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Album 4 Track 6 – Derek Osgood, Founder and CEO, Ignition
Hey Brand Nerds! Join us in our virtual house as we chat with Derek Osgood, who brings over a decade of knowledge from leading and scaling marketing teams at brands like Playstation, BBVA, and Rippling. He has launched over 100 products working as a Product Marketer that have collectively generated over $1B in revenue.
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: What's happening Brand Nerds, back at you with another podcast Brands, Beats, and Bytes, and we got a cat in the building who has a very interesting background. He's been in a gamin' space for a minute. So we know gaming is really big out here y'all, so LT, can you break down who we have in the building with us today?
LT: DC. We've got a real good one in the house today - Derek Osgood is here. Welcome Derek.
Derek Osgood: Yeah. Thanks for having me guys. Pumped a bunch of jam on this stuff.
LT: Excellent. Okay. D, so let me walk you through Derek's phenomenal background, which has a great mix of brands and bytes with a good amount of beats too.
DC: So let's walk through it. Let's walk through it.
LT: Let's do it. Right. So Derek grew up in Portland, Oregon, where he currently resides after earning his undergrad degree at the University of Southern California, go Trojans, right Derek?
Derek Osgood: Right on.
LT: Derek had quick stints in digital marketing with Sony Pictures and Altria, and then Derek joins Sony PlayStation and right down the block from where I used to live in foster city as a Product Manager.
All right. So this is Derek's Sprite, right?
DC: Okay. Okay.
LT: At PlayStation he owns the P&L brand positioning, branding, marketing strategy, research, go to market and creative development for nine major PlayStation launches. He manages annual budgets of about $25 million, leads offline and online acquisition retention, PR partnerships, retail events, the whole thing.
Right?
DC: Okay.
LT: Check this out while their PlayStation grew from number three, to number one console in his tenure and they also earned numerous awards, including a couple of Cannes Lions and a Clio. Very impressive. Wouldn't you say?
DC: Absolutely.
LT: All right. So even though Derek is at a big division of a big company and down the block from Fortune 50 Company Visa, Derek is really in the very heart of Silicon Valley, and now he's feeling that entrepreneurial itch.
So he leaves the safety of Sony and goes to work at various startups as marketing lead, sometimes in-house, sometimes as a consultant. They include startups, Flint Mobile, Pinger, Fleksy, which was acquired by Pinterest, and Breezeworks. So after this success Derek joins the large global bank, BBVA as Director of Growth for New Digital Businesses, where he essentially continues to help startups in marketing, both ones that are incubated at the bank, and those that are acquired.
So the highlights include positioning and launching six new ventures in 2017, including the fastest growing SMB banking app in the United States, developing and leading marketing diligence process for investment committee venture evaluation, and building out a playbook content to educate incoming ventures on advanced practices, across a variety of topics such as influencer marketing, paid acquisition, brand strategy, et cetera.
Derek is then recruited to be Director of Product Marketing at Rippling. Now for those folks who don't know Rippling is the first employee management platform automating and eliminating all busy work within an organization caused by employee change. The company has become such a high flyer that its most recent funding round is now valued at six and a half billion dollars.
So with all of this success, Derek finally decides to really go out and do his own thing and in early 2021, he becomes CEO and Founder of Ignition. Ignition as a collaborative hub to help launch teams dynamically plan, execute and measure, Go To Market processes. So that's really their focus through best practice based workflows.
It helps marketing teams save time on planning, create more internal alignment and launch more effectively by predictably surfacing, upcoming launches, speeding up planning via dynamic recommendations, and then giving teams a central view of plans, approvals tasks, and assets. In closing Brand Nerds, we've got someone who is a great marketer and has really cut his teeth right here in the heart of Silicon Valley, we think has lots to share with you and us. Welcome to Brands, Beats, and Bytes, Derek Osgood.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, thanks so much for having me guys. I'm a, I'm pumped to talk about this. It's a, you know, I've, I've done a little bit of everything. Small companies, big companies, brand roles, growth roles, kind of all over the place. So it's been a, it's been a fun ride. And it's funny because I feel like a, you know, a lot of the I actually went into marketing and went into product marketing, specifically, because I felt like marketing was the role that would prepare me best down the road to be a CEO.
And, you know, I think one of the cool things about product marketing, and I think marketing in general is that because so much feeds into it and there's this whole, you know, Drucker quote that companies have two functions, innovation and marketing, and, you know, marketing is really like half the business and it touches everything across the organization in order to do it well, at least you know, I felt like it was, it was the type of role that would give me the visibility into how all these, all these moving parts within an organization kind of fit together, which, you know, has served me well as I've been starting a company myself but excited to excited to jam a bunch today.
DC: You know this well, Derek, there's a saying of six degrees of separation between most human beings in the world. But when you work in marketing, that gets down to one or two, I'm going to list a couple of names from my time and working with the folks that Sony PlayStation, and let me know if you know of these folks and, or have heard of them.
One of them is Andy house. He's now retired. He might be doing something else. Andy House used to be president of the deal led the whole thing. Do you know this brother?
Derek Osgood: Oh, I know Andy. Yeah. I, yes I do. He was, he was running the show when I was when I was back there.
DC: All right, cool. Okay. So Sharon Shapiro?
Derek Osgood: Yep. Worked with Sharon as well. She was pretty close to.
DC: Shelley Gainer?
Derek Osgood: Yup. Oh man. Some blast from the past names. Yeah. Yeah.
DC: Okay. All right. So, so we work with those folks when we were, I was at Coke at the time, a group that was responsible that included digital marketing and entertainment, marketing technology. And then before that all advertising North America. So that's how I met these folks, but what we'll we'll keep, keep going, brother. We got a section Derek, that we call Get Comfy. Listening to LT, break down your experience and give you your flowers. There was a thread through there I noticed, and it was around teams.
So this is what you're doing now. You did that in the company just prior to starting your own stuff. And you being a marketing aficionado, you can't get anything done in marketing by yourself. Gotta have a team working on stuff. And since you are in tech specifically, and dealing with teams, I'd like you to talk a bit about what has COVID and zoom culture. And I mean, Zoom culture as a, you know, as a catch all for all video conferences, but folks working from home because of COVID. What implications does that have for your business now? And what implications do you think that has for marketers in general, as it relates to teams?
Derek Osgood: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think the, the interesting thing is like marketers come in all shapes and sizes, right. And some marketers are really, really good at process and operationalizing things. Some marketers are much better at kind of like the art side of things and, you know, creative development.
And I think a lot of teams that I've seen both that I've been a part of and that, you know, I've talked to through the course of starting my company, as well as, you know, our own team in house. I see all shapes and sizes of like how much they've operationalized their marketing. And I think that there's such an emphasis when you're in a remote world on actually building like repeatable processes into you're you're interacting. And like, even if that's coming down to just how do you go through the creative development process. And how do you do handoffs with your design team and then, you know, manage approvals back through that. And I think, you know, a lot of what kind of COVID world has done to us is it's forced everybody to get way, way better and level up their process and get to a point where, you know, they, they actually have, rather than just like, kind of throwing stuff against the wall, over slack you know, every, so often every time they need something to actually put systems in place in order to handle the communication back and forth, and also provide more transparency internally because the other big problem is like, as marketers, obviously, like we spend most of our time thinking about how do we talk to customers?
