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Interesting people, insightful points of view and incredible stories on what’s popping and not popping in marketing, tech, and culture you can use to win immediately. Brands, Beats and Bytes boldly stands at the intersection of brand, tech and culture. DC and Larry are fascinated with stories and people behind some of the best marketing in the business. No matter how dope your product, if your marketing sucks your company may suck too. #dontsuck
DC: Brand Nerds, Brand Nerds, Brand Nerds. It's the next episode of Brands, Beats & Bytes. And Larry, um, I, I, I gotta go a little philosophical here.
Gotta go-
LT: Ooh
DC: ... a little philosophical.
LT: I love when you do that.
DC: All right. So we, we... Thank you, Larry. We know that we hold a belief that if there's a problem with a brand and business, it can typically be mapped back to brand positioning. The great brands all have something in common, and it's called a sharply defined, well-positioned brands.
The ones that are not so good, 99% of the time their problem is that they got a murky positioning. People don't really understand what it is.
LT: Murky at best.
DC: Yeah, so that, that's our philosophy on branding. But our next guest has some other philosophies in addition to that. The first one is, I'm gonna give a quote here.
It's Buddhist. This is a Buddhist quote now. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
LT: Mm.
DC: Brand Nerds, when you have the ability to be in front of a great teacher Take a beat and listen. Listen to what this teacher has to say. And we have not only a branding and marketing expert, but a teacher.
Number two, I got a story to tell. Way back in the day, we used to have these folks who were partners of the Coca-Cola Company, celebrity partnerships, athletes, or as Charles Barkley says, uh, Larry, uh, athletes.
LT: Athletes.
DC: One of them was a NASCAR driver. His name was Tony Stewart. So he was in our meeting. We were having this executive leadership meeting.
He visited the meeting to say a couple words, and I asked him, I said, "Excuse me, Tony, um, when you're racing around the track at upwards of one sixty, seventy, eighty, and you're coming towards the end of the race and you're leading, and there's someone that's in second place barreling down on your behind, what do you do?"
This brother Tony Stewart said, "The first thing I do is slow down." And I thought, "Wow, slow down." Not what I thought I was gonna hear from him. Our next guest understands the value of taking a moment to slow down. I want you to listen to that, Brand Nerds, 'cause some of us are scared to take a moment to slow down.
And thirdly, I'll say this. Brand Nerds, you all know I'm from, uh, Detroit, the Motor City, Foot des trois We're in a moment now where, as I used to look across the Detroit River at my brethren over in Ontario, Canada, and I do think of them as my brethren and sistren. Right now, we are in the middle of some ridiculousness, okay?
And I just have to acknowledge it. I'm sorry to make this political. I'm not trying to make it political, but I've always thought of my brethren and sistren, I used, as I used to go over what was then the Ambassador Bridge, to go visit, and I would see my, my brethren and sistren from Ontario and Canada.
They would come over, and by the way, if you all have never been, if you have never been to Toronto... It's not Toronto, it's Toronto. And they have a festival that's called the Caribbean Festival. Uh, it, it is one of the best you can ever go to. So I just wanna say, Brand Nerds, we have a Canadian in the building, okay?
We ha- And I'm, I'm just so happy that we have a Canadian in the building because as it relates to all this stuff that's going on right now between our two countries, I'm gonna say this in the nomenclature that my Canadian brethren will certainly understand, we should be using a different process- ... to eliminate the drama, okay?
Okay, with that- With, with that, Larry, can you tell the people who we have in the building today?
LT: That's great, D. We, D, we have Sheldon Poon in the house. Welcome, Sheldon.
Sheldon Poon: Thank you so much. That's, that's a great intro, and I, I just wanna say, like, I... The, the, the last time I went to Detroit, um, was literally coming from Ontario, so there's a small town on the other side of the bridge.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: And there's one bus line that goes between the two countries, and you just take it like a regular city bus.
DC: Oh, wow, I did not know that.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah, it was the weirdest experience, 'cause you hopped on a regular city bus, you went under the tunnel, and in the tunnel there's a customs guy. Right. And then he just takes your basic information, checks your passport.
You hopped back on the bus and you continued, uh, but now you're in the US and, and you're in Detroit, and it was just one city line. Um, and that's- That's cool ... how close the country is. In my mind, that's, that's how it, it should be.
LT: Totally. Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. And once this whole ridiculousness is over, I think the actual people from both countries can go back to normal, because-
LT: Yes
Sheldon Poon: I haven't heard of a single person, actually actual real person on the ground, who sees any of this as anything other than ridiculous, so-
DC: Yeah ...
Sheldon Poon: uh, pleasure to be here.
DC: I, I, I, I resemble that comment.
LT: Right? Go ahead, Larry. Agree.
DC: Go ahead, Larry.
LT: Agree wholeheartedly. Okay, so Sheldon, it's time for us to give the Brand Nerds, uh, your full background here.
So Brand Nerds, we are coming to you today, to you today with someone who is founder and CEO of Montreal-based digital marketing agency Drive Marketing. And for those see- those on YouTube, you can see the Drive logo behind Sheldon. Uh, where their clients get $10 back- Back for every dollar spent on, on Meta and Google.
D, you heard me, $10 back for every dollar spent
DC: Dang. Mm-hmm
LT: That is performance marketing. But let's walk you through Sheldon's very unique and super cool and non-linear career path leading to Drive Marketing. And, and DC was giving you some Easter eggs in, uh, his context. So Sheldon first attends Dawson College, and he perfectly fits the stereotype, as he would say, for his computer science major: technical, introverted, and much more comfortable behind a computer.
Unexpectedly, while in school, he takes a job in telemarketing, and to his surprise, he becomes one of the strongest salespeople on his team and eventually trains new hires. He learns an early lesson unknowingly, directly shaping his future career, and it's this: understanding systems is important, but understanding people matters just as much or more.
After graduation, Sheldon expects to land a corporate tech job. Brand Nerds, as we have said so often, timing is really key to everything. Mm-hmm. Sheldon graduates right when the dot-com bubble is bursting, and he is competing for entry-level roles against people with years of experience. Given the situation, he takes a job in construction, and a year later, he lands with-
DC: Hold, hold on, hold on, Larry.
Hold on, Larry. You say that this brilliant mind in digital and performance marketing with a degree took a job in what industry? Did you say-
LT: Construction.
DC: Construction, okay. I see the parallel. Please continue.
LT: Gotta pay the bills, right?
DC: Yep, gotta pay the bills.
LT: And a year later, he lands what he thinks is a temp job teaching computer skills to high school students.
He falls in love with the classroom and stays for nearly a decade. Mm. That's what DC was alluding to a- as the teacher. When budget cuts move him to the school board's head office, Sheldon becomes one of four tech staff responsible for a multimillion-dollar technology network. At this time, he begins to conceive Drive Marketing on the side.
Wanting to give the company a real shot, Sheldon finds an unconventional way out of his day job. His union agreement allows full-time students to take a sabbatical, so he applies to a university. His view is first computer science rejects him, then business rejects him, philosophy lets him in. Sheldon takes his sabbatical and becomes a philosophy student at Concordia University and simultaneously starts running Drive Marketing full time.
When his sabbatical ends, he chooses the agency. The unusual path still shapes how he approaches marketing today. Sheldon's background spans technology, sales, teaching, philosophy, and entrepreneurship. Rather than treating Google and Meta as collections of tactics and best practices, Sheldon and his team focuses on the systems underneath them, how the algo- algorithms learn, what incentives drive the platforms, and how data and campaigns can be structured to work with those systems.
This thinking is foundational- To drive marketing's approach and helps clients achieve return on ad spend, and the acronym is ROAS, results of at least 3X industry averages across multiple industries. Here's what Drive Marketing says on their website on why they are different than other agencies. Quote, "Every marketing agency says the same thing, makes the same promises, and claims to be different. Here at Drive, we don't focus on anything other than results for our clients. That means ROI. Every one of our clients makes measurable revenue on the work we do, which is why our clients continue working with us after years." Outside of work, Sheldon lives with his partner and young son, splitting time between Montreal and summers in New Brunswick.
He enjoys climbing, motorcycle, snowboarding, and tinkering with code and technology. Really looking forward to this one, Brand Nerds. Welcome to Brands, Beats & Bytes, Sheldon Poon.
Sheldon Poon: Such an intense intro. I think that's the same feedback you guys got with, like, all your other guests. Everybody's just like, "Oh my God, that sounds so much more impressive than I feel."
