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Finding the Empathy in Data with Ian Baer · We Built This Brand

0:00
You know, the problem's not your brand.
0:02
The problem's not your customer.
0:03
The problem's not you personally.
0:05
It's that marketing doesn't work the way it used to.
0:10
People don't work the way they used to.
0:12
They make faster decisions with less information than ever.
0:17
Younger consumers are trained.
0:20
To make decisions faster and with less information, by
0:23
the way, they're doing this in the B2B world as well.
0:27
I've advised a number of B2B brands.
0:29
Like if you're going to wait around for the person, who's going
0:32
to say, yeah, I'll take a meeting with a sales rep. That's
0:35
not how most decision makers under 35 or 40 have been trained.
0:40
They're going to gather up as much information as they
0:43
can, and they're going to make a decision on their own.
0:45
And if you don't make information accessible to people.
0:50
Welcome to We Built This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the
0:53
creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with
0:57
practical insights that you can use in growing your own business.
1:00
Today, we're talking with Ian Baer, Founder and CEO at Sooth, a
1:05
marketing intelligence company that helps brands, agencies, and
1:08
media companies dramatically improve their marketing performance.
1:12
Ian has over 35 years of experience in the industry, and in
1:15
this episode, we really dive head first into his philosophy
1:18
and talk about his perspective on the landscape of marketing
1:22
and the importance of emotional connection and storytelling.
1:25
Now, I always love wading into deeper conversational waters
1:28
and definitely hope we can find some time to have Ian back for
1:31
another conversation because this was just frankly a delight.
1:34
It was a lot of fun to talk to him.
1:36
For now, though, let's get our waders on and jump
1:39
into this conversation with Ian Baer of Sooth.
1:46
Alrighty.
1:47
Well, Ian Baer, welcome to the podcast.
1:49
Thanks for
1:49
having me on, Chris.
1:50
I'm excited to be here.
1:52
Yeah, excited to learn more from you today about your business and what you've
1:56
built at Sooth and how you all help solve marketing challenges for businesses.
2:02
So, we'd just love to dive into it.
2:04
I always like to talk about where you came from and where you got your start.
2:08
What led you to where you are today?
2:10
You know, one of the things I will often explain, especially
2:14
if I'm teaching at a university guest lecturing, is that
2:18
I nobody ever &taught me how to do this marketing thing.
2:22
I have never taken a marketing class in my life.
2:25
I was a journalism major.
2:28
So what I learned a lot about in college as a journalism
2:32
major and a, a sociology and, and psych minor is I learned
2:39
about the importance of storytelling, and I learned about
2:44
the critical nature of human empathy, human understanding.
2:48
Developed a real hunger early on to understand why people
2:54
did the things they did, not just what they do, but why?
2:58
And when I got into marketing, and I found myself in a position pretty early
3:04
on to influence marketing strategy while never having taken a marketing
3:09
class, like I didn't know about the three P's or, you know, any of those
3:13
things that supposedly unlocked all the keys to marketing success, what I knew
3:20
was that if I understood somebody's motivations, I understood how they made
3:27
choices, I understood what was important to them, independent of marketing,
3:33
then I could find a way to help that brand relate to that human being.
3:37
So from the earliest days.
3:40
That's how I approached marketing, and over the years, I guess, while I knew
3:45
I was really good at this marketing thing, I didn't realize that what I was
3:51
doing for my clients, what I was teaching my teams to do, eventually what I was
3:56
building agencies and building strategy and creative departments to do, was a
4:02
definitively different practice that all had to do with empathetic storytelling
4:08
and getting to the heart of how people make the decisions they make.
4:14
Ultimately, when I decided to pivot out of the agency business,
4:18
which was very, very good to me for 35 years, the mission
4:23
really became about codifying this work that I had done, which
4:27
had consistently delivered better results for all my clients.
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I mean, we're talking, you know, often between four and
4:35
10 times the marketing performance that came before.
4:40
I sought to codify that as a repeatable practice.
4:43
In doing so, we actually, wound up with a patent pending
4:47
methodology that decodes the emotional tendencies, the
4:53
emotional decision making hierarchy, really for any population.
4:58
And that defines the work we do at Sooth.
5:02
That is really cool.
5:03
I mean, taking the emotional aspect of things.
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I mean, I think a lot of people do think more on
5:09
the intellectual level of we've got all this data.
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We got all this information.
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Surely we can make good decisions based on the click through rates on this
5:17
particular thing and not think through the emotions maybe behind that decision.
5:22
Well, and I think also to an extent we have been
5:26
overly trained by a lot of the "powers that be" in marketing.
5:32
When I hit "powers that be," I mostly mean like, you know, the
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digital media empires to believe that it's all about targeting in that
5:40
moment of truth, and that if we just have all the right data to find
5:44
someone in that precise moment, when they're ready to buy, we win.
