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Richard Ng is probably one of the smartest guys we know, who also happens to be an expert in marketing, PR and market research. As a Marketing Director at Advanced GG, a performance supplement brand for gamers, business professionals and beyond, Richard leverages his market research experience to lead Advanced’s marketing strategy. Ian sat down with Richard to talk about all things marketing and insight within the CPG and supplements landscape, as well as discuss the project Advanced did with Dig and Upsiide.
Welcome to Dig In, the podcast brought to you by the minds at Dig Insights. We're interviewing some of the most inspiring brand professionals in marketing, innovation, and insights to discover the story behind the story of their most exciting innovations.
Ian: Welcome back to Dig In. This week, I'm very excited to be talking to Richard Ng. I've known Richard for a very long time. I'm not even going to guess how long I've known Richard. I don't know what. 12, 13 years. And in addition to being one of the smartest, all around guys I've ever met, I mean, Rich, you know a little bit about pretty much everything, you're also an expert in marketing, an expert in PR and expert and market research. So you're a perfect guest for Dig In currently. Rich is the marketing director at Advanced G.G.Thanks so much for joining me, Richard.
Richard: I thank you for having me. And it's always good to catch up.
Ian: So can you tell me a little bit about Advanced GG and a little bit about what you're doing there?
Richard: Of course, so Advanced makes performance supplements that support gamers, office workers, gym rats, basically anybody who needs to be at their best every day. And the company was founded on a very, very simple mission. And it was that in a market saturated with marketing gimmicks, unhealthy options and questionable, questionable claims. You know, why don't we actually do something very different and actually produce innovative products that work as advertised.
Ian: Great. And I know we've done some testing with you using outside. We actually did three separate tests, and a lot of that was focused around gamers. I mean, this was a whole category. I wasn't even aware that existed. And I was interested in online gaming. As you know, I've interviewed people who run stadiums and stuff for online tournaments.
And I know you're super into it. You've you know, you've been involved in leagues and stuff. When did this sort of this… and I know you said it's all for office workers, a lot of other people who need to focus, but it seems that a large part of your target has been gamers. Is that a fair statement?
Richard: 100%. You know, our heritage comes from gaming. Our two founders, Peter Wencong and Eric Hummel. You know, they actually met in the gaming scene. It's a fascinating thing. You know, they actually met there's a game called Destiny. They met in that scene. They were tournament operators. And they bonded actually through that. And that's how they got talking.
Ian: So it's actually quite amazing that the entire company is based off of an initial interaction that started in the space. And as such, you know, the neat states they were trying to address first were people that were in and around them. So that became gamers.
Ian: Right. And so, I mean, it's interesting. Like I said, you have you know, you've been everywhere. You worked in market research. You worked at Rogers, at Syncapse, you worked in PR for Edelman, even in London. So this is a relationship. And now here you are in Advanced. You're working in supplements. I mean, what, how did you decide to make that switch and work in the supplement space?
Richard: It's one of my favorite origin stories, Ian. I actually met Peter and Eric at advanced walking through EGLX back in 2019. So the enthusiast gaming the gaming expo that happens downtown Toronto And I met them because they had a booth. I'm not kidding. They were just, they were booths set up. They had the little drug you know, the, you know, the urn set up and giving out samples. And I just struck up a conversation with them because at the time I was acting as the creative director for an Overwatch League, an overwatch contender's team called Revival and I was hunting down partnerships and sponsorships.
I see this drug. The first thing I always looked at was, does it make it clear? Because it was a good way to understand, like if you're getting a lot of junk and crap and, you know, in what you're taking into your body. I had it. It was awesome. And we just started talking. So it was literally from a basic conversation at a gaming convention and it just kind of grew.
You know, actually, I actually started as Advanced as the creative director. So I was actually leading a lot of the campaign designs, a lot of driving art direction, etc.. And then it just sort of grew and it was kind of funny. Basically, they realized they're like, Oh, you seem to know a little bit about marketing. I'm like, Yeah, I've dabbled here and there And that's actually how the position evolved.
