Latest / The Marketing Brief / Robert & Brian Chat Media Buying in the AI-era and How to Define your Super Consumers (S1 E18)
Transcript
- Brian Aucoin: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Brief. I am your host Brian Acquan and this is the podcast where we briefly touch on topics across the marketing landscape. As always, we're joined by an industry expert and I'm joined by an old colleague and friend, Robert Brill today from Brill Media. Robert, welcome to the pod. Robert Brill: Thanks for having me, Brian. This is awesome. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, we're excited to have you in. Robert, would you like to introduce yourself and Brill Media, kind of talk about what you've been working on? Robert Brill: Yeah, so I'm Robert Brill. I've worked in advertising for 23 years, big agencies, mid-size agencies, and been running my company for the last 13 years. Started off as a media buying firm, and we typically solve three key challenges. better ads, leads, ⁓ that could be a function of needing better media buying. But even with better media buying, you typically need, see three common challenges. The media buying component, the message market match isn't there. So you're spending a lot of money to amplify the wrong message. So we solve for that. And then finally, it's really about warming up buyers to turn them into people who are willing to spend money with a ⁓ company, whether it's... you know, small, medium, or even massive amounts, half a million, of millions of dollars, it all starts with great marketing. Brian Aucoin: Of course. You and I both came out of the media buying ⁓ Obviously, you're still in it. I'm still ⁓ it in a certain sense. Here's I'd like to start. I'm really interested in how targeting, and we'll see you agree or not, but how targeting used to be a function of media. really, did a lot of, you know, remember at plan and we did a lot of ⁓ stuff, a lot of on how do you find your audience. And now that there's like places you go to buy Robert Brill: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Brian Aucoin: media and ⁓ mostly it's like Facebook telling you, hey, just give us your creative. We'll find your audience. We'll optimize it against you. that a change that you've seen, that you've been interested in? Maybe could just talk about that a little bit. Robert Brill: Yeah, look, the reality is that media buying is incredibly commoditized ⁓ for several reasons. Number one, it's a lot easier to do today than it was when we started in the business. And even seven years ago was ⁓ complex than it is today. Brian Aucoin: Cheers. Robert Brill: So the platforms make it really easy to buy advertising, ⁓ it, run the campaigns and optimize. Even the comp- now there are a lot of clients that say, you know, Facebook is incredibly complex. And what's kind of ironic just on a tangent ⁓ is the complexity with Facebook is there's still some complexity with the ad platform. But the complexity is just literally the logins and permissions. So many clients get locked out of their accounts or have like Other email addresses that is just a cardinal sin with, with, with these platforms. So it's, it's the permissions issue. That's actually a big, a big challenge. Once you, once you get into learning how to buy Facebook ads, it's far simpler today than it was like seven years ago. so theoretically a person ⁓ moderate level intelligence could figure out how to buy advertising space. It's not particularly complex. so. Brian Aucoin: Interesting. Robert Brill: Why do companies like mine even need to be here? There's a few reasons for that. Number one, the targeting on Facebook and for a lot of cases, Google, not in every place on Google, but in a lot of places on Google, on Meta, on TikTok, the targeting is the creative. So you write an ad. Brian Aucoin: Yep. Robert Brill: speaks to a very specific audience. You show the visuals that the audience achieving the transformation that they're looking for. ⁓ you essentially get pretty darn good targeting. That doesn't mean it's foolproof, but it's a lot easier ⁓ deploy. Still in programmatic media, when you're buying on the trade desk, ⁓ there's lot more granularity on targeting. When you're buying Google search advertising, that's complex math, as it were, in relation to the general targeting. in Meta and like TikTok and other channels. So really anyone listening that wants to buy Facebook ads, go in, develop an ad that speaks directly to your customer. the is train the algorithm, target age, and location. Let the algorithm learn who your people are. Turn on conversions API. So conversions API is like, you you tell Facebook which leads turn into customers or which buyers turn, know, ⁓ website visitors turn into customers and which don't. And then you populate that data back into Facebook or TikTok or Google or wherever, and it starts to learn who your best customers are. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. You stole my favorite line, which is the targeting is the creative. I was going to try to hit you with that and sound really profound, you got to it before I did. ⁓ Robert Brill: Sorry. Brian Aucoin: But no, completely agree with you there. And that's what I saw happen is that media buying became commoditized. It used to be something that was really the science. And then we would say there's art to it as well. But yeah, now it's ⁓ moved to the creative development side. How have you seen so now that is completely changing, right, with AI? And I think we found that the best use of AI is not pumping out creative. I think ⁓ we that right at the beginning, but it's like, ⁓ you could just make thousands of creative and you're like, ⁓ yeah, but it's not really good at that. How have you seen ⁓ creative change now that it's become the targeting? Robert Brill: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, reality is, that from a 10,000 foot view, need, you do need to pump out a lot of content. You're not creating a Super Bowl spot every time you turn out new ads and you need anywhere between seven and 20 ads a month with variations on copy, big variations, not minor variations on creative and really like. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, you need volume. Yeah. Robert Brill: Every business needs to be a content production machine, influencers, user generated content, big brand glossy content, content that looks like it was ⁓ by a five year old, post it notes, ugly content, simple content, long copy, short copy, medium copy, copy that is provocative and ⁓ copy that is provocative. Basically, The way I think about like meta in particular is every person falls into some category of They like videos, they like images, they like long videos, they like short videos, whatever the case is. So your responsibility as a business owner is to say, I need to create enough variation in ads that interesting to a whole variety of individuals. So the short copy is only going to be relevant for a certain group of people. And if you don't create long copy ads, then you're excluding a whole contingent of opportunity for you. But I think ultimately it comes down to the transformation you provide and advertising by itself is not the thing. It's, it's one of five steps that we deploy, but a successful advertising campaigns really comes down to understanding the problems of the, the, person you serve. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yeah, so that's really interesting. where do you where does the advertising sit in that kind of five points that you deploy? it the first thing? Are you driving awareness? Robert Brill: It's a commodity. No, no, no. Advertising is, so you take advertising as a standalone thing, it has several purposes in the funnel. But the first step to great advertising is not to think about advertising, it's to think about your super consumer. So we have this sort of concept that ⁓ there's three to think about people who can buy from you. There's the total addressable market, literally anyone who could possibly buy. Secondly, there's the ⁓ customer. The ideal customer in a very simple definition is someone who can extract the most value out your company. Where we like to focus our marketing on is the super consumer. The super consumer is someone who... will evangelize for your business. who will say positive things and refer people, et cetera. It's people who will pay you what you're asking. They're not gonna nickel and dime you. the third step is, and this is the most important one, you love working with them. This is, we with a lot of professional services businesses, and so this is highly relevant, right? Because what you're basically saying is, I don't wanna work with people who are gonna drain my energy. I don't wanna work with people who I think are bad people. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Robert Brill: Or whatever the thing is that makes it, that qualifies the under, I like working with them. They're a good human. One of ours is you're just a good human being. You're a bad human being. I don't want to work with you. You're a good human being. want to work with you. If you're ⁓ a services corporation and you have thousands or tens of thousands of clients, ⁓ maybe not about the individual relationship, but it's ⁓ the of the business. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Robert Brill: Our mission, whatever, you work with a bank, our mission is to turn 10 million lower class, struggling poverty people into the middle class by the year 2030. Like if that's the mission, I'm not saying you have to exclude everyone else. Like if you're a bank, you need the whales, you need the with big bank accounts who are gonna, But the people who you're super consumer fits your mission. So when we think about marketing, I'm not thinking about ads, I'm thinking about who is your super consumer? What is unique about them and what are their unique problems? And then I go in and say, what are the problems that you solve that are unique? Then your marketing falls into place. Cause you're going from talking to everyone and really having a hard time differentiating to saying, you know, we're the best accountants for the trucking industry. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Robert Brill: because for 20 years my dad was a trucker and I really understand that business. That takes you ⁓ from a completely commoditized accounting firm that does taxes and bookkeeping on the random, know, QuickBooks and Xero and all those things, to your contingent of prospective customer. They know that you are for them. You stand for something. So that, all of that falls into great creative media buying. So when we start with media buying, we're really talking about all that other stuff first. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. I love that you have this basis in that because I call that foundational marketing. Right. And I think there's always this rush to what's our Instagram ad. Right. Like ⁓ do we get on social or what do we do. And you're doing that work. almost sounds like it's like an inverted pyramid of like Tam your total addressable market. Then you've got your ideal consumer profile and then you get down to who are your super you call them super consumers. Yeah. Robert Brill: consumer. Yeah, I want to ignore everyone else. I just want to focus on the super consumer. Because when you focus on your super consumer, you become differentiated. And ironically enough, you start to get a lot more opportunities presented to you that doesn't and by the way, no one is saying you can't work with people who are not your super consumer. Of course you can. It just creates more opportunities for the business. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, and also it makes those tactics really easy, right? Where it's like if you're starting from a tactic place of just like, I'm trying to figure out my Instagram ad or I need a radio ad. hard, but ⁓ way you're going through it, you've identified these ⁓ who are going to be responsive. And then the tactics get really easy because you know exactly who your consumer is. ⁓ Robert Brill: Exactly. Exactly. It all falls into place when you know you're super consumer. Brian Aucoin: Yep, I love it. other thing I've been ⁓ a lot about this year, consumer trends or consumer insights, kind of what are consumers doing? identified them as like authenticity is important to them, community is something they're seeking, value is something that is ever present as they're making decisions. Are any of those things ⁓ that with you in terms of consumer insights, do you have anything else that you're kind of paying attention to right now? Robert Brill: It all comes back to the super consumer. hate to do that, but it's like authenticity. I fully agree with you. Authenticity makes sense. Your job as a business is to tell the customer they have a problem in dozens and hundreds of different ways that makes you the inevitable solution for them. That can only live out of a place of authenticity and empathy. Like when the customer... Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Robert Brill: sees a message and they think holy cow, he knows or she knows or they know my problem and they're able to articulate it better than was even to like, holy cow, that just put everything into place for me. That's everything you said. ⁓ about getting into the brain of the person and giving them an opportunity to say, yes, this person, this company understands my pain and chances are they can probably solve it. Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, I love that. And that comes from the imagery you use to the language you use. It really comes from an understanding place of I understand the consumer and now they're going to relate to this ad because I'm showing them that I understand them. Robert Brill: And it's not just the ad, it's social media. Like the challenge with a lot of social media, like there's this, know, framework of the levels of awareness. And when I started paying attention to this, blew my mind how obvious some of these mistakes are. So level of awareness, the first level of awareness is unaware, which is the person doesn't realize that they have a problem that your business solves. Doesn't mean they don't have it. They just don't realize they have it. So a lot of social media content posting is for the unaware audience and the problem aware audience. And then a minority in our, the way we look at the world, and then a minority of our social media posts are for people who are solution aware. They know that there's a solution. They just don't know which companies provides that solution. There's product aware, which means they know of the company and then there's most of where they're ready to make a purchase. So the big mistake that a lot of companies make is they say, ⁓ Well, you can't start now if I don't know I have a problem or schedule an appointment for what I don't have a problem that requires an appointment. So I think where