.

(05:08):
And then to Add all of the motion graphics, the any special
effects, any of the superimposedtext that is going to go to a
visual effects company. So what's happening is right
then the clients paying for fourdifferent companies, right?
And all that does is add cost and complexity.
Now the reality is that there's now creative production agencies

(05:31):
like Wild Gravity, where it has creative production, post and
VFX all under one roof, and thatallows companies like ours to
produce work that's much, much quicker.
Better and more precise of the. Yeah, right.
Yeah. And clients, clients love that,

(05:52):
right. And when they learn that, like a
lot of clients have no idea thatthat was even possible.
And so it's very refreshing to all those clients.
And make you think of it. You know what I mean?
Elementary school you used to the phone game because there's
something your friend he needs. Well, when there's four people
going through like, like the direction that the the client

(06:13):
wanted initially is probably notwhat we're getting at the end of
the road by 4 different companies.
Though that's exactly right. Like the more people you
distribute the work around, the more the message is going to get
confused. Welcome to the Rumbling Facts

(07:05):
podcast, people. This is your number one
destination to challenge the status quo, think outside the
box, dissect the system and challenge illusions to extract
raw and unfiltered wisdom. Every show, no matter how it
rumbles your perspective. And welcome to the Rumbling
Facts podcast, my dogs. This is where our guests
uncomfortable truths of life collides with our reality to

(07:26):
fast track our learning of this life.
And this is where critical thinking is promoted to make our
guests and the rumbling facts tribe get out of their comfort
zone and think outside the box for themselves.
I'm your host Sam, OK, DJ Brett Sam on all music platforms.
We're at 225,000 streams since January 2020 third.
So that's quite incredible. I'm a rapper, podcaster, truth

(07:49):
seeker to the core, and the founder of Making Others Read, a
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anymore and give them back to the communities.
Because knowledge is power and it should never be wasted.
Whether you're building yourselfup or growing a company or
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type of car station that you don't even know you needed.

(08:11):
Rumbling affects people isn't about the easy answers, it's
about the truth bombs that shakethe views of different opinions
and your perspective. Today's guests there is a true
legend in the advertising world.He started in Boston, sold a
wave radios for for Boss over the phone and ran a $20 million
sales team while earning his MBAat night and then leveled up to

(08:37):
Lee to lead major companies likegiants like GM, AT&T, Microsoft
and Fidelity. But after years of him watching
to add agents agencies bleed money and being ineffective like
they should, he did something that most people wouldn't even
have the guts to do. He walked away.

(08:58):
Walked away from the comfort of that corporate and built his own
savage ad agency from scratch while gravity.
No capital, no employees, no buildings.
Just a mission to prove that world class creativity could be
faster, smarter and cheaper. And within three months, he was
working with trillion dollar clients, people.

(09:21):
And by the way, he's also the author of Hacking Advertise, a
book that exposes the problems with legacy marketing and
delivers a new blueprint for thefuture of advertising.
John Schneider is here to break the myth, drop some strategies
and show us how the market is. Really welcome to the podcast.
John, how you doing today? Hey, thank you so much.

(09:43):
I really appreciate you having me.
I'm really excited to be here. Man, it was such an honor just
to just to know that you wanted to come on there in a man you
accomplish so much in this life.How did you get from selling
wave radios for balls and then OK, let let's go and
advertising. How did how did that happen

(10:04):
there? Was working for Bose Corporation
doing teller sales and then ended up managing sales team
doing $20 million a year in business and Bose paid for me to
get my masters, my MBA. And after that I got recruited
by one of the earliest digital marketing agencies called

(10:24):
Digitas and I started working for them in 2000.
They are interactive ad agency and they had clients, huge
clients like AT&T, GM, Microsoftand a lot of others.
And I got my feet wet there running digital campaigns mostly
for General Motors. And we were young kids, I mean

(10:49):
20s, right? And but we were running building
websites, building banner campaigns, emails, etcetera, all
of the basic building, building blocks of early digital
marketing. And that's how I got my start.
And then it wasn't until a couple steps later that I ended
up broadening and going out intobroadcast advertising.

(11:12):
Wow. And so, yeah, you were really
not not just doing like the ad, you were doing the banners, like
the the Flyers, like everything that had to do with advertising.
That's right. And I'm so glad that I got my
start doing digital marketing because that's really where you
get down to the brass tacks. You see what's working, what's
not working. You get all of the all of the
major metrics. And then when you get into like

(11:34):
television advertising, radio out of home, it's really a lot
harder to track those individualmetrics.
You don't know if anybody is buying directly from your
television ad. Yeah.
All you're dealing with is secondary metrics at that point.
So it's great to have that grounding to know what actually
works and doesn't work from digital before I started getting

(11:55):
into broadcast. And, and probably when people
are at home watching television,like you can't know how many
people of the family are really watching the TV compared to like
a, a cell phones now that you know exactly that person is a
girl 32 years old, she's interested in our product or
whatever. So for sure like TV can never be

(12:17):
as precise as cell phones now oror social medias that are just
right on point there. That's exactly right.
And actually, to your point, youdon't know, even if you know
that they're watching the ad, you don't know that they're
watching the ad. Like everybody's got cell phones
in their hands while they're watching TV.
So yeah, there's really no hard metrics there.