DC: All you, man.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. Appreciate it.
DC: All you. All you. All right, Sheldon, we're going to get comfy.
The word sabbatical.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: Word sabbatical, right? Your sabbatical was a little different than what people typically think of as a sabbatical.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: That said, it was a sabbatical. Yeah. And so c- can, can you walk, walk the, the Brand Nerds through your thinking at three different stages of the sabbatical? We know what happened at the end.
Sheldon Poon: Mm-hmm.
DC: You chose the agency. We kinda know what was going on at the beginning, but we, but not entirely sure what you were thinking at the beginning of that sabbatical. But maybe even more juicy is in the middle, in the middle of the sabbatical, what was going on with, with you?
Sheldon Poon: So, um, I think... So I don't have a very typical entrepreneurship story.
I think a lot of people start their businesses nowadays because some other chapter in their life came to a close- Mm-hmm ... and they were kind of forced into it, and they looked around at different options and said, "You know what? Now is the time." There's some, like, there's some moment, right?
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: For, for me it didn't really work like that.
I think, um, today, and, uh, I, I talked to, I still try to lecture to, to high school students, 'cause that's kinda where my heart is at. And I tell these kids a lot of the times that today you take it for granted that people just wanna be an entrepreneur. That's, like, the, the height of what they want to achieve.
LT: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: But that's not what it was like back in, like, the '90s, back in the early 2000s. It, it didn't make sense to be an entrepreneur. Why would you take that risk, right? Mm-hmm. It made sense especially, uh, I was studying computer science. Computer science at the time, too, was not a sexy industry. It was just, like, a whatever job.
Um, and-
DC: Fortran.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah, that's it. Like, yeah. I w- I was doing COBOL, actually, uh-
DC: COBOL, okay, okay.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah ... on, on mainframes. Yeah.
LT: So- That was it. But, but also, Sheldon, what I think you're also saying is there's a very distinct career path. At that time- Yes ... a computer science major, you get a tech job and you're good.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah, that's it. You, you work at, you work at a bank, you work at insurance. Right. You, you, you work at, like, some whatever, like, established big industry on a team. Uh, and I, I don't, I wasn't, uh, surrounded by entrepreneurs. I was surrounded by engineers. I myself was an engineer- But when I was a kid, when I was young, young, um, in elementary school, uh, my buddy and I, uh, just came across, like, this random spool of, like, old wire that a construction site had left behind, and we started making these little bracelets and selling them- Mm-hmm
on the playground. Mm. And we sold the entire elementary school to the point where teachers, for whatever reason, got wind of it and shut us down. Wow. As it was some sort of threat that these, like, you know, uh, that, that these 10-year-olds were going around selling these bracelets to each other. Um, but that was my first kind of foray into, like, entrepreneurship, and I enjoyed it.
I liked it, I liked it so much. I also always, growing up, looked around and said, I did not want that typal ca- typical career path. It was just something- Yeah ... I got pushed into. Mm-hmm. I was always told by my parents, you know, uh, being, being from an immigrant family, you know, they sacrificed so much to be here.
We gotta work hard to make sure that we don't have to go through that same level of stru- uh, of struggle- Mm-hmm ... and sacrifice. So-
DC: Mm-hmm ...
Sheldon Poon: we set you up so you can have that career, get that job, raise that family. Mm-hmm. But that never sat well with me. I always wanted to do my own thing. Mm.
Jade: So,
Sheldon Poon: um, in the back of my mind, I always had this question: Could I really make a go at it?
Could I really build my own thing the way that I want and escape that kinda typical corporate path? So that was a question that went unanswered as I was teaching, as I was, uh, working at the school board. So, um, the opportunity didn't come up. What happened was I was, uh, I was on a very understaffed tech team at the school board.
Mm. We were responsible for, uh, I forget h- how many, at least three dozen buildings. Mm-hmm. So we're the biggest- Wow ... English school board in Montreal.
LT: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: And we had tens of thousands of users that we had to support. This was at a time when the, uh, government was giving us tons of money to buy more equipment.
Uh, there, there's metrics in IT, so every IT person on the ground should be supporting no more than, I think, like 20, 20 pieces of tech. I think our guys were supporting 60 or 70 pieces of tech each. We were way understaffed. Wow. And because I was one of four guys who was kinda like, I was just under management, uh, a lot of the calls, uh, flowed to me.
A lot of the hard problems came to me and one of my buddies. My buddy was about to take a sabbatical to go travel Europe, and I sat down with him one day and over lunch, I was just realizing that, oh my God, once you leave, all of your work is coming to me.
DC: Wow.
Sheldon Poon: I need to get the hell out of here.
DC: Oh, ah, okay.
Sheldon Poon: Okay. So I didn't plan ahead, so I, I... After that lunch, I literally ran upstairs to HR, and I had a friend there, and I said to her, like, "Okay, this is the situation. I need to leave in the next few months for sabbatical." I was like, "What are my options? 'Cause I haven't planned for this at all." And she looks up the union rules, and she's like, "Well, it says here that technically, I, I guess if you're going back to school, you're entitled to take sabbatical, and we can't..."
She put it, "We can't stop you."
LT: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: So- Mm-hmm.
LT: Union rules.
Sheldon Poon: Union rules, exactly. So immediately I started looking around, like, okay, well, I have a background in computer science. Let me apply to computer science. They took my, uh, college grades and said, "No," right off the bat. Mm. 'Cause at that point, computer science was no longer just a whatever program.
It was very sought after, and they want the best- Mm ... of the best, and my grades did not reflect that at all.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: So computer science rejected me. Um, I had already started a version of Drive when this happened, so I already had a bit of business experience. So I said, "Okay, I can go into business school."
Business school said, "No."
DC: Mm.
Sheldon Poon: So again, business school was looking for the best of the best. Yeah. Um, and their websites and the program and everything, all the talking points kind of said, like, you know, you have to be, like, cream of the crop, like, absolute best marks, best grade, passionate, driven, all that stuff.
Mm-hmm. Um, and they were both, uh, at Concordia, v- uh, the computer science and the business programs are very highly regarded. Um, I'd, I'd argue absolutely world-class- Mm ... and they do accept the best of the best. Mm. Uh, very well-funded. So then I got desperate, and I was like, "Well, I always liked philosophy. Let me see what's going on there."
And the website is the complete opposite, and they're desperate for funding, and they said, "Please, please sign up for philosophy. You can do something after. This is your door. This is your way in." Mm. "You can just, like, join us and just make our program relevant so that, you know, the school doesn't shut us down."
So they accepted me right off the bat. Um, so once I got accepted into full-time school, I was like, "Okay, perfect." Went back to the union. "I'm taking some time off."
DC: Wow.
Sheldon Poon: So not the most- Wow ... passion-driven story. Yeah.
And it's definitely a weird way to get into entrepreneurship.
DC: Larry, you have any thoughts? No, yeah, please, Larry, please.
LT: So Sheldon, what I'm struck with is that, you know, you're obviously starting from the very left brain place. Computer science is y- Yeah ... you're self-describing, you know, all the, your attributes that fit computer science.
But philosophy- ... is the antithesis of that.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
LT: And what that sort of, that r- that... I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but I guess the question goes, did that provide a whole new viewpoint and outlook for you that you wouldn't have had if you didn't study philosophy?
Sheldon Poon: Yeah, absolutely. I, I was going into the philosophy program out of convenience because it was the one program-
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: Mm-hmm ... that was, that was accepting me. Uh, I came to absolutely love that program. My, my original thinking, and they, they even said this because I, I'm not kidding, the philosophy program is at any moment being, like, ready to, to be dismantled. Wow. Um, but they even said, like, "Listen, uh, we'll accept anybody.
You can join us, and then what you can do is get your other prerequisites, get your marks up, and then switch into the program that you want." So that was my original plan.
LT: Wow.
Sheldon Poon: Um, but I, just like teaching, I, I just fell in love with the philosophy program. I really, really enjoyed what I was reading. It gave me a different lens, a different perspective on things.
Uh, and, and I kinda just stuck it out. Un- unfortunately, uh, with the timing and everything, uh, with the agency and with COVID, I never finished my degree, but that's something that I definitely wanna, wanna do at one point. Um, but yeah, it definitely shaped my thinking. The most interesting thing was at the, uh, at the time when I was in the philosophy department, um, you know, there's all the typical, like, ethics and all that stuff that you study, but the up and coming, uh, not up and coming, but the branch of philosophy that was doing the most interesting work was philosophy of mind, particularly because this was- Ah
uh, the beginning, beginning, beginning of machine learning, of AI. Mm-hmm. So there, there started becoming these questions of what can these things do, and what I found interesting was because, because I was in tech and I was working with some of these algorithms that they were talking about, I was able to dispel a lot of the things, a lot of the rumors that they were working off of.
