Latest / The Marketing Brief / Jordan & Brian Go Deep on Social Commerce (S2 E17)
Transcript
- Brian: Hello and welcome back to the Marketing Brief Podcast. I am your host, Brian Aquan, and this is the podcast where we explore topics and trends across the marketing landscape. Really, whatever we we want to kind of talk about. Of course, I can't do that by myself. You know, I do it when I'm in traffic, but it's better when I have someone on. So today we are very excited to be joined by Jordan West. Welcome to the podcast, Jordan. Jordan West: I am hoping to bring some interesting conversation today, Brian. Like I Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: I have no doubts that some people are gonna get something out of this. Brian: I think so too. And if people can't tell by your warm and inviting voice and how you approach the microphone, you do host your own podcast as well. Jordan West: I do the unofficial TikTok shop podcast. So just in case you're you're thinking to yourself, what have we gotten ourselves into today? It is TikTok shop. I have been obsessive about TikTok shop since 2024-ish? 2023? Yeah, 2024. As soon as it came to the US, right? And I say the US because I'm a Canadian and that's what we say. We say the US, right? We don't say our home country. It's it's our Brian: The US Jordan West: our our brother, our big brother. I mind you. So so Brian: Yeah. All the way from the Canada. Jordan West: As soon as I saw it, as soon as I saw TikTok shop, I was like, this is going to be the next massive platform. And I saw it, I saw today. It's on track to do $100 billion worldwide this year. A hundred billion. Like Brian: Unreal. Unreal. Jordan West: outpacing Shopify, outpacing Amazon in their infancy by like orders of magnitude, right? Like when you look at like a logarithmic scale, you're like, that's what this is. That is what this looks like. That this is what a hockey stick looks like. Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: so just happy to be in this space. Brian: And you would know that being a Canadian. Jordan West: Yes. Brian: Well, you are at Social Commerce Club. how would you like to introduce yourselves to the to the listeners? Jordan West: Yeah, I'm the founder of Social Commerce Club. Again, I I mean, I could tell you the, you know, the whole story. I am 40 now. So, you know, it's a long, long Brian: Grazie. Jordan West: tale here. No, I I have been in the brand space for a long time. I owned eight different brands over the years, mostly all in apparel. and we are now brandless. a couple of years ago, we had one brand that we sold and one brand go bankrupt. Those were our last two brands, and I was like, what do I do? And I saw TikTok shop come around. And I, because of you know, pattern recognition and all of these years in the space, I was able to really pick up on why it was going to be the big thing. It didn't really take off in the sort of hockey stick way until we actually saw TikTok for sure not being banned. That was the big thing, right? As soon as it wasn't Brian: Right. Right. Jordan West: banned, it was like, whoa, everybody went on board. We happen to be the big voice in the space. and I've got a YouTube channel, Jordan West e commerce entrepreneur that has, you know, hundreds of thousands of views monthly in the TikTok shop space. And so people knew about us and we built the like know and trust in that way that it was just like it was crazy. Brian: Yeah. Well, I'd love to start here because I've done some work in the social commerce space when I was at Gooder. I found it fascinating. But one of the most fascinating things I found about it is that it's huge in Asia. It's huge around the world. And it's really just starting to to gain traction and really grow, like you said, logarithmic logarithmically. That's a tough one to say. here in the US. So why is that? Why why is this caught on so so much around the world and not yet in the US? Jordan West: I mean, I th really the US and North America tends to be behind in trends in general, right? So, yes, is the US a trendsetter in some ways? maybe, but but most of the time China is three or four years ahead. In this case, social commerce has been a thing in Asia for years, right? Live Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: shopping is massive. now there are things you have to you have to separate out a few different things, right? Some are cultural. Right? Will we be massive with live shopping in the same way? I don't think so. I really don't. I don't think that live shopping is going to be the driver. I think that North Americans are very much people who will consume when they want rather than going and tuning into something. I think that if you look at like Apple TV, it's the perfect example, right? Apple TV. Has done this thing where they are now releasing, and you can see Ted Lasso is in this sort of phase right now where they're releasing once a week, but it's not at a specific time. You don't have to watch it live, but they are doing releases once a week, which I think is a great way to do that. They've done that with all of their big shows over the years. That's more like the North American way. And I think that works