(12:38):
Absolutely. What do you think of was one of
the biggest lie traditional ad agency still sell and why?
Why does it keep working? Um, well, big ad agencies sell
this myth that, you know, you need all these people to create
a world class ad. And the reality is it's just not

(12:59):
true, especially with all of today's technologies.
The video production game has been completely democratized and
it's completely possible to create world class advertising
without all of those people. You don't need so many people on
set. A big ad agency will literally
have 100 people on set and the reality is they don't even make

(13:21):
the ad. They think of the ads, they
create the concepts for the ad, but when it's time to make them,
they farm the production work out to a production company.
So my whole premise is that you can skip the big addict and seas
and go direct to production and save yourself a ton of money.

(13:41):
Mile so so yeah they they they they make you do all the steps
with the with different procedures when everything could
be done at one-on-one spot and even easier to.
That's right. And then a lot of times the ad
agencies are doing work that's not even to your benefit that
it's worth that benefits the agency, meaning agencies don't

(14:05):
really care if they're selling your product.
Agencies are in the business of selling themselves.
Yeah. So agencies want to make
advertising creative that they can win awards, right?
That's their currency as awards.So, and that means a lot of
breakthrough crazy creative thatmay work for your brand, but it
may not. And their their main focus is

(14:27):
making stuff that works for them.
And then a lot of other stuff like testing that they gauge in,
like focus group testing. No ad was ever made better by
going through focus group testing.
But what it does for the agency when the ad doesn't work, they
can be like, well, that's what the focus group told us to do.
Wow. And and well, when you were

(14:48):
working with Trillian, since you're working with a trillion
dollar of brands, what was the most dysfunctional thing that
you saw that actually worked? And you were like, oh damn, OK,
that works. The most dysfunctional thing
that worked? I don't know if there's a lot of

(15:09):
dysfunctional things that work. Or something that you didn't
expect it to work in it did. You were like, OK, I didn't
think about that could be working.
Yeah. I mean, one of the things is we
were when I worked for Microsoft, we were in the habit
of, we worked with a huge agencyand when we went to create a

(15:29):
campaign that was something thatwould take about 3 months in
cost like 4 to 6,000,000. Dollars.
Oh shit. And, you know, right.
And then we were like, I guess that's what you have to do to
make great work. But then my premise was, there's
gotta be a different way that wecan do this and make it cheaper,
faster and actually better. And so I started developing a

(15:52):
bunch of smaller vendors. And what I found is it was
possible to make world class work with smaller vendors.
It just took a lot of work on our part.
Stuff that the ad agency would do, we as the clients had to do.
And fortunately, I had a lot of ad agency experience, so it was
possible for me to do that. But a lot of clients don't have
that experience. And So what happened was we

(16:16):
worked with these smaller boutique agencies and then we
put it, put our ads on digital platforms and tested them
against the stuff we're getting from our big huge agency.
And we found the stuff that was working from our smaller vendors
vendors was performing better than the ads that we paid
millions of dollars for. Wow, do some ad agencies that

(16:36):
work in royalties instead of that fee at the beginning like
US $2000. We're going to create a huge
amazing ad for you. But is there some that are like
a, like I don't wanna set and I just want royalty?
Because I think, let, let's say,if that does exist, I think the,
the, the company's gonna fuckingcare of that commercial when it

(16:56):
comes out. Because if they want come back
on it, if they got that 15 or 20% on it, they're gonna want
that commercial to achieve that market or to add to achieve
compared to being like, oh, giveus our 202,000.
And you send it to them and theygive you that product back.
And they don't care how much it reaches people and everything at
the end game because they already got paid.

(17:17):
Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of smaller
agencies that are coming out nowthat do work like that.
Wow. OK.
Yeah, that they do work on incentives, but you will never
find one of the larger ad agencies working.
Like. That all the big major ad
agencies they're working for fee, you know, they're they want
you to pay, you pay up front. A lot of that agency is won't

(17:39):
even take you unless you're committing to spend it like at
least a half a million or $1,000,000 with.
Yeah. So there's no Joel Blower just
going there. I help me with a commercial.
No, no. Yeah, yeah.
Not among the big boys. Yeah, yeah, wow.
Because I I think it's because they got a big name.
So they're like, oh, we gotta make you pay.

