Latest / Brands, Beats & Bytes / Album 6 Track 1 - Welcome to 2024!
Transcript
- DC: Let's go. What's happening, Brand Nerds? It's a Happy New Year, Album Six, Track One kicking off this year, 2024. Now, Larry, you know, Jade and, and Jeff and Haley, they don't like when I note or put a date, an expiration date on a podcast, but got to do it the first, the first week of the new year of 2024, Larry. LT: Yes. This is auspicious occasion. Would you believe it? The album six. Episode one. Like that's crazy. DC: That's wild. That's wild. Uh, I cannot believe we have been doing this thing for entering a year number six. It's just, um, so Brand Nerds cross the 50 countries that listened to us 50 plus now. Thank you. Uh, all of the, uh, all of the Brand Nerds that we've had as guests. Thank you all very much. Uh, we are, since we're starting this year, when we get into things, uh, there are two things, there are two items that get bannied about LT at this time of year, one resolution. So what's your new year's resolution. LT: Right. DC: And the second is trends. What are the trends? And so we are going to kick this year off talking a bit about trends in marketing and branding for 2024. LT, can you break down how we're going to handle this thing for the Brand Nerds? LT: Yeah, I'd love to D. You know, it's cool. We all thought it would be great to do this. We've never done this kicking a year off. So we thought that this would be fun. And as usual, super producer Jade Tate came up with the idea to really grab a legitimate source for 2024 marketing trends and have us talk about it. So we thought Forbes It's as good a brand as any to bank on this, uh, and they had an article in mid December. So maybe I can read off their top ten trends. You can choose the one you think most compelling, D, and I can choose mine. We can rip from there. Is that cool with you? DC: I like that. I like that. Let's do it. LT: All right, let's go. So these are their top 10 trends in alphabetical order. So there's not an order, it's purely alphabetical. So, uh, first one, AI marketing automation. Number two, augmented reality and virtual reality. They're, they're right next to one another, really. Three is hyper personalization. Four, influencer marketing. Five privacy and data protection, six social commerce, seven sustainability and purpose driven marketing, eight user generated content. And of course we all know that as UGC, uh, nine is video marketing. And then 10 is voice search optimization. So D what's yours? DC: LT. Before I give you mine and the brand nerds, I need to make a connection here of one of my dear friends. His name is Seth Matlins and he is a managing director over at Forbes of their CMO, uh, practice, uh, dear friend. So I want to shout out Seth and, um, and also the, uh, the person that wrote the article, which we'll put in the notes of these, of these trends in alphabetical order. So shout out for shout out, Seth. Uh, appreciate the trends and, uh, and, and Jimmy, that's what I call Seth, Jimmy, but it might be nice to get you on here to talk about these at, uh, at some point soon. That said, that said. LT, I'm going to AI marketing automation. LT: Cool. DC: AI marketing automation. So we know A. I. Is all the rave has been for a couple of years crescendoing this year. With the whole cm, uh, CEO of, uh, of open AI being ousted and then coming back right via, via Microsoft. So this really brought, uh, AI not only into the, into the consciousness of marketers, which we've been thinking about for a while, but also the consciousness of just the lay person. Yep. What's going on with this whole OpenAI . So here is what I'm thinking about regarding that trend. Um, uh, AI and marketing automation, three different uses, LT. One is marketing processes. The second is marketing efficiency. And the third is marketing strategy. I'll explain both, all three, rather. So on marketing processes, what AI allows us to do, this is where the automation piece comes in is if you're in the business and you you've got a brand and a company and a customer has bought something, uh, before, and now they're back. And they have something in their cart LT, but they haven't finished the transaction. It's just in their cart. You know how we do that sometimes. We go into somewhere, we get busy. It's a, uh, what, what AI can allow us to do, among other things, is say, okay, this person has had this thing in the cart for X amount of time. There's a certain kind of message we want to send to them, assuming that we have their information, legally, uh, that, that encourages them to go revisit. Their cart and complete the transaction. So that's that's one level. That's that's marketing processes. Then there's marketing efficiencies. So with data crunching, when you do data crunching, if you want to have an ability