But the reality is there's so much importance placed on internal marketing as well. When, especially for us, we're talking about launches and like launches you have like internal marketing is probably 80% of the game and you know, I think people have had to get better at finding ways to surface the plans that they would otherwise have just shared in like all hands meetings with people through, you know, tools and process.
DC: Got it. Got it. I agree with your brother and I want to get to the, the two words you said were repeatable process. I can see and have experienced as has Larry and Jeff and Jade and Haley and I, the efficiency component of Zoom culture. So that I grant you. Okay, and I also want to go back to this quote that you talked about from Drucker.
So a company has two functions, innovation and marketing. I like to conflate innovation and marketing. It's our belief, Derek and Brand Nerds is that you can't do great marketing without having some innovative thinking and execution around it. So I'm going to complete those for a second. And then I want to bring up in a an Jade
I was with some clients of ours over the weekend, Jade and Jeff, they don't like me to date things, but Sundance this year was virtual and we have a client that, that had a film in the brand category. So we were one of the winners. It was animated, short, dope film. I'm going to give it a little plug.
It's called The Park Bench by Aflac. So shout the the team one time on that. Anyway, so we were there for that and I'm sitting with the Chief Brand Officer. Sister named Shannon, shout Shannon, who is Vice-President of the brand. Yes. She's been on the show and then Garth who is the Vice-President of the brand and comps. Shout G one time.
And we were just sitting there talking without an agenda and Garth came up with a hell of an idea and that idea we're going to execute in 2022 and based on my opinion, and I think theirs, we share this opinion. It's going to be massive Derek and Larry, and it came out of an off schedule conversation of people sitting down over some meal or hors d'oeuvres and that kind of thing.
You can't get that in Zoom. Like you can, you don't just like, you don't just go into Zoom, Derek and like, "Hey Derek, you're here. Let's just hang out and kind of talk, brother. You got to grab a glass of wine and I'll go and I'll grab some tequila and just chat." So we were losing that in Zoom culture.
So I just want to say that in response, but Larry, you got any thoughts on this before brother Derek says anything else on it. And we moved to the next section.
LT: I just have one quick thing. I think what Derek was saying, it's really interesting that it seems to me what the summary of that is. You gotta be more disciplined with Zoom culture and you gotta make sure that you're, cause you just can't drop in somebody's office, you know?
And so you got to make sure that the communication pieces are really tied up.
DC: Yeah.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, I totally agree though, DC, like the serendipity is just kind of, it's really hard to manufacture when you're all remote. I mean, at Rippling, we had a really fun campaign that we did when you know, we ran some billboards and Gusto sent us a lawsuit because we were kind of using their brand name.
And, and we responded with like a really funny poem in the press. And so we basically like did this very clever poem that was kind of poking fun at the fact that they were coming at us for this campaign and that kind of idea, like it popped up, you know, cause we were just all kind of sitting around in a room and like, you know, our CEO came in, started talking about how Gusto sent us a cease and desist.
And we're like, oh, what if we responded with this like goofy poem, some, you know, somebody on the team just kind of threw that out.
LT: That's a great story.
Derek Osgood: It's hard to recreate that stuff, right.
DC: That is a phenomenal story, Derek. Jeff and Jade let's get a link to that story that we publish along with the with the podcast here.
All right. Cool. All right, Derek, now that you're nice and comfy, you've had your flowers pedaled upon you, by by Larry. We're going to go to our next section. We call it five questions. So this goes down as such. I hit you with a question. Larry hits you with a question. We go back and forth until we get the five and I have the auspicious opportunity to kick this thing off.
So brother, I don't know, the first time you saw someone and it stirred your emotion, touched your heart, you were so attracted to this person. It's kind of hard to get them out of your mind. I don't know when that happened for you, but we all have had that experience. Bit by puppy love, like, oh man, I got a crush.
I want to correlate that to the brand world, Derek. When did you have an experience with a brand, your first one where it just kinda shook you, you loved it so much. It touched you so much.
What was that for you, bro?
Derek Osgood: Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I got, I got to actually go live this out afterwards.
I, you know, I'm one of the lucky few that got to go experience this by going and working in PlayStation. But PlayStation was, was really the first one.
LT: Wow.
Derek Osgood: That touched me as a kid. You know, I loved, loved, loved the old, like Crash Bandicoot ads where he was in the suit and, you know, standing out in front of Nintendo's offices, like poking fun at Nintendo.
And I thought it was just so, it was so ballsy, you know, it was like at the time, like PlayStation was kind of an underdog, like Nintendo had been around for forever and took like a true challenger brand approach to this where they came out and they literally were just calling out Nintendo in front of their office.
And I was like, that is the kind of, just attitude that I want to see in a brand where they have chosen to have like a point of view and have a voice. And it made me fall in love with the brand forever. And, and you know I luckily got to go and got to go and work there eventually. But it was has stuck with me forever.
LT: I don't know that we've ever had a guest D that said that, you know, as a kid, that you know, a brand that they fell in love with and then actually got to work in the brand. That's that's so dope. How old were you when that happened.
Derek Osgood: I must've been, I mean, probably seven or eight, something like that.
LT: Wow, that's awesome.
Derek Osgood: Yeah. It was a lifelong dream that I got to go live out and, you know, it's there's not many people get to say that and I'm very thankful for it.
And it was fun cause you know, we'd go, we do challenger branding workshops at PlayStation and you know, we'd pull up like those ads and I'd see, you know, the ads that literally made me fall in love with marketing. You know, as we were trying to like reestablish what our brand identity was 20 years later.
DC: You're the first brother. Larry, you're right. We have never had a guest mention a brand that impacted them as a young person and then went on to work for that brand and lead the development of that brand. This is a first; however your story has now hit me in the following way. The same damn thing happened with me and Sprite. And I hadn't thought about it until now.
When I saw Curtis Blow in a Sprite ad, I said, well I'll be damned. You can do that? Right. You can do that? And I got a chance to work on that brand. That's really something else, man. So thank you for sharing that story for, for the Brand Nerds, but also for me personally, brother.
Thank you.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, of course, man Sprite's a great one..
I mean those old uncola ads we're just A-plus.
DC: Okay. Now, now, now that that was Seven Up brother.
Derek Osgood: Oh, that was Seven Up, right? You're right. Oh my God.
DC: That was Seven Up. That was Seven Up that's okay. That's okay.
LT: We won't demerit you, but we should.
DC: All right, Larry, you wanna hit the next one brother?
Yeah, let's hit the next question. Man, Derek, that was so cool that that you had that experience. So Derek who has had, or is having the most influence on your career?
Derek Osgood: Yeah, so right after I left PlayStation, I actually left to go work for this guy. Because I was just so impressed in the interview that I had with him, where I was like, you just get marketing at a level that no other marketer that I had talked to at the time really did.
So it's, it's Terrence Sweeney who currently he's the CMO at Hint. I've worked with him at a number of different stops throughout my career. So I did some consulting for a couple of companies he was at, you know, I worked with them at BBVA, I worked with them at Pinger. And I mean, he, he, he's really fascinating.