(18:00):
And I noticed the same thing when I was going to recording
studios. Like they didn't care of of the
royalty. They didn't want to set off that
they wanted that 200 right away to because it's a big company.
So I literally had to find a producer that believed in me as
much as as I believe in myself to really have that that royalty

(18:21):
base that I have now with my newproducer.
But all the cruise I had before,like they didn't give a shit if
that song was good at when I left it.
And man, I felt like a piece of shit at the end because you get
screwed over. You don't have that good
product. Like they should care that about
their product. They don't.
They don't need to. So that's a problem.
That's right. Yeah, that's a problem with most

(18:41):
of the major ad agencies is at the end of the day, they don't
really care how well your ad did.
They really care how many products they sold.
They care about what is the press that they can get on their
ad. They care about Can I enter this
this ad in an awards contest? Ohm my goodness, makes me think
of one of the the I had a a guy on a for the DEA and the his

(19:06):
boss didn't care about what needed to be done to arrest
somebody by the end game. He wanted the pictures with all
the drugs. That was the only important, not
the drugs off the streets really, but the award of seeing
that, the whole whole amount of money and stuff there, man, you
can't always wait for that, for that end goal to be happy for

(19:28):
sure. That's exactly right.
Do you think that most CMO's actually understand their own
brand or are they faking it withbig words and big budgets?
I mean, I think most CMO's understand their brand.
What happens though is when theyengage with big agencies, the

(19:48):
agency will come in and be like,no, that's not what your brand
is. This is what your brand is.
And then agencies will come in. They have big strategy
departments of their own if you work for a big company like
Microsoft. Amazon, Coca-Cola, Lego, they
have internal strategy teams already.
So it's like, why do you need the ad agency to come in with

(20:09):
their strategy team when you already have a strategy team?
If you had to eliminate 80% of the ad industry, what's 1
criteria you'd use to to decide who stays or not?
Yeah. I mean the the criteria would be
like who's actually doing the work?
Right. There's, there's so many layers

(20:33):
of account people and creative people and a lot of them are
just managers, right. A lot of them are not doing the
actual work, especially I would say the biggest, the biggest
part of that is the account managers.
Like on our accounts, we would have a VP account director and
then an account director and then an account supervisor, then

(20:55):
an account manager, then an account executive, and then
associate account executives. Like let me tell you, if you are
a client and you have associate account executives on your
account, you are paying for stuff you do not need.
All you're doing is paying for the agency to be able to train
junior employees. You want the people that are

(21:17):
actually moving the work along. And you know, in our shop, while
Gravity, we don't have account people, we just have producers,
right? Producers produce, right?
Producers make things. And that's, that's the way that
we designed our shop. While Gravity is like, we only
have the people that are actually making the actual work.
We have camera people, we have writers, directors, producers,

(21:38):
obviously, right. And because we have small flat
teams, we can work so much faster than a big agency and the
work is actually better. Well, for sure when you got a, a
whole football team just taking care of the finance and like,
damn, I got to go through so many people and who's really
working in there? It's like there's too many

(21:59):
people on one dossier. Like God damn.
Agencies. Agencies are all all about
billable hours, and the more hours they can bill, the more
money they make for the agency. But if that in no way benefits.
The client So for uncomfortable truths of life, what's 1 of the
hardest truth you realize in your career or life?

(22:20):
Um. Realizing that there were so
many people that are not actually doing the work.
And then I'd like to talk about this in corporations.
Overall, after working in corporations for the greater
part of 10 or 15 years, I was like, there's only about 5% of
the people here that are doing the actual work, right?

(22:41):
And 95% of the people are scrolling along there.
They're just going to meetings, they're managing other people,
they're responding to emails, making status reports about the
people that are actually doing the work.
That's the reality. And I've talked about this with
other people, corporations, theywere like, that number might
even be low. There might even be less people

(23:02):
that are doing the actual work. And when I when I was there, I
was the one that was doing the actual work.
Yeah. And all of these people around
me and the killer was other people getting success from the
work that I was going. Oh my God.
But I think we really saw it visually for all the citizens

(23:23):
When Eli Musk bought Twitter, right away he was firing people
one after another. And we were like, God damn, but
how many people do you really need there?
And he realized that you didn't need most of those people.
So he took out like 80 or 70% or80% of everybody in Twitter
because you don't need a thousands of people to to
control something there or else it just less personalized and

(23:47):
weigh less focus on that one thing, I think.
I mean, for sure, in general, most corporations, almost every
corporation has way, way too many managers and not enough
people doing the actual work. Well, what's an aspect of
marketing ads that you believe is misrepresented in movies or
media? Well, I think the glamour is

(24:10):
certainly over represented. It's the like the ad industry is
very glamorous and you know, there's an aspect of that,
right? Sometimes you get to work with
famous people. Filming a commercial can feel
just like filming a Hollywood movie, and there is that.
But the reality is it's a grind.It's a lot of work.
There's a lot of unglamorous aspects to the job.