So because they were, were philosophers, they did not have an understanding of the tech side. Mm. So the things that they thought that the technology could and could not do was based on sci-fi. It was based on not realistic, like, interpretations of what it was, and this is going back before LLMs was taken seriously.
So we're really talking about, like, TensorFlow machine learning, uh, more like the beginnings of what we would consider, uh, uh, AI today. So I found myself a lot of the times being in those classrooms bringing a professional technical lens- Even though this was an undergrad and I was- Mm-hmm ... I, I just ended up having one-on-one conversations with the professors with the rest of the class just kind of listening in because I would tell them, like, "You think AI can do this, but it can't.
It actually works like this under the hood. This is what it does. This is how it does it. Like, your thing that you're coming up with, that's not realistic in terms of what the threats are. Like, it's actually more closer to this." So, uh, I end, I, I ended up really enjoying it, and today, now that we're getting into LLMs and we're seeing it do things that we wouldn't have thought possible, like, 10 years ago, it, it...
I, I draw a lot on what I learned in those philosophy classes because it brings in some interesting ideas, like why is something like an, a large language model, which is a statistical predictive algorithm, seemingly having, um, some sort of thoughts that go beyond what it should be able to do? It's almost like- Mm-hmm
there's a human consciousness that's been built into our spoken language- Mm-hmm ... that these machines are reflecting back to us. So it's interesting what you think of as a mind, and that's one of the ideas that's explored heavily when you're, when you're doing philosophy of mind. And that's if, in another life, if once I finish my undergrad , if I continue going to philosophy, I'd probably look at what other aspects of philosophy of mind are there given what we now know that's happening on the ground with these AI technologies.
DC: Mm.
LT: That's deep, D, and
DC: It is, yeah ...
LT: I, I love how what seems to be serendipitous, but we believe in something larger than that, Sheldon, uh, has, has really helped inform what you've done with Drive, right?
Sheldon Poon: It, it has. I think... So I think one of the big advantages that we have is that because of my background in computer science, uh, I personally tend to be very early when it comes to tech just because I'm always tinkering with things.
Jade: Right.
Sheldon Poon: Um, and, uh, with the reason- e- even though we call ourselves a marketing agency, I always tell people who get to know us, I'm like, "We're really a tech agency that, that is wearing a, wearing a jacket that says marketing on it." Um- Got it ... we, our philosophy is really that there is a pivot that's happening in the industry.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: And where before, I would even say 18 months before, marketing, winning at marketing was probably, like, call it, like, 70% content and, and, um, 70%, like, creative work, and, like, 30% technical. Mm-hmm. I, I think that balance has now shifted where it's probably, like, 60% technical if you really wanna win. Mm-hmm.
And I think the reason we're able to get the return on ad spend and the return on investment that we do for our clients is because even though we're not great on the creative side, we lean very heavy on the tech side. Mm. And when you follow the tech side and you follow the engineering standards and you start understanding the way in which these algorithms are making decisions, you can play with that, and just having that technical advantage is enough to get you those business wins.
LT: Very interesting.
DC: Extremely. Thanks for that, Sheldon. We're gonna get into five questions now. Larry and I go back and forth until we arrive at five. I begin. Take yourself back. I like the story up front of, um, you going back to getting on the bus in this small city in Ontario, on the Ontario side, and riding it through the tunnel to the, uh, to the US.
But this is about branding experience. Take yourself back to the first branding experience or brand that you can recall where you were just really into it, Sheldon. You just couldn't spend enough time thinking about it, talking about it, d- interacting with it, whatever the case may be. A bit like a first love.
Yeah. What was the, what was this branding experience for you?
Sheldon Poon: So I have two answers for that- Okay ... and from very different parts of my life, if that's okay.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Um, so, uh, we have a, we had a brand in Canada called Eatons.
LT: Okay.
Sheldon Poon: Um, and it was a department store. Um, and
LT: it was- How do you spell it?
Sheldon Poon: Uh, E-A-T-O-N.
LT: Okay.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. So the Eatons department store is, uh, used to take up, like a, a fair, uh, chunk of the downtown core. Like, they, there was a big, a big department store that was right downtown. Mm-hmm. And, uh, Eatons and The Bay were the two, like, big department stores that we had in Canada. Um, at this point, they're, they're both pretty much gone.
Uh, we still have the Eaton Centre in Toronto. So the Eat- Mm ... like, Eatons at its height created the Eaton Centre in, in Montreal and Toronto, and that's where we get that name from. Um, but, uh, the reason that always, that was a brand that I, that I connected to very strongly was because growing up, uh, my father worked, uh, at the Montreal head office, and he was the one responsible for creating the ads that would go around, um...
I, I knew that they were all over the city, but I think it went province-wide, if not, like, national. And back then-
DC: Wow
Sheldon Poon: ... this was, like, the '80s, he would literally hand draw the ads that would then get printed and blown up. So I, as a kid, I remember- Wow ... like, walking through our metro system and my dad's work representing the Eatons company would be plastered on the metro walls as these giant billboard things.
And my dad always had added a little, um, he always hid his signature somewhere on, on, on the drawing.
LT: Oh, that's awesome.
Sheldon Poon: So he would, yeah, so he would point it out to me on these giant blown-up pieces of art that he saw everywhere around the city. Um, and, uh, this was back in the '80s when, at the height of that company, you know, uh, it was- Like, if you were part of the company, you were family.
So they had, like... I remember, uh, as a kid going to these elaborate Christmas parties where w- they would gather, like, hundreds of staff members from all across the company, uh, in, uh, at the top floor of what used to be the department store. There was this beautiful space to host events that is a historic, like, antique space that, uh, the city is actually now in the process of renovating and saving.
Uh, and that's where they would have these Christmas parties. Um, so, uh, a- all of the... Because it was a department store, all the stuff in our house was from the Eaton's. I have, like, a little stuffed bear that I've- Wow ... I've since passed down to my son that's from Eaton's. Oh, wow. So it's a brand that, um, uh, obviously because my father was so involved with it, uh, it's a brand that always, like, has a very special place in my heart.
And when, um, uh, in the '90s, when they, they went bankrupt, it was just devastating. Yeah. It was devastating obviously for, like, my family's finances, but on a personal level, it's like we lost something that was just taken for granted, that was just in the background- Mm-hmm ... that was always there, that was a part of my life growing up, that all of a sudden one day it's like, "What do you mean? This brand is just gone."
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: Wow. Mm. So that, that's, that's the, that's the brand that I, that I remember from my childhood.
LT: Okay.
Sheldon Poon: Um, and then, uh, the brand that I connected to, uh, as I was growing up is, uh, Google, uh, because- Google ... just because I was in comp- I was studying computer science. I always- Um, part of that era of watching from a distance when, you know, the corporate mindset was this, and then all of a sudden you had this scrappy little company doing web stuff, and it was-
DC: Mm-hmm
Sheldon Poon: disrupting everything, and everyone was, was pissed off at them. And back in the, back in the early 2000s, I graduated in 2002, uh, computer science culture was hacker culture, right? Yep. You didn't have, like, you couldn't go into a store and pick something off of a shelf. You had to, like, go and assemble stuff yourself.
You had to find random parts and look up, uh, uh, schematics and buy a book or go to a library and figure out how these things worked- Right ... and, and really, like, mess with it and, and piece it together. So Google, when it was coming around, was kind of like, "Oh man, this is, this was the beginning of this is our time now."
Mm. Like, us nerds, us, uh, you know, the guys that got, like, kind of picked last on the, on the soccer team in school, like, this is our chance now. This is our, this is now something that's coming up that's gonna be our home. Um, and it was fun to watch that, uh, as I progressed in my career. Obviously, today Google is something completely different, but those early days-
DC: Mm-hmm
Sheldon Poon: um, of, of those tech companies, uh, before Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley, uh, of what it is today, it was something very different. We were all watching from the sidelines and, and looking at this thing as, like, a utopia. And I remember, like, as time continued, right, Google had a very specific philosophy.