But it all started off with just really just running into a genuine pair of folks trying the product and, you know, I'm no spring chicken. You know, it didn't seem like absolute junk food. So I said, let's actually talk more. And then I got and then I found out what exactly was going on. And I said, Hold on. This is completely different from the rest of the market because you're not trying to sell high caffeine, high sugar gimmick junk food to youth. You're actually trying to solve a problem. Let's jam, and that's how it started.
Ian: Very cool. And so, you know, the products that we test for you, you know, supplements, but in a drink, in a beverage form.
Yeah, right. And so your key competitors would include ones that probably everybody would have heard of, like Monster, Red Bull. And then some more niche ones, like Game Fuel, G fuel. These are direct competitors as well in your space. So what are the trends in this space? Like, how is it growing? How's it going?
Richard: You know, it's fascinating. You know, this is so, I'll answer it with a bit of a multi-pronged response. So the category is ferocity. Fascinating, because, you know, our background is we come out of powders, you know, mixing bowl beverages. It was just you know, it's the most effective way for us to create these supplements that we do.
You know, we've got focus, which is our, you know, full spectrum nootropic supplements. Everything is clinically dosed, a fully open label, no maltodextrin filler. Like it works better as a powder. It's just easier to send out, it's easier to flavor, etc., You know, energy which is our clean energy beverage is also very easy to transport as a jar, as a powder.
And what we were working on for the purposes of the test we're doing with you, it's actually working on the designs for our new RTD, ready to drink canned formulation. Now, the canned formulation is tricky, right? Because the category when you said what are the trends in the category? Question is, are we talking about the energy drink category? Or are we talking about performance supplementation and nutritionals? You know, that I would say is the trend, the fact that we have these two parallel categories, we've always seen them as parallel. Jamieson, what category are they? What are they? You know, where does Centrum belong? In the mix or Flintstone gummy vitamins. If you're me, you know, where does this exist in the mix?
The biggest trend right now is that there is a desire to actually evolve energy drinks, be on energy and for supplements, nutrition and nutraceuticals to start to cross over into areas of promise that energy drinks claim to have. And I'll clarify that: in energy, you're going to start to see, you know, these are you know, there are some great innovations where people are putting in things like, you know, creating mixes, things that you typically have within the fitness space into their ready to drink cans.
We are seeing a lot of traditional or, you know, in the, you know, non-endemic brands within the gaming space trying to create new SKUs that play into this, that play into the category. I think personally some of the executions are a little bit clumsy. I'm not sure if enough research has actually been done quite frankly. I've always thought if somebody is coming from a large CPG or house of brands, it makes far more sense for someone to invest in, do a joint venture with an existing incumbent brand. Why build a new market when you can buy the customer base and have a great formula to support? But I digress.
But what you're seeing now is there's a big fight now into a rebirth, sort of this new wave of nootropic supplementation, which is an actual old trend. You know, back when you and I would have been in college, biohacking and neuro hacking was a thing, you know, that was a thing. You got those two forms and that was something that was coming and that's actually coming into the fray now. But then with that is the fact that, like I said, as these, you know, as the brands are evolving, the biggest challenge and what you're seeing is people are trying to figure out, you know, which area of the culture they want to sit in.
And that is going to be that's really the big fight point now for where that where the trends are going to be going because they have to decide do they want to go the energy drink route or do they want to go the supplementation route And quite frankly, I think anybody who's an astute marketer in the space would realize that there's a unique sort of middle ground that you can take between those two.
Ian: So let's talk about those because I'm you know, look, this is coming from a point of ignorance. But generally speaking, when I think of energy, I think taurine caffeine that mostly it. That's mostly it. Yeah. And then on the other side, what kind of things are we talking about?
Richard: So you'll find things like, you know, new level that's the primary active that we work with. You'll you know, you'll find things like alpha coal in better trade. You're going to find ingredients. You balance out caffeine. With the Alpha Unit, you'll find some vitamin fortification, you know, often to just, you know, balance out the nutritionals that are coming in. You find actives that are ultimately that really exist within a different category. They've historically been taken and consumed as a standalone ingredient.