You know, he's been around for awhile. Like he's been doing this for a long time. I think he's kind of a hidden gem in Silicon Valley. Because he's one of the few marketers that I've met, who just has a super, super deep understanding of branding and brand strategy, but also pairs that up really, really well with, you know, A plus kind of performance marketing chops.
And I think he's the first person who has been able to kind of, when I was at PlayStation, I was in a very traditional kind of like brand management type role where, you know, a lot of what I was doing was kind of up in the clouds at the emotional level, trying to motivate, like build a lifestyle brand.
And he was able to kind of like bring me down to earth and connect the dots between how that stuff works in partnership with more kind of like, you know, tech oriented growth marketing work. And so I think, you know, he's continued to shape my perspective on how brand and performance kind of interact together and has done that for years and years, and, you know, he's still a close friend that I talk to on, on almost a weekly basis, about marketing
LT: You're lucky and smart Derek, and that you had Terrence, and then you smart enough to really connect with him because he sounds like an incredible mentor for you. And, and that's terrific.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, totally is.
DC: What's that? What's Terrance's last name again?
Derek Osgood: Sweeney.
DC: Sweeney. Thank you.
LT: Shout out to Terrence.
Derek Osgood: I love the work he's been doing a Hint lately too. They've had some fun campaigns. I think they did a bit of Super Bowl spot last year that he brought their first Super Bowl spot to market and it was a, it was a blast.
LT: Interesting.
DC: Cool.
LT: Should we move to the next question?
DC: Let's do it. All right, Derek, by virtue of the eloquent introduction that brother Larry gave to you, it is obvious that you've had many of successes. None of which I'm interested in hearing about with this question. Absolutely none of them. I want you to talk about the biggest F-Ups you've had and perhaps most importantly, what you learned from the F-Up and a caveat.
Give us an F-Up that you made. We don't buy the F-Ups, well, such and such did this. They did that. And that kind of happened. That's somebody else's F-Up. We want to know yours.
Oh,
Derek Osgood: I gotta, I got a big one. Yeah, so I mean, as marketers, right? Like more than half, the job is kind of failure. It's like you're, you're testing a bunch of stuff and everything breaks, but probably the biggest one was, was really just an oversight.
So I, we were doing a, an activation at Tribeca Film Festival for one of the games that I worked on back at PlayStation and Ellen Page was in the game. She was the star of it. It was kind of one of the first games that had live action motion captured like Hollywood actors performing the role.
And so we made a big deal out of, you know, the fact that it was cinematic and similar to a film. And the whole campaign was really oriented around portraying the game is not really a game, but more of a, you know, cinematic experience. That was centered around the narrative. And so at Tribeca, we basically, you know, did this activation where we were like, Hey, you know, there's all these vendors in New York that liked to there that sell scripts to movies.
And this game has a much, much bigger script than any movie you could possibly imagine. And so it's, you know, as opposed to a few hundred pages is like a couple thousand pages. So we're like, oh, let's do let's do, you know, kind of like a little pop-up stand at one of these vendors where we sell the script and it'll just look way bigger and more. And like it's got a lot more story to it than, you know, any movie. And we sent this around to a bunch of press. And we were like, okay, Hey, like we're doing this fun activation at Tribeca. We sent them a copy of the script. That was really just like a big batch of blank paper with the first page of the script in it and all recycled paper.
It was all you know but it was hole punched. And so we sent this around. And a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, we didn't catch the fact that we were sending it on Earth Day. And so a journalist at the Wall Street Journal basically put us on blast with an article about how we had wasted just like thousands of sheets of paper, because they were all whole punched and just completely attacked us.
But the worst part was that Ellen Page, who was really like the star of the show at Tribeca is a massive, massive environmentalist. And she is, that is like her entire personal brand around philanthropy is around environmentalism. And so when this came out, it happened, it came out probably an hour before the show was supposed to go on and she was ready to back out.
It was, it was like full-blown panic. We had to talk everybody off the ledge. And we had a issue, a statement as PlayStation kind of like walking back off of this and apologizing and it was brutal. And I was, you know, the one who was kind of running the show on this, on this event. And I was probably 24/25 at the time.
And I was in sheer panic. I was like, I'm going to lose my job. This is gonna be horrible. I'm never going to work in marketing again.
LT: Oh, that's what you do.
DC: Oh, this is such a good story.
LT: It is.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, it was, it was raw panic, but you know, I think like the nice thing about it is it taught me to have just, you know, pretty thick skin.
It's like, you know, stuff goes wrong and that's part of the game when it comes to marketing and you can't predict all the variables, like, you know, who would have thought to have looked, are we sending this thing on Earth Day beforehand, but it's also another learning was like, check your calendars before you do any campaigns is make sure that you're not running on some holiday that you you didn't predict.
LT: That was going to be, that was going to be my next question is that you'll, you'll never make that mistake again. Right? Like, you know, we all have, you know, the it's it's chocolate ice cream day, right? Like, you know, there's an, you better know when you're doing something like that. Those kinds of things at a micro level, but I think at a macro level too is, you know, as a marketer, you've got to understand things 360, right?
Like you're not in a vacuum and we all tend to be myopic in our worlds and right. Like, this is a, this is a case study that what happens when you are that way.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, totally. It, it really teaches you to just develop empathy for every possible audience of your campaigns and not just like the specific target audience that you're really thinking about, because you're going to have knock on effects for any, any messaging that you put out there and the, into the wild.
And so you have to think about like every possible edge case, and there's so many that happened in any activation, but you just have to let, as you said, you've got to have a 360 view at all times.
DC: What a great example. That was good brother. That was good. Thank you for that one.
Derek Osgood: Of course.
DC: Larry, any more from you before we go to the next one.
LT: Just a quick followup, D, before we go to the next question. So what, what happened internally? You know, obviously, you know, what did your, how did your bosses treat it? And, you know, you, you went through, as you described the panic mode, you're never going to work again. What was the internal sort of reaction and how did that affect you within your job.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, totally. So I think I mean, it's, it's funny because it really was like person to person. So I was lucky enough to at the time, my boss, Anthony Caiazzo, and you know, our director, Mike Webster, I mean, they, they were just incredible, incredible, incredibly supportive bosses. And so, you know, they were like, look, we get it. Like you messed up. This happens, like, don't worry about it. So, but you know, obviously like everybody was scrambling. So they were, you know, while they were being very, very nice to me in kind of like helping me feel better about the situation, they were definitely like, on their phones scrambling to try and coordinate a response to this. And, you know, a lot of it, like at that point I was relatively junior and like a lot of it kind of got pulled out of my hands to a degree where, you know, it got escalated to you know, our VP of Comms. And, you know, the comms team was a little bit less nice to me than our product marketing team.
But I think, you know, everybody was, everybody understood. It was like, oh, this is just like a, an oversight. And, you know, I think everybody kind of took the stance of, well, this is, you know, it seems like this, this journalist was kind of had a bone to pick and, you know, was sort of looking for an excuse. So, you know, we'll, we'll walk this back as well as we can.
