Brand Story Inc. with Andrew Davis
Jay Sharman: I’m super excited for today’s guest, Andrew Davis, bestselling author, internationally acclaimed keynote speaker. Before building and selling a thriving digital marketing agency, Andrew produced for NBC’s Today Show. He worked for the Muppets. I mean, how cool is that? In New York he wrote for Charles Kuralt. He’s been everywhere. New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, BBC, NBC. He’s done documentary films and a guy after my own heart, grew up in the ranks as a television producer doing award-winning content for tiny startups up to Fortune 500 brands. He’s recognized as one of the industry’s, “jaw-dropping marketing speakers”, making him blush. A mainstay on the global marketing influencer list. And wherever he goes, I’ve seen him first person. He puts an infectious enthusiasm, magnetic speaking style to good use. Teaching business leaders how to grow their business and transform and helping them leave their legacy. So Andrew, thanks so much for joining us today.
Andrew Davis: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Jay. This is fun.
Jay Sharman: Yeah, I became a disciple after seeing you, I think, at Content Marketing Institute, gosh, probably six years ago and have followed you ever since. And a little odd time for you since you’re such a road warrior for the past few years, but despite what’s going on in the Coronavirus situation, you’re still garnering all kinds of awards around keynoting.
And your latest topic, which I want to touch on is called The Loyalty Loop. For those of you interested, check it out @drewdavishere, is the Twitter account for Drew. Let’s start there and explain to folks what you’re doing right now around The Loyalty Loop.
Andrew Davis: The loyalty loop started as a year-long adventure to find an alternative to the funnel. And so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what’s a better way to visualize the consumer journey and the way brands market in the modern world. And three years later, I’m doing a video every week on YouTube and on LinkedIn about what I’ve found along the way.
For example, this week I actually started experimenting with chatbots and interacted with chatbots all over. And so this week we’re doing something called Chatbot theater. So if you’re interested in chatbots, check that out. It’s kind of fun.
Jay Sharman: Awesome.
Andrew Davis: But the whole goal is to just use the customers and clients you’ve got to get the customers and clients you want. Because I realized, the funnel, just raising awareness, isn’t everything anymore and there are much better ways to kind of build a better experience for the customers and clients you have, which eventually, grows your business exponentially. So it’s kind of a focus on the experience we provide.
Jay Sharman: Yeah, I think you and I touched on this before we hopped on here, I think it’s a natural extension of one of your previous books, which we’ll talk about here in a second, Brandscaping, my all time favorite content marketing book. And I’m not saying that to pander.
Andrew Davis: Thank you.
Jay Sharman: I’ve liberally borrowed from it in presentations as you well know and some of your concepts that you’ve had. But I think most of the people that are listening to this are generally in the marketing bucket, right? And we’re trying to talk about something near and dear to your heart and kind of that transformation into a media mindset for brands to really tell their story and connect.
And your loyalty loop is a natural extension, right? It’s one thing to engage them through content. It’s another thing through their entire life cycle as a customer to kind of be sure you’re maximizing all those opportunities.
Andrew Davis: Yeah. And to be honest, the loyalty, the loyalty loop hinges on what I call a moment of commitment, which is an instant in time where you’re trading some data for some information. And to me the most valuable piece of information you can get from people these days is an email address. And that hinges on your ability to deliver some valuable content on a regular basis to keep your audience. And so it fits really well into the concept that I’ve always been a big believer in, that high-quality content can actually turn revenue. And one of the earliest moments of commitment you can make with it a consumer is inviting them to sign up for some real content, not signing up for your newsletter, but what exactly are you going to provide me if I commit to giving you my email address? And how frequently are you going to deliver it? Are two of the easiest things you can do to start building a loyalty loop.