So, you know, I always joke that the future of supplementation always exists on the shelves of every health food store. They just happen to come in individual jars, you know? So that's really what it is. It's a different realm of basically what it really comes down to is ingredients that are focused on improving either overall cognitive performance or helping with neurotransmitter efficacy, efficiency and then, of course, just stamina, alertness and clarity. But that's really the two categories.
Ian: And so how do you from a marketing point of view, how do you communicate that? How do you stand versus monster or, you know, or Red Bull, you know, or any of these other energy drinks that are slight? You know, obviously, they're slightly different positions. But how do you stand out against them?
Richard: You know, it's difficult. You know, I can very happily say I wasn't there at the early onset of the launch of the brand, thank God, because that would have been in all honesty in most cases, an impossible challenge. You know, how does a company with basically two people start with two folks you know, and a dream, you know, this is Ben and Jerry's, but they met 30 years later to solve gaming problems versus ice cream flavor issues in Vermont.
You know, the reality was, we had to get a very, very strong reason to believe that came out of consumer voice. The entire brand. Most of the launch was built off of very, very nuanced end and art and tight influencer activations. Eric, Eric H. You know, CMO you know, I don't see this lightly, but he is, I would argue, at least in my perspective, the single best partnership and influencer campaign designer I've ever met.
It's just unusual to run into people like that. And that's because you need people to believe in trial. You know, it's that old question right? Like, well, we used to ask on purchase and TED surveys, you know, sometimes you ask, would you buy? But then remember, there was a camp that used to always say, would you try, you know, at the price was right.
But what it really comes down to is to stand out. We needed people to speak for us. It was largely an earned media strategy, but it's not about just blasting the name out. Buy this product. Here's my discount affiliate code. No. It was about getting trial and getting people to talk about ultimately how the product was different because everybody makes the same claims we do.
They just can't substantiate them. And this market is full. And here's the beauty of it, though. You know, I always say gaming just means use for many people, right? When you talk about gamers, you're just talking about young people. And I don't know why people will still dismiss or disparage or malign the opinions of the youth, because the truth is that is the future of the world. Whether, you know, you got to accept that, you know, you got to move with the times of the times move you.
And what I've always loved about this category and this industry and this market is that, you know, they love to tear apart people who are clumsy in their executions and who aren't genuine and they're in their, you know, outreach. And really what it came down to for us is really just cutting getting through to the basics. You know, we basically focus on a few core areas.
And these are the defensible points, you know. First off, you know, we have clinical level doses for all active ingredients; that doesn't exist in most supplements. Period. You know, they just kind of put stuff into pad the ingredient list, but they don't have enough to have a damage dribble effect on performance or response The second thing our label is fully open is supplements since time immemorial have always hidden behind proprietary blends, you know, and you see them on the supplement box.
It's like grouped and then just a list of things and you don't know how much there is. You have to just go in reverse order based on the weight because of the list. But that's bullshit, pardon my language, but that's a complete bullshit approach to selling something, right? So we never hide behind that because our goal was No, what's not what's in your body?
And then honestly, the third piece was outside of, you know, backing up, we always tell people, try it, you're going to notice that difference. But honestly, the last big thing and this is a critical aspect that came, you know, it was a discussion that came from like the very top of the company. And it's that we don't use unnecessary fillers because what are the biggest challenges in the category right now is the abuse of maltodextrin filler to pad powder mixes.
And anybody who's in packaged drink mixes knows maltodextrin. Right synthetic sugar used to just fluff things up. But what's happened now is that ingredient has become a filler to jack the volume of the powder in the jars where you are likely it's not unheard of to have more than 50% of your jar be synthetic sugar. It's why some products say they're sugar free, but they're not diabetic friendly.