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The unfortunate reality of that is if you wait until somebody's ready
5:55
to buy, you've missed the greatest part of the opportunity, because
6:00
all you're doing at that point is fulfilling an immediate need.
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Well, history tells us 95 percent of the time people will choose the
6:10
brand that does the best job of meeting their needs in the moment.
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If you're a brand that has spent millions or tens of millions or hundreds of
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millions of dollars on brand equity, building a great brand experience, building
6:28
a killer mobile app, building an amazing, useful, friendly, engaging website.
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And in that moment, somebody is opportunistically there with something
6:43
that sounds either a little better or simply more immediate than
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what you have to offer all that money that was spent on brand equity
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goes up in smoke in that moment.
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And we see it happen all the time.
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Think about the last time you were scrolling through Facebook, and you
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saw some reel, some video for a supplement, a nutritional supplement that
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claimed to do something that previously only a pharmaceutical could do.
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Now, think about that drug company that might've
7:18
spent a billion dollars bringing that drug to market.
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But in the moment, here's something in a capsule.
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Here's something in a gummy that I can click on right now in Facebook.
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It says it's going to control my diabetes.
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They wouldn't lie to me, right?
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So all that R and D, all that brand equity,
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all that experience, all that data, poof.
7:42
In the moment I bought that gummy 'cause it looked good on Facebook.
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And this is the, the dilemma that brands find themselves
7:50
in, which is one of the reasons the DMA says that over the
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last two years, marketing effectiveness has declined 62%.
8:00
It's declined 71% over the last four years.
8:04
I found myself, I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago with
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about 75 CMOs, and the topic that came up more often than not was
8:18
how poorly everything was working in their marketing organizations.
8:22
And it sort of led me to this, this line that I found myself repeating over
8:26
and over again, "It's not you, it's marketing." You know, the problem's not
8:30
your brand, the problem's not your customer, the problem's not you personally.
8:34
It's that marketing doesn't work the way it used to.
8:41
People don't work the way they used to.
8:44
They make faster decisions with less information than ever.
8:50
Younger consumers are trained to make
8:53
decisions faster and with less information.
8:56
By the way, they're doing this in the B2B world as well.
9:01
You know, I've been, I've, I've advised a number of B2B brands.
9:04
Like if you're going to wait around for the person, who's
9:07
going to say, yeah, I'll take a meeting with a sales rep,
9:10
that's not how most decision makers under 35 or 40 have been trained.
9:16
They're gonna gather up as much information as they can,
9:20
and they're gonna make a decision on their own, and if
9:22
you don't make information accessible to people you lose.
9:26
So much of the conversation we're having is if you wanna reclaim marketing
9:31
effectiveness, you actually have to engage with somebody far earlier.
9:36
Then their moment of need.
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And that is counterintuitive to the way a lot of people have been taught
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modern marketing is supposed to work moments, moments, moments, moments.
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No, it's more of a long haul.
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And it's about emotional connection.
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And it's about empathy and it's about really understanding
9:56
what somebody needs and finding a way to give it to them.
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It is the oldest rule of selling.
10:02
There is understand what somebody needs and find a way to give it to
10:07
them.
10:07
Identify the pain, push in on the pain.
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Like that's, that's what I was taught in sales all those years ago of like.
10:13
You know, identify what that pain point is and bring everything
10:16
back to how you're going to solve that pain and that problem.
10:18
And that's why those supplements and things sell like hotcakes because people
10:22
are going, I'm in pain right now, scrolling through, you know, scrolling through
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TikTok.
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And because part of their pain is I don't want to go to a doctor.
10:31
I don't want to deal with insurance.
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I don't want to get a prescription.
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Wait a minute.
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I can get these gummies that are going to solve all my problems.
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Click, click.
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I'm in.
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And that's the challenge.
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About 10 years ago, only 40 percent of people regularly made impulse purchases.
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It's gone up every year since the latest data says 88 percent of us.
10:54
Buy on impulse and we're spending twice as
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much on impulse as we were a few years ago.
11:00
We are more comfortable shelling out hundreds of
11:03
dollars at a time for things that we didn't plan to buy.
11:07
So it makes it really, really hard for a brand to get
11:12
anything out of, out of all that equity it built up.
11:16
Yeah.
11:17
And it's, I mean, I'm, I'm thinking through a situation I
11:19
was in recently where, I'm learning to fly fish this year.
11:23
That's just a personal, personal endeavor of mine.
11:27
It is an adventure like no other.
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And I can't even imagine it's, it's really fun, but I was like, you know what?
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I was like, I'm going to start cheap.
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I'm not going to do what I see.
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A lot of guys do where they go out and they buy 16,000 worth of gear.