So it gives you an opportunity to tell your brand story or your story or your clients’ or customers’ stories over time and that’s what builds trust with consumers. So yeah, it’s a natural extension of what I feel like I’ve been talking about and thinking about for over a decade, which is really building a better relationship with your prospects and clients and customers, by providing them with an amazing experience. And while it’s not just about content, the loyalty loop anyway, it hinges very heavily on your ability to execute that.
Jay Sharman: Well. I think, one of the things I’m most excited about in this conversation is that, even on this podcast, sometimes you tend to get conceptual or philosophical, but the thing I loved about your Brandscaping book was just the actual practical take-home value of it, which I think people thirst for. It’s easy to sit and talk about marketplace trends. But at the end of the day, someone’s got to go back and do the work. And so I want to start there and I have the way I define and talk about brandscaping, but I’d rather you do it. How do you succinctly summarize Brandscaping?
Andrew Davis: Well, brandscaping as a concept is just the simple process of bringing more than one brand together and their respective audiences, to create content that increases demand and drives revenue for all parties involved. So it’s really about creating partnerships to get access to an audience you’re never had access to before. That’s the most basic way to think about it.
Jay Sharman: Awesome. Well I think to that point, how it connects with revenue, we at Teamworks Media, we spend a lot of time with clients trying to help them discover that niche within the niche, which I think is so powerful, right? To your point, to create value to that customer or even perhaps community members. And I often point to your fractal marketing approach as the starting point to your point. Walk our listeners through your fractal marketing approach.
Andrew Davis: Yeah, well, so we’ll start with some basics. A fractal is just a self-similar repeating pattern. So, if you’re driving, don’t do this, don’t close your eyes, but if you’re not driving, close your eyes for a second and just imagine a tree. All right? A tree has a big trunk and then a series of branches that spray off of those and then some branches that spray off of those and branches that spray off of those.
So if you take any market, no matter what you sell or what clients or customers you’re targeting, it doesn’t matter if you’re an educational institution looking for prospective students or you’re a Fortune 500 company selling laundry detergent, you can target the trunk of the tree for sure, but it’s a very diverse audience. And that’s the way we marketed 50 years ago. That’s kind of the idea that we just get a demographic in our minds of moms between 18 and 45 and that’s who we’re going after. It’s like the most basic element of the kind of marketing plan and target persona.
But we’ve evolved so much in the online world that we can actually now dive deeper and you can think of a fractal audience as just making some decisions and bifurcating that trunk into branches upon branches upon branches. So instead of just going after moms that are 18 to 45, you might say, “Hey, let’s just say, okay, the trunk of the tree is mom. Great, let’s take a bifurcation immediately and call it young moms and mature moms. And then let’s bifurcate the mature mom tree to moms with one kid and moms with two to four kids.”
And as you build out your tree, all of a sudden you will find this unbelievable universe of opportunities to reach that specific fractal, that node in the tree that you never knew was possible before. And the great thing about fractal marketing is the deeper you dive into the tree, the faster you can build a relationship with that audience, the less likely it is any other brand is they’re targeting that audience and building a relationship with them, and the more successful you can be in building a great content or story play that actually means something to them.
It’s much easier to do the research to embrace who these people are and even to find them online. So the whole idea of fractal marketing is to divide and subdivide your audience until you find a branch that’s big enough, that it’s worth targeting but small enough to be meaningful to you. Does that makes sense?
Jay Sharman: Total sense. It makes sense to me. I talk about it all the time.
Andrew Davis: Yeah, you know it but if you’re listening and it didn’t make sense, let me know, I’ll draw you a picture because I just drew a picture on a note card.
Jay Sharman: I think in the book you talk, I believe it’s Tractor Supply is the case study.
Andrew Davis: Yeah, yeah.
Jay Sharman: Maybe you could bring that to light using Tractor Supply. Because it’s a real-life example and the thing I love is you actually tied it to revenue and it’s rare that you see case studies that bring it home like that.
Andrew Davis: Yeah, you’re right. Tractor Supply is a great example of a brand who’s courageous enough to take a node on a tree, because it really does take courage to do this. Because hypothetically you’re saying no to some people by finding this node, right? So yes. Let me explain Tractor Supply.