So we really leaned on those pieces, took them through that. But then after that, you leave it to the voice of real people to talk about it. Now, not everyone's going to like the product, and that's okay. What was important is that those who tried it and realized that this is what they had been looking for, they became like, truly, I know this sounds corny, I know, but they become actual brand advocates. And then along the way, don't treat partners like they're just code machines. And this is a very operational attack, like functional marketing reality that I see a lot of. Again, this is again, the abuse of youth, right? When someone may not know better about the nature of the relationship of how they can be a partner or how they can communicate or what the constraints are around a marketing or influencer relationship.
I always default to just doing the right thing and doing what would be sustainable and that is not the norm in the industry. There's just a lot of you know, people will take advantage of people's desire to be seen. The fact that again, that same market feels largely invisible in their daily lives in a digital only, you know, construct and that and we've made a very concerted decision to do the opposite of that get to know folks you can have smaller numbers of affiliates but get to know them, find out, learn about their audience.
We run, you know, audience intelligence and tracking on streams to see how people are talking about products and that test and learn then gets fed back and you create this holistic relationship with people and that's actually how you make the difference.
Ian: So that's interesting. Let's, you know, this you know, this last piece, all of what you said is interesting, Richard. But the last part we're talking a little bit about, you know, the research that you did. You've done you know, like you said, market intelligence studies. You've also done three studies with us. You did the first one. You did include packaging logos, lock ups that were just on the Advanced brand.
And then you did a second study that revamped the package designs for Advanced as well as variance for sponsored designs. And then finally, you did a study that included Advanced and your key competitors, and that's where you would have included, you know, the rockstars to see how it performed competitively. How did you use that research to make some key decisions around Advanced?
Richard: You know, for us, a lot of our brand, you know, if you anyone who goes to the website, we'll see that we're very bright for a very colorful brand. We're very much in that Old-School Memphis design, right? Like Taco Bell's from the nineties. You know, that's... I could go for some Taco Bell right now. You know, no.
But you know, what it really came down to was as a small startup, you have got to think about this. The reality of the supplements space, the reality of drinks, beverages. Right. You're largely a marketing business. Your marketing, advertising and communications business. You reap what you sow. You feast or famine at any given season. But it comes down to figuring out how to make sure your message comes through.
So here's the challenge that we face, you know, in your company, we're basically a startup. The company was founded only in 20, 18. You know, I wish I could tell you about the numbers, but when I saw the health of the customer base, I was blown away like these are things where, you know, most brands create product launch campaigns that hope for people to come in right there.
They prayed for the conversion Advance to be built up and they built the audience and then the customer base. And actually up until I launched a few support posts with some recent product launches, not a single dollar, not a single dollar of paid media has ever been spent. The entire brand has been built organically off of relationships, quality and performance.
But what happens when you have a small team of high performers that have never been? Not many have seen the outside world. You start to have kind of blinders. It doesn't mean you're right or you're wrong. It means you have a lack of perspective about what the rest of the world can be as you expand beyond the borders of gaming.
So for us, our main mission is this with this ready to drink can we are trying we are expanding into a broader market. You know, it's easier to do. You know, it's easier for retail distribution. The goal ultimately is to create a consumption experience that once still lives up to our promise of performance quality, etc. But in a new format.
Look, here's the thing, man. People love fizzy drinks. It's just the reality of the world. We love fizzy drinks, but we knew that what we had to understand was this: if our market needs to get bigger and look, here's the reality, right? People think, oh, it's gamers. What does that mean? That's just people who are at home in their basements.
I'm like, Okay, fine, you're getting mad because you're going to malign a group because they're sitting at a desk focusing on their ability to perform something on a screen.
Ian: It's what I do every day.
Richard: Exactly. You change the word gaming to office, and then all of a sudden it's normal to spend $6,000 on a bare desk. And we people have all these nutritional supplements, and I'm like, Guys like, you take vitamin C all the time and you read any of the weird did you know, do you know about Linus Pauling and where this myth comes from?
But my point was that we knew we had to expand beyond the market, and we knew that there were broader triggers that we had to tap into. So with the research, you know, we were testing a lot of our first was our internal biases. So stage one, the internal advanced tox screen was all about understanding our internal design biases.