a lot of businesses, big and small and everything in between, make mistakes is that they're speaking to the unaware audience who don't realize that they have a problem, but they're saying things that are only applicable to solution aware or aware or product aware audiences. The next step in creating a more holistic and more effective marketing apparatus for a business is really out the levels of awareness and ⁓ KPIs and metrics that speak to each level of awareness. ⁓ when you can understand, right? When you say start now to a person who is at least solution aware, if not product aware or most aware, that's the right message. Brian Aucoin: Mm-hmm. Yeah, the resumes, I call it systems marketing. Like I think we've gone from campaign marketing to systems marketing where you need to be ready for each one of those consumers with a message based on where they are in their life cycle with your brand or your service. So I totally dig that. I'm down. Robert Brill: Yeah. Like you want, you want business six months from now, speak to the unaware. You want business tomorrow, speak to the solution aware. Brian Aucoin: Yeah, and with different messages. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I always like to ask my podcast guests what's exciting them right now. It can either be in the world of media, in your professional capacity, or in your personal capacity. But what's something that you're excited about right now? Robert Brill: Can I give you like three things? ⁓ Professionally, I'm super excited about AI. I think AI is killer. Like one the things my team did, not developers, like one of our director of accounts, she built a Trello killer internally, so we canceled our Trello account. She built a ⁓ Notion killer, so we don't have to pay Notion anymore. Brian Aucoin: Sure. Uh-huh. Robert Brill: I'm building dashboards. It's, it's, it's far faster to build a dashboard in cloud for analysis than to do Excel analysis, dramatically faster and more powerful at that and more impressive, frankly, and easier to read. So, so many benefits. am ⁓ an AI CFO. I creating now. I hate to say this, but I am creating content, visual content, but it Brian Aucoin: Wow, yeah. Robert Brill: The thing about AI is that visual content and anything about AI, AI is relevant. The quality of AI is exclusively determined on the input of AI. So AI slop is gonna be AI slop because you're taking every general knowledge marketing thing and deploying it for your business, not so good. If you have an opinion, you have your framework, then you refine it through AI becomes highly valuable. So I'm excited about AI. Brian Aucoin: Nice. Robert Brill: The second thing I'm excited about is the freaking Dodgers. Holy cow. The big baddies, Shohei Otani. We have a once in a lifetime talent. mean, literally once in a hundred years since Babe Ruth talent. worldwide. He's big in Japan. ⁓ think there's a song that was like that once. He's big in Japan. He's all over. And the Dodgers, ⁓ Dodgers, our freaking Dodgers back to back world champions get him. I am thrilled. Does it ever? Brian Aucoin: You Yeah. Yep, alpharetta. Robert Brill: Does it ever get boring winning? Absolutely not. Because we went like 32 or 34 years of not winning and bankruptcies and all that stuff. And the last thing, most importantly, I'm excited about my family and my seven year old son. He's like, he has opinions about dinosaurs and Minecraft and he plays with his friends and it's absolutely glorious and wondrous and just beautiful to watch. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, I have an almost six year old and dinosaurs and Minecraft are totally top of the top of the game right now. And he also loves the Dodgers and I'm a Red Sox fan, but you it's hard to keep. We live in Los Angeles and he sees Shoei Otani and his teacher loves the Dodgers. So that's just what it's going to be. No, no, he can like whoever he wants. Yeah, that's awesome. This has been great to catch up and to talk. Robert Brill: ⁓ sorry sorry sorry You won't hold it against him. Brian Aucoin: ⁓ Thanks for joining us. How do people get in touch with you if they want to use Brill Media? Robert Brill: Yeah, Brillmedia.co. I recommend everyone go to strategy.brillmedia.co. lot of the discussion that we talked about here are ⁓ talked there. We've replaced Google presentations for like sales decks, and we just use that strategy.brillmedia.co. It has our pricing. You know, basically for a lot of companies, we just start with a 497 diagnostic and strategy. It's an interview and audit. a framework, the highest lever thing I can possibly do for a company. Brian Aucoin: That's awesome. And you've been at it for a while, so I know you're doing it well. Robert Brill: Well, thanks. It's a great time and same to you. a veteran at this point and so we should be doing more together. Brian Aucoin: Yeah. Absolutely. It was great to have you on. Thanks for being a guest on the Marketing Brief Podcast. I'm your host Brian Acquan and stay curious out there.