to, uh, automatically on a continuous basis, real time, so evaluate cost per acquisition, comparing different marketing programs, You can get that right away. You can get that right away efficiently. And another thing in content. Let's say you've got a thought about a possible content direction. And you want to have some idea of what that may look like before you engage copywriters or art design people. You can put something into AI and then quickly have something going on. So that's marketing efficiencies. And then finally marketing strategies. So here is like, you may have a strategy A. That you want to compare the strategy, B, LT and Brand Nerds, and you might engage AI to help you discern of these two options, which one might be the better option. So those are the ways that marketing folks are using AI. I know the, the trend in Forbes says, uh, AI automation that, that more speaks to my number one marketing processes, but AI generally, I'm broadening it out a bit. You get these three things, but not so fast. Larry, this is Lee Corso, shout out Lee Corso, not so fast. We, when we think of AI, many of us will think, Oh, it's something entirely new. There's nothing new under the sun, Larry. You know that there's nothing new under the sun. And so what, what AI really comes down to are inputs and outputs, inputs and outputs. And when you have high quality inputs, you have high quality outputs. Conversely, when you have trash inputs, you have trash outputs, right? No, this is how it works. And it has been working this way since the beginning of marketing. If you have a trash input for a brief, you're going to get trash output from that brief. If you have trash input for a research project. Uh, research design. Uh, you're gonna have trash output based on that trash input of research design. So what does this thing really come down to Brand Nerds? And I believe it's this, and I've alluded to this on a couple of our podcasts before when the subject has come up. It's about the quality of the questions now. The quality of the questions. That way you get the best input. Where before, we were waiting for answers from different folks. Now it's about how do you posit the right question to this thing called artificial intelligence? What's the right question to ask it? A quality question, a high quality question so you can get high quality outputs and then lt and I'm coming to a close here. It comes down to the high quality follow up questions. So it's not just one question. It's how do you go deeper and deeper into high quality questions to increase the efficacy of the output. Here's the reason why. AI currently, when you ask it a question or put something into it, it will crawl the entire, um, webosphere, blogosphere, social media, everything. And in that crawling lt, it'll bring back misinformation, right? Misinformation comes with it. Now it might mitigate it. Right. And so the way to eliminate misinformation, erroneous information, unnecessary information. It's to be more surgical in the high quality questions and the high quality follow up questions. We have something, Larry, you know this well, in our practice, uh, that we use and it's common in marketing is called laddering up. And so we start at the base of this ladder with a product feature. And then we ask, why is that important? Why does that matter? And then we go another rung with answering that question. And we do that six times. I believe with AI now, it's about how do we ladder up the questions to get to the best, the best, highest quality outputs. That's where I'm on this, brother. What say you? LT: Ooh, this is really deep, D. As you're positing that theory, I also wonder that the folks who are at the tip of the spear as it relates to really embracing AI and trying to make it work for marketing, that maybe those first couple questions won't be answered won't be that great because, as I understand AI, um, you know, the more, as you said, the more questions you ask and the more you utilize it, the better it gets, right? So the first, at the beginning, it's not so great. So maybe those folks are the ones who really are going to be the ones who, in essence, make it better because they're going to be asking those questions and continually, maybe at the beginning when they ask those third, fourth and fifth generation questions. AI's not gonna have good answers, but the more AI gets those questions, the better the AI will be. Ah, I wouldn't, that's the case. DC: I like that, Larry. Right? Given that what I say, what I would say to the Brand Nerds is. Yes, AI gets smarter as it gets more questions, hopefully high quality questions, and it gives its, uh, its outputs, hopefully with better, uh, questions. It gives better, uh, inputs. I think AI gets smarter over time. That does not absolve us LT as marketers of asking