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They do it once and then they give up on it
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because it's so difficult and it's difficult.
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So I started cheap.
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And I've been slowly adding, now, admittedly, I've done some research.
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I went into a fly fishing shop, Orvis, who, they have a local fly shop here.
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And, you know, I started trying stuff on.
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I found out that my sizing was weird.
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And all of a sudden people in the store going, well, you know, we only
12:05
have this one option here and it's more expensive than what you want to
12:08
pay, but we'll give you a discount and like all those things combined.
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I just made that impulsive decision.
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I wasn't fully planning on it.
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My wife was a little surprised when I came home.
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But you know, it was one of those impulsive decisions that I made just
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on the emotion and also these guys gave me the warm fuzzies, right?
12:22
Like, I have been into the store multiple times.
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They know me.
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First time I came into the store, one of the guys played
12:28
with my daughter so I could talk to another associate.
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And like, you know, I'm like, I like these guys.
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I like this environment.
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They're doing their best to help me out.
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I mean, it's such a great example, right?
12:38
So what Orvis did was they connected with you
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emotionally before the moment you were ready to buy.
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And very often that's what we talk about is emotional connection
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works because it creates a mutual sense of expectation.
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It helps the brand.
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Understand and expect what someone wants from them.
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What it also does is it trains that customer to expect as
13:05
you did, Chris, when you were ready to really invest in fly
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fishing, there was some part of you that said, Orvis gets me.
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I'm not going to start over with a Google search.
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I'm not going to follow a bunch of fly fishing influencers
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and social media and see what gear they recommend.
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Orvis gets me, those people get me, those people understood me not
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only as a, as somebody with an interest in fly fishing, but my needs
13:36
as a dad, my needs as a customer, how I want to be treated, what a
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good give and take in exchange feels like, and that's exactly what
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we're trying to help more brands do, is anticipate what people need.
13:52
Because if you connect emotionally.
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With a customer or a prospect, you know what
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they need often before they know they need it.
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And when they do need it, that reciprocal expectation is already in place.
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That's why brands that emotionally connect
14:10
with their customers are worth four times more.
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The, the value of emotional connection, I think one of the, the
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data points was somebody who feels emotionally connected to a brand.
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Not only did they spend four times more, but they
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remain a customer an average of 20 months longer.
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So if you think about any recurring revenue business model, a
14:34
subscription product, A prescription drug where, where the annual
14:39
customer value could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Just think about what an extra 20 months of customer life is worth.
14:48
Yeah.
14:49
Yeah.
14:49
I mean, coming from a business that does just that, you know, recurring retainer
14:53
based services, and I'm sure you're probably in a similar boat of like, if you
14:57
save them money, if you do something to connect with them emotionally, maybe
15:01
they go through a rough spot and they need to be spotted a month on their
15:04
service or something like, yeah, we've gotten so much life out of clients
15:08
because, you know, we've, we've catered to their emotions because we care, but
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also because that just helps continue to grow, you know, to build that trust.
15:17
So I see exactly what you're saying.
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That's, that's, that's great.
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Yeah.
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Everyone's really good at focusing on the what and when.
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I mentioned, you know, my journalistic training, everything for me always comes
15:29
down to, you know, who, what, when, where, why, how, and marketers are tend
15:34
to be much better at focusing on the what and when than on the who and why.
15:40
But if we invest a little bit in understanding who's buying, why they're
15:45
buying, what their criteria really are, then you're not going to get chewed up
15:50
by the buzzsaw of instinct and impulse that is really hurting a lot of brands.
15:57
Well, we've dove in on the deep end of this and I love it.
16:00
So I'm happy to keep going down this line, but I do
16:02
want to know a little bit more about sooth itself.
16:05
So you said you were in marketing for 35 years, you've got into the business.
16:08
I'm sort of a rarity too from the agency world.
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Not only that I survived 35 years of agency life, which in itself is, is.
16:19
Remarkable for someone of my youth.
16:24
I lived several lives in the agency world.
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I started as an account person, which was not what I
16:32
sought out to do, but it's where my first agency put me.
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I wanted to be a creative, I wanted to be a copywriter.
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They needed an account person.
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I needed a raise.
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I became an account person and then I grew up through the ranks of account
16:46
management, went on to be president of a few agencies, but along the way.
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The thing that really kept me in the game all those years, which was
16:56
strategy, when I was an account person, when I was an agency leader, making
17:03
sure we got to the right, most effective ideas was always my mission.
17:06
Well, eventually, strategy became a specialty.
17:09
It wasn't when I started in the late eighties.
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So then I pivoted out of account leadership and general agency
17:17
management, focused my career on strategy leadership, had the
17:22
opportunity to be chief strategy officer of a few agencies,
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and also spent seven years as a chief creative officer.