It, it wanted to be... Like, I have friends that work at Google, and I've had friends that work at Facebook, and I've had friends that work at Amazon. Each one of these brands has carved out a very specific philosophy, has carved out a very specific way of doing business, as it were. Um, Google, uh, so one of my, one of my, uh, one of my buddies was working there as an engineer, and any minor little project that he did, he was always told, like, "Okay, no matter how much you've engineered it, you have to make sure that whatever number of users you expect, it has to be able to handle at least 10x, 20x, 50x-
DC: Mm
Sheldon Poon: that number of users-
DC: Mm ...
Sheldon Poon: before we'll sign off and let you do anything in, in, uh, any kind of open beta." Mm. Um, whereas, uh, I have friends that worked at Facebook, and they're like, "Yeah, anything. Like, just go for it. Just try it, and if it breaks, whatever, we just shut it down and do it, do it again." Uh, and then there was Amazon, and I won't get into specifics, but I've heard horror stories at Amazon.
Um, uh, but each one has a very specific engineering standard, and it comes out in the way that they present themselves to the public as well, right?
DC: Mm.
Sheldon Poon: Um, so, uh, the, the, the, the brand that I have, that I always followed was, was Google because I think that was the kind of like the unicorn story that a lot of us kind of aspired to be.
Um, and then there was other people that, like the Facebook story and kind of the counterculture and- Mm ... the, the, the difference between the two, I think, was that Google was trying to build almost like a utopia, where Facebook seemed angry at the world and wanted to take- ... some sort of- Mm-hmm ... vengeance for us nerds.
Um- Mm ... and but that's why I always kind of leaned towards more the Google side. So that's, that's my, uh, that's my whole spiel about, like, what I saw in terms of branding there.
DC: Interesting- Love that ... dichotomy of the two.
LT: Yes.
DC: Larry, anything you'd like to add before we go to the next question?
LT: Uh, I just have one quick thing and then we'll, before we go to the next question.
Uh, Brand Nerds, what the, the nuances that Sheldon picks out are actually embedded in each of those brands' brand's positioning. And that is something that we take, uh, we at Brand Positioning Doctors and here at Brands, Beats & Bytes pay very close attention to. So we're, we're calling it out for you to do the same.
All right, next question. So Sheldon, who has had or is having the most influence on your career?
Sheldon Poon: Um, so I went back and forth on this one a lot, and I think, like, it's cheesy but, uh, I have a, a two-year-old now, and I think he's made the biggest impact in terms of my thinking, in terms of just my career path, in terms of, like, how do...
I- it's forced me to reflect on my life and my decision and my time more than anyone has, has ever made me reflect before. 'Cause obviously now, everything that I'm doing, I'm always... It- my son's always in the back of my mind. I'm like, "How is this gonna ref- how is this going to affect his life," right? It's no longer just my life.
LT: It's not cheesy, by the way. It's not. Because DC- DC and I are parents, and it-
Sheldon Poon: Yeah ...
LT: w- the biggest change in one's life, you can get married, you can get... Like, the- Yeah ... biggest change in one life is being from the time you, uh, were not a parent to a parent. I- Yeah ... DC and I have talked about this a lot, so... A- and by the way, other folks have said it, so please-
Sheldon Poon: Oh, have they?
Okay.
LT: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
DC: Yes, yes.
Sheldon Poon: Oh, that's good to know. I'm sure I'm in, I'm in good company then.
DC: You are. Um- You are ...
Sheldon Poon: but yeah, no, definitely, like, I, you know, I... You can even tell, the way that I started the company was almost, like, a point of convenience. I was just... I was sick of working at the school board.
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: I wanted a change. I wanted to see if I could do something, and then I just kinda went for it, and it didn't matter if it failed or whatever. Now, it's like every, uh, my risk tolerance is a little bit different, right? Yep. I'm trying to think ahead. I'm trying to think, plan for the future. I, I'm trying to make the decisions that are not gonna, uh, keep me stuck at the office till midnight-
LT: Yep
Sheldon Poon: um, because I have to be home. So these are the things that are, are kind of starting to affect my decisions and my career and, and, and it's definitely had, like, the biggest impact. Um, and, and then at the end of the day, right, it, it's also from an ethical standpoint. I wanna be able to, to make the decisions that I can stand behind and be proud of and tell-
LT: Yep
Sheldon Poon: him, like, "Hey," like, "This is what I did," and not have to be embarrassed or shy away from it or hide it from him because it was something that was unscrupulous.
LT: Love it.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: All right.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: I, um, um- I've got, uh, three words that sum up being a parent that I did not get until I'd crossed the threshold of becoming a parent. Now, these three words are true just in life, but I didn't recognize that they were true in life until after, uh, having my first daughter.
Uh, her name is, is Hailey. And those three words is, uh, actually four words. It's not about you.
LT: Yep.
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: Yeah. It's not about you. And, uh, you, you now know that. Yeah. Now, the reality is even before, uh, we had Hailey, it wasn't about me then either.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: I just thought it was about me.
LT: Exactly.
DC: I just thought it was about me.
So that's a beau- beautiful answer. Beautiful answer, Sheldon. Yeah.
LT: Thank you. Love that, and it does... Y- your whole view of the world changes. It just does. And for you to, to notice it and, and it, it sha- it's gonna shape your company, too, I think in the best way, um, uh, Sheldon, which is really cool. D, you wanna go to the next question?
DC: I do. Sheldon, you've been, uh, running your own shop for a while. You ha- you've had a, um, a meandering- ... uh, matriculation through your career As you look back, what's the biggest F-up that you've encountered that was on you, your thinking? Not your business partners, not your partner in life, not some colleague, not some above you manager or executive or C-suite person, but you made a decision or a call, it was a F-up, and most importantly, what, what did you learn from it, Sheldon?
Sheldon Poon: Um, so I think the biggest F-up we're still in the middle of, to be honest. Okay. Like, not in the middle of... I, I, maybe not the middle. We're seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. I think I'm almost out of it at this point.
DC: Okay.
Sheldon Poon: Um, but I went against one of the rules that I put for myself when I founded the company.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: And, uh, lo and behold, it came back to bite me in the ass.
DC: Ooh.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. Ooh. Um, when, when I was, uh... Before I started my company, you know, I, I had friends who were in, uh, in various industries. A couple of them were working with marketing agencies. Um, and I had seen firsthand a couple of agencies that had not set themselves up properly, where they were beholden to, like, three big clients, and when one of them left, they would have to do, like, a round of layoffs, right?
DC: Ah, okay.
Sheldon Poon: I was... Yeah. So you see where I'm going with this. So when I started Drive, I was like, "Okay, this is not something I want- I wanna make sure I don't put myself in that situation."
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: But lo and behold, like, uh, what ended up happening was, uh, one of my, uh, uh, very close friends, he works in the finance space.
Um, and, uh, he, he, he came across this deal. He was working with a group. They had just got their funding, and they were in the process of buying a whole bunch of companies, and we started consulting with them. And we, uh, came up with this plan where one of the, one of the things that they will look for in terms of what companies to buy was companies that had solid foundations but were weak in terms of marketing.
So there, there was potential there to kind of- Mm-hmm ... grow the revenue, right? Very, very basic play. Very standard thing.
DC: Yeah, yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Everything was good. They went around, they started buying up these companies. They started handing out, uh, these contracts, and they were g- too good to pass up. Even though I re- I recognized at the time that we were getting in bed with, like, a single kinda s- source, like, a single point of failure-
LT: Mm-hmm
Sheldon Poon: uh, the, the monthly retainers that were coming in from these new projects, um, were going to double our revenue just overnight. Um- Hmm ... so I was like- How do you
LT: say no to that?
Sheldon Poon: How do you say no to that, right? Yeah. So I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna go into this. Why? Like, eyes open. I'm going against one of the rules, uh, but I'm gonna plan ahead for it."
So financially what I did was I didn't change anything in terms of my, uh, in terms of, um, our operating expenses, or as much as, uh, as, as much as, like, uh, we could avoid as possible. Any profits that we had, we put it back in the company and just kinda held it because I was like, "This is for sure gonna blow up in our face, so let's, let's hang on to this money just when the rainy day comes."
Uh, the problem was that we had to grow our team. So during that time we actually, uh, grew our team to... not- nothing crazy, but we were at 15 people at that point.
LT: Somebody's gotta do the work.
Sheldon Poon: Somebody's gotta do the work, right? So we grew our team to about 15 people. Um, and because of that our payroll went up, obviously, and, uh, we were, we were just kind of, uh, we were doing, uh, uh, quite well actually with these contracts until they had a principal funder.