And the nice thing about an organization like PlayStation is that they're, you know, they've been through this stuff before, like they know that they have a pretty established response plan to, you know, kinds of like PR snafus and so, you know, we kind of just ran the playbook and I think the comms team, you know, had a good relationship with this journalist.
So they went out and, you know, like apologized, talked through it. You know, I think if I think whether or not it impacted my career at all, I really don't. Like I think, you know, I think mostly everybody got within the marketing team at least like understood this happens. And I think that comes from experiences like everybody who has been a marketer has been through these things. And like everybody as this is the reason you guys are asking the question, everybody has an F-Up. So I, that was me just cutting my teeth.
LT: Exactly. Right. That's exactly right.
DC: Quick question.
LT: Yeah, go ahead.
DC: I got one more brother. Derek, how long did it take you personally to get over this snafu?
LT: Great question.
Derek Osgood: Does it sound like I'm over it because,
DC: Okay. All right. Good shout. Good shout.
LT: D, before I go to the next question, it's sorta like, Steve Young, who I'm a big Niner fan go Niners by the way. And Steve young talks about this all the time. You know, he talks about the NFC Championships that they lost and that they never leave you. And rather than the Super Bowl win that yeah. Is wonderful. But I think that that's, that's the mindset of anybody who's successful. You're always going to harp on and be more sort of angst ridden by what you did.
Derek Osgood: Yeah. People ask me like metrics on how some of my, some of my past campaigns to them. Like I could, I couldn't tell you for the life of me, but I can give you in detail, exactly all of the things that I did wrong when something happened like this.
DC: Yeah.
LT: Very cool. All right. Next question, Derek. So regarding technology and marketing, man, again, we, your props you're right in the heart of technology through, through and through your career. You have a great perspective because of that.
Can you tell us where you think marketers should lean in or best leverage tech versus areas that they should be leery.
Derek Osgood: Yeah. I mean, I think like, I mean, technology is obviously the game now it's like marketing has become so complex and even just in the last, like 10 to 15 years, there's been because of the explosion of channels that are available to us as marketers, you know, with the advent of the internet you just can't do the job if you're not using technology because, and also like marketing roles have, have really like separated into much, much more specialized roles and each of those roles has a tool for it.
And so, you know, I think realistically, I don't know how you, you even separate marketing from technology these days. I think obviously there for a long time, there's been a lot of MarTech out there that helps you to actually like run the automation around the channels that you're actually, you know, executing on, but and run ads and measure campaign performance and all of that stuff.
I think like, where I think teams need to lean in a little bit more, and you're starting to see this as, as kind of alluding to earlier, earlier in the day, like, you know, due to COVID and remote work, you're starting to see teams need to adopt more and more kind of like process-driven technology and, you know, starting to adopt for awhile, like marketing teams were using like basic project management tools, like Asana, but, you know, I think you really need to operationalize so much of your campaign development, creative development, actual like planning processes and communication internally that marketing teams really need to be investing right now in internal communication tooling that helps with, you know, surfacing transparency around the work that they're doing to all the different cross-functional teams. And I also think that that helps them, you know, give other teams and understanding of how marketing works too.
Obviously like marketing's pretty misunderstood by a lot of folks internally, aside from the fact that everybody in any company thinks they're a marketer.
LT: Derek, that's why we do this show. You just have to, that's exactly right.
Derek Osgood: Yeah, it's a it, I mean, I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten very detailed advice about how to do my job from,
DC: Oh yeah, brotha'
Derek Osgood: ...who have never been in the role, but,
LT: and you'll, and that'll happen thousands of more times going forward too.
Derek Osgood: Forever, forever. That's that's the cross that we bear. But I think, but I think like when you operationalize this stuff and you actually put this documentation into, you know, tool form. It helps other teams to look at it and say, oh, I kind of now understand the process you're following to get to the conclusions that you are providing to us. And I think like, I mean, not to pitch our thing, but like, that's kind of what
LT: I was going to say. That's what you're doing in Ignition, right?
Derek Osgood: Yeah, we're, we're structuring a Go To Market process in a way that like everybody across the company can kind of understand how people are coming to the conclusion of like, Hey, we should talk about this product in this way or this way.
Hey, you know, we should, these are the assets that we're using because X, Y, Z, like we give you kind of the upstream strategy visibility that feeds into the actual execution. So then when people come to you with a question and they're like, Hey, why are we doing, you know, why are we using this channel? Or why are we, you know, why is this asset telling this story? You can just point easily back to, you know, the upstream go to market strategy and see all the work that's been done to feed into that in a way that, like, I think is typically pretty tough to surface.
LT: Very interesting. D, you got to follow up?
DC: I don't.
LT: That's great stuff, Derek. Thanks for sharing that. Let's go to the next question D.
DC: Cool. Simple, brotha, what are you most proud of?
Derek Osgood: Oh, man. I mean, it's hard not to say like all the, all the early work at Rippling. You know, I mean, Rippling has gone from when I was there. It was like, we were all in a room with a single conference room that literally everybody in the office, you know, all like 15 of us could hear exactly what everybody was saying to, you know, now it's like an 800 person company with a $7 billion valuation. And I think, you know, being there through the early days was so fun because I got to. Got to like work through leading a rebrand, got to work through all of the early, like building out of our onboarding flows and a lot of product experience in the product, you know, building out like an ecosystem of partnerships.
And all of that stuff that, you know, just building things from scratch is what I think is most fun. It's why I actually got out of like big company branding is I love working on big brands and having all the resources available to me that, you know, that allows, but I really love brand definition and the earliest days of like deciding what we actually want to be when we grow up and like, and I got to do all of that, you know, helping Rippling kind of scale up from, from nothing.
So I think it's hard not to, not to pick that one.
DC: Not many have that kind of experience to see something at its infancy. That then goes on to become something massive in terms of dollar and commerce impact. But frankly also in terms of cultural impact, these are rare. So congratulations brother.
LT: And what I'm struck with too ,D is that, you know, Derek did it at PlayStation, you know, already a a very well-known space with a, with a great brand that he had an affinity for as a little kid and was able to take that from number three to number one, and then actually do something pretty much from scratch, you know, to have those feathers in your cap is pretty awesome, Derek.
DC: It is.
LT: That's awesome.
Yes, it's a fun ride and it's, it's fun like seeing, you know, just the differences that exist, like big company to small company, it's, you know, they're two totally separate paths, but equally, equally fun for different reasons.
DC: We're going to the next section there. This, this is this is interesting brother. It's this interesting. I'm glad to here in the cipher with us today, man.
All right, Larry.
LT: Let's do this now. What's popping, Derek? What's popping, D?
DC: All right. Well, Derek, Derek, we're going to give ours first. Then you're going to let our audience know.
LT: Now, this is the Brand Nerds out there. This is our chance to shout out, shout down and simply air something happening in and around marketing today that we think is good fodder for discussion. All right. So D do you want to take the first word of.
Derek Osgood: Why don't you, why don't you leave the first one? I'll take one a little bit later.
DC: You can take it off. By the way. Derek, Larry calls me D I know it probably people call you D too.