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So by the time I pivoted out of the agency world,
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it's like I had my account leadership career.
17:37
I had my strategy career.
17:39
I had my creative career, did the agency
17:43
president thing, definitely not the job for me.
17:46
And, and, had such a well rounded set of experience that I wanted
17:53
to be able to solve as many problems as I could for brands.
17:56
Outside the agency model, doing the things I do best,
18:00
which is helping my clients get to superior insights,
18:06
more impactful insights that drive better results.
18:10
I saw way too many case studies from agencies where they were
18:14
bragging about things like, you know, we increased this brand's email.
18:19
Open rate by 8 percent and that's not why I'm here.
18:24
I'm, I'm really, my mission is to transform the relationships between
18:29
brands and people who buy from them and make those relationships
18:33
more empathetic and use data as the key to unlock that empathy.
18:39
I feel like brands have so much data, so much technology,
18:43
But we tend to use that data in the wrong ways.
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And, and there is such a tendency to want to
18:48
use data in ways that are awfully mercenary.
18:52
And I get that.
18:53
It's okay.
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I prefer to use it to solve people's problems.
18:57
So you mentioned, you mentioned using data to be empathetic.
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How, how does a brand become empathetic with data?
19:04
I can think of some ways that you might want to go about it just with the
19:08
content you write or the content you create and how you communicate with people.
19:13
Is that a lot of what it is or is there something more to the secret sauce?
19:17
There are certainly different degrees, but, but the secret sauce when it
19:21
comes to Sooth and the reason, I never thought I'd wind up being an inventor
19:26
and yet here I am, the reason we have a patent pending on our method is
19:31
because we developed a set of algorithms that allow us to analyze lies.
19:36
third party data and specifically the signals and patterns in that data to
19:43
decode the emotional decision making tendencies of consumers or business people.
19:50
I read an article in 2016, I think it was actually published in 2015, and if
19:57
you or your listeners have not read it, I couldn't recommend it more highly.
20:00
It's called The New Science of Customer Emotion.
20:03
So, when Harvard Business Review did this study, working with, actually one
20:10
of our data partners, Halixa, they determined, that of all the emotions we
20:15
feel, there are only 10 that positively correlate to people's brand choices.
20:21
They are things like the need to feel confident, or the need
20:24
to have fun, or the need to feel connected to other people.
20:28
And of course they all have undersides too, right?
20:31
So like if one of those key emotions, for example, is security.
20:35
Well, the underside of that is fear.
20:36
And we've certainly seen fear used in, you know, everything from
20:40
marketing campaigns to political campaigns, very effectively, all of
20:45
these emotions, you know, confidence has an, an underside of insecurity.
20:50
And, and certainly we've seen that used in a lot of advertising over the years.
20:54
But we focus on, on these 10 emotions.
20:56
So Harvard proved out that if somebody, if a brand emotionally connects to a
21:01
customer, as I mentioned, that customer at the time was worth 52 percent more.
21:07
And to me, as somebody who had always been preaching this opportunity to
21:13
engage empathetically with, with customers and often found that greeted by.
21:17
Well, that sounds nice, but it's kind of
21:19
a warm and fuzzy and I have to sell stuff.
21:22
Suddenly, I had a white paper that I could share with my clients
21:26
that showed, no, actually, this is a really good way to sell stuff.
21:29
And I became almost obsessed with it.
21:32
Well, in the eight years since that was first measured and
21:36
studied, that 52 percent increment is now a 4x increment.
21:41
Because as the rest of marketing has gotten more commoditized,
21:45
And more expensive, we've seen emotional connection
21:50
emerge as the highest leverage opportunity brands have.
21:56
So, going back to your question on how you use data to unlock
22:01
empathy, data can be analyzed and used in ways that allow us to
22:08
detect people's emotional needs from their decision making patterns.
22:15
The websites they choose, the stores they visit, the brands they
22:19
trust, who they watch on TV, the mobile apps they use, and how
22:24
they use them, and who they follow on social, and all of those data
22:27
signals together paint an incredibly robust behavioral picture.
22:33
Of of a buying audience.
22:35
So that's always where we begin is with that behavioral analysis.
22:39
Then we can overlay onto their decision making tendencies and their behaviors,
22:45
their media habits, their retail habits, their social media habits, and
22:51
in the end, provide the brand with a very detailed dossier that almost
22:57
functions like a user manual for how to sell anything to any audience.
23:05
That's fascinating.
23:07
So when you're talking about the pulling in the behavioral
23:11
habits, is that surveys that go out to the audience?
23:14
How is that working?
23:15
Because we're attribution is also becoming a big challenge,
23:18
which is why these emotional connections are a thing.
23:21
So how does, how does that factor into this?