(24:32):
And I think the industry overall, overall is presented as
very, very glamorous. Me and a lot of people I hear
complaining, Canada, I don't know if there's all the
commercials in the US are similar, but we have so many
commercial television that you look at it, you're like, what
the hell were they selling? Cause what they're showing us,

(24:52):
it doesn't even make sense. There was one that can't passed
a year ago. There was a Bigfoot destroying
like an apartment and it was written at the end Airbnb like
anybody can rent and and rent their own place and you have
insurance, you're covered. Like, are you kidding me?
So the whole time, yeah, it's just a skit of a Bigfoot.

(25:13):
The whole time you're like, whatthe hell?
So. So why do you think commercials
like their ad don't make sense what they're trying to sell us?
Well, what happens is there's five main metrics for
advertising and a lot of companies and clients lose track
of what they're trying to do. The five metrics are

(25:34):
breakthrough, which is do I remember seeing the ad?
And then there's brand product recall, which is do I remember
who it was for, right. And then there's message recall,
which is do I remember what the message is?
Do I remember what they were selling?
Likability, which is obvious, did I like it?
And then at the end of the day, we're all trying to get to high
purchase intent, meaning do I intend to buy it right.

(25:57):
And what happens like in an ad that you're describing is
everybody's over focused on breakthrough.
You're right. Just shock factor.
Yeah. You see this in gum commercials
all the time, right? Because what else do they have
to talk about? Yeah.
And so they just do crazy, crazythings to make the commercial
breakthrough. But then that's great.

(26:17):
But if the, you know, if they fall flat on the rest of the
metrics, then the ad didn't do anything.
For example, I'm sure you've hadpeople do this all the time
where they're like, I saw the greatest ad on TV last night and
they started to describe it and you're like, oh, who was it for?
And they're like, I don't know exactly.
Right. That's not a good ad, that ad,
exactly. Right, exactly, yeah, that there

(26:38):
was one in particular that I laughed so much because I was
like, man, that is some funny shit.
That was like a a grandma at a farm.
And the commercial at the beginning, it says like, yeah,
we will always want to do stuff on their on their own, but
sometimes it's better for somebody else to do it.
And her for her. She's a hard headed lady in in a

(27:00):
farmland. So she goes outside because
there's full of crows and you just see her walking towards
that, that scarecrow that used to be there.
And then she's on the stick of Scarecrow and she's.
Yeah. And she's yelling.
Sometimes it's maybe not better for you to do on your own.
And I found it hilarious. I was laughing so much.
But then after when I I talked to one of my friends about, it

(27:21):
was like, what was it about? I have no fucking clue.
I don't know what they were selling, but it was.
Funny. Yeah, exactly.
And you know, that ad probably did great for the agency when
they went to win awards, but it did shit for the client.
Oh yeah, that's it. And what's something about the
advertising community that you feel could be better, better

(27:42):
understood or improved like overall, like all the companies
should start adapting something?There well, I think there's an
over I mean there's way too muchbloat in the system, right.
There's just way too many peoplethat are doing stuff that is not
necessary or not in the clients best interest for sure.
And then the other thing is the way the basic setup of the
industry is that the, you know, the ad agencies think of the

(28:06):
ads, but they don't produce them.
So they farm out that work to production companies.
Now production companies gonna do all the filming, the editing,
sorry, not the editing, all the,all the filming.
And they'll create the raw footage.
And then it's going to go to a third company, which is a post
production company. Now they're going to do all of
the editing, right? They're going to get it into

(28:27):
near final shape and then to Addall of the motion graphics the
any special effects, any of the superimposed text that is going
to go to a visual effects company.
So what's happening is right then the clients paying for four
different. Companies.
Right. And all that does is add cost
and complexity. Now the reality is that there's

(28:49):
now creative production agencieslike Wild Gravity, where it
haves creative production, post and VFX all under one roof, and
that allows companies like ours to produce work that's much,
much quicker. Better and more precise of the.
Yeah, right. Yeah.

(29:09):
And clients, clients love that, right?
And when they learn that, like alot of clients have no idea that
that was even possible. And so it's very refreshing to
all those clients. And makes you think of it.
You know what I mean. Elementary school, you used to
the phone game, you come out there something your friend he
needs. Well, when there's four people

(29:30):
going through like, like the direction that the the client
wanted initially is probably notwhat we're getting at the end of
the road by 4 different companies.
Though that's exactly right. Like the more people you
distribute the work around, the more the message is gonna get
confused and lost. Absolutely.
What's an uncomfortable truth you had to accept about the way

(29:50):
success or happiness is really achieved?
Um. I would say that one of the most
uncomfortable truths I had to deal with it my career was that
people that were much better at politics, like internal work,

(30:12):
politics could be more successful than people that were
actually good at doing their job.
And that a lot of times in corporations, it isn't the
people that are the best workersthat get the promotions and the
titles. It's the people that are best at
politics. And you know, I had, I used to
have people that would basicallypresent not basically they would