They decided to pull out. There was some sort of problem between the group and the funder, and then because of that they could no longer hit their milestones with these companies. Hmm. The companies, uh, their funding uphold, uh, their, their revenue... uh, not their revenue, but their, the funding that, uh, the funds that they had and the plans- Got it
they had in place to continue growing got messed up. So they started cutting our contracts, and then we found ourselves in exactly the situation I didn't wanna find myself, which is, uh, you know, we've now increased our head count, we've increased our, our expenses, but now we've lost this source of revenue, and what do we do about that?
So fortunately we had that, that, uh, the extra funds that were sitting around. But what it turns out is that when I look back on it, the real screw-up was not taking the contracts. That was not the problem. The problem was when I took the contracts, I was too personally invested in making sure that it would work out, 'cause I think I got nervous knowing that there was gonna be an end date- I didn't do a proper job of onboarding the clients.
I didn't do a proper job of just handing off the work and letting the team do it. It took up too much of my time-
DC: Mm ...
Sheldon Poon: to manage those relationships, to try to keep these going as long as possible. And because it shifted me from working on the company to working in the company without me realizing it, all of a sudden we had- we lost our front of house, and there wasn't anyone doing that networking to continue bringing in the fresh work- Ah
and the new clients.
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: And I only realized that after the bottom fell out and I was like, "Oh my God, our pipeline is gone."
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: That was the mistake. Ah. Yeah. So we're still dealing with that now. And not to say that I didn't try during that time. I kinda knew what was going on, so I had tried to hire a guy to do sales, but our foundation wasn't there.
LT: Not the same.
Sheldon Poon: It's not the same. So our, when our pipeline disappeared and our funding, uh, and our, our, our lucrative contracts were gone, that's when I started having to make some difficult decisions and start cutting back and, and, uh, we had s- we had a, we had a few folks that they, they had come on a short-term contract 'cause I knew this was gonna happen.
Uh, so they finished their contracts. They left. We brought our head count back down a little bit.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Um, but we were in, we were in a bad spot. We're still not in a great spot now, like we're still kinda getting out of it. Um- Mm-hmm ... but, uh, that was a huge, huge kinda kick in the teeth. And one of the things that came about that too was that during that time, it un- uh, so it was a domino effect, right?
So the initial, the initial FUP was looking at this and going like, "I gotta take this. I can't not take a contract that's gonna double the revenue of the company."
DC: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sheldon Poon: So that was the big F. That was the first mistake. The revealing mistake was the fact that I, I, I, I ended up working in the projects when I should have just been handing them off.
But the final thing was the reason the sales guy that we had hired during that time, 'cause we had a bit of money, the reason he failed was because we set him up for failure, and I think that's the thing that we're still trying to recover from.
DC: Mm.
Sheldon Poon: Our, our own, um, uh, marketing efforts, our own branding efforts, uh, had fallen by the wayside because we were focused on the client work we had.
My networking had fallen off a cliff. Uh, we weren't doing the same things in the past that had been bringing in attention and revenue. Um, and those cracks are still there, and we're still trying to patch that up to get us kinda back on track. Um, so yeah, it's been, it's been a, that, that's probably been the biggest, uh, biggest FUP so far.
And when I say so far, it's because I noticed that the bigger the company gets, the bigger these FUPs are. Yeah. So until the next one.
LT: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
LT: D, thoughts?
DC: What a story. Sheldon, if you were going to put a percentage-
Sheldon Poon: Yep ...
DC: on someone who's leading a company or team leading the company, what percentage of their day-to-day time should be placed on working on the business versus working in the business?
What percentage would you give to on versus in?
Sheldon Poon: I, that's a good question, but I, I don't know that it, it works out that cleanly. Okay. I, I've seen... And it, but, but it depends on philosophy, right? Mm-hmm. I think I've seen a lot of, by many metrics, very successful companies where the owner was 100% focused just on getting new business, getting new contracts, figuring out the next, like, whatever move.
Uh, actually, one of my, one of my best friends did this, and he admits that this was a huge mistake. He was 100% investment- invested in getting new contracts and making sure that- He- ... he was handling that side of things. He left 100% to his operating team.
DC: Hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Ah. What his operator did was he created this toxic culture where everybody was infighting, many, many cliques.
Hmm. Everybody was backstabbing each other. All sorts of weird polit- Like, I, we talk about it now and I'm like, "Dude, how did you not get sued?" He's like, "I have no idea." Like, there was so many- And he
LT: was 0% involved is what you're
Sheldon Poon: saying. So- He was zero... Yeah, he was 0% involved.
LT: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Uh, but he was making a ton of money at the time, and everything was running great, but ultimately, uh, the, the company just fell apart because the operations- Sure like killed it. Uh, I've also seen other guys that they're just so 100%, like, deep in the operations. They have everything running like clockwork, and they have business just flowing to them because they just set that up where they can just be there on the ground, schmoozing with their existing clients, making sure that everything's going well, keeping the culture up-
DC: Mm-hmm
Sheldon Poon: and everything's fine. So I, I don't know that there's, like, a magic number. For me personally-
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Okay ... yeah, for me personally, I'm, I'm very lucky that I had a very particular, um, uh, mindset of how to build the team and how to build the culture- Mm-hmm ... at Drive. So everybody gets along, like, I, I think pretty well at our, in our team, and our philosophy is that everybody learns, everybody teaches.
So everybody teaches the new stuff that they've learned. And I always, I, I ask the interns, like, "You know, what's going on with you guys? Like, show me something new 'cause you guys have-" Love that ... "a completely different res- perspective."
DC: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. Um, so out of that, uh, our operations are pretty clean. Uh, Brent, our head of operations, does a phenomenal job of making sure the shop is taken care of.
So I personally should be spending 80% of my time just working on the company, and only 20% checking in to make sure things are going well, and I know- Mm-hmm ... more or less what we're doing so I can represent it properly.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Um, but that's a personal split, I think. That would be my ideal. I don't think I'm quite there yet.
I'm still a little bit too in the weeds for some of the things, just because I like, I have that engineering mindset. I like playing with code. But, uh, yeah, I should be spending 80% of my time, um, probably just working on the, the front of house, as it were.
DC: Thank you.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: Thank you very much. Larry, any, any more from you before we go to the next question?
LT: Uh, I just have a quick comment. That's a great story, and thanks for sharing it, Sheldon. Um, and I just ... I do have one quick question before we get to the next question. So Sheldon, you ... It sounds like you've done a lot of thinking about this, like, you know, to diagnose- Yeah ... right? So, so what... When did this all occur to you?
Like, were you ... W- was it well ... You, you say you're still in it, but you're, you're obviously towards the ... You're still dealing with the repercussions, it sounds like. But when was, uh ... Did you have ... Did the aha m- ... Was there an aha moment, or do, or did it come to you over time? Like, "Man, I, I, I... The pipeline dried up because I was too immersed in the business," and, and was it well past that point where you could really shift to do anything about it?
Sheldon Poon: Um, there was definitely a moment of panic when we, we found out that the contracts were coming to an end. Um, fortunately we had, you know, I was looking at a bank account that was very healthy cashflow-wise, so I was like, "Okay, we ha- we have a little bit of time to figure this out." Uh, but then when I sat down and I did the math, I'm like, I know more or less how long it takes to close a project.
I know, like, what our pipelines look like. I know what's coming up over the horizon. I think it was a particularly bad time too 'cause it's right around the holidays where everybody's like, you know, effed off and- Right ... so I think it was that moment that I was like, "Oh no, this is bad." Like, we're in bad shape here.
We don't have anything coming in. We have to s- kind of... It's a flywheel, right? So, like- Right ... marketing is a flywheel. It's a running train. So to get that flywheel going- Mm-hmm ... to get that train going again from scratch is- it's not an easy thing. Um, and like I said, when, uh, we had our sales guy as well, he exposed a lot of these cracks that I...
And again, this is part of it where instead of saying like, "Okay, I see these cracks. We gotta deal with this right now," we were in a comfortable position, so it's like, "Okay, I see these cracks. Let's make a note of it. Let's come back later." Um- Right ... and that's when it was like, okay, now this is a real problem.
Yeah.
LT: Gotcha. Uh, a good thing you planned for the rainy day, though. Again, I think what you'd... W- what I'm gleaning, though, is you would still take the contract, but you would've done a number of things differently after you did that.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think, I, I don't know that even though it went against one of my rules, I don't know that it was the wrong call to take- It
LT: wasn't.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
DC: Yep. Yeah. It wasn't.