really, really well where people want to choose when they watch, which is why TikTok shop has really taken off in a massive way with short form content. Versus live shopping content. So that's kind of the big difference that I'm seeing right now between Asia Brian: Gotcha. Yeah. Jordan West: and and the States. And and continuing, it's gonna be interesting to see. I don't see live shopping taking off in the same way in Europe either. again, Brian: Gotcha. Jordan West: yeah, it it has to be dependent on the culture. Brian: Mm. Jordan West: and and that's that's sort of what I see. Brian: Yeah. And it and in Korea and in China, there are like the culture, there are like celebrities who sell, right? Like they that Jordan West: Totally. Brian: is their job that they get on camera and they hold something up and they sell it. when I first started seeing this and talking to my teams when I was I was running a team there, I was like, well, we've had QVC in this country for a long, long time of people getting Jordan West: Yeah. Yeah. Brian: on TV and kind of selling something. So that's existed, but Yeah, so so interesting to see the difference. And thank you for making the clarification. Social commerce as kind of a a a top layer and then live shopping living underneath that. Jordan West: Yes, yes. There's all of these different elements, right, of social commerce. And so it's Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: not just, it's not just that. What I pictured social commerce as is a brand handing over the reins of the brand to the creator, right? And that's a really big thing, right? So influencer Brian: Hmm. Yeah. Jordan West: marketing, not social commerce. Why? Because you are telling the influencer basically exactly what to say, how to say it, and you are judging them based on that. Social commerce is like, hey, Here's the product, go and sell it. I think it's much more akin to like the MLM of today, right? Where it's like, hey, you wanna make money? Come sell my brand, right? It's like every single brand now has become an MLM that has in their arsenal this whole massive sales team. And you're just trying to then get that sales team on board and incentivize them and motivate them for your brand. That's the big thing. Brian: Yeah. Yeah. So what what makes it work? You you mentioned incentivization, right? That's obviously a big part of it. But when you're running an agency like this, who are you looking for to represent a brand when they're trying to sell socially? Jordan West: Well, I mean, really today it's who can sell, right? Who actually can sell? That that we're not we're not looking for specific people when when we're going through Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: this, right? We're looking to see is has somebody sold a product like this before? Have they sold products in general before? Do they have the ability to create a huge amount of videos for our brand? And are they willing for us to then use that content across all platforms? Right. Because the best, the best videos you could talk to Any brand right now. The videos that are crushing on meta, on YouTube, on App Loven, on all of these different mediums are these creator videos that come from TikTok Shop, right? The reason why is because they get the validation straight on the platform, right? The the we're not guessing whether it's going to work or not. We're like, sweet, this video produced 100,000 on TikTok shop. It's probably gonna work on other channels because we're talking to other humans on other channels. Now, alternatively, Instagram content doesn't really work very well on TikTok. So TikTok is the pace car, right? When Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: you're thinking about which content is going to work across different channels, right? You think, okay, well, what works on TikTok is generally going to work anywhere else, but not the other way around. And that's really important for brands to understand. I again like I'm 40. I I am not a TikTok dude. I don't know if you guys can tell. Like that's not that's not what I'm like really good at, but what I'm good at, and I think as a Canadian generally has to punch up everywhere is we're really good at seeing the outside of things and being like, okay, I think I can see how that system works. And I think that's why we've been successful as a Canadian agency being one of the top TikTok shop agencies in the world. It's it's kind of funny, right? It's like, well, we don't even have TikTok shop in Canada. Brian: really? Jordan West: No, no, we do we don't and we don't even know when it's going to be, right? Like Australia Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: is gonna get it before us, like anyone else, like basically all of Europe now has it. Like when's Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: Canada coming? It's just that we're we're so incredibly regulated Brian: That's so funny. Jordan West: that like they're they're like, yeah, I think we'd rather sell cigarettes to kids than TikTok shop. So Brian: you know, I you talk about the capability of people being able to produce a lot of video to to be someone that you want to work with. I you know, I've written