(30:33):
present my work and they would get the promotion and I
wouldn't. And I just was not as much of A
political player. And that's probably, at the end
of the day, one of the reasons why I got out of the corporate
build and started my own company.
And I, I think it's that for a lot of companies for, for
example, a complete different company, UFC, if you wanna be a

(30:53):
star, well, you're knocking people out.
That's good. But if you're great with the
microphone as well, well, like Conor McGregor example, well,
you're going to make for fuck you money faster because people
are going to pay to see you get knocked out or knock somebody
out. So a having that might having
good at politics and knowing howto rile things up in your way

(31:15):
for people to buy your product or your fight.
Well, like you need to be good on in politics for sure.
That's exactly right. That's great analogy.
What's 1 of the biggest risk when you started launching a
while gravity with no capital? And how did how did you

(31:35):
psychology psychologically handle all the this risk and
being like, OK, I'm just gonna let go everything start from
scratch right here. When when you had it all there,
you could have just chilled yourway to the top, but you did it.
You were like fuck it, I'll go my own lane.
I mean, I had a couple job changes.
I was CMO of another content marketing agency.

(31:59):
I got laid off because the agency that bought that company
already had a CMO and I had six month package.
And I was able to sit back and be like, OK, well what do I
really want to do? And the idea of going back into
the corporate world kind of mademe like nauseous.
And so I was like, I really wantto.

(32:19):
But what made you nauseous? Was it like too many people
again to deal with or? Yeah, it was the idea, all that
politics and having a crime, thecorporate ladder again and
things like that. And so I had an idea of like,
well, what if companies could have a person like me that
actually did all of the stuff, But, you know, they didn't have
to pay me full time. I could just come in and advise

(32:41):
them and create all of their campaign materials and then walk
away when they're done, right? And So what happened is I built
a PowerPoint presentation and I started chopping it around to
people. And, you know, because I had big
connections from my jobs, I was able to land the meetings.
And the offering itself was so compelling to be able to create

(33:03):
great work without all of that cost and complexity that I ended
up getting booked on some jobs. But I would say by the most
uncomfortable part of doing whatI'm doing is the fact that we're
a bootstrap startup, meaning we don't have any funding, right?
And so if we don't make any money, then the business doesn't

(33:24):
exist anymore, you know, and we now we have nice studio here, we
have full time employees being responsible for that and for all
those people and to my family and knowing like if the dollars
don't come in this, all this allgoes up in smoke.
That is very uncomfortable. Garry's very stressful and keeps

(33:48):
my partner and I awake at night,but it also keeps those super
motivated and always cranking. Yeah, and on edge to just keep
going for sure to. Yeah, that's right.
Because a lot of millionaires I talked to like after they get
that 10 million that there were praying forces there, 10.
Well, like the the flame is donethere because you reached the

(34:08):
pinpoint. And if you're always looking for
something to, to build and, or something to keep and having
that foundation, well, for sure,you just yeah, that flame is
never going to close itself, that's for sure.
That's right. That's right.
Yeah. What's the real difference
between a brand that wins and a one that just has the marketing

(34:31):
budget? A brand that wins knows exactly
who they are, and they're dead focused on what they're trying
to achieve. And the brand that doesn't is
fumbling around. They're not exactly sure who
they are and they're not becauseof that, they're not exactly
sure what they're trying to achieve.
As an example, I like to bring up the insurance industry a lot

(34:52):
because they spend a ton of money on advertising.
And you know, a brand that absolutely kills it is GEICO,
right? Because those ads, like those
ads, are funny. People remember them.
People remember what the. They know them by.
Heart, right? Yeah, they talk.
About I know them by heart. Right, they know what the
message is. Save 15% or more.

(35:14):
On your Yeah, forget that. It's locked in our head forever.
Right. And then so because of that,
people have purchase intent, butgo to the website and check to
see if they could save 15%. On the flip side, or companies
like Liberty Mutual or State Farm, where it's like they have,
they have ads, you might remember them, but you're not
really sure what the message was, right?

(35:36):
Like they don't have a compelling message like save 15%
or more. And in fact, what both of those
insurance companies tend to sellis bundle your insurance with us
and you can save money, which isnot very compelling message.
And because of that, people don't have very high purchase
intent. And so that's a good example of,
you know, one company that dad said and what they're doing and

(35:57):
what they're trying to achieve, and two other companies that are
just basically fumbling around the dark.
And what's incredible that you mentioned that I just had a DC
blend on the podcast hand me. It just relit his his like the
marketing that his calls, like he's getting jobs now because
like he he got that commercial for Gecko like a couple years
ago and it re exploded that whoop.

(36:19):
There it is. It's incredible.
And that's what GEICO does and acouple other company do like
they go get that that iconic person and they just add him
perfectly to to to your commercial without making it
like something else where you keep it the same model since
it's working, but just add something big in it.