Derek Osgood: I know it's been throwing me a little bit, but my bad picking it up.
DC: That's all right. Go, go ahead Larry.
LT: Okay. All right. It's so funny. You mentioned Terrence with Hint before Derek with Super Bowl advertising.
So I, I want to talk about Super Bowl advertising. We've come to the end of the NFL season and you know, in today's world where we're so inundated with ads and video everywhere we turn, you know, when you go on, think about when you go on YouTube and you first look at any YouTube video, you know, you're my fingers, twitching waiting until I can hit the skip ads button.
Right. Right. So when you think about Super Bowl ads, although, obviously we all know it's incredibly pricey, but they're pricey for a reason because, well, I believe for the right brand, they're just fabulous. You know, think about it. There's no time ever where consumers are not only receptive to the message, but they actually want to see the ads.
I was actually involved in a Super Bowl study years ago, where we found that the ads were actually one of the top drivers of viewership for the entire Super Bowl viewing. So, and now most recently there was a poll by, Omnicom's marketing arm where 43% of viewers are watching the Super Bowl for the ads while 57% are tuning in for the game.
So think about that. Most times, ads repell viewership. Now people want to watch. They're there waiting for them, right? Oh, so lastly, I just want to say this too, in that same study, 97% of respondents, want spots that make them laugh, which is really interesting. And
DC: that is
LT: Right? At the same time we talk about this a lot and we're invariably Derek, we do a show after the Super Bowl, so many times we think brands go too far with that. They can have the funniest ad in the world, and then you can ask people five seconds later, what was that ad for? And they can't tell you. That's a huge missed opportunity, right?
Derek Osgood: So if you just hit on like literally every single, like big pitfall that happens with advertising.
LT: That's right. No question. So lastly, if you do it right, people are also talking about your ad before, during, and after the game, you know, and there's been some controversy, whether you want to drop your ad on YouTube before some people don't like that, that's actually been a thing. So I just wanted to surface that.
What do you all think of this?
Derek Osgood: Yeah. I mean, I got a whole bunch of takes on this. So I think the on the, on the ads front, like people watching for the ads, I think that's like 100% true. The reality that I have always thought it's true is people don't dislike ads. They don't, what they dislike is they just like shitty ads.
Like they want good ads. People will totally watch, I mean, people will watch an hour long ad if it's good and entertaining, and you have to think of yourself as an advertiser, as like a publisher and you're publishing stuff that hopefully is attracting people's attention because it's, it merits that attention because it's actually entertaining in some way. Or it speaks really deeply to one of their specific pain points and they just feel very seen. And I think, you know, if you're able to do that and you're able to actually merge it with recall and creating something that actually tells your brand story and is attached to your brand, that's the holy grail of advertising. It's hard, it's way harder to do in practice than it is to do it in theory. But ultimately like I think ads are good. And I also think that there's a really interesting, you were talking about, there's this, there's a school of thought that's emerged and marketing that like Super Bowl ads are kind of like a waste of money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But I think, you know, they're one of my favorite articles about, about marketing and advertising talks about the idea of like impact versus efficiency. And I think that as marketers, you know, we've done ourselves a disservice by having to justify so much of our, of our activity to, you know, non marketers that we've introduced measurement in a way that actually like makes us measure the wrong stuff.
And so originally what we end up measuring when we measure advertising is efficiency, which gets driven much more highly by, you know, performance advertising, like, you know, on Facebook and SEM where you're mostly harvesting existing demand. You're finding people who are already looking for your thing and then you're converting them.
But, the theory in this, in this piece that I really love, talks about how, you know, you're mostly capturing people who are already going to buy your product in that scenario. Whereas with something like advertising, like Super Bowl advertising, where it is broad reach, you're able to actually drive impact where you can actually shape people's perceptions about your product.
And you can actually push people who would not normally be exposed to your product, who would not normally be, you know, motivated to buy your product, to actually buy it. So you can actually have like a higher Delta between the people that you're actually, you know, converting or in, in sales. And so I think that, you know, and, and the other factor at play there, and this is especially true of Super Bowl advertising, is this concept of like social imprinting, where basically advertising, what it does is it allows, you know, when you do big, broad scale advertising, like billboard campaigns or TV spots, it makes people feel like you are big and important, like
LT: So true.
Derek Osgood: And they talk about your ad with their friends and you get this knock on effect of just appearing like a more meaningful brand than you otherwise would. And so I like, I'm a big believer in expense, you know, theoretically expensive ads like Super Bowl ads, because I think they actually ended up delivering higher ROI that is just harder to measure than anything else.
LT: Totally agree. D, what's your take??
DC: Derek, I got to tell you, Larry and I don't share our what's popping with one another before we do it, because we want our responses to be organic. I'm going to come back to that when I get to my what's popping, but let me deal with this first. I agree with everything you brothers have said, there is marketing that is regular marketing when it comes to content, film content, visual content, moving pictures. And then there is that kind of marketing with the Super Bowl. It's like it's the Super Bowl and everything else. Not on the everything else. That's about reach and frequency, time spent with, all of these metrics, how many people opened it, how long did they stick with it after they opened it, where did they come from, where did they go to. All of these things, these metrics are incredibly important when we're doing marketing of visual stuff. But in a Super Bowl, it ain't about that.
LT: Nope.
DC: The Super Bowl is about stunts. It's about stunts. And if you don't have a good stunt, whatever that stunt happens to be, you don't have a good ad. You don't have a good ad. Finally, I say this as it relates to using different metrics, to evaluate Super Bowl advertising versus Non-super Bowl advertising and Derek I'm coming exactly to your point about ROI. However, you may not be able to measure all of the ROI. I'm gonna go to a dude that I think most people would say is relatively smart. Mr. Albert Einstein.
Derek Osgood: All right.
DC: I just want, I just want to spend some time with Albert Einstein for a minute. Here's what this brother said. A quote, not everything that can be counted, counts. And not everything that counts can be counted. This is the world of Super Bowl advertising. Well, we roll up into that world. We need to be thinking more about Albert Einstein and less about Google analytics. That's what poppin' for me.
Derek Osgood: A hundred percent. I used to actually have that quote pinned above my desk. Because it's so true of marketing. Like that is literally the definition of, you know, how marketers should think about things and, you know, marketers need to treat their you know, treat their activity like investors do where it's like, look, not all the bets are going to pay off, but the bets that you offer, the ones where you predict or where you may not have predicted that it was going to be the one that won, but you're looking for great and funny one or two, like things that end up having a hundred X returns as opposed. And so you're just trying to place enough bets that are, you know, you can get one or two of those really big, impactful wins. And I think Super Bowls tend to be the Super Bowl ads tend to be a higher, you know, higher probability of it being that, you know, a hundred X return.
LT: But it better be strategic and fit with your brand position.
DC: That's good. Great one, Larry. Great.
Derek Osgood: Always, always.
LT: Yeah. I just want to, I know, you know that I just wanted to make sure that we're, we're we're aligning the Brand Nerds with that as well.
DC: Cool. Larry, are you ready to give me the rock brother?
LT: It's all yours.
DC: Thank you brother. Derek and Larry I'm in the world of Super Bowl as well.