Sheldon Poon: It also gave us a huge boost in terms of the, the way the company operates, in terms of the size of the company. Like-
LT: Sure ...
Sheldon Poon: I can track a very clear, like, before and after those contracts for better or- There
LT: you go ...
Sheldon Poon: yeah.
LT: Yeah. All right. Let's get to the next question, question four, and I love this for you given, uh, your g- your really unique and interesting background, especially your tech background.
So regarding technology and marketing, um, and the confluence of those, I think you can really help enlighten the brand nerds and us here. Can you tell us where you think marketers should lean in or best leverage tech, or you can take us to an area or areas they should be leery of or simply avoid?
Sheldon Poon: So, um, yeah.
Tech obviously has shaped the, my career, my company since the beginning, right? So this is a very... I, I could do an entire series just on this separately.
LT: I'm sure you could.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. Um, the obvious thing that people are talking about is AI, right?
LT: Yep.
Sheldon Poon: Uh, there's a lot of myth around AI, and I think- A lot ... when I...
Yeah. And when I talk to a lot of, uh, non-technical people about AI, their understanding of it is, "Oh yeah, ChatGPT. I log into ChatGPT, I'm using AI," right? Um, but that's not it. Um- AI has been serving ads, for example. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll try to stick to my lane and talk about mostly the ads- Yep ... algorithms, because that's, that's the one that we definitely know the best.
So when people are using a, a system like ChatGPT, they're using a large language model, an LLM, and large language models are statistical machines that are basically trying to guess at what the right answer or the m- the most statistically likely answer is going to be. Um, but that's only one type of, of AI.
Uh, there's also predictive algorithms. So whereas the LLMs are considered what's called a generative algorithm, where it's generating content, a predictive algorithm is taking a very, very large, uh, data set and then trying to glean patterns that a normal person using normal math would not be able to do.
Right? So think of like things that predict weather, uh, the algorithms that predict the stock market. Uh, in our case, algorithms that predict who is gonna buy an ad, who's gonna click- Right ... on an ad. So these predictive algorithms have been embedded into Google and Meta for at least the last, like, uh, last decade or so-
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: In some form or another. They've been used, um, way before people started realizing that AI is everywhere. AI has actually been everywhere. And I think the thing that's happening right now is that people don't have enough technical expertise to take full advantage of these algorithms. So the, what they're doing is they're defaulting to an older way of using these ads platforms, and they're actually butting heads with the way that the AI is meant to work, and then they're, they're getting poor results and not realizing what they're doing.
So I would say to anyone who's in marketing, uh, today, understand that marketing, like even though, yes, like the foundations have stayed the same, like even us, we still use AIDA, we still use attention, interest, desire, action as our fundamental framework. The tools have changed, and I think what's happening is a lot of people have not caught on to the fact that the shift in winning at, at digital marketing has shifted towards the tech side, towards the data side.
So while it's important to have the branding and, and, and all that stuff, the quality of your data, the completeness of your data, the way you're feeding the data into your algorithm, the way you're setting up your campaigns makes such a big difference in today's, uh, in, in this day and age. And if you just read up and follow best practices and take some time to understand what these algorithms are doing, how they like to work, you can get the results that we see because they're meant to get those results.
Our theory is that the average return on ad spend that's out there in the marketplace is actually so low because most people don't know how to use them properly. No- Mm-hmm ... most people don't know how to use the tools properly. We do think that if everybody was using the tools the same way we are, they would see a similar return on investment.
Um, it just takes a lot of work. So more concretely, right? Um, the Meta, uh, so Meta ads is a very good example of how people are, are going against the algorithm right now. Uh, traditionally, the way you set up a Facebook or, uh, an Instagram ad, you would kind of go back to basics and go like, "Well, my brand is this, so I think it's gonna appeal to women who live in, uh, suburban areas between this age and this age, making this income," and you put in all the demographics.
And then you start serving up the ad, you start making the creatives, and you just start seeing like, okay, I'm, I'm trying to... I, I made the ad for this person, for this persona. I want to serve only this persona, right? And the Meta algorithm, the Meta platform would let you do that previously.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: It doesn't work like that anymore at all.
What you have to do now instead is you have to flip it on its head. What you do is you say, um, "I'm- I think that, uh, this, this ad, this creative represents my brand well." And this is where the branding is really important, the positioning is really important. Your positioning should be clear enough that when you look at the ad, it instantly tells you who this brand is for without doing anything else.
Jade: Ooh. Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Right? If you look at a McDonald's ad, you know you're not targeting corporate America. Uh, you're not targeting, like, the, the, the, the, the high-end lawyer who's driving around in a, uh, in an expensive Mercedes. He's not necessarily stopping at McDonald's. At least they're not target- they're targeting families, they're targeting, like, a certain demographic.
Uh, if you, if you, um, uh, if you see, like a, a- an ad for a particular product or a brand, it should immediately speak to your target audience regardless of demographic. And it's the regardless of demographic piece that's important. And I think you guys must see this all the time with branding, that people fail to connect to their, to their audience because they're going too broad, right?
LT: Yep.
Sheldon Poon: So fundamentals are absolutely important. You have to make sure that your assets properly represent the fundamental of who this is for, but more importantly, who it's not, and that should be immediately obvious. Once you have that, this is where it gets interesting. You don't target people specifically.
What you do instead is you, you, you let the algorithm go broad. So you want it to hit as many people as possible, and you wanna go as wide demographically as possible and not bias the model. When you bias the model in computer science or in AI, it's called overfitting. When you overfit, what happens is you're losing out on the actual, uh, on the actual data.
What you do instead in terms of Meta is that you go for a very, very broad audience and you go for reach. And if you've set up your ads properly, what's gonna happen is the people will self-filter.
LT: Yes.
Sheldon Poon: So- Got it. Ah. So what happens is they start self-filtering, and then as they're interacting with your ads, your events are firing in such a way that you're gonna target those people again and you're gonna target more of those people, and the events will signal back to Meta, "These are the types of people I want."
Now, the types of people that you, that you wanna target are going to be self-selecting based on your ad. The way that-
LT: Based on your ad creative, just being clear ...
Sheldon Poon: based on your ad creative- Right ... or based on your brand positioning more specifically. Right.
LT: Yeah.
Sheldon Poon: The algorithm, uh, is going to be using the, I think it's 52 or 54,000 data points it has on each of us to find a pattern.
So it's gonna say, "When we look at all of the users that you guys are identifying for us, we see this pattern emerge. So we don't know what this pattern is, we just know that when a user shows this pattern in their data profile, we should target them." And then that's what they'll start doing. They'll go through their database and go like, "Hey, we just found another 10,000 people that match the, the pattern of user that is, is reacting well to your ad.
Do you wanna target more of those people? This is how much it costs." And by letting the algorithm do the work, you're getting right to the people the way the algorithm is intended to g- to do it, and it- the pattern matching that I'm, that I'm talking about is that predictive algorithm that you can't do by hand.
So when you're trying to do it by hand, by trying to force the algorithm-
LT: Right
Sheldon Poon: ... you're actually working against it. Now, the interesting part is if you were to take your client list from those ads, and you line those, like, 10 people up in front of you, you would go, "I don't understand why you guys have anything to do t- uh, with each other."
You have- Right ... by the, by, by my
LT: Because it's psychographic, not demographic, is where you're going.
Sheldon Poon: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. It's psychographic. It's much, much deeper, and it's not something that's immediately obvious. Right. So when people are still focused on demographic targeting, 'cause traditionally that's what we did-
LT: Yeah
Sheldon Poon: they completely miss the point. They completely work against the algorithm, and they fail. So this is just a small example, but this is an example of how by reading the white papers, by understanding how these algorithms work, by understanding the underlying technology, by being able to understand it to a point where I can tell you a story, that's our advantage.
That's our strategy. That's how we have... Like, you, you can start, kinda reverse engineer that and go like-
LT: Yep
Sheldon Poon: ... "Oh, I gotta set up events here. I gotta make sure my conversions are tracked properly. I gotta make sure I'm signaling this to the algorithm. I need to set up one ad asset that's telling this story for this group, this group, this group, and see which group wins out."
Your, your creatives start coming together. Everything starts sharpening its focus just by understanding how the platform wants to serve your ads.
LT: Whoa, D, this is amazing. D- Sheldon, you did an incredible job of explaining that. But I wanna ask you a, a pointed question. So what I'm, what I'm gleaning is- Y- y- again, brand nerds, we can't emphasize this enough.