I mean Tractor Supply, if you don’t know it, is like the Walmart of the agricultural realm. You can go in and you can buy some Skittles and you can buy a riding lawn mower and you can get a bunny rabbit and some overalls, all in one shopping spree. So it’s really a fun place to go. And it’s a really big business. I think last year they probably did about $7 billion in revenue. And most Tractor Supplies are located in suburban metropolitan areas.
And funnily enough, Tractor Supply has very high awareness. If there’s a Tractor Supply near you, most people in that area, if you say, “Hey, have you ever heard of tractor supply?”, they’ll say, “Oh yeah, that’s that place down on whatever street.” They all know it. But if you’ve never been in a Tractor Supply, you’re very unlikely to go in unless you have a very specific moment of inspiration, an instant where you’d need to go into a Tractor Supply or you’ve already been in there before.
So they have high awareness, but they needed to get new people who know about it to come into the store. And as they started trying to figure out how to do this, they decided they can’t just market to everyone. They can’t just get more people aware of what they have because they don’t seem to be interested. So what they did was they actually looked for opportunities to find something that would get people interested in Tractor Supply. And as they started to do their research, they came across this guy named Andy Snyder. Andy Snyder, is from Atlanta, he’s kind of a middle-aged guy with two young kids. And his kids came home one day and said, “Hey dad, where do eggs come from?” The eggs they eat for breakfast. And he said, “Well, come on, you must know they come from chickens.” And then they were like, “Well, where do chickens come from?” And he was like, oh my gosh, okay. We’ve got to do something about this.
So Andy decided to buy some baby chickens and some eggs and hatch them to teach the kids about raising chickens and the farm life, even though he lived in metropolitan Atlanta. And as he started doing this, he realize that no one was teaching suburban people how to raise just a few chickens. So he was desperate for information and decided, “You know what, I’m going to start teaching other people how to do this.” So he actually wrote a book called The Chicken Whisperer’s Guide to Keeping Chickens. He’s known as The Chicken Whisperer. He even started a radio show.
Jay Sharman: The Chicken Whisperer. How great is that? I mean …
Andrew Davis: It’s awesome, it’s awesome. If you have some time and you’re listening, check out The Chicken Whisperer. Just Google and you’ll find him in two seconds. He started with an AM radio show on traditional media in Atlanta every Saturday. And the show was a hit. people were calling me up saying, “Oh, I want chickens, or I have two chickens. I don’t know what kind of house to build for them.” And the show, from the radio station standpoint, wasn’t a massive success. So they kind of, after a few months of, “Andy, you may need to find another place to do this show,” Andy decided to do it online.
So The Chicken Whisperer started an online radio show on blog talk radio. And by the way, he went from just doing it on Saturdays to doing it four days a week for two hours a day. So from noon to two, every single day, four days a week, you can go online and listen to The Chicken Whisperer on live radio. And he has guests. He has a chicken doctor that’s on every Monday. It’s amazing. By the way, one day Oprah Winfrey called into his chicken show because she’s a backyard poultry fan.
And so he amassed this massive following of essentially suburban people who were really interested in raising chickens and interested in backyard poultry. And if you check out his Facebook page, it’s got over 200,000 fans and he ended up publishing a magazine, a digital magazine that has 60,000 paid subscribers.
And this is when all of a sudden Tractor Supply says, “Hey, wait a second. Maybe we can inspire people in our suburban metropolitan areas to get into backyard poultry. We’ll call The Chicken Whisperer, we’ll ask him if he can do some videos for us on how to teach people to raise their own chickens.” So The Chicken Whisperer agrees because he’s all about trying to teach people how to raise their own chickens, and the fans love it. The new consumers love it. And Tractor Supply has this thing called Chick Days.
Andrew Davis: This is a long-winded story. Are you still there, Jay?