lazy first questions intellectually easy, so it does that we still should try to ask the highest quality question to begin with to set AI on a path. LT: Yeah, and as you're saying that the I referenced this a couple times when we, when AI has come up on the podcast. I read about a, a journalist and I, and again, I don't remember what journalist this was, who used the AI to basically say this journalist was given an assignment and gave it to ai, and what this journalist quickly learned was, oh, that the AI got this journalist started in a great way. And so this journalist went from a blank sheet of paper to AI starting it, and then this journalist realized like, wow, this is great, instead of me being fearful of AI, the AI actually got me going, but it got me to be smarter, to ask the right questions, and then to get to the next generations more quickly. Instead of starting with just the blank piece of paper. So I wonder if the same applies for marketing here. DC: That's, that's huge. Right? Yeah, that, that's huge. I wonder, Larry, what input this particular journalist or writer gave to AI in order to get them jump started, if you will. LT: Whatever the journalist assignment was, find out, you know, again, I'm making this up, you know, um, what's, uh, what's, what's going on in China? Uh, why and why is the economy going down? So the journalist literally gave that a same assignment to AI. And then the AI started in the, and the journalist realized, oh, I see where it started, but it just did the, because again, early machinations, right? It just got the journalist started, but then it got the journalist to think, Oh, it brought up a B and C that maybe I wouldn't have thought of right away. And then it, so it gave the journalist a jumpstart from instead of just starting from scratch. And I think the same would apply for marketing, right? Maybe there's things you wouldn't have thought of, um, right away. So maybe it gets to actually getting you to ask better questions earlier to your point about asking questions, right? DC: Yeah. So Larry, you're bringing up a point with that example. That's a great example, by the way, where there may be two different ways to approach this, right? One way is to begin with a high quality question, uh, to begin with. The other one may be just play and it comes out and then you go, okay, now that I'm hearing this. I'm prepared to ask a higher quality question where before I was not. So, so maybe there's, there, there's room for these two different approaches depending on what you, what you need. LT: You know what? And D again, it's like anything else in life. The smart marketers are going to embrace this and lean in and probably try both of those approaches or hybrids of them. Yeah. And see where it gets you. Uh, it's not something that you're going to rely on, you're not going to do what Sports Illustrated did. Oh yeah. And give a journalist an assignment and have AI write it, no. You need to have humans be, uh, be at the epicenter of this and utilize it, lean in, but not rely on it fully. DC: All right, so, so 2 points and then Larry, I want to hear yours. I'm, I'm, I'm really curious about yours, but, um, in marketing LT, we were, we have been taught for many, many years decades. In fact, that the best marketing is like a circle. That gets drawn around and almost like 85, 80 percent closed, but don't close it all the way, and then allow the intelligence and curiosity of the consumer and customer to close it off. Right. Close it off. So let's, let's, let's, let's take that model, that framework and apply it to, uh, to AI and not just automation, although that's the trend in Forbes, but, uh, but AI generally, maybe the deal is, is that instead of it being a straight line circle is that it's a fourth of a circle that we do. Use AI, fill in a little bit, the next fourth, we fill in the next fourth, or now we're at three fours. You ask AI to fill in, maybe, maybe, uh, AI fills in 10%. You got another 15 percent remaining. You do another 10, then you use AI to do five. So. That there might be an iterative process here of how much you use AI and how much your brain leads versus your brain following something that you've asked AI to do. LT: I love that. I think you get to what you're really saying is you can iterate and iterate faster and iterate smarter. Yep. DC: Yeah. Right. And I, I, I, I, yeah, I agree, LT. And I don't believe at this point. If, um, if a marketer hasn't figured out how to leverage AI, it would be similar. Even now it would be similar to when, uh, when digital marketing began, uh, it was thought of as this sort of ancillary thing, everybody else, he, you'll know this well, we still do traditional media. We do TV, we do radio, we do out of home. All of those are wonderful things. We do print those wonderful mediums at