So here's a great example: we did some cans that were supposed to be themed after like, you know, craft beers or canned waters. And we were actually pretty sure we're like, I think that a work that looks like a craft beer and boy did that like get cut off of those ideas really fast, like they were at the base.
And I'm like, Okay, you know what? That's good to know, because that was going to be a top five. I got an op, like a top tier design for us. We were thinking this could really work, right? So step one was about rattling the cage and really, you know, clearing up what our internal biases were. We took all that.
So it came across like overall layout and structuring color use and geometries and placements. Right. That's how we typically structure things. Second stage. Okay, let's take what we learn and try this one more time because we don't want to go right into a competitive market deep dove without knowing that we have internalized the learning, because that's always the challenge, right?
You know, we are blessed with a brilliant creative director who I think is the first creative director I've run into who loves research, like he loves research because he knows that there are biases in taste like, taste is very subjective. So we did the second round test and this was to confirm we could actually improve. And that was very, very critical for us because it's one thing to say we know what's better or what's worse and how to tear things on ranks like an ordinal ranking.
But the bigger issue here was that you know, we always say what the so what is you know, that's the old adage, so what? And so what and so what. Now here's the thing. So everyone thinks so what is the insight no. Knowing something isn't the same as being able to do it and being able to do something isn't the same as being able to do it well.
So we had to know that we could apply the learnings into a relative improvement in terms of scoring. Otherwise, it means that we didn't understand the essence of the lesson. So that's what the second stage was for, to clean that up. And then the third stage was great. We think we've gotten this to where we can get it.
How does this actually stack up in stage three to the actual real world, to cans that have existing brand equity to products where we know we're going to get busted? Now, here's the thing, and you're going to love this. I think I told you this when we first kind of planned this, our goal wasn't to be the number one can in the market, that's impossible.
The equity is like the fact that these are products people have had. We're not going to beat them. We said we need to be in the middle. Don't be last you know, this is an old radio lesson I learned from the folks who were the original station, the original station manager at S.F. and why he said, you know, always be number three in the market because number one and number two, blow each other's brains out on marketing, spend it. You end up being more profitable, you know?
So our goal was getting to a healthy middle point. So we did that. We saw which callers were responding. You know, we all know, the biggest learning there was we had to tweak some of our usage of color. And then one, when we got that final learning together, we kind of ran that through like again, just the realities of what's the material design reality.
Now, when we apply this to the cans, you know, in this particular run, we're doing a digital print, digital is different from flex a graphic, which is different from, you know, there's so many different techniques. We had to make sure it worked. And then, you know, at the very end, knowing what the rules were, you know, those creators can make a couple little touch ups, but that's still within the realm of the rules.
And that is that that's what's going into production right now. Those cans are being produced right now, you know.
Ian: Fantastic. And you're able to turn that around really fast, right?
Richard: I mean, that's two weeks. Yeah. You know, I still remember the days of packaged tests being done manually. And we were building these, you know, the questionnaire template out of Microsoft Word and you had to drop in the things and send it to the programmers and it was, it was time consuming.
You know, I think the fastest we could ever turn that over was a week. I think that was a stretch. Right? A one week turnaround was pretty aggressive for a multi sell test. We did three stages, three rounds, you know, the last round was getting into the 15 and a 1500 or so. That was quite a large sample size.
We did all of it in two and a half weeks, all three stages. That's unheard of at least, you know, in my sort of out of date it's somewhat, somewhat out of date perspective. I never thought it was possible.
Ian: And I got to say, your final cans look awesome. And they, and they tested really well like they beat out some really well-known competitors. And then, and then when we started applying some filters around things like do they watch sports recently, SKUs, I mean very, very cool designs.
Richard: Gender balancing was a big thing for us as well, too. You know, as you can imagine, the category, quite frankly, if only it's the overly targeted young men. And I was like, yeah, guys, stop doing this.
