Where Brands Get Their Edge

Two high school kids walked up to Amanda and her husband at the grocery store and said, "I know you." They didn't.
They had his name. His employer. A dad who supposedly kept a photo of him on his desk. None of it checked out — so Amanda did what most of us wouldn't: documented the aisle, the descriptions, every word they said, in case she had to pull the store's surveillance footage. Then she spent a full night piecing together the only theory that fit: they scanned his face.
A week later she found out she was right. It was an app called Sherlock, and the kids were just testing it. They felt so bad afterward they aborted the whole thing and confessed to their parents.
Borzou's takeaway is not the one you'd expect. He wants it. In his glasses. Immediately.
They cover:
  • How a "do I know you?" conversation turns into a data-collection test
  • Why Amanda's instinct was to write everything down — and why Borzou never would have
  • The credit-card-skimming theory, and the red flag that gave the kids away
  • Facial recognition is already consumer-grade and already in teenagers' hands
  • The other side: never forgetting a name at an event again
  • Amanda's fix for the "nice to meet you" vs. "good to see you" problem
  • Why being aware is the only real defense left
Got a weird AI story of your own? Send it to us — this one we didn't even know existed until it happened.
Connect with us
This episode is brought to you by NickelBronx.

Creators and Guests

Host
Amanda Fischer
Host
Borzou Azabdaftari
Alabama-born, Virginia-raised, and Iranian-made, Borzou isn't just another CEO; he's a college dropout turned serial entrepreneur, speaker, and the brains behind the award-winning digital agency NickelBronx. Known for his prowess in branding and digital marketing, Borzou's work has garnered Hermes Creative, Clutch, and Marcom Awards. Beyond the boardroom, he's a connoisseur of design and anything aesthetically driven, embodying style with substance. Borzou's philosophy? Embrace what makes you unique; that's how you find your tribe.  When priorities with his family, health, business, and community are satisfied - you can find Borzou chasing once-in-a-lifetime experiences. His favorite things are amazing people and making memories, and he’s always adding to his collection of both.

What is Where Brands Get Their Edge?

Cutting-edge marketing news and advice for (and from) brands, founders, and marketing executives.

Borzou amanda random shoots (00:00)
by the way, kids, this is a lesson I knew already, but in case you don't know already like don't mess with Amanda. Just just

Amanda (00:05)
I mean, I don't

Borzou amanda random shoots (00:15)
hey Amanda, I heard you met some high school boys and got a good story out of it. You wanna tell everyone what happened?

Amanda (00:20)
Yeah, well, okay, so

Borzou amanda random shoots (00:21)
Yeah.

Amanda (00:21)
it's really it is a crazy story, not as crazy as you made it just sound, or or maybe actually crazier. so I was at

Borzou amanda random shoots (00:27)
It depends what people are expecting.

Amanda (00:29)
it I mean, you teased that very interestingly.

Borzou amanda random shoots (00:32)
Ha ha ha.

Amanda (00:33)
so I was at Publix, which is our local grocery store in Florida, and I was with my husband, so we were just shopping together, which is not a common occurrence, but anyway, we were together and

Amanda (00:44)
All of a sudden, these two high school guys came up to us and they were like, I know you. And they're talking to my husband. They're, I you're you're Doug Fisher. you work for Active, right? I think you know my dad. And so we're like, Okay, this is a little strange, but this kind of thing does happen pretty often. and Doug

Amanda (01:03)
Goes to a lot of conferences, he speaks at a lot of conferences, but he's like, the the kids like, my dad has a picture of you on his desk. And that was a red flag for sure. right. Super

Borzou amanda random shoots (01:13)
I mean it's creepy no matter what, yeah.

Amanda (01:17)
bizarre. So my antennas were up, but we're just like kind of trying to get out of this situation, but also want to get as much information as possible to research after and try to figure out who we know, like what the connection is.