Jay Sharman: I’m here. It’s good, I like it.
Andrew Davis: So they have this thing called Chick Days.
Jay Sharman: I feel like we’re now in This American Life right now. It’s fantastic.
Andrew Davis: Every April around Easter time, Tractor Supply runs a promotion where you can come and for 99 cents, you can buy a little baby chick and then it costs $700 to keep that baby chick alive. It’s a great business model though right? And people start asking in the Facebook group, if The Chicken Whisperer is going to come to their Tractor Supply for Chick Days. And Tractor Supply says, “Wow. This looks like it’s working. If we can get all of those consumers that have never come into a Tractor Supply to come in because The Chicken Whisperer’s going to there, let’s try it.”
So the first year they did 10 cities, 10 different stores, and around Chick Days, they offered a four hour workshop with Tractor Supply and The Chicken Whisperer on how to get your own chickens. And all of his fans brought their friends and family. The first store they did, I can’t remember where it was, I want to say it was in Alabama, but they filled up the store to the point at which it became a fire hazard and they had to shut it down. So they learned from that. Every other store successively, it seemed to get bigger and bigger. They rented a VFW hall to do one of them. They rented some mobile trucks for it.
And it turns out that it is so successful that, at the end of the day, someone who is brand new to Tractor Supply has never been to Tractor Supply before, but buys one of those chicks on Chick Day with the assistance of The Chicken Whisperer, spends 11 times as much as the actual average Tractor Supply customer.
Jay Sharman: Wow.
Andrew Davis: And even just the chicken feed alone, from one of those stores, is worth about $125 million over the course of about 10 years, which is about the expected lifespan of a chicken if you keep him alive that long.
So from a revenue standpoint, it’s unbelievably successful. And Tractor Supply didn’t stop with just the, suburban loving, chicken and backyard poultry enthusiasts, they don’t let into other fractals. They jumped around the tree and found 4H fair kids was another one. If you’re raising a pig for the 4H fair, they created a whole tree for you.
And they went into a rabbits and they went into equestrian stuff. So for Tractor Supply, this strategy has built their business. It has been unbelievably successful for them, but it takes some courage. You’ve got to choose a node and stick with it and commit to making it really successful.
Jay Sharman: Yeah. And I think it’s such a huge point. And the reason I love the depth of which you went into that story is it shows in today’s day and age, you’ve used the word courage. It takes courage because a typical marketer would look and say 200,000 followers on Facebook, there’s not scale. Right? And this is the opposite of that. It’s own the niche within the niche. And you’re talking about 11x consumer, packed places, new customers, all the things that people get promoted for in a corporation.
And that fractal marketing approach, quite candidly, I applied it for this podcast. Brand Story Inc was started simply because I believe, we believe here at Teamworks that, which will be a segue into, you validating or telling me we’re crazy, we believe that the new age of brands and organizations, of becoming media companies to, entertain using that niche within the niche approach to gain customers through giving something of value, whether that’s an entertaining moment or something else, but really, instead of relying on third party media companies, right, to advertise with, why not have a connection directly with the consumer.
And as I started, Digiday’s great. I read it every day. There’s tons of folks that kind of touch on the concept of an internal content studio for brands, right? But there was no one focused 100% on the brand content studio. And so I was like, “You know what, why don’t I just …” It’s exactly what you talked about. It was the tree branch where I was like, “Okay, there’s no one owning this. And so why shouldn’t we? We’re in the business of doing that and let’s do it.” To that point, I mean …
Andrew Davis: It’s perfect.
Jay Sharman: … I still believe that, I look back, I’ve read Brandscaping a couple times, and seven years later with all the disruption and evolution in media, the principles still for the most part, hold up really well. So compliments to you on that. But you’re out speaking to, I mean, by the way, Andrew, the list of associations that he speaks at across the country, it’s amazing that they’re associations. I mean, you speak to associations of associations and associations. I think sometimes. [crosstalk] But you get such a, your perspective here for me is really going to help educate, I think, our audience.