23:25
So, we license data from a multitude of sources, everything from emoji analysis
23:33
to text based analysis to social conversation, survey responses, digital
23:39
behaviors, media behaviors, retail behaviors, as I mentioned, social influence
23:45
patterns, and, and all of that gets crunched together with the magic of AI.
23:51
And what is remarkable is when you analyze what somebody has already
23:55
done, you can crunch what would normally take a couple of years
24:00
worth of custom research and in market testing into about a month's
24:06
worth of analysis that can tell you before you spend your money.
24:10
What's going to work and what's not going to work.
24:12
We can actually predict at a 95 percent confidence level,
24:17
which media channels are going to overperform your ROI and
24:22
by how much, which are going to underperform your ROI target.
24:26
And by how much we knew, we had something going as we started to
24:30
walk into clients and You know, present the insights that they hired
24:34
us to find, and we would hear things like, Oh my gosh, where were
24:38
you six months ago when we decided to sponsor this sports team?
24:42
You know, we had no idea that, that the audience that consumes
24:45
more of our product than any other doesn't attend live sports.
24:49
And you know, what it has really become because brands struggle so much with.
24:54
Attribution with marketing mix modeling and really knowing where the money went.
24:59
The best value we can provide is in helping people know in
25:03
advance where to put their money, where to place their bets.
25:07
I've always felt that the best thing you could do
25:10
for any marketing leader is answer the question.
25:13
If I had a dollar, where should I put it to deliver the most to my business
25:19
and be able to look at it in as diverse and expansive a way as possible.
25:25
You know, it, should it be a shelf talker?
25:27
Should it be a TV spot?
25:28
Should it be product placement?
25:30
Should it be a contract with this social influencer?
25:34
You gotta be able to look at those things apples to apples.
25:36
It's unacceptable in 2024.
25:39
If somebody says they can't, of course they can.
25:42
Well, let me ask this then.
25:43
So what are those trends that you're seeing in the present
25:46
year over the past couple of years as the places where
25:48
people are seeing the most investment for their money?
25:51
It varies.
25:52
You know, I think one of the most important trends
25:56
that we are watching is the merging of the B2B and B2C.
26:02
Marketing environments, it always used to be the B2B had its own
26:07
rules and I touched on this a little bit before more and more.
26:12
And I think it was McKinsey used the word consumerization.
26:18
Of business to business marketing, especially through
26:21
the pandemic, where everyone found themselves think
26:26
about, you know, where you might be sitting right now.
26:28
As you listen to this, you're probably not in what I would call
26:32
a single state environment, meaning purely at work, purely at
26:37
home, purely on family time, purely, you know, on personal time.
26:43
We are simultaneously.
26:45
Members of our family, we are professionals, we are hobbyists,
26:48
we are connoisseurs, we are enthusiasts, we are activists.
26:52
And those modes are simultaneous, they are not
26:55
nearly as compartmentalized as they once were.
26:59
I often think, I love the TV show Severance,
27:02
which if you haven't seen it, it's so good, right?
27:05
I'm not sure Severance gets made today.
27:08
I'm not sure that gets green lighted.
27:10
Today, because the notion of being able to compartmentalize
27:15
the person you are at work from the person you are in your home
27:19
life, I think 10 years from now, be a completely foreign concept.
27:25
So when people are very comfortable shifting.
27:30
Minute to minute between personal and professional, it really blurs
27:35
the line in terms of what their expectations are for interacting with
27:41
with business brands, the devices they use, the information they share.
27:46
And this blurring of the line, I think is one of the most important
27:50
trends because it actually now brings this notion of storytelling
27:55
and emotional connection into the business world as well.
27:59
And it's certainly a very important thing, especially as Gen Z
28:04
moves into the business world, starts to take over a little more
28:08
business decision making every year and as social media natives.
28:13
And as people who are used to doing everything in an independent,
28:17
digital fashion, very different from the generations that
28:21
came before, they're just not working the way all of us did.
28:25
And by the way, they also, a lot of them finished up college or, did a
28:30
significant part of their college during the pandemic in some form of isolation.
28:35
They're not as used to socializing ideas.
28:38
As older generations are, they are used to
28:41
independent information gathering and decision making.
28:45
And that doesn't really fly with the consensus
28:49
building more old fashioned sales process of B2B.
28:52
So that's just, I think, one example of where the trends are taking us.
28:57
Well, that's, that's a good one.
28:58
And that's, that's a really interesting one for me because
29:01
I've always, most of my career has been in B2B stuff.
29:04
So thinking in a B2B mindset, B2B marketing, B2B to business
29:07
development, like it's all, all kind of under the same umbrella
29:10
from my experience and what we've seen, I mean, what you're saying
29:14
feels like it's really true because I've seen a lot of move towards.
29:18
What we call permissions based marketing, right?
29:21
You opt in to get advertising.