(36:41):
There. That's right.
Yeah. And that was.
What's 1 campaign or decision you made that felt wrong but at
a certain point turned out to begenius in hindsight?
Um. Let me see, here's a very small
example. When I was working on banner
campaigns back in the digital marketing days, we had some

(37:02):
banners that weren't performing very well.
And somebody said, well, what ifwe put click here on all of the
frames of the banner? And I was like, that's not going
to do anything. Who doesn't know to click on it?
And so we put click here on the banners and sure enough, the
metrics went up 25%. Wow.
I was like, wow, people will actually click here if you say

(37:24):
click here. And that's sometimes like the
most obvious thing that you think, well, there's no reason
it should work, will work. Wow, wow.
Yeah, that is something so small.
But yeah, that can change everything.
If a startup has only 5000 for marketing, where should they
they put it to make the most impact with that 5000?

(37:47):
I would go right to Google and Facebook if I were doing that in
all parts of my career. The one parts of the advertising
spectrum where I could count on positive ROI was advertising on
what's now called Meta and and Google.
And then you've got to absolutely nail nail your

(38:09):
search, your search engine marketing, your search engine
optimization before you have anything else down.
I noticed that that that really changed the game for a like a
video to get pulled up and everything Because if you Google
is behind, you will for sure that's gonna fucking help the
metrics. What are three brutal mistakes

(38:31):
that or maybe 2 that most companies make and when they try
to go viral? Uh, well, I think the first
mistake that people make is trying to go viral.
Like going viral is something that.
It's unpredictable normal. It's unpredictable, right?
And if you try and go viral, youa lot of times you end up doing

(38:51):
things that are inauthentic to yourself, right?
Try too hard. Yeah, yeah.
You try too hard and then you just look silly.
Whereas if you just try and communicate authentically and
communicate who you are and whatyou're trying to be, then look,
you may not go viral, but you'regoing to have good authentic
content out there and you never know, anything can hit, right.

(39:14):
Yeah, fucking anything. Incredible.
I like that girl. Cash me outside.
How about that? Like it was nobody.
Like she wanted Doctor Phil at 13 and now she's a mega
millionaire. So.
So it's literally a phrase couldchange her life.
A commercial could change her life.
So just trying to go viral for for sure.

(39:34):
You're probably not ending up there going viral.
There, I mean, to your point, a friend of mine was showing me a
video the other day that it was a fish and chips company, you
know, in England. And all it was was a first
person view of somebody orderingthe fish and chips and it had 25
million views. Wow.

(39:56):
That's nothing. There was nothing to it.
There was no like, no big surprise.
No, it was just somebody ordering fish and chips.
It's like that Captain Morgan commercial guys talk at a bar,
just normal. You don't even hear the
conversation. And there's one that just put
his foot on the chair and bang, it becomes that thing in he's

(40:16):
Captain Morgan on nowhere. They they, they transfer it and
always found that cool. When I was a kid before I
started drinking at like 20 something, I was like, ah, I
want to test that beer out one day only because it looks so
cool. That's how a commercial can
really transfer your vision of that object there.
That's true. How do you separate a good idea

(40:38):
from the one from the one that has a social, social scalable,
scalable momentum behind it? Well, I think if you focus on
the five core metrics, that's really the thing that will
separate a good idea from a bad one.
People should go with that checklist, like when they're
going through that, that that little video to try to hit

(41:00):
people like really check. Do you have those five things in
it? Yeah, for sure.
It's like, are people gonna remember it?
Are people gonna remember what you're saying?
Are they, are people gonna like it?
And at the end of the day, it's going to motivate people to buy
it. And a lot of like, I know
because I, it happened to me as a client, you lose track of, you
know, what are the metrics you're really trying to drive.

(41:21):
And if you work with ad agenciesand media agencies, there's so
many metrics thrown at you, hundreds, thousands of metrics
that you can often lose focus. And if you just focus on those 5
core things, that will guide youcorrectly every time.
What's a what's a checklist for building trust in high stakes
boardroom filled with politics and egos?

(41:44):
Is there like a tips that you could give some people that are
going into that, that boardroom to because they have a plan they
did. They just want to like, show it
to people. I would say just focus on, you
know, what are the real authentic truths and don't try
and be too, too crazy. And then in terms of a lot of

(42:05):
people get distracted when they're trying to think of ads,
they try and think of something that nobody's ever done or
that's so outrageous. And.
The reality is that there's onlyso many bits in advertising and
if you look at other things thathave worked and then you just
put your own spin on it, that's often the best way to get to a
really good ad. Yeah, because it tells you like

(42:27):
the behind the scenes, like why that worked in particular.
And you just got to tweak it andmake it your own in your way
without stealing the complete idea and you could have
something good there. Yeah, that's exactly right.
So for the critical thinking outside the box situations,
what's a mistake you made in your career or life that you
definitely didn't repeat twice? Um.