I’m curious as to where you see the state of brands and organizations in that media company mindset, thinking like, acting like or not, as content producers to do what we just talked about.
Andrew Davis: Well, I mean I think it’s something that I always have felt like hasn’t moved fast enough. I don’t know if you feel that way.
Jay Sharman: Yeah, agreed.
Andrew Davis: It seems like such an easy leap for me because the brands that do it well are unbelievably successful. I think they’re successful for a couple of reasons. One, they’re willing to take some major risks. Because I’m a firm believer that no great marketing is safe marketing. And so people look at those brands and say, “Well, we could never do that.” So they immediately kind of disconnect from it and it looks unachievable. And impossible to them. That being said, I actually think one of the things that is sparking a complete mind shift and change in the minds of a lot of these brands, is the fact that podcasting has become so successful, because it’s a low barrier way to think like a media company and build your own radio show. I mean just like you’re doing, for a very specific audience on a regular basis that’s meant to build trust and a relationship with that audience in the hopes that it delivers revenue.
So I would say in the last 12 to 18 months I’ve heard more and more brands thinking like a media company or a radio company for lack of a better thought. They’re thinking like Radiotopia or a lot of these podcasts kind of, brands that are pushing out higher and higher quality programming to attract an audience that adds value to their bottom line.
But have I seen a sea change where everybody’s doing what I think a media company does? No, not yet. And I’m constantly shocked by it. Because one of the things that hasn’t changed from a brandscaping standpoint, maybe we’re even a little bit ahead of, but is the focus on influencers. And I’ve been to so many events in the last two years where there have been sessions about influencers and panels about influencers and complaints about influencers and success stories about … Everybody wants an influencer and is happy to have a relationship with one if they believe it’ll deliver on the bottom line.
But The Chicken Whisperer story’s actually a great example of it. I think one of the places that’s held a lot of brands back is focusing on acquiring the right kind of talent to power their media company.
Jay Sharman: That’s a good point.
Andrew Davis: Because a lot of people are interested in an influencer one time hit. Like, “Hey they blogged about us, then they tweeted about us, then we got on Instagram.” Whereas what’s amazing about the relationship between Tractor Supply and Chicken Whisperer, is it’s a longterm relationship. I mean it’s been going for over seven years now and it’s still just as successful. And The Chicken Whisperer is the expert with access to an audience and a real talent. People fall in love with The Chicken Whisperer, once they listen to him. I mean I’m not even into chickens and I find this radio show hilarious. Would I listen every week? Probably not, but it’s not for me. That’s the great thing.
So I think the big breakthrough is going to come when people realize in the brand and marketing world that one of the best and easiest ways to build a relationship with an audience is to find someone who, number one already has access to that audience and help them be more successful with the audience they’re building.
Jay Sharman: Are you seeing any good examples? Because I think to your point, I’ve seen a couple, right? There’s some, like Marriott’s done some courageous things.
Andrew Davis: Marriott’s done some good stuff.
Jay Sharman: AARP and their Original Entertainment studio. I mean they have shows like Date My Grandma coming. I mean it’s hilarious. They’re doing some neat stuff. But it tends to be, to your point, I think this democratization of content, it tends to be the third tier brands, the people who may not have the huge budgets, that are getting really innovative in it. Even like a Trader Joe’s, with their podcast series, which was a huge hit.
Andrew Davis: Really successfully. Yeah.
Jay Sharman: Curious to see any examples you’re seeing out on the speaking circuit?
Andrew Davis: I’ve seen some really interesting ones like The Beef Council of Texas.
Jay Sharman: I love this. See. This is why we have you on. We’d never know about the Beef Council of Texas.