29:23
You opt in to get this information.
29:25
You opt in even to accept cookies now, which has an impact on
29:28
attribution and the things that are challenging right now, the challenge
29:31
becomes when you're trying to do social media marketing, right?
29:33
Like if you're, if you're putting a lot of money into
29:35
tick tock, it's like, is that money actually coming to us?
29:37
You have to ask people now to get that information out there.
29:40
So that becomes a challenge, but that permission based marketing.
29:44
Makes sense that we would now be starting to see that merge
29:47
because over time, people were like, I want you in my channels.
29:49
I want that information.
29:51
You know, we all know, why am I blanking on the guy's name?
29:56
Oh, Gary Vee.
29:58
Gary Vee.
29:58
Thank you.
30:00
Yes, that's, that's how much I've tried to put him out of my head.
30:03
I'll just say that.
30:07
No offense to Gary Vee.
30:08
I'd love to have him, but
30:09
boy, there, there is no more polarizing figure
30:12
in the marketing world than Gary Veeaynerchuk.
30:14
Yeah, but the, the, the challenge, the challenge is like, if you follow him
30:18
on, like I've followed him on LinkedIn for a little while and all of a sudden
30:20
he was creeping into my social feeds and I didn't want that information there.
30:25
Yeah.
30:25
Well he's become almost more of a self help guru.
30:29
Oh yeah,
30:29
then just a marketing guy at this point.
30:32
I mean, he's, he is really the definition of personal brand,
30:37
right?
30:38
Which works for him.
30:39
And for the people that want that, you know, want that content,
30:43
like he's making himself available in the best ways possible.
30:47
It's incredibly effective until you were like,
30:49
Oh, I was just curious about you on LinkedIn.
30:51
I didn't want to see you on my Instagram feed too.
30:54
So, so yeah, I can definitely see where that's, that's a big benefit
30:57
and I didn't want to buy your merch.
31:02
I mean,
31:03
I like wine, but
31:04
come on, man.
31:04
Well, he's, he's certainly, you know, as, as really one of the early, I
31:10
guess you'd say crossover artists from the world of digital marketing.
31:15
You know, Gary, Gary's done some extraordinary things, but he's, he's
31:19
branched out into things like, you know, they manage athletes now.
31:23
I'm, I'm just sticking to the world of marketing
31:25
insight that, that makes me very happy.
31:27
So, yeah, so I think permissions based is, you know,
31:30
because to your point, like he has agencies, right?
31:33
He's got that business side and that's why he's in all those different places
31:36
because he knows at some point you might need to engage with his agency and he,
31:41
he knows that that's part of his business development and part of his strategy.
31:44
So yeah.
31:45
Cool.
31:46
Yeah, you're seeing that more and more.
31:47
We're seeing that in the podcasting world.
31:49
A lot, you know, people want to come in and do B to B podcast because it's a way
31:54
of getting in front of people, becoming them a mini Gary Vee or what have you.
31:59
So,
32:00
and content is, is the way to do it.
32:02
We realized that very early on after we launched suit that, until you
32:08
actually heard what we had to say, you weren't really going to be able to, to.
32:14
Understand why we're here.
32:15
We're not a data company.
32:18
We're not a research company.
32:20
We're an insights company.
32:22
You don't hear about a lot of insights companies.
32:25
You don't hear a lot of CMOs say, you know what I need to do in 2025?
32:29
I need to find a great insights company.
32:31
But we think five years from now, they're going to be saying that.
32:36
So it's a matter for us of getting the thought leadership out
32:42
there and hopefully, We've You know, connecting with people who
32:48
might hear what we have to say in an interview on a podcast and
32:54
say, okay, wait a minute, that's actually something I can use.
32:57
I'm going to take that to work with me and put it into action and
33:01
hopefully it's that's different from what I'm hearing every day.
33:05
I need more of that.
33:07
So I think really those B2B marketers, so much of it is about owning
33:12
space in thought leadership and it is just too easy for any brand,
33:19
B2B or B2C, to be seen as a parody offering and then it's over.
33:26
Then you're back down to that moment when somebody is desperately in need.
33:30
So yeah, it, that everyone wants.
33:34
Content they can use the first rule for a
33:38
brand now in any space really is be helpful.
33:42
And when you're helpful, people pay attention to what you have to sell.
33:46
Yeah, they definitely do.
33:47
And yeah, I think, you know, a lot of how to's.
33:50
I mean, and to that point, I mean, that's
33:51
even where AI is going with search, right?
33:53
Like people will ask Google a question now as opposed to just
33:56
writing a word because they know AI is going to answer it.
33:59
And if your question isn't matched up with what
34:01
Google has, you're missing out on search results.
34:04
Very true.
34:05
And, and one of the big challenges with AI of
34:07
course, is that all the, all the raw material for AI.