the time. And we thought that this Digital marketing thing. This thing called the Internet was just an interesting kind of a side deal. And most of the time, the best and the brightest were not working in that domain. They were working on the more traditional sides of marketing. The same now is true of AI, I believe. This thing's, this is going to be the thing, and we have to figure out how we're going to leverage it and manage it. And I think because of its intelligence, AI. It forces us marketers to be even more intelligent and create, and what I LT: D, I think what, to put a bow around it, what we're both saying is, you know, Brand Nerds out there, lean in, embrace it, and figure out how you can really optimize it to work for you. Yeah. The, the key part there is it's working for you. DC: Yes. Right. Well said, LT. Yeah. And play, LT: Right? That's exactly, exactly, exactly. DC: Alright, that's, thank you brother. LT: Oh, that's great. All right. I'm going to go to mine. All right. So mine is influencer marketing, D. Okay. And by the way, barring something really paradigm shifting for me, influencer marketing is always going to be right at the top every year. And let me explain why. So here is the current definition for influencer marketing, literally from Wikipedia. Now we all know the words. That we get from about, we all know that Wikipedia awards, right? But sometimes you get good stuff from Wikipedia. And I think this is actually a really good definition. So here's the definition for influencer marketing and Wikipedia. Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people, and organizations who have a purported level or expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field. Influencers are someone or something with the power to affect the buying habits or quantifiable actions of others by uploading some form of original, often sponsored content to social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Tik Tok, or other online channels. Influencer marketing is when a brand enrolls influencers who have an established credibility and audience. On social media platforms to discuss or mention the brand in a social media post. So that's the definition, right? Pretty good. Don't you think? DC: Yeah, that's good. And where'd you get that definition? Uh, Larry? LT: Literally from wikipedia wikipedia. Okay. Got it. Okay, cool All right. So now where i'm going with this idea i'm gonna speak for you in this sense Okay, but uh, i'm gonna say we would maintain that influencer marketing has been going on way before there was social media It is simply easier and more prevalent with social media. So check this out. DI did some research, right? Mm-Hmm? . Okay. So British Queen Victoria in the mid 18, in the mid 18 hundreds, British Queen Victoria did a Cadbury Cocoa ad in 1854. DC: 1854. LT: As part of her deal, she earned licensing fees from it. So that's influencer marketing, isn't it? No doubt. Right? So this is clearly influencer marketing before there was ever a hint of social media. So that's why I wanted to point that out. So yes, social media is the main currency for people of all ages, of all ages, and especially millennials and Gen Z. The confluence of influencer marketing and social media are perfect since someone you may follow on IG, as an example, and feel like you really know, is now weaving in thoughts and or testimonials for brands. When done smartly, where there is a genuine connection between brand and influencer, it can be very powerful. And by the way, our brand building view at, at, at both Brands, Beats, and Bytes and Brand Positioning Doctors, is that it isn't about just getting quick hits and clicks. This should be about actually doing things that emotionally connect brand with target audience. So where I immediately go to, D, is with all of these trends, and especially with influencer marketing, if you don't have your fundamentals down, you may get a quick hit, but Brand Nerds, you are ultimately not going to really build your brand. This means you absolutely need to know your brand positioning and you especially need to know who your brand lover is. Brand Nerds in our parlance, the brand lover is the most important sub segment of the target audience. Imagine a full archery target. Think of an archery target, right? Where the entire target represents the target audience. For us, the brand lover is actually the middle bullseye of that archery target and carries the greatest influence on the entire target audience. Once you correctly identify the most influential brand lover, which is no easy task, by the way, and something we really focus on at Brand Positioning Doctors. This brand lover then becomes the centerpiece of your marketing efforts, and if done right, you emotionally connect your brand with a brand lover and ultimately the