a lot and I I've studied a lot peer-to-peer messaging. And it just seems to be the creme de la creme right now of breaking through to consumers is on a peer-to-peer basis. There's trust there, there's familiarity there. Like there, there's you are looking to people in your network that you might know, you might just know them from being an influencer. Is that big in terms of how you qualify audiences, how you build this capability for brands? Jordan West: Yeah, so so we don't qualify anyone, just so you guys know. Like when we're Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: looking at creators, what we're doing is sending them samples, and if they do well, then we send them more. And it's it's a true win-win, right? Because people Brian: Gotcha. Yeah. Jordan West: on the platform are getting paid only when they actually produce sales, and that's it. Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: And so it's like awesome. If you don't make money on this, we are not going to give you more responsibility, and vice versa, right? It's it's a it's a true win-win. When you're looking at what the brand is doing. So that's that's Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: how we see it. Brian: And is exclusivity important to any brand? Is that in in any way how you operate, or is it really just a a spray? Jordan West: It's impossible. It is impossible. It is not, there's no exclusive. Again, it's so different than influencer marketing. You cannot Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: buy somebody. You can't buy. And also, these people don't have big followings, right? Like the Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: these are not people who have like somehow created influence for themselves. They are really good at selling, at talking about products and selling products. And also genuinely the ones that do the best are the ones that love the product. Like when we get a brand that works with us, like AG1 works with us, right? Most people love AG one. And so when these creators are getting AG one, it's not hard for them to talk about the product and how much they love the product, right? Like we work with a lot of massive consumer brands out there that people already love. So those are the ones that are really easy to get out there because people already have number one, heard other celebrities talking about them. I think that's really important. Again, in the AG one sense, it's like you ever listen to a podcast? Okay, good, you've heard AG one. So like you know what what you're going to talk about. You could probably pull from some of their ideas. Like that's that's a really big thing. Brian: So is it I I was thinking about another question, but that brings me up. so it awareness not being an issue for AG1, right? Is that the type of brand you like to work with? Or are there ways to then also drive awareness of like a new product or service? Jordan West: I mean, those are slam dunks, right? Like those are Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: the kind of those those are the kind of ones that are just absolute slam dunks. We're looking for when somebody comes to us, there has to be something interesting about the product that creators are going to talk about that is different. If Brian: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jordan West: you are just like like a lot of Amazon brands will come in and you're like, okay, so you're a commodity in the commoditized market who understood how to capture search demand. That is not interesting. And I don't think those are the kinds of brands that actually work. Now, if you have an interesting story around your product, if your product solves a specific issue for the general public, those are the kinds of products that are going to work there. and also like these products need to be TikTok specific, right? Because creators only get paid when you check out on TikTok shop. And so they want the checkout to happen. We talk about the Halo effect all the time, but it's like creators don't want the Halo effect. They want the the transaction to happen right there on TikTok Shop. And it's getting better and better with some of the tools that TikTok shop is putting in in place. And again, like we because we're one of the top agencies in the world, like we talk to the CEO of TikTok Shop. his name is Bob, and we talk to him specifically about that. That's his that's his his US name. Okay. His it's his white name. So through a translator. but like we we have their ear, we, you know, we have the top API credentials with all this this stuff because we're on the front lines seeing how this is all working. Brian: Mm-hmm. I love that. You started to hint on something that I've talked a lot about, which is authenticity. I think it's one of the major motivations for consumers right now of just trying to find out what's real, what's not real. Am I going to get this product when I actually purchase it? How, you know, living in this world where you're operating through kind of TikTok hosts, what do you call the what do you call the people who sell on TikTok? Creators. Jordan West: We call them creators. So creator is sort of the the word that we use for anyone that is selling on TikTok shop. You can call them TikTok shop salespeople. Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: but it but it's a very specific type of creator that is good at this. They're not influencers. Brian: Yeah, yeah. The creators. So how do you deliver that authenticity? You said one thing is is, you know, sending out product and see if they actually react to the product, if it's something that they actually use. Jordan West: absolutely. So, so when we're looking at this, I was actually just running some of these numbers before on what actually works. It is wild when you see so product demonstrations, number one, by far still product demonstrations are the Brian: Gotcha. Yeah. Jordan West: number one hook. Just show the product, right? I think every brand should know like, hey, here's how you use the product, right? And Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: what people do, because people are really smart as they look and they're like, I can see how that could fit into my life. Like, look an AG1. It's like, Just literally show the pri hey, first thing in the morning before anything else, I I pour this stick of AG1 in here. I stir it and I drink it and I feel better. Awesome. Easiest possible video. And and Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: you don't have to get fancy. That's the thing. People don't realize. You just don't have to get fancy. You just have to be clear. You have to show clarity in your communication. And that's where creators win. Brian: Yeah. I would imagine that not getting fancy actually breaks through more, right? The reality of seeing someone in there every day kind of using the product. Jordan West: 100%. Yeah. Brian: Yeah. That's cool. Well, I'd love to ask my guests a a question that's kind of a through line. the question for season two is what is your superpower? Jordan, do you know what your superpower is? great. Jordan West: I do. I do. My superpower is taking really complex systems ideas and boiling them down into very simple to understand concepts. I like to call them frameworks. I Brian: Nice. Jordan West: am obsessive about frameworks. I'm actually starting a whole new media property that's totally outside of TikTok shop based on frameworks. I've done a lot of CEO consulting and and advising boards and CEOs and all of them over the years, and Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: I use frameworks. it is what it is what I am obsessive with is taking all of this stuff that seems really complex, and you're like, actually, it's really simple. Like Charlie Munger talked about, you know, a man really needs somewhere between 90 and 100 mental models to understand the world. And that's what I believe frameworks are, and that's my superpower is Brian: Nice. Jordan West: is taking those. So I read a lot, I listen a lot. I'm constantly looking for new frameworks to be able to understand the world. Cause I think the more we understand the world, the more, the more we actually understand what is possible. And I think that. That most people don't understand what is actually possible, right? Like we there is such a high bar to what we can do as humans. It's wild. Brian: Yeah, I agree. And I that's my super power as well is breaking down complex ideas and making them really clear. Jordan West: interesting. Brian: So no one's ever come back to that with that with that answer on this podcast. So thank you. Yeah. Jordan West: it's a huge superpower, Brian. Like it's it's it's one of those things that I think you and I are very, very fortunate to have because then people can understand these things, right? Like Brian: Yes. Yeah. Jordan West: very fortunate. Brian: Yeah. Especially as a marketer. I mean, that is really the essence of trying to boil down an idea and connect with an audience. Jordan West: Totally. Yeah. Brian: Love that. Well, how do people get in touch with you? if they're interested in social commerce club, if they're interested in learning about your frameworks. Jordan West: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just go to socialcommerceclub.com. I mean, I think that's the the the biggest thing right there. Brian: Mm-hmm. Jordan West: and then you can find me on LinkedIn. I think that's the the number one way. If you just search for Jordan West Marketer, and if you search Jordan West Ecom on YouTube, I put out new videos. I would say one a week, but it's way more than that. So Brian: nice. Jordan West: yeah, very, very pumped these days to just put out as much education as I can. My my goal is to out educate. every single person out there when it comes to TikTok shop. So that that Brian: Yeah. Jordan West: is my entire goal. Brian: That's awesome. I love that there's that I love that you're in that space doing it because I love learning about it. So I'm gonna definitely digest those. Jordan West: Awesome. Awesome. Well thanks for having me on, Brian. This is great and I I hope people got a lot out of this. Brian: Me too. Yeah. Thank you for being a guest on the on the Marketing Brief podcast. it's been a real joy to have you on. Jordan West: Awesome. Thanks for having me. Brian: And to all the listeners out there, stay curious.