You best know w- you know, really a sharp brand positioning, and that needs to show up in every piece of creative you do. So let's say you're, you're doing that. Um, and then what you're saying is, but to serve the algorithm, you don't wanna take a tight brand positioning because you ha- the opportunity cost is you may miss folks who you, who don't fit what you perceive as who your brand, uh, who your target audience is.
Different, we talk about this a lot. Brand positioning is much different than the target audience. Target audience wide, brand positioning narrow, right? So what, but what you're suggesting though, uh, Sheldon, is that sh- you need to make it wide for the target audience, but what's... W- so would you be best s- and, and I know you're not saying this, but I'm, I'm asking this question to just g- really get the best answer from you.
Wouldn't you just say, "Well, let's put it out to anyone," because then the, the, the creative, uh, of the tight brand positioning is gonna self-select. So what's the, what's the right narrowness of the target audience that's not too narrow, to your point, it's wide enough to, to get the opportunity cost, but it isn't for everybody?
Sheldon Poon: So there's a time dimension to this. Okay. So one of the things that, um, people kind of know about AI is that it learns, right? So you want it to learn. So part, an important part of the strategy is you need to give the algorithm enough time and budget to learn. Once it's done learning, then you can scale.
Okay. Those are two separate phases. So what you do is, uh, when we're testing new creatives, first of all, you know, human eye, you look at it. Is this for everybody, or is this actually saying something that someone's gonna go like, "Oh, this is for me," right? That's really important. 'Cause if it says nothing, it says, "Hey, I'm for everybody," it's for nobody.
We know that.
LT: Yep.
Sheldon Poon: So that's the first sniff test to make sure that it gets past our human eyes to make sure that, okay, we see what you're saying- Right ... we see that there's a message here. For the first two weeks, two weeks to, to a month, depending on the budget and depending on the audience side, we just, we go for reach as the main, um, uh, objective rather than conversions.
So we build a top of funnel where we're just trying to go as wide as possible.
LT: Got it.
Sheldon Poon: And then based on that, once the algorithm, it's done its first, like, call it two or three weeks of learning, it will be able to let you create an audience out of that learning. And then that audience has that user pattern that we wanna target.
Then we can rerun, but at that point we can scale and we can change the goal from, from reach to something lower down in the funnel, like conversion. And that's how you save on budget.
LT: Ooh.
DC: This is good, Sheldon.
Sheldon Poon: Thanks.
DC: Yeah, this is good.
LT: D, anything else or do you wanna go to the next question? This is awesome.
DC: Next question. What are you most proud of, Sheldon?
Sheldon Poon: What I'm most proud of. Um, I- I'm proud of having built the company that I have always wanted to work at. Um- Mm ... that was one of my goals at the offset, and I was very open about that with my, uh, with my staff. It's like anyone that's new to the company, I always tell them that my, my goal, my mission is to build the company I would wanna work at.
So what does that mean? It means that, like I said, everybody learns, everybody teaches. Uh, I- I love just jumping into any random meeting that my team is having, and we'll have the deepest, most interesting- Mm ... uh, conversations about tech, business, world politics. Um, you know, just all of these really, uh, j- just things that pique my cur- my, my curiosity.
Um, and then, uh, a- as part of, you know, building the company I would wanna work at, I think we built a very ethical company, as much as you can in a marketing agency, I guess, um, where, you know, we try to treat people as people, not just as an ends to a, a, a means, a means to an end. We, uh, are currently being challenged by that as automation technology becomes more and more, uh, uh, kind of important in our day to day, and asking ourselves, you know, like, what value do each team members bring?
And making sure that we treat each team member as a person, not just as a cog in a machine.
DC: Mm-hmm.
Sheldon Poon: Um, and it's funny but, like, when, uh... It's silly but, like, when... I remember when we signed up for insurance for our, our, our employees, like, that was a really proud moment. The fact that we had gotten to a point where we were structured enough, we were mature enough as an organization, we've taken care of all these other things, that we're now making sure that, you know, our employees have dental coverage.
So-
DC: Ah.
Sheldon Poon: And I know it's different in the US, but in Canada- Big, big, big milestone.
DC: Big milestone ...
Sheldon Poon: yeah, it's a big milestone. In, in Canada, as a business owner, I don't need to get insurance for my, for my team because, you know, we have our, our government insurance. This is just extra.
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
DC: That's great.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah.
LT: You should be proud of that. That's awesome.
Sheldon Poon: Thank you.
LT: It's, it's, it's awesome. It really is. All right, D, we get- we ready to go to, uh, to what's popping? Let's do it. All right, so Sheldon, what's popping? D, what's popping?
DC: What's popping?
LT: So Sheldon, uh, this is our chance to shout out, shout down, or simply air something in and around marketing today we think is good fodder for discussion, and, and we, uh, we discussed this a little bit with you in the prep session.
So I'm gonna read the Brand Nerds a, a little bit, uh, from an article that will, will be the foundation for the conversation we're gonna have. So Brand Nerds, uh, this article was written by a, a person named Mack Hagel on mediapost.com. The headline reads, "Brands needs to be... Brands needs to become findable, choosable, buyable in the AI search era."
Okay, and I'm gonna read the, the beginning of this article and then the very end. So for over two decades, organizations have been built around channels, SEO, improved rankings, paid search, captured demand, social expanded reach, and commerce, uh, commerce optimized conversion. The model worked because consumers connected the dots themselves.
They searched, compared, and decided which brands to trust. Now they ask AI to recommend products, compare alternatives, and simplify purchasing. AI is becoming the decision layer between brands and consumers. Marketers spend years optimizing channels independently, but AI doesn't care about channels. It evaluates brands.
That's why many marketing con- conversations begin with the same questions. Are we showing up in an AI search? This is understandable, but it's the wrong question. Large language models synthesize hundreds of trusted signals to determine which brands deserve recommendations. Showing up within AI searches the floor.
The challenge is becoming the brand AI chooses. This requires a fundamentally different operating model that we call connected search. Connected search recognizes that AI evaluates the complete information ecosystem surrounding a brand, not SEO, PR, social commerce, or paid media separately. Success is the cumulative outcome of every signal working together to build confidence.
In the AI era, brands must achieve three things: being findable, choosable, and buyable. So the, the end to this, which will be the platform for our conversation is, brands hoping to lead must build connected marketing systems where media, content, PR, commerce, CRM, customer ser- experience, and everything else reinforce one another, making their brands truly findable, choosable, and buyable.
After Sheldon just gave us that wonderful, uh, lesson, D, I would say, on what's happening in that biosphere for Meta and whatnot, Sheldon, thoughts on this?
Sheldon Poon: Um, so as much as I'm a tech guy, right? Like, I'm, I, I'm the first to say we're not a branding agency, we're not a content agency. Uh, fundamentally, um, the, the brand has always been at, even for us, the center of what is gonna make or break an- a, a campaign.
'Cause it, it doesn't matter if you get all the tech side right. If you're getting bad reviews, your product doesn't solve a problem, your brand is not geared properly, it's not gonna work anyways. The fundamental still has always been, right, like- How are you positioning yourself? How are you standing out?
How are you being different? How do you speak to an engaged audience? And, and carving out a niche that says, "We are for this," but more importantly, "We are against this or not for this." I think that's still always been fundamental. Uh, the difference with the AI stuff is that, um, the AI, uh, uh, there's been a bunch of studies on this in terms of how it evaluates, um, brands and how it decides what to recommend.
Time and time again, uh, social media and reviews are top of the list.
LT: Yep.
Sheldon Poon: Right?
LT: That's what we found too.
Sheldon Poon: Yeah. The stuff that you cannot fake. Yep. And I think it's called, I think it's The Brand Gap, the, uh, book that talks about how a brand, it's not what you think it is, it's what your audience thinks it is.
Yep. Every single person has an idea of what your brand is. So the AI's been trying to figure that piece out. And how it's doing that, it's going to the reviews and, and getting it right from the horse's mouth. What do people think about these brands, right? Um, and that's how they're basing the recommendations on.
Um, so yeah, no, absolutely. I, I think, uh, it, it's always been that way, and I think, like, uh, everybody has in their life, you know, that, that one person who every single product they buy, they will spend three weeks researching everything about it- Yeah ... and all the other alternatives and know all the stats and com- and all that.
All of that work, right, most of us would not do because it's a crazy amount of work.
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: AI has just made it so that now you can just ask it and it does the work for you. Yep. So people have always cared about those things, and it, it's like the type of thing where, like, my uncle and my dad will nerd abo- uh, nerd out about cameras all day long, and I will zone out until, "Hey, I need to buy a really professional camera."