Mine is around Pepsi halftime shows. Stick put before a second. Gentlemen, Pepsi started doing this. They took it over in 2013. Now they were doing halftime stuff at the Super Bowl, obviously before 2013, but Pepsi came in and said, Hey, we're going to really make this about sort of the biggest stars musical stars in the world.
So I'm going to go through what's happened since they took it over. 2013 Beyonce and featuring also Destiny's Child. 2014, Bruno Mars and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. 2015, Katy Perry, who was flanked by Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliott, and the Arizona State University marching band. 2016, Coldplay. Beyonce came back, Bruno came back. We had Gustavo and the USC marching band and a youth choir. They were out of LA. Lady Gaga was in 2017. She had nobody with her. Just Lady Gaga. I'm Lady Gaga. I got this. 2018, Justin Timberlake. All right. So we know about, we know about that one. What was going on with that one. 2019, Maroon Five, Travis Scott, Big Boy and the Georgia State University marching band, that one was in Atlanta. So to get a little Atlanta flavor and little, little Atlanta flavor in there. 2020, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, Shakira, Shakira, and Bad Bunny, J Balvin and Emmy Munez. And last year, 2021 The Weekend, it was just The Weekend. He had nobody with him. He just said, I'm The Weekend. I got this. Yeah, I ain't too happy with the Grammys right now. So I'm just gonna handle this by myself. So that was The Weekend. Now, in those years, 2013 to 2021, there were a total of four hip hop artists. Katie Perry brought up Missy, Missy Elliott. Maroon Five in Atlanta, brought out Travis Scott, who kind of found his legs here in Atlanta as a producer and artists and Big Boy from Outkast. And then in 2020, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira brought out Bad Bunny. Four hip hop artists. Hip hop is musically the most dominant art form on the globe and has been for more than a decade.
LT: And by far.
Yeah, by far by far, but the Super Bowl had four, none of them, by the way, were leading. They were all sort of guests. I'm going to invite you on. But in 2022, we have Dr. Dre, Snoop, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar. They have more folks rooted in hip hop in 2022, then Pepsi started doing it from 2013. So here's, what's popping for me. Why did, why now? Why did this happen? And I got to get serious for a moment. I feel bad for Gianna Floyd. Feel bad for her. Her father is George Floyd. He was murdered. I think that had an impact on what we're now seeing in the Super Bowl. Wanda Cooper Jones, of Ahmad Auburn, who was killed here in Brunswick, Georgia. He was murdered. I think that also had an impact on folks thinking about what they could do with Super Bowl in 2022.
And then Tracy Martin and Sabrina Fulton. This is the father and mother of Trayvon Martin, also killed. While these are tragic events and Gianna, Wanda, Tracy, and Sabrina. You can never bring back their children. They're never coming back. But what I can say is this. If there is a silver lining and it's tough to find one it's their passing has opened the aperture in culture about where Black led things are now acceptable in global culture.
There's now an acknowledgement of that beyond Black folk. That's my what's poppin'.
Derek, you want to want to respond to it, or shall I?
Derek Osgood: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I, I, 100% agree. I think that there has been this explosion over the last, you know, two, three years because of this, and, and I think you're, you're a hundred percent, right.
And my take on this when I saw the announcement that this was going to be, you know, largely hip hop led or entirely hip hop led a halftime show was I was like, great somebody finally got smart. Like somebody over at the NFL, somebody, somebody actually realized that like, Hey, probably the majority of our audience and not just like a minority of our audience, they actually loves hip hop.
And it probably in the majority is in a large portion is probably Black as well. And I think that, you know, for so long, this is a trap that like marketers fall into is they, they kind of like start falling into this idea of, of buying into stereotypes. And I think the stereotype for a long time was like, Hey, football is a sport that is predominantly watched by rural white guys. And I think that that has finally shifted where people realize, no, this is it's got, you know, I don't know how many viewers watch the NFL, but it's, it's hundreds of millions and it is the most of the country. And so when you start looking at hip hop, being the dominant music musical genre, I don't know why you wouldn't have hip hop led acts like it, it is what people watch and listen to now.
Yeah, I think, I think it's brilliant. I think, I think it's a good it's, it's a good evolution and it was much needed for a long time.
LT: Yes, totally agree. And I just want to throughput DC, as usual goes back to the roots of how this all happened and, and also sort of integrating real life into. These decisions. And we all know that a lot of these, you know, these things are get planned well in advance. There's a, there's a lot of planning that goes into this. And and what I'm also struck with what they've also done is, you know, obviously Dr. Dre and Snoop become sort of the foundation to this. And I think what they're also doing is yes, it's Los Angeles, so that's part of it as well, because they are rooted in LA. And, you know, although they're, you know, global, you know, they've been global icons for a long time. They are of LA. So that, that's a cool thing too, but they're also, they've been around a while. And so, you know, the NFL and Pepsi are going to do everything they can to mitigate risk.
Everybody knows who those guys are, you know, and, and, and I love my girl, Mary, Mary J. shout out, like, you know, all those, all those. There's nothing, and Eminem and everyone, everybody knows who they are. There's nothing hidden. We know Snoop smokes weed, nobody cares. Right. And so I think that's part of it as well. Cause they do. They're also looking at it again from that angle of what's our risk here. And I think that, you know, that it's a beautiful sort of way to go about what they should've done a long time ago. And I'm really looking forward to seeing it.
Derek Osgood: When I, I think like to tie you two guys points together, it's like the risk point is 100% what's driving this is, you know, the unfortunate reality of like how these campaigns get developed is largely like some exec has to sign off on them and executives, I mean, this is the whole innovator's dilemma is like, once you're at a large scale, like executives incentives are designed around not like losing their job.
And so everything they do is about mitigating risk and it, you know, pre all of the, the George Floyd and, and all of the other events that have happened over the last few years, it's probably seen as a risk to step out of the generally accepted types of halftime shows that were happening. And now all of that risk has gone away. And finally, somebody is able to take the initiative to turn this into, to like do something a little bit different. And I think more like more marketers should be doing that in general, but it's hard to get that executive buy-in at large companies like that.
LT: Well said.
DC: What a great point. What a great point.
I'm going to close with a couple of things here fellas. The first one is is this: what we don't do as human beings is look at marketing from I'm going to pick a brand Capri Sun and check out all of the stuff they do on the beaches and with water and things like that. And see mostly if not exclusively white people and think to ourselves, well, Capri Sun must only be for white folk.
We don't do that. We go, okay. They kind kinda got a beach vibe going on. We understand surfer dudes. We got all of that. Most of, most of them are are Caucasian. Okay. We got that. But somehow marketers, when they see folks that are Black or brown, they get challenged with questions of, are people gonna think this is just for Black folk?
Are we, are we making our brand too Black? And what I want to say to our, our Black and brown marketers first, and then I'm gonna come to our, Caucasian brethren and sister, is when you're feeling that brothers and sisters Black and brown brothers and sisters. You have to stand up to that. You got to point out how, if you see a Tide ad and it has white folks in it that no one's thinking Tide is just for white people.