Amanda (01:29)
And so we're like, what's your name? What's your dad's name? You know, what does your dad do? Where do you guys live? and everything seemed a little bit weird, but they're nice and forthcoming. And he was giving information. And we're like, okay, so we got the information. And then just go about our shopping. Then afterwards we start looking and trying to figure out, you know, who this guy is. He said he's I mean, he said his name was Ross Epstein.

Amanda (01:53)
Which, you know, we live in Boca, so it's pretty, you know, legit. Sounded

Borzou amanda random shoots (01:57)
Common last name? Is that what you were gonna say?

Amanda (02:02)
legit. And so we couldn't find anybody that matched this guy. We found a couple of lawyers that, you know, my husband's a lawyer. We're like, okay. but nothing matched up. And so then automatically I start, you know, kind of freaking out. It's it's really I start documenting everything like

Amanda (02:18)
what aisle we were in when this happened, what the guys looked like, every single thing they said, what they said their names were. And I put it in a note just in case we needed to find out, you know, find surveillance at Publix. You know.

Borzou amanda random shoots (02:32)
Would never

Borzou amanda random shoots (02:33)
have been my thought process, by the way. I'm actually glad you t are telling me this in case I'm ever in this kind of scenario. No, super

Amanda (02:40)
Well, so my thoughts were this.

Borzou amanda random shoots (02:41)
smart, super smart. It just would never have occurred to

Amanda (02:44)
I mean, immediately after when we couldn't find the person that we were searching for, I started thinking this

Borzou amanda random shoots (02:52)
So there is no Ross Epstein.

Amanda (02:53)
there are a couple, but they they didn't fit all of the criteria. And so

Borzou amanda random shoots (02:57)
This but this is yeah, this is a fake one.

Amanda (02:59)
yeah, this was definitely a fake one. And so

Amanda (03:02)
I started thinking, and I said this to my husband. I said, Hey, you know, th this is really weird. Maybe they were using some sort of AI to scan your face and then they came up to you and started asking you these questions. But the real reason was to get close enough so that they could steal like your credit card info at a certain you know, because there people can do certain things like that if you don't have things blocked on your credit card, if they're close enough and all of that. So

Amanda (03:26)
I just the I this is where my head was going. So in case we need to pull surveillance from Publix, I documented everything. But then after a full night of no sleep, because I was focused on this, I realized that these kids, even if that was their intent eventually, they were in the rudimentary stages of data collection to see if certain things worked. Because the way the the conversation went, I was like, they were too early in their trials for this to be the final. So

Amanda (03:54)
I kind of already put this to bed and was like, these kids, even if they were doing something really bad, they were we weren't the target. Some the target's gonna be somebody after

Borzou amanda random shoots (04:02)
But

Amanda (04:03)
us.

Borzou amanda random shoots (04:03)
just

Borzou amanda random shoots (04:03)
by the way, kids, this is a lesson I knew already, but in case you don't know already like don't mess with Amanda. Just just

Amanda (04:09)
I mean, I don't know.

Amanda (04:11)
I I I feel I did feel still stupid that I didn't, you know, catch on right away, so a week later, we are at an event at in our community and we meet this couple who Doug does kind of know the husband of this couple. We're getting to know them, they're telling us about their kids and everything, and then they break it to us that

Amanda (04:33)
One of those kids was his stepkid. And he was using an app called Sherlock to scan faces. So I was right. but they were just, you know, having fun and apparently aborted mission after they met us because they felt so bad because we were so nice and so authentic.

Amanda (04:54)
And then they went home and they told the parents everything and how badly they felt. And then the wife was there. She said, you know, my, she thought she should tell us right away that this guy, whose name is Ross, by the way, was supposed the husband. Yeah, the husband's real name is Ross. His last name is not Epstein. so she's she's like, You gotta tell them. And he's like, No, no, no. This is something we need to talk about in person. This is too weird. So it was funny that we kind of ran into each other at this event and

Amanda (05:22)
they told us everything and they're like, they're good kids. They don't even drink, they don't do anything, they don't party. We want them to party, they don't party. like, okay. Okay.

Borzou amanda random shoots (05:32)
We we can do a whole

Borzou amanda random shoots (05:33)
separate episode on my problem with like young kids not wanting to party anymore.