34:14
Is human.
34:15
So, you know, all the input, it had to come from a person that
34:20
will bring with it biases that will bring with it exclusions.
34:24
And, and that is why, you know, it's
34:26
certainly AI in the hands of talented humans.
34:32
Is where this is all pointed as opposed to the thing that keeps way
34:36
too many people up at night, which is, you know, AI replacing us.
34:41
AI is going to push us to do more, do better, and it is going
34:47
to raise the bar for people to contribute genuine talents.
34:52
You know, when a machine can Iterate something 500 times over,
34:58
well then that's not what we should have our talented people doing.
35:02
Anytime somebody asks me about jobs going away in marketing and
35:06
advertising because of AI my response is, I would spend less time
35:12
worrying about that and more time figuring out how you're going to use
35:16
AI to do the thing you do better, or to do something you can't do today.
35:21
And certainly with sooth, that's, that's what we did.
35:24
If it wasn't for AI we couldn't offer what we offered.
35:27
It would have taken years to reach the same
35:31
conclusions we can reach after a couple of weeks.
35:34
Yeah.
35:34
So going back to sooth and how you grew it, like I always like to know
35:39
in these interviews, like what was your first big moment of validation?
35:44
Because you, you leave.
35:45
This industry of 35 years, you go off to do your own thing.
35:49
I know how much of a challenge that can be.
35:51
Did you have clients out the gate?
35:53
Did you have to get some?
35:54
And then what was that validation that, Hey, I might be onto
35:57
something with what I'm doing beyond just the idea of my head.
36:00
Took six weeks to land our first client, which was a pleasant surprise.
36:06
I thought it was going to take longer than that.
36:09
But, but even then, you know, and even now, to an extent, there's
36:13
a challenge in helping brands understand the value of these
36:19
insights, understand, how and why they would do things differently.
36:24
You know, if they knew more, I would say the ahas came
36:29
pretty early on, especially when we would get in front of.
36:34
Companies like Meta and Gartner, you know, not just brands, but, but,
36:41
you know, when Gartner says this is the most inventive use of data we've
36:48
seen in a very long time, that that's a little, it's, it's encouraging.
36:54
It's humbling.
36:55
It's all those exciting things, but it let us know.
36:57
And we continue to be validated by Okay.
37:03
Look, I told you, I was at this conference a couple of weeks
37:05
ago, a few of us were from Sooth, and there were 75 CMOs there.
37:10
We were the only company exhibiting at this conference that
37:15
does what we do, and, and we occupy a completely unique place.
37:22
There are research companies, we're not a research company.
37:25
We're a, what should I do company.
37:30
The marketing world needs more of those.
37:32
So we're very validated by the feedback we get from clients saying things like
37:39
this is more than we've ever known about our customers in the history of the
37:42
company, but mostly the validation comes when they put our insights into action.
37:49
And see better results and as a company that's less than two years old,
37:53
you know, we're still counting those successes as, as we grow and mature.
37:58
But again, it's built off of decades of, of what we know and
38:03
have proven works in everything from financial services to
38:07
transportation to, to technology, you know, in the end, 90
38:11
percent of all the choices we make with our money are emotional.
38:15
We help brands understand what people need from them emotionally, and it's
38:20
it's the most unique offering in the space, but we're making a difference.
38:24
Well, Ian, that's really fascinating, and I'm glad it's going well for you.
38:28
You know, being so early on in your company, and that could be
38:32
a challenging time just to even know from week to week what's
38:35
going to happen next and when the new clients going to come.
38:38
So getting validation from big businesses like.
38:42
Always a, you know, a good sign.
38:45
Things are going well.
38:45
So that's great.
38:47
Thank you.
38:48
Yeah.
38:48
It's and, and it, it, I'm sort of in that putting back phase of my career.
38:55
Like I said, 35 years at the agency business now, two years with sooth.
38:59
I do spend a good deal of time, talking to marketing students and, and, you
39:06
know, lecturing on this because I do want to help people do this better.
39:11
And to me, that's the most emotionally fulfilling part of, of the work
39:16
we're doing at Sooth is we're just equipping people to do a better job.
39:21
I marketing's been great to me for decades and to see so
39:27
many brands, so many agencies struggle with performance,
39:31
I've never struggled with, with marketing performance.
39:35
And I want to be able to share more of, of those tools with.
39:39
Brands and individuals who can use them.
39:42
That's great.
39:42
That's great.
39:43
So last question I always ask at the end of an
39:45
episode, is what is your favorite brand right now?
39:50
We've talked a lot about branding.
39:51
We talked a lot about what you do and how they connect emotionally.
39:53
So I would imagine it's one that connects emotionally
39:55
really well, but I'd just love to hear your insight on that.