(42:51):
I would say, you know, there's times where I didn't stick with
things long enough that. That you should have been more
patient for like. Yeah, but I went into certain
jobs and I was like, this isn't working.
And then I just left. And then later I was like, you
know what, I could have stuck that out longer and I bet it
would have worked out. That's happened certainly a few
times and certainly a mistake that I won't make again.

(43:12):
Name two things that people should try at least once in
their life. People should go skiing for
sure, and people should just getoutside more in general.
That is so, so great advice obviously for, for 'cause most
people now today, they're the, the worst thing you could say to

(43:32):
a kid is I'm gonna close the Wi-Fi.
You know, they're like now and me and my mom back in the day is
like, I'll lock you inside out. Like, no, don't do that because
life is outside. And now it's complete flip by 20
years or 30 years later, what's that one personal favorite
achievement of yours and your career or life that you're most

(43:53):
proud of? I mean, starting while gravity
is probably way up there with mymost proud moments, it was
definitely a scary endeavor. Something that I went into where
there was true to my heart and to have it so well received is,
you know, definitely, you know, among the most rewarding things
that I've ever done in my. Life for sure.

(44:17):
In your line of work at what's the most important skill or
trait that you think a person should have?
I think good communication skills are the most important
thing in general to have. If you're not able to say what
you're doing and why are you doing it, then just doing the

(44:37):
thing often falls flat. Like we have a saying here that
there's two types of bartenders,right?
When you go to a busy bar, there's one type of bartender
that's heads down. They're cranking out drinks.
You come to the bar, you don't know if they've they've seen you
or not. You're like, when am I going to
get to order? And then the other type of
bartender has their head up. And then when you walk in,

(44:59):
they're still cranking out drinks, but they'll throw down a
cocktail napkin in front of you and they'll be like, I'm super
busy, but I'll be right with you, right?
And both bartenders are making the same amount of drinks, one
is communicating, they're engaging with you and they're
giving you status. And then you know that you are
seen as a customer. And so you know which ones going
to get more tips, which one's going to get the promotion.

(45:20):
It's the one with the good communication skills that's.
Engaging, God damn right. Oh yeah, that is for sure.
That's a great example. That's a great example.
Because for sure you're like, ohman, that that girl's working so
hard. She has her head down the whole
time. But the other one that is like,
I see you right now, but here's the menu and like at least you
know where you're going with herand you're like, man, that's

(45:41):
thoughtful. I would have left her more tips
for sure. Right, that's right, like the
ones that's looking down, you'retrying to get their eye contact
and see if they see you. But if the guy you know throws
down the cocktail napkin, then you can just start talking to
your friend again because you know that they'll be over
whenever your whenever they're actually.
Yeah. Can you share an instance of
where your intuition or gut feeling led you to make a

(46:01):
particular decision? Um.
I mean, there was a lot of timesin the AD development process
where things either just feel right or they don't feel right.
And so 9 times that out of 10, if it feels wrong, it's going to
be wrong, and if you're right, it's going to be right.

(46:22):
So people should really go with their instincts or intuition way
more for stuff like that there. Yeah, I think like along the
lines of Malcolm Gladwell's blank is you need to develop an
expertise. And once you've developed an
expertise, then you can start toreally trust your gut.
Uh, so we're done to critical thinking part.

(46:44):
Uh, what's one of the most underrated skill that made you
millions that doesn't show up onany of your resumes there?
Um. I think doing the right thing.
Um, like being genuine? Being genuine and also like in
general, doing right by your employees, doing right by your

(47:05):
customers, having integrity evenwhen people can't see it per se,
people feel that. And then overtime, it builds A
reputation and that doing the right thing is not just, it's
not just something to do becauseit's nice.

(47:25):
It's actually an investment. And it's an investment that
compounds overtime. Yeah, exactly.
It's something that gets built. After a while there, that's
right. Was there a low point in your
journey where you thought that while gravity might fail or
certain point, and if so, at what kept you going?
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely been
many times where that's happened.

(47:47):
And you know, we were, we started in 2017 and we were
growing 33% a year and then COVID happened, right.
And so all of a sudden, a bunch of stuff went away, and that was
existentially terrifying. And similarly, when in 22 and
23, when the Fed started raisinginterest rates so much and

(48:09):
companies started spending money, things got super
existential for us. And what kept us going was just
knowing how many people were depending on us.
Obviously the our families from my partner and I and then all
the employees that we have here,just knowing on how many people
are depending on us. That's the thing that really

(48:30):
kept us going and kept us motivated.
Talk about pressure there. Putting that that money on the
table for their families as wellas yours, man, it's something.
Yeah, it's funny you say that because a lot of times people
are like, well, owning your business must be so satisfying.
And you're like, it is satisfying, but it alternates
between so satisfying and existentially terrifying.