entire target audience, and this is how you really grow your brand. Fundamentally grow your brand for Powerade back when we launched and ran the brand our brand lover, as you know, was the high school captain of the football, basketball and or baseball team. All of our marketing was focused on that. DC: Brilliant. LT: Thank you. And that was our brand lover. We were. And by the way, not only did our brand team know it, the whole Coca Cola system knew it. So our first year we had Deion Sanders, who was an incredible pro football and baseball player. Now, as we know, Coach Prime in Colorado, by the way, D, I don't know if you even knew this in high school. No surprise. Deion was also a great basketball player. So social media and NIL back when we launched Powerade, we easily would have built a whole cadre of influencers. Well, you can say, well, LT Gatorade could have done the same thing, but Gatorade, in my opinion, that time would have tried to sign people in all of the sports. We would have signed the best high school football, basketball, and baseball players. It probably really would have focused on basketball and football and would have left the other sports alone. In summary, this is why for me, influencer marketing is most important since it is trendy. And also should be directly tied to the fundamentals of great brand positioning. What say you, D? DC: All right. Did you say, I want to get the year right here. 1854 was the year that you found? LT: Yes. DC: All right. So I'm, I'm going to go a little ahead of you, and then I'm going to go after you. All right. So, um, the first endorsement that was used, at least recorded, Was in the 1700s, okay? A brand called Wedgewood. Uh, and they did find, uh, chinaware and then in 1882, so this is three years ahead? Uh, actually, no, no, not, not, uh, actually. Oh, this is after. Damn, you were in 1854. You, you ahead of me here, brother. But, uh, there was a woman named Lily Langtree, who was a socialite in London and a West End stage actress who became a poster person for Pierce Suit. Now you being from New York, let's bring it stateside here. Uh, LT in the 1930s, Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth. And it was, he endorsed something called red rock Cola and he was paid. This is a very big. Difference here. Mm-Hmm. . One thing appearing, another thing to be paid. What we have learned since the 17 hundreds, 18 hundreds and the early, uh, 19 hundreds, is that we understand now that endorsers, not influencers, regular endorsers, they get paid. They get paid. So they begin to, uh, consumers started to get more sophisticated and go, okay, is this person here because they use this brand, they like this brand, or because they're being paid here is what I think is a risk now with this whole quote unquote influencer marketing space. Yep. The way this started, LT and Brand Nerds, is brands started to become aware of people who were legitimately using their brands. They were legitimately talking about their brands. They weren't getting paid to do it. They just were doing it because it was organic and they really believed in the brand and or the product. Now we understand that these influencer marketings, they're all getting paid either from the brand directly or from the platform that they're being on. So I wonder if, in fact, the influence of, uh, influencer marketers. It's starting to diminish. That's a great question. Because because we know we know that we know they're getting racks. Now they're getting the bag. So, I'm not so certain that the impact is going to be the same this year as it has been in past years. LT: So I'm going to, I'm going to push back and this is great. I'm going to push back on you. We think when it's, when there's a really good brand positioning where the brand knows really who they are and they have influencers that really are, uh, those who represent their brand in the, in a way that's, that's really connecting, right, genuinely, authentically connecting. I think consumers are smart. They know that these folks are getting are getting money, but if they see That this influencer, as an example, if it's a, if it's a brand that's involved in the fitness space and they see somebody who's, you know, really somebody they aspire to, uh, if somebody is a cyclist and they see somebody who's a great cyclist and somebody who's a great cyclist is using a product that's making them an even better cyclist, you know, they could know that that cyclist is, you know, that person's getting paid, they see it's actually helping them. I don't think, I don't think it matters. It's when they It's when people see the BS, when it's not authentic, when it's not genuine, that people roll their eyes and have an issue with it because they know it's BS. That's when, that's when I think there's issues that come