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: "Now I'm, now I'm gonna ask you. Like, okay, give me all your notes."
LT: Right.
Sheldon Poon: So that, that val- that information has always been valuable to people. I think it's just been a lot more work in the past to go and source it yourself. The difference that AI has made is that AI is now doing that legwork for us, and that's why people are turning to it because they just, they just need a, uh, a summary.
They need a consolidated, uh, a consolidated report of this thing that they wanna buy. So yeah, uh, your reviews are, are doing a lot of heavy lifting. How you position yourself absolutely is important and, like, uh, people are, are wise to the fact that if you're, if you're too broad and you're too general, you're not gonna stand out.
Because when you're going to ChatGPT or you're in Gemini, you're gonna say, "I need a camera for this specific purpose, for this specific event that meets these specific criteria." You are being specific to your situation. The system is gonna find the product or the brand that is specific to that situation.
When you're positioning yourself in a way that you're not specific to anything, well, guess what? You're never gonna make that list.
LT: Right. D, thoughts?
DC: I completely concur with Sheldon. Um, I, I wanna quickly say this. You mentioned the word persona. Yeah. In the, uh, domain of performance in digital marketing, personas have seduced many of companies, and I believe personas have, uh, have an outside, uh, now influence.
They have become, in many marketing, uh, instances, the center, and I think they should be pushed out of the center. This is personas. And brand positioning should be firmly ensconced in the center, and the reason why is simple. You've alr- you've already stated it. Most organization build their brand positioning statements from the inside looking out at the consumer.
That's not how this is done. What they should be doing is building what we call brand, brand creation statements about the consumer outside and how they are looking in at the brand I think, I think we got it in reverse. Larry? Yeah.
LT: I'm gonna state, le- just add to what DC just said, and you were allu- you alluded to this, Sheldon.
The consumer in the B2C case and the B2B case customer, they will position your brand. They, they do it all the time. We can influence it, but they ultimately do it, and they have more of the tools than they've ever had before. In the old, and even 10, 15 years ago, if you were a brand with a big budget, you can outspend.
You might have a muddled brand position, but you could sort of outspend your way to still doing well. You can't do that anymore. It doesn't matter how much money you spend, because people are gonna go to this. And so your brand positioning to D- what DC said, better be dead-ass right and on point. That's really what w- what really needs to happen.
All right. Sheldon, that was awesome. We're gonna segue to show close now. This has, this has been an incredible conversation, Sheldon. We love it. Love it, love it, love it. I'm gonna share some, uh, uh, I had a bu- bunch of learnings, but I'm gonna share seven quick ones. Okay. Uh, Sheldon's story at the beginning, Brand Nerds, the number one, n- my first w- learning is go with the flow.
Sheldon learned this through his teaching out of college after a year of construction, and his sabbatical/philosophy study later. He had, he sort of had no choice with the sabbatical, like he had a no shit moment, but he went with the flow, and look what's happened. So go with the flow. Number two, uh, can you imbue, Brand Nerds, in your organization, a culture where a Sheldon does it drive that, quote, "Everybody learns and everybody teaches"?
That's beautiful. That's wonderful. Also, Sheldon, you know, his, his biggest F-up of what, what he was saying eyes wide open and taking in that, uh, that great new client, but he planned for the rainy day. You gotta plan for that rainy day, so he was able to at least adjust, um, i- in a way that he, he couldn't have done if they didn't plan for a rainy day.
Number four, people fail to connect with an audience because they go too broad. We see this time and time again. You cannot be too broad. You have to sacrifice. Number five, a brand's positioning should always be clear enough for people to know who the ad is for. If it's muddled, problemo, as DC would say.
Number six, you should immediately know who a brand is not for in their, from their communication. And number seven, this was what incredible stuff that Sheldon taught us. For digital marketing, creative needs to be tight, target audience needs to be wide when you put it out there- Mm-hmm ... and the algorithm will then do the work for you.
Mm. Those are mine
DC: Excellent, Larry. Sheldon, you said you listened to some of our podcasts, so you know what happens at this part of the program. I do my attempt of explaining, in my view, what it is that our guests have that the planet of 8.34 billion people is getting in a way that they can only get from this guest in the way they would get it from this guest.
So I'm gonna attempt to do that with you now, Sheldon. I'm gonna go to the question during our, uh, five questions thing. Larry asked you a question about technology, and so y- your thoughts about what marketers should be thinking, and you talked about, yeah, there's a lot of people that focus on the obvious thing in, uh, in AI.
And you said, "But that's not it." Said folks used to be very focused on generative algorithms, and you talked about predictive algorithms. And you said this is where AI gets to the point to where normal person would not be able to do what a predictive algorithm would do. And then you revisited this thought of there's a shift into tech now, and the reason why folks are not getting it, getting their ROAS where they need it to be, ROAS, why it's so low, is because they don't see the shift.
They don't see the shift that has happened. You see it. Also, in the same section of five questions on your, uh, on your biggest, uh, F-up, you talked about how the salesperson that you hired has exposed the cracks. Exposed the cracks, this notion of working on the business versus in the business, and you were a little bit too far in the business.
But now you see, hey, need to kind of set-- The, the mistake was not taking on this business, 'cause that was some fresh meat laying out there on the prairie, okay? You had to eat that. You, you kill what you eat in, in this business. And you killed it, and you ate it, but as you were eating it, your head was down, so you n- you were not thinking ahead to the next hunt, which is why the pipeline dr- uh, dried up on you.
But then you saw it In the get comfy section where we ask you about your sabbatical, you said you, you apply, Concordia University. This is a great school. I wanna get into computer science. I'm a tech guy. Sorry, no. Okay. Well, I w- I wanna go to the business school. Can I go to business school? Sorry, no, Sheldon, we're not, we're not accepting you.
Hmm. Philosophy, hey. Oh, come on in, Sheldon. Please come on in right away. Philosophy as a department was always there at Concordia. They were always there. It just took you a moment to see it after you were told no twice. But the thing that really got me, Sheldon, was the answer to the question of your favorite branding experience.
And you talked about your father and how he would do these ads for Eatons, and he told you as you're going, as you're going down the track here, the Metro walls, and you're, you're seeing on the, on the walls these ads that your father created, and you knew within each of them was a hidden signature that he would point out to you.
LT: That's so cool, by the way.
DC: Yeah, that is cool. And I'm thinking, okay, not obvious in tech. Predictive algorithms shift to tech. Hidden, but not to Sheldon. Biggest F-up working on the business versus in the business. You had a rule about it. Messed up many a company, but has not messed up Drive Marketing Not in computer science, not in business.
You could have just said, "Well, I'm gonna go back and get my ass kicked here at the, uh, in my tech job and get deluged." But you kept your head up and saw philosophy, so that was not hidden to you. And then your father taught you, "Just pay close attention, son, and you can see what is hidden to most." Which has me think of you as you're a teacher who illuminates the patterns hidden in plain sight, AKA the Neo matrix of marketing.
That's what I got for you, brother.
Sheldon Poon: That's awesome. I love that. Thank you.
LT: That is awesome, D. That was, that was incredible. That was really cool. So Sheldon, we're, uh, we're at the show close. Any, uh, any quick thoughts for us for what you've learned from this wonderful conversation we've had? And it's been a great conversation.
Sheldon Poon: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. I wa- I wa- like I said, I was intimidated, uh, based on the conversations you had with some of your previous guests. I'm like, "I am not a brand guy, and I hope that, like, I, I have interesting stories. I'm not just boring you guys with, like, tech stuff." You're
DC: not.
LT: Your stuff's been amazing, actually.
We- And you've been great ... that, we have a wide array on purpose. This is why we love... We, we said that to you, Jade and I, straight up when we met you at the beginning of our prep meeting. So.
Sheldon Poon: Oh, yeah. You guys have been amazing at, at just making me feel comfortable. I, I really appreciated the experience.
LT: Well, this has been wonderful.
We thank you so much for joining us. And Brand Nerds, we thank you so much for listening. Uh, this is, the executive producers of Brand Speeds & Bytes are Jeff Shirley, Darryl "DC" Cobbin, Larry Taman Jade Tate, and Tom Dioro.
DC: The Podfather
LT: That is he. And if you do like this podcast, please subscribe and share.
And for those on Apple Podcasts, if you are so inclined, we love those excellent reviews. We hope you enjoyed this podcast, and we look forward to next time, where we will have more insightful and enlightening talk about marketing.