Andrew Davis: I’ve got to make sure I get it right. But basically they did a reality show called Beef Loving Texans. And first of all, it’s fantastic, but they basically partnered with this woman who’s a chef but also an unbelievable barbecue enthusiastic. And you can picture any Food Network show that this would be around. Right. And she basically toured around Texas, deconstructed the recipes for some of the best barbecue in Texas and created a reality series around it. And it was awesome. I mean, really, really well done.
Andrew Davis: What’s even more important is The Beef Council attributes, I’m going to get the numbers wrong, so don’t quote me, but it’s like a $50 or $60 million increase over the 12 months that they did the show, in sales of beef as a result of the show.
Jay Sharman: To your point, it’s like, what are we missing? Maybe we’re just, well, you’re the smart guy, you get paid the big bucks to do all these keynotes, but what are we missing? Is it courage? What’s the holdback? There are so many examples of this in the marketplace.
Andrew Davis: I think the holdback is the fear that it’s not going to deliver on revenue. So yes, does it take courage? Yeah. It takes courage to decide to make a TV show about looking for the best barbecue. By the way, I just looked it up, it’s called Barbecue Quest, so BB Quest. And season two is streaming now if you want to go check it out.
But I think the fear is that, “Hey, we’re going to invest a lot, we’re going to put a lot of resources on this. We’re very excited about it. But is it going to drive revenue?” And I think the challenge comes down to the CMOs of today, the marketing executives of today, really challenging their teams and themselves to start passing this to revenue. How are we going to measure the impact of this?
And I think one of the reasons that, if I can go back to the loyalty loop and a moment of commitment, I actually don’t think it’s that hard to measure the impact on revenue. Food and Family magazine, which is Kraft’s magazine that they’ve been publishing for 20 something years, they measure the impact of their magazine based on the subscriber revenue, versus non-subscriber revenue. So basically the question they ask themselves is, should we keep publishing this magazine? Because what’s the value to us? And basically every time they run the report it says, “Hey, if you get the magazine, you spend X dollars more a month on Kraft products than if you don’t get the magazine.” So guess what? We should still do the magazine.
And I think we need to start thinking that way. If somebody subscribes to our video series, do they spend more than people who don’t get our video series? If you subscribe to our podcasts, do they spend more with us than if they don’t get our podcast? These are the things that I think we need to challenge ourselves to answer, because then it will remove the fear and trepidation for attempting and then measuring the impact of things like this.
And the last thing I should say about this is, you can distribute the risk by partnering with other people. And that’s what Brandscaping’s about. You don’t have to take on the task yourself of building a content brand like this and thinking like a media company. You can mitigate the risk by saying, “Hey look, if you sell coffee machines and I sell coffee beans, wouldn’t it be great if we got a bunch of coffee lovers to enjoy some content together every month? And hopefully your people who like your coffee machines will buy my beans and vice versa.” That’s what a brandscape is. Can we come together and agree that we can create some great content for our audience who’s interested in what we have to say and the stories we have to tell. And at the end of the day, let’s measure the impact for each of us.
Jay Sharman: Final two questions for you. I know we’re running tight on time here. So first one, I don’t have a name for this yet. I’m calling it Top of The Stack. So whether it’s your nightstand and the books that are on there or if you’re not a vociferous reader, what’s in your email inbox and your subscribe list. Share with me either one of those.
Andrew Davis: Oh man, I read a lot. So I just finished Mean People Suck by Michael Brenner. But it’s a really good book about putting the customer at the center of everything you do. It’s a nice story.
It’s basically how empathy can help you become a better marketer, a better business person, better leader, but it’s really good. He’s got this really great model in the book that he calls the Bullseye Org chart where finally, for once somebody’s put the customer at the center of the organization instead of the CEO at the top. It’s really, really well done.
So that’s at the top of my mind right now, just because I read it. Let’s see, what else have I been reading a lot of lately? Oh, I also listen to a lot of audiobooks. I don’t know if you’re an audiobook fan, but David Burkus, who I like a lot. He wrote Friend of a Friend. I’m not sure if you’ve read that one. But he’s a great guy. He actually just released an audio book only book, which I’m just about to read, called Pick a Fight. That’s my next, my listen now thing. I actually just bought it this morning so I can listen to it.