Like, yeah, again, it's a limitation with a fixation of how people define what gaming is. And what's fascinating here is that everyone gets the stats wrong. I'm like they're like, oh, EA Sports. I'm like, no, not e-sports mobile gaming and consoles that move more revenue than all PC games combined. Like guys, you, everyone, you're getting this all wrong.
But what's really important, though, is that we needed to make sure we didn't have unusual plural eighties or weights, you know, in terms of what drove interest, you know, one of the key requirements was that there is one brand that we tested that was started by she was an instance, she's an Instagram influencer. So we we knew what we needed to know, what the contour what the but the profile of the package response looked like because we knew we need to be a little bit we need to be good and lean into elements of that design, not necessarily into this like, you know, I guess and it's not to say that I dislike these products because
I eat Doritos and I play Call of Duty. But you know, to be the traditional Doritos Call of Duty market, that doesn't mean we don't want to be there. We appreciate those games. But we wanted to make sure we didn't we didn't create a design that was only suited for those individuals. You know, our market is always you know, we have two basic rules when it comes to design and it's always don't you know A B be appealing to most people, talk to people in general and be parent friendly.
Be clear in what you say and have a design that doesn't make someone look at a product and think, this is going to destroy my child's kidneys.
Ian: Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. You know, and I like what you said about the gender bias thing, too, because, you know, my daughter, she's not playing Call of Duty, but she's playing other games has gotta be you know, she's got an HP Omen.
She's got the headset. She's on the streaming channels, like with her friends playing the games. That's awesome. She's not playing first person shooter, but she opened games and that's all young kids these days. Right.
Richard: And that's the thing. There's a bias that exists within the market. And this is one of the challenges why always tell folks when you're in this category, you know, we approach gaming like this, like it's this mythic sort of mythical and opaque industry that we can't penetrate.
It's like when you talk to marketers about TikTok and I said it's youth, okay. Like the same way that once upon a time, if I was going to like the Opera House or the big bop for a concert like that was like opaque. To some people, that's no different than today, you know? And I would say that that's sort of where I think the ultimate sort of kind of, you know, illumination comes from.
And it's that gaming is simply it's actually too broad of a term that it's a very broad term that gets applied in terms of art, our sort of cognitive reasoning into fixing them an image we always think of like the image. Now it is always like PC based EA sports players, but there's more console players and there are PC players.
Why is that? Right? Because the marketers are also getting sold in on these concepts. And the reality is, is that, you know, women in gaming, youth and gaming games that aren't first person shooters like or even MOBAs, you know, like league league or Dota, there is a big world out there. There's entire segments of horror game people. There's entire segments of puzzle game people. And the truth is, as humans, as people, we love watching at least on the live stream space. Yeah, we love watching people play the games I like. That's human nature. Though, like we I watched, you know, I'm an Oilers fan. I love, I hate and I know what's going to happen every year.
The Leafs are going to blow it in the playoffs. I don't know why anybody believes in them this year. Stop it. You know? But we know. But we watch. Here's the thing. We love to watch people like ourselves in games of skill and in competitive, competitive environments. And we also like to be entertained. Right. But the reality is, once you start to open up the view of what this can be, it's again, it's one of our basic rules.
You know, it's that we have to come up with products that are based on the needs of everybody. You know, we've got a few new lines coming out. You know, I can't give you the tip on it yet, but I will make sure some samples show up at the dig office. Where, you know, we work a lot with a lot of gamers who are into fitness and people like gamers are out of shape and they're unhealthy.
I know that's a very broad generalization. I resent those kinds of sentiments. The reality is you will be better at your game if you are in good health, right? If your back is in good shape, etc.. So yeah.
Ian: So, you hit it a little bit. I think that's the big exciting question. To kind of wrap this up on what's next for advanced, what, you know, where is it going and what do you make plans? Any, any, even any just recent developments.
Richard: Yeah. So we've got our ready to drink line, right? That is what I mentioned. We are launching that in July. We're going to be doing some of our you know, we have an existing retail partnership with Simplicity and Play Live Nation. It's the largest chain of land centers around the US.