(48:56):
You have to account for the existentially terrifying if
you're going to want to go and. That's not all fun and games at
the top at all. What mindset shift do you
believe every business owner should start adopting in 2025 to
stay relevant to the marketing industry?
I think at this time it's more authenticity is more important

(49:18):
than ever, especially in the ageof AI.
Things can become so inauthenticand so fake and people feel that
and you need to be authentic andtrue to yourself and people feel
that as well. And I think authenticity is
going to be one of the biggest trademarks going forward as we

(49:41):
get more into this inauthentic time.
Now, I think you're completely right because when you look at
it because we don't want change or for a lot of stuff, we want
the authentic shit. And an example of that that they
put out The Little Mermaid show movie and the girls black.
Like I don't mind the girl's black, but in history of this

(50:02):
story, she's white. So, so when a lot of people saw
her black, they were like, what the fuck are you doing changing
history? We wanted that authentic shit.
But they, they, they try so muchto do something else.
Well, if it was working at the beginning, you might as well not
start changing that. Stuffing.
And if you could, if you could blow up your agency and rebuild

(50:25):
again from scratch, what would you do differently that time?
There was one time where we weregetting really busy and we
started to grow a lot and we over hired.
We brought on too many people too quickly and then that
necessitated us to having to letgo of some people and if I went

(50:47):
back in time I would have not hired that many people.
Now we we are small and we stay small on purpose and going back.
I wish that we had done that more religiously.
For sure, because let's say, yeah, you give a job to
somebody, you wanna keep giving him that job, especially if he's

(51:09):
good at it. Like you don't want to just take
it off. But when you you added a bit too
many people for the growth that you were having, oh man, for
sure, that should have been fucking hard on you.
Yeah. So, yeah.
So the way our company works is we have a small team of seasoned
pros and then we have big productions.
We hire freelancers and contractors.
And what's great about that is when the jobs over, it's just

(51:32):
all high fives and see you next times versus pink slips and
tears. Yeah, what is one of the dumbest
trends in advertising right now that people are blindly copying?
Well, I think the over reliance on AI is for sure one of the
biggest problems right now. Companies keep trying to put out

(51:52):
a, you know, AI ads and people are people are calling bullshit
on them right away. And I think similarly people are
over relying on AI to write copyand as of now it just rings
false. You know, I'm sure the
technology will get there and get better, but as of now the

(52:13):
over reliance on a I think is killing a lot of creative.
For sure, because a lot of people don't use it as your
assistant that it should be. It shouldn't be your, your,
your, your personal worker that you're giving a salary to that
you're not giving a salary to not know.
It's not he, he, he's not the person that's going to do that
stuff there because the human side is gone.

(52:33):
If you do that, you, you, you, he has to be your assistant, the
one that you talked to about what you need to do, stuff like
that. That's going to help you grow,
not just relying on him to shit out the the perfect and
marketing. He doesn't have that human
conscience and understanding what people are really looking
for. He's just going to look at the
patterns but not really understand the human person on

(52:55):
your side. Yeah, that's right.
People would rather have authentic and imperfect versus
inauthentic and perfect. And what's dangerous now with
AI, like one of the biggest guysthat exposes scams on YouTube is
a coffee Zilla is a great guy just exposing the people that

(53:16):
are scamming people. And there's a there's people
that obviously are creating fake, deep, deep fake AI's and
commercials on YouTube. And they, they took him his face
and everything. And it really looks like him and
it's incredible there. And they were, he was like, oh,
go get this cryptocoin and whatever.
And he had to do a video about it.

(53:37):
It is like for sure, my fans, I get a fellow followed by it,
follow it because that they knowthey know what scams are they
getting screwed. But other creators that somebody
does that about him and their their fan base is not people
exposing scams like he is. Well, they would get screwed
because it looks so real. There he was.
He was shocked and this is goingeven worse and worse there.

(54:01):
Like you remember that time likebefore Trump got elected the
first time and we heard that locker room talk.
I'm going to put that hand on the pussy and well, now you you
could literally make somebody say anything like it.
It's kind of scary. Yeah, that's right.
Thanks again for coming on man, it was so much incredible
information. Where can everybody find you and

(54:21):
your socials and your website? Yeah, thanks so much.
This has been an absolute blast.If you're interested in the book
Hacking Advertising, you can find it at
hackingadvertising.com. You can also just look it up on
Amazon, Just type in Hacking Advertising and it'll come up.
If you're interested in learningmore about Wild Gravity, you can
go to wildgravity.net and find us there and learn how to make

(54:44):
great advertising creative without the time, cost, hassle
and complexity of working with an ad agency.
And if you want to learn more about me, I am at John Snyder
JONSNEIDER on all the major social media platforms.
So thanks again, Donna, it's been a.
Blast. Yeah.

(55:04):
Thank you so much. This is absolutely been a blast.
So thanks everybody and have a great weekend.

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Wild Gravity's Hacking Advertising: The Unfiltered Truth About of Advertising Companies EP78

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