So you, you, you have to turn that on them. And these people that are asking you this, because it's, in most cases, they simply don't know, and they are responding to a program they've had for decades in their work life sometimes. And this is hundreds of years in the making. You got to educate them and you got to stand in that that's number one.
Now, let me talk to about my Caucasian brothers and sister. Okay. Before you ask a brother or sister this, brown brother/sister, Black brother/sister, pause, and think first. Pause and think, should I be asking this question? One. Two, why am I asking this question? And three, why don't you get out and lead, talking to your other Caucasian brother and sister, and about how you can not ask a question about is the brand going to be too Black, but then they would never ask you that directly.
If you're not asking the same question about as a brand too white. The marketing, can't ask that question, right? Okay. That's it. That's it. I'm done with that what's popping.
Derek Osgood: I mean, I I've seen, you know, you gotta, you have to have look out for the, the lexicon that's used internally to when you're having, when you're seeing these pitches from agencies is like, you know, the people like to say, is this going to be too urban? Is the brand going to come up to urban? And, and that's code for, you know, are there too many Black people in this?
DC: And it's cold.
Derek Osgood: And so you have to really be on the lookout for that stuff because it comes in and it seems pretty, you know, if you're like a relatively new marketer, it's easy to hear that. And like, you know, not recognize what it's really talking about. And yeah. So, yeah, totally.
LT: All right, Derek. Larry, I was going to say before we go,
DC: Okay, I'm going to give it, I'll make it real quick. Sorry about this is that there's a song by Weezy, Lil Wayne. It's one of my favorites is called Barry Bonds. And Barry Bonds just he was in his final year of eligibility to get into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. He didn't make it. So Barry Bonds not going to get in unless they change some of the bylaws associated with getting in.
LT: What a joke.
DC: Yeah. That is a joke. But one thing about Barry Bonds is that he could smack the hell out of that ball. He could hit that ball and I used to take great joy, Derek and Larry, when folks would come to me, speaking in code about these things, I became Barry Bonds and they were pitching underhand to me with a beach ball. And I just used to smack that shit all over the field. I just loved it, Derek and Larry. I did. Okay. I got admitted. I loved it. All right. Okay, Larry, go ahead, brother.
LT: Yeah, I just want to, I it's funny, cause I was gonna throw that to you because, because, and Jeff and I we've been in meetings where we see this happening and I start inside, I can't, I, I have to keep myself from laughing. It's like, oh, here we go. This is going to happen. And it folks set them up. Because quite honestly, they underestimate people of color and underestimate my brother DC. And that's at your own peril because it then becomes ugly or beautiful in my, in my opinion, to watch. And I've said this before on this show, Derek, before I throw it to you, this is very important point.
I want to I've said it before. I know I'm going to say it again. That what DC was alluding to before, white people have to take up the mantle for this and do the right thing. Listen to the mayor, going back to the Spike Lee joint, do the right thing and there's times, not times if you think you have to step up, you need to step up and you need to be the voice. Because Black folks are been shouting this for a million years. They've been telling about police brutality for a million years. And now we see the video and, and folks who are not in the cauldron when they see something that's not right, you've got to stand up and say it.
DC: You've got to.
LT: With that Derek, what's your what's popping.
DC: What's yours brother. I know we took a lot of time there, but go ahead, brother.
Derek Osgood: I feel like mine is going to pale in comparison. I mean, these are, these were two, a two really good ones, meaty topics to dig into. I mean, I think mine mine's a little bit more nebulous where, you know, I think what. What's popping is, is like, there's this big re-emergence that I'm seeing and this is kind of specific to tech marketing.
So I'm kind of stepping outside of the like broader branding world. But, you know, I think you're seeing this huge re-emergence of the importance of fundamentals in marketing. And I think a lot of what's driving, this is early in the two thousands, there was this big X, like cambering explosion of new channels, which emerged with the internet.
And there were a bunch of arbitrage opportunities in those, because there were so few brands competing on channels, like Facebook advertising that you saw this big rise of like growth marketing as a practice. And everybody was really trying to look for like technological arbitrage opportunities within the channels that they're working on.
And that drove like a lot of the last 15, 20 years of marketing. But now, because everybody is like, a lot of those channels have started to consolidate. And on top of that, a lot of like more companies are just participating in the digital arena. You have this massive spike in competition. Which is now turning those channels into something that resembles much more closely like traditional advertising mediums of, you know, back in the eighties and nineties where, you know everybody's advertising on TV.
So you need to start standing out in a way that you didn't need to before on, on digital. And so there's this, there's a lot more emphasis being placed on core like product marketing, brand strategy, creative development. And so I think this kind of ties into like, what we're talking about with Super Bowl advertising is like, I think it's going to get more important over the next few years.
And I think a lot of what has also happened is you're seeing a lot of tech companies that have historically been very bad at branding start seeing kind of backlash against that. So you have like the Facebooks of the world and the Airbnbs of the world that kind of confuse network effects for good brands.
And they've kind of like put this like inoffensive, saccharin, like relatively bland brand in place because they want to do the least people possible because they need massive scale. But now what they're running into is people are realizing that, that, that kind of inoffensive branding that they put in place was really just disguise kind of sketchiest business practices.
And so now that's starting to get unearthed and there's no actual like affinity for these brands, so nobody's coming to their defense. And so I think, you know, there's, there's a really interesting thing. I don't know if there there's actually a point here, but I think we're seeing a really interesting kind of re-emergence of the importance of actually developing good brands in the tech arena.
LT: Wow. I'm so glad you brought this up.
DC: This is, Ooh, this juicy,
LT: Right? This is not nebulous. This is great Derek. This is a great topic. Do you want to take a first stab at a response here?
DC: You go for it brotha.
LT: So I love that you surface this. And my wife has heard this forever. We've been married over 20 years and one of the, one of the bad things the spouse has to endure when you're married to a marketer and you live in the Silicon Valley and you watch all these tech folks who I'm just going to say it, man, you know, not everyone Derek, you're the exception, but there's a large majority of folks in tech marketing who don't know they don't, they don't know shit when it comes to marketing.
It's very blunt because they don't go with the fundamentals. The fundamentals matter, you know, it's in anything in life, you know Steph Curry's a great shooter because his fundamentally is he's incredibly sound. And so whatever it is, you know, to be great at something invariably, there's always exceptions to the rule, but most people, you got to know the fundamentals and I think you're voicing something that is so is powerful because you're right.
Nobody's emotionally connected to Facebook, right. Nobody's emotionally connected to Airbnb. You might've had good experiences, but nobody's, and so, because like you said, they're saccharin and now, like you said, all these business practices have been unearthed. There's no emotional connection to those brands with people and that's a huge issue when the problems do arise and they're going to arise. And so the fundamentals that what you're talking about are so huge. So I love that - couldn't agree more.
Derek Osgood: Yeah. It's like people will cut people, cut PlayStation a break. People have PlayStation logos tattooed on themselves, but people will not do that for a company like Facebook where they're using it because their friends are on it. Not because it's actually a brand that they identify their lifestyle with.