Amanda (05:37)
I mean,

Borzou amanda random shoots (05:38)
so I I want this technology. When you told me the story, I went and looked for it immediately. The f the app is available on Android, but not on iOS yet. Meta, please put this in my glasses.

Borzou amanda random shoots (05:50)
Nothing would make me happier than being able to go to an event and just be like, who is this? And have it give me the details so I can act like I remember the person's fucking name and catch by. This is my only takeaway from the story. All the scary stuff about AI and people tracking me, I'm not even worried about. I just want to not have to remember people anymore.

Amanda (06:06)
Well, and that's a great scenario because people, especially ones that you're supposed to know their name, if you can secretly r you know, look it up.

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:14)
I have a

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:15)
hundred percent, like near a hundred percent guessing wrong ratio. And not just in like obviously if I know the person, another person, but even something as simple as like a nice to meet you versus good to see you again, I seem to get it wrong

Amanda (06:25)
And

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:27)
every time. And like more so recently.

Amanda (06:28)
just here's the trick.

Amanda (06:30)
Just always say good to see you. It works for everyone.

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:33)
I I

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:35)
I feel like they know still.

Amanda (06:36)
They might, but they're not gonna know as definitely as if you say nice to meet you and they've met you a bunch of times.

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:42)
And I do also hate when they like try to make me feel bad about not remembering them. It's like this is just embarrassing to you. Like let it go. Like what

Amanda (06:48)
It's probably somebody

Amanda (06:49)
that calls you Borzo or something, so you probably shouldn't feel that bad.

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:52)
That is

Borzou amanda random shoots (06:53)
funny. I do hate there are people that like and and for people who don't know, I have a pretty nice mnemonic device for remembering my name as I tell everyone it's boar, like the big hairy pig in Zoo, like where it lives. And it's like, Yeah, you should you should have this down by now.

Borzou amanda random shoots (07:06)
But no, th there's still so many people that get it wrong regularly.

Amanda (07:06)
well I mean ten years like at least ten years in we should

Amanda (07:09)
have it down because there are certain people that I'm like, it's too long for you. You really shouldn't know how to pronounce his name. Yeah.

Borzou amanda random shoots (07:15)
Yeah.

Borzou amanda random shoots (07:17)
but I do, I want this technology. I'm I'm also afraid of it. Nikki's horrified of our kids being on social for all like the normal reasons. but

Amanda (07:24)
Yes.

Borzou amanda random shoots (07:24)
this is just another layer of how fast people can get info when you're out there.

Amanda (07:29)
I mean, it's just, I mean, obviously the technology's getting better and better, smarter and smarter. It's just the best thing you can do is be aware of the things that people could be using. So that's that's the best you can do. You really you can't always know, you can't always be prepared, but you can just try to be aware.

Borzou amanda random shoots (07:49)
All right, people, we just wanted you to know this was a thing. send us your crazy AI stories, because we didn't even know this existed until

Amanda (07:54)
Yeah.

Borzou amanda random shoots (07:55)
I managed I was gonna say hustled, like like they were like on the way to trying to do something, but like really just like you said, testing

Amanda (08:00)
Weird catch.

Borzou amanda random shoots (08:01)
the technology.

Amanda (08:02)
Yeah, they were obviously new to it and that's what put me at ease in the end. But I did mean I

Borzou amanda random shoots (08:08)
I thought I

Borzou amanda random shoots (08:08)
thought this was gonna end with like, Can you go buy us beer?

Amanda (08:10)
Can you go buy spear? Yeah.

Borzou amanda random shoots (08:12)
Yeah.

Amanda (08:13)
No, they don't drink. So too busy

Borzou amanda random shoots (08:15)
All right.

Amanda (08:16)
too busy tricking people with AI. So yeah.

Borzou amanda random shoots (08:19)
All right.

Amanda (08:19)
There's my story.

Borzou amanda random shoots (08:20)
Guys, let us know you have Cris AI stuff that we need to look into, because I want to hear about all of it.