You will be finding them in those stores right away. We have a brand new line coming out that's really for more sports performance. So you're going to see that coming out in the next really the next few weeks. I don't even have to tell you what it is because you will see it very, very soon. We've also been expanding, you know, heavily into, you know, new flavor areas.
You know, one of our last two launches, if you've noticed, we launched a lychee flavored energy and we launched one that was a taro bubble tea. It's a taro bubble tea energy. So, yes, the mad scientists at Advanced took bubble tea, the most unhealthy milkshake of a dessert that you can get at a tea shop. And I got it down to 50 calories, five grams of fat, zero sugar.
And I got the energy and electrolyte benefits into it. You know, we took energy drinks and we combined them with bubble tea. But that's all part of our expansion into new flavor areas. And this is actually a pet project of mine for a while. But the reality is, is that there are so there's a cultural centrism that exists around flavor design.
It's just how it happens. Right. And I said, like maybe I'm biased because I grew up in Toronto and I'm like, guys, there's a lot of flavor from a lot of places. You know, cultural exchange in Toronto starts often with food. Let's bring these broader flavors in. So a lot of our new initiatives are focusing on flavors that I would argue maybe other brands don't have a license to operate in.
But we've been doing all East Asian flavors, you know, Power Bubble, Tea Lychee, and then we're launching this Friday or I'm going to flavor launches, probably our most ambitious in out there flavor. But that's the beginning of a whole new round of exploration. And then outside that, you know, the really big growth for us now is finding and expanding and getting broader in terms of the needs states that we're addressing.
You know, ocular health used to be a part of our focus product. But, you know, we kind of keep the flavor. It's consistent. It's a problem with lutein. I don't know why people try to do it. If it doesn't taste consistent or look consistent, don't make it right. They get something else. And so we're expanding into a whole new, really broader area. basically these are the neat states of everyday people facing a reality of not just the digital first but almost like I would argue like a digital only to hybrid life.
This is an entire area. You know, that's what we're really focusing on now, right? Digital hybrid work school and life and communications and social communications that are digital only have fundamentally changed the reality of need states. And the truth is people are not making products that actually meet the new needs of both older and younger people. So our mission now is to start to backfill that we're doing it you know, the only same way you eat an elephant, right? Slice by slice, right? So we're just now going in and breaking down. What are all the challenges? And you're going to see there's about seven or eight products that we've got cooking up in the lab right now. And those, you know, you'll be you'll start to see you'll see them pretty soon. You know, barring any supply chain challenges for distribution.
Ian: Very cool. I'm excited to see those. I'm excited to do more studies, case studies with you, and support you with more research. And I always love talking to you, Rich. You're a fountain of knowledge on just about everything. So thanks so much for joining me today. And I hope to reconnect with you really soon to have you back on the show now.
Richard: Thank you so much for having me. And it's about time, you know, I kept bugging you about, you know, why haven't I been on yet? But thank you so much for the time and really to you and the Digg team. Thank you so much for working with us on this. You know, this is one of these that can launch is one of our most ambitious launches.
And it was really nice to find a research shop that understood our specific requirements. It's not every day, you know, often you get kind of put into the cookie cutter mode. And it was just amazing that you actually took the time. And yeah, you know what it was? It wasn't just checking a box. And, you know, Advanced has never been about checking boxes. So thank you so much for your support.
Ian: So as we leave this, where should people be finding out more about Advanced GG?
Richard: Go to the website advangedgg.com. So definitely go out there. You know, you can take a look at the product set. So we have the SKUs that we have. A new website is set to launch right now and will very, very soon.
So keep an eye out on that. But the best place to find us is our Twitter handle. So Twitter.com/advancedgg, no spaces come out, you know, come, you know, check us out, follow us and keep your eyes peeled because this Friday you are going to see probably the most bizarre in out there product launch that at least I've ever attempted. So I'd like to think that that makes it probably one of the strangest ones. Anyone has attempted.
Ian: Thanks, Rich. All right.
Richard: Thank you so much.