LT: Whereas Instagram on the other hand, right. That's different. And I think that, I think that young people are really connected to Instagram. And I think I I'm, I I'm going to say this. I don't think it's because of Facebook. I think that started before, you know, oh yeah. Before Facebook purchased Instagram. And most people don't even know that Facebook owns Instagram. Right. And so, you know, that is really interesting.
DC: Definitely. Well, the Derek you have just hit on something that tickles my soul. Technology, performance marketing, data. This comes down to two different lanes.
They both start with the letter "I". Information and insights. Let's go information. What's happening now in marketing is we marketers. We're getting our information from an algorithm. It's an algorithm. And then the algorithm comes to the marketers and the marketers go. That's cool. Serve my ads up based on that algorithm.
And many of us don't even understand the algorithm. We just know the shit's going to land, where it's supposed to land. I got some bad news marketers. Eventually artificial intelligence will be better at you at when, where, and how to serve those ads. You're not going to be able to catch up with AI as it relates to the algorithm and how to serve up the ads.
So eventually, if that's your deal, you ain't gonna have no goddamn job on the information side, but let's go to insights. Insights are about choice and for Brand Nerds out there, what I'm going to counsel you all to know is that you're making choices. When you can bifurcate your, your customer group, consumers or constituents into lovers or haters.
If you don't have lovers and haters, you haven't made a choice. This is how you get the sacrum. This is how you get to sacrum. You got to have both lovers and haters. Now you're doing your job right, you're gonna have more lovers than haters, but if you ain't got both, you got milk toast. So let's go through a couple of brands that have this. Coke and Pepsi, there are lovers and haters of both of those brands. They do just fine. They do just fine. Mac and PC. Lovers and haters. They do just fine. And then in your world, there are a PlayStation folks and XBox folks. They don't really mess with each other that much. They got lovers and haters.
So marketers can make the choice based on insights to determine how to frame their brand and their marketing in terms of lovers and haters and AI will never replace that.
LT: So true.
DC: Great one. We gotta bring this all home. No, no, I was
Derek Osgood: Just going to say like the like Facebook and Google have already started removing a lot of the targeting parameters that you can use to be able to use.
And they're just eating it directly into their algorithm and making the decisions for you. So you're, you're already seeing that start to happen.
DC: There you go, all right, we're going to bring it home now.
LT: Alright. Learnings, D. You want to go first or shall I?
Derek Osgood: Yeah. Why don't you kick it off?
DC: Yeah, go, go ahead.
LT: Okay. So, all right. I got five. All right. They're going to be quick, Derek. First of all, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. Appreciate having you. So my first one is Derek said something to the effect of there's more than half of marketing is failing. Brand Nerds if you aren't effin' up, you're never going to maximize success. You're being too cautious. That's number one. Number two, as a marketer, you and your team must be thinking 360 degrees at all times, and this means you should have someone on your team. And ideally it's a, it's a PR centric person who can think of, okay, we're going to do this. What can go wrong? What's our risk? That's number two. Number three, marketing. Isn't only about efficiency, it's about impact. As Derek said, when talking about Super Bowl ads, number four, fundamentals of marketing are just, just guys, you have to have them. You can't skip them. You can try. You might get lucky, but your odds for success go down dramatically if you skip the fundamentals and then number five, the last one, white marketers. We need to step up and do the right thing when it comes to having the backs of our minority compatriots as well as our consumers and make sure you're doing the right thing that's right for the brand and right for society. Those are mine
DC: Strong, Strong.
LT: DC, you up?
DC: I'm gonna hit it. I'm gonna hit it.
First thing I want to do Derek is I want to shout out Jade who's one of our show producers. This is a first for us in that you're the first guest that Jade brought to.
All of the other guests, we, me, Jeff and Larry, we bring to Jade and then Jade helps us make it happen. So, Jade, I want to shout you one time on this because Jade we'd like you to do more of it because Derek you've been good. Now, if you bombed Derek, I would not be saying this now. And when we get off the phone, I'd call Jade and say, Jade don't break us no more wacky. All right. But you did good.
Derek Osgood: My whole goal was to make Jade look good here, so.
DC: You're makin' Jade look good.
Well, Derek, Derek, I use these sections sometimes about what have I learned to talk more about the person than what the person did. And I think I have discovered your superpower. You probably already know it, but let me just walk through some examples.
You said there's a connection between marketing and tech, almost like you can't do marketing without tech. So you connected those two. The second thing you talked about what you learned from Terrence Sweeney. Shout Terrence, another time, is the connection between emotional marketing and performance marketing.
When you were at PlayStation, you talked about early days, you use Ellen Page the, the snafu, notwithstanding, the gaming world connected to live action. That was a connection that you were part of making. In the business you're in now you're connecting teams with repeatable processes. You've talked about important of internal marketing connected to external marketing.
And you said, and in some cases the internal marketing might be more important than the external marketing. Right. The six connection that you made was the marketing function and the investment community, and both are about making bets. You connected those two worlds. And then finally, when we were talking about Super Bowl ads, you made the connection between marketers and their level of risk tolerance connected to now the need to have more courage, given the context in which we find ourselves. Seven things Derek.
I believe your gift brother is a unique ability to connect dots that other people don't see. That's what I've learned from you.
Derek Osgood: Well, I love hearing that that is the best compliment I've I've gotten all month. So I
LT: Take that to your clients Derek, that's a good one.
Derek Osgood: I might need to
DC: That's what you, that's what you do, bro. And you do it exceptionallu well. In fact, it's the sublime, the way you do it.
Derek Osgood: Wow. You're making me blush
LT: Before we close the show. DC, we gave you flowers from the beginning and the end. So this is great. But what you learn anything from from this conversation?
Derek Osgood: Yeah, I mean, honestly, so I think it was it's, it's less like a net new learning and more like a reinforcement of I think probably the most important thing that is true for marketers, which is like, you have to have courage. I think like above anything when it comes to marketing, the best marketers, and this goes back to like the whole investment thing where you're trying to find those like 100 X return bets, the very best marketers are the ones that are comfortable taking risks and taking risks on a creative front where, you know, you're, you're choosing to do something that's a little bit like antagonistic or whether you're doing something, you know, it's a brand strategy choice and you're making the impact or the insight trade-offs that you mentioned DC, or whether it's, you know, standing up for your people of color compatriots that you want to, I mean, like are being like not featured in a piece of creative that you're creating, like all of these things come back to the idea that you need to, if you are a true marketer and you have real insight into your audience, you need to be able to go to the map in order to have conviction, to make decisions that support those insights.
And so I think that that was the thing that like just bled into this for me from every single one of these conversations.
LT: That's a mic drop right there. Jade, mic drop. I'm closing now. All right.
So brand nerds, thanks for listening to the Brands, Beats and Bytes recorded virtually on zoom and a production of KZSU Stanford, 90.1 FM radio worldwide at kzsu.org. The executive producers are Jeff Shirley, Darryl "DC" Cobbin, myself, Larry Taman, Joseph Anderson, Jade Tate, Hailey Cobbin, and Tom Dioro.
The Podfather.
And if you are listening to us via podcast, it would be great if you can please rate and review us. Additionally, if you do like the show, please subscribe and share. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. And we look forward to next time where we will have more insightful and enlightening talk about marketing with another great business leader as our guest.