about with this kind of stuff. All right. DC: So we're going to debate this a little bit, LT, because there's some gray area here. So I agree with you that if it's inauthentic, then, uh, people are going to. Not necessarily be influenced because they're going to be able to, they're going to, I smell something off here, right? I don't think it's in those obvious black or white situations where there's going to be a difference. I think it's going to be in the gray area. So let me, let me give you an example. Um, uh, this person has not received any money, at least that I know of from major brands to promote them, but I could be wrong. So there is a food critic influencer. It's a brother named Keith Lee, Keith Lee. And what he does is he goes into cities unannounced. And tries out the different restaurants, so he's checking the food scene, but he's not coming in saying, Hey, I'm Keith Lee, and I want to be seated at a particular table. And I want to chef here. This is how a lot of critics do it, right? Food critics. They let the restaurant know I'm coming in. And then, of course, whatever is the best Chef in that restaurant, they're going to be there. The owner's going to be there. The best service is going to be, everything's going to be top notch. That's not what Keithley does. And so he came here to Atlanta last year and he did not have a great time. And he recently released a top eight of top eight food cities in the country, according to him, and Atlanta finished number eight. This dude is enormously popular LT. I mean, this is, this is not an example that I think would ever happen, but let me just, just roll with it for a second. If this dude tomorrow started doing advertising for Applebee's, it's over. Ain't nobody checking for Keith Lee. No, no one's checking for him, but they are checking for him because they, they know he's giving an honest opinion of his experience and he is, he, they know he does not receive free food or any of that stuff. So all I'm saying is, yes, we understand as consumers that influencers will be paid, but I think there will be fewer and fewer of them who are truly, truly have this level of integrity that brands will say, I want to be in business with you. And I think that's, that's the difference is that you could have, you know, 10 million followers. But only half a million of them really ride with you. I suspect that the engagement level of Keith Lee's followers, by the way, we don't have any relationship with Keith Lee. I, he has not paid me to say anything about him. Uh, Brands, Beats, and Bytes doesn't have any agreement with Keith Lee. I'm just merely stating this based on what I'm seeing and experiencing, but I would imagine that Keith Lee's, um, follower base. Is much more engaged than those, uh, others who are being paid money, uh, to endorse brands. Just got a feeling. LT: I think you're totally right, but let's keep going with this. By the way, I'm glad you just gave, gave that caveat about Keith Lee. I've never, the only Keith Lee I knew who played for Memphis State in, uh, in the, in the 1980s . Okay. And my friend, I, I remember that Keith Lee and, and, and my friend Fred Bruce Leitz guarded him in the, in the NCAA tournament. Uh, Bruce was a, uh, a guest on the show. Um, so I never heard of Keith Lee, but let's go with Keith Lee. If Keith Lee decided D, to do something, maybe not because restaurants is his, is his thing. If he decided to do something with a gourmet food brand, yes, he would be able to have, because he sounds awesome. By the way, I'm going to check him out after the podcast. Um, you know, he would then have the ability because it sounds like he really is authentic and really knows his stuff and really connected to find restaurants. He'd be able if I'm a gourmet food brand and I want to connect that my brand to his audience. Gee, that could be one of those, uh, you know, great partnerships of Keith is willing to do something like that, that he wouldn't maybe sell his soul out because it would be something that he maybe he would cook with again. I'm making this up, right? It's something that he sees is a great product. And that everybody wins, um, you know, if, if that's something that he would be interested in and it wouldn't at all, it wouldn't at all, um, it wouldn't at all impact his, uh, authenticity or everything he does on the restaurant side. DC: All right. So I want to pick up on this example because this is a great one. I know you don't know Keith Lee, but when you check him out after this. It will blow your mind because he is not what you would think of as a stereotypical, uh, food critic. And I mean that as a compliment. Uh, it, it, it, Muhammad Ali used to refer to himself as the people's champ. LT: Right. DC: I think of, uh, Keith Lee as the people's food critic. By the way, Keith. If you're