Jay Sharman: You’ve got a contentious list. Mean People Suck. Pick a Fight.
Andrew Davis: Yeah I do, don’t I? Wait a second. I must be angry.
Jay Sharman: Let’s throw down here.
Andrew Davis: Well, David’s audio book sounds really angry, but it’s actually about how teams use a purpose worth rallying around to actually create a great company
Jay Sharman: Awesome, I love it.
Andrew Davis: So it’s like a purpose-driven book, yeah, which I’m really interested in. Because at the end of the day, what you’re talking about needs and requires a higher purpose. You’ve got to believe that you can add value to people’s lives through the content or story you’re telling, instead of just believing you’ve got to sell them something. If you want the content to eventually sell them something.
Jay Sharman: When you and I first met, we actually put a stake in the ground around it, you’ll see a challenge here. Being too early to the market sometimes can be bad, because I want to say about 2015 is when I met you and we had purpose-driven content marketing was kind of on our homepage. People thought we were in the religion business. And now it’s like everyone’s purpose-driven and we’re like, “Well, wait a minute, but we were there. But you thought we were like the God squad.”
Andrew Davis: You just got to pull up the internet archive and then relaunch your website from 2015. It’s great. It’s great to hang out with thought leaders you who are ahead of the game so far that … There’s another great marketing guy I know Russell Sparkman. He was talking about purpose-driven marketing, you might’ve even heard him at the time, marketing, 10 years ago. He was talking about it and everybody was like, what is that? So yeah, it’s amazing. It’s amazing how fast people think and how slow the market moves.
Jay Sharman: Totally agreed. Last question for you is, when you get the old rush to the stage after these keynotes, right? The inevitable hundred people, 20 people, whatever it is, standing in line, what is the most pressing concern that you’re seeing from marketers right now? Out and about across the U.S.
Andrew Davis: Oh, it’s the same question I’ve been getting for 10 years. What’s next? I get asked that so often and my answer is always the same. It’s like, stop worrying about what’s next. Unless you’re one of five companies in the world that needs to be a first-mover on a new platform or with a new technology, wait until everybody else has figured it out. You don’t need to rush in. If you sell widgets, you don’t need to be able to order them with voice commands on Amazon Alexa. You’re fine. Don’t panic.
And and I think marketers in general feel this pressure to kind of always know what’s new and what’s next and have experimented there. And I think that was fine 15 years ago when there were only a few things you needed to experiment with every year, but I was just at an event where I went to a session a whole about Tik Tok. And for an hour everybody was talking about how Tik Tok’s, the next big thing, and Chipotle made $1 million on Tik Tok in one day with one campaign. And we’ve got to figure out Tik Tok now.
And my honest feeling is marketers have ruined more platforms than we’ve embraced. And most of us can wait on Tik Tok until there’s a bunch of people who have pioneered it and made all the mistakes and then we can do it right and not do our audience a disservice by spoiling a relationship with them because we can’t figure it out. So what’s new or what’s next is the question I get incessantly and it drives me nuts.
Jay Sharman: Well Andrew, I can’t thank you enough for taking some time out of your busy schedule to share some of your stories with us. Folks, if you’re listening, Google, go on YouTube, search for loyalty loop, sign up, subscribe also @drewdavishere on Twitter.
I promise you, if you are in the marketing space and you have for some reason not heard of Andrew Davis, you will not be disappointed. So thanks so much for your time, bud.
Andrew Davis: Thank you guys. This was really fun.
Jay Sharman: Thanks for listening to Brand Story Inc. We’ll be back next week with another conversation, digging into the ways companies are becoming like media companies. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and give me a follow on Twitter @_jaysharman and on LinkedIn.
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