listening to this, that's yours free. You can have that. That'd be a nice brand moniker for you. Uh, Keith Lee, the people's food critic, but to pick up on your example of doing something that would, uh, be, uh, integral and, and have integrity for his brand. It, one of the things he does, uh, uh, LT is. He starts by helping restaurants who are on the way up and growing, like he went to a food truck, a food truck where no one was going, LT, and he goes by there, he tastes the food, it's great. So then he starts to big up this food truck, uh, and starts to have people give him money, him being Keith Lee, to give to this person who had this food truck, I wish I remembered this brother's name, and he went and gave this cash. To the, to this food truck owner who was, who was committed to his craft because he was serving only one or two, uh, meals a day. But he said, I got to try to do this. So that's the, that's the kind of human that Keith Lee is. Now, if, if someone came to him and said, Hey, we are in the business of creating the next generation of chefs, that's what we want to do. And we want to find these chefs from areas that are not necessarily common. And we want to come to you to help us bring the word out. I think that would be directly in line with the kind of, uh, critic that he is and the kind of human that he is. The point here is that, um, if Keith Lee, uh, had 10 major sponsors and he probably already has that. And he put them all up on, on a screen during one of these says, these are my 10, what the audience ought to be able to say is I understand why you got all 10 of those and that's great. That's great. This is what you're saying. Whereas some of these influences out here, if they put their 10 up half of them would be like, now, you know, you just trying to get the bag. Exactly. That's how you, that's how you judge me. So what I'm encouraging the brand nerds here to be mindful of it is. Influencer marketing is only as influential as the authenticity of the influencer to their audience. That's it. That's it. LT: And one other connection. I agree with everything you just said. And the brand! It's gotta be also, there's gotta be, you just said it perfectly, if Keith Lee, however many he has, whether he has one or ten, if those brands really are a great representation of his brand, that's awesome, right? And so, the influencer has to be somebody that is what you said, D, plus It's the obvious where you shake your head. Oh yeah, that brand and that influencer fit perfectly. DC: Totally agree. One more shout out. I don't know how exactly this brother has done it, but he's done it. There are few endorsers of multiple products who maintain their brand inside of another brand in a partnership, as well as this person. He's the best I've ever seen. It's Snoop D O double G. I knew you were gonna say Snoop. Okay, it, like, this, now, Larry, you know we had an opportunity to work with him, uh, with our, uh, uh, one of our former clients at Harlem Globetrotters. Yep. So, uh, shout out, um, um, uh, APE, Amusement Park Entertainment. With, uh, uh, Jimmy, I call him Black Jesus, Ed, D, Rail, Smoke, uh, I'm gonna forget, uh, Seek, uh, Sequel D, I'm, I'm, I'm forgetting, uh, uh, goodness gracious, I'm forgetting, uh, Poetry, uh, Flaz, I'm forgetting someone, anyway, those are all the folks that we work with, uh, Brand Nerds, so, and then we worked with, uh, with Snoop Dogg. This dude is himself. Totally himself. And when he puts his list of 10, he's got more than 10. Um, it's not that they just make sense because they aligned with him is when he steps into a brand, he, he makes the brand shift towards him. Amazing. Just, just, just amazing. So to me, that's the number one influencer marketer in the world right now. Snoop D O double G. LT: I couldn't agree more. Is that the way to end this? Right? Like, that's, that, that puts a great bow on it. Snoop is the best. And Brand Nerds, as you're completing these kind of influencer deals, have Snoop in mind. It better be the easy fit where you go, yep, that makes sense. DC: Yep. I'm going to end it. You're right. Let's end it here. But I'm going to end it with two words in the name of the inimitable Snoop Dogg. You dig? LT: That's awesome. That goes right to the show close. Thanks for listening to Brands Beats and Bites. The executive producers are Jeff Shirley, Daryl "DC" Cobbin, Larry Taman, Hailey Cobbin and Jade Tate and Tom DiOro. DC: The Podfather. That's he. And if you do like the podcast, please subscribe and share. And for those on Apple podcasts, if you are so inclined, we love those excellent reviews. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. And we look forward to next time where we will have more insightful and enlightening talk about marketing and have a great 2024, y'all. Happy New Year, y'all.