39:58
I really think T-Mobile does an exceptional job for a big brand.
40:07
In a very commoditized industry and an industry that, you
40:11
know, a lot of shoppers and consumers in the category love
40:17
to hate their wireless company, but you don't find a lot of
40:20
T-Mobile customers hate T-Mobile and what they managed to do.
40:27
But look, they can never solve all the problems you're going to have.
40:29
Calls are still going to drop out.
40:31
Data is going to slow down.
40:32
Calls are going to freeze.
40:34
Crap's But they have figured out how to take away the pain wherever they could.
40:41
And they communicate it very well.
40:44
The messaging, I love the work they're doing
40:47
in TV right now, or at least a lot of it.
40:50
Because the messaging is so clear.
40:53
You know, when I see, for example, Verizon has now relaunched as a, as a brand.
40:59
And, you know, I gotta be honest.
41:01
I'm not sure I know what they stand for today.
41:04
I'm not sure I know what AT& T stands for today.
41:07
I know exactly what T-Mobile stands for, which is saving
41:11
people money on cool technology without a lot of commitments.
41:15
And when you can carve out a space, it's no wonder that
41:18
they are cleaning the other brands clocks in their category.
41:24
You know, they're not the only ones doing it well.
41:27
I think some of the most entertaining advertising
41:30
continues to come out of the insurance category.
41:34
Which is kind of crazy.
41:35
I mean, like 30 years ago, there was no competitive insurance advertising.
41:39
And now it is this fabulous shootout of
41:42
these really richly developed characters.
41:45
You know, I think a lot of the Liberty Mutual stuff is great.
41:48
In the end, does it differentiate any of those brands?
41:51
No, everyone's saying the same thing, which is, call
41:53
us, we can probably save you money on car insurance.
41:56
So, you know, when I see a brand that has really carved out
42:00
A space that is solid emotionally, they know the value they
42:06
can provide and they know what they, what they can't provide.
42:09
Yeah, I think, you know, they're not a client, but I wish they were.
42:13
I think, I think Timo has done exceptionally well.
42:16
I became a client of theirs because their advertising is so good.
42:21
Yeah, I would say out of the telecom space and actually full
42:25
disclosure, I used to work for AT& T on the corporate side.
42:28
So I've, I've been there, I've done that.
42:30
And I worked with Verizon for 12 years on the agency side.
42:33
There you go.
42:35
And we've done, we've done some little telecom projects
42:38
here and there over the years, but like, yeah, I would
42:41
say T-Mobile is doing a great job with their marketing.
42:43
I mean, they've got two of my favorite actors, you know,
42:46
doing those, You know, doing doing those commercials now with,
42:51
the scrubs spots.
42:52
And now I think I read that that has actually led to interest in a
42:57
scrubs reboot, and they've got, they've got the deals almost done.
43:02
One of the streaming platforms is bringing
43:04
back scrubs with Zach Braff and Donald Faso.
43:09
Yeah.
43:09
So, so good.
43:11
Yeah.
43:12
Yeah.
43:12
Hope.
43:12
Hopefully that goes well.
43:13
Cause I really love the original series.
43:16
From what I from what I've read, it's, it's very close and you know, I thought
43:20
that Superbowl spot they did, two years ago at this point with Travolta.
43:28
That was the best spot of that Super Bowl for me because
43:30
again, it's, they're selling a highly commoditized product,
43:35
you recognize their ads, you know what they stand for, and,
43:39
and they resist the temptation to overly complicate anything.
43:45
They make it very easy for the people who should buy from
43:49
them to see themselves in the advertising and to say yes.
43:53
Yeah, they do.
43:55
They do a great job.
43:55
My in laws are, dedicated T-Mobile subscribers in part
44:00
because too, they have a great international option.
44:03
And my in laws lived overseas for 30 plus years, I believe.
44:06
So yeah, they, they appreciate that aspect
44:09
of, you know, I think they're owned by Deutsch
44:11
and fabulous small business service.
44:13
Shout out to my, my T-Mobile team there.
44:17
Very responsive and helpful and, and they seem
44:20
to get the plight of small business people.
44:22
So I love that.
44:24
That's awesome.
44:24
Well, very cool.
44:25
Well, Ian, thank you so much for your time today.
44:28
Where can people find out more about you and connect with you?
44:31
Find me on LinkedIn.
44:33
Very, very accessible there.
44:34
And I love to get to know folks and, and, I'm, I'm active in the space.
44:39
Look us up at "soothbetold." So it's like, "truth
44:43
be told," but you know, "sooth" means "truth."
44:45
S-O-O-T-H, soothbetold.com.
44:48
Check out the work we're doing, shoot me a note at
44:52
hello@soothbetold.com if, if you wanna chat more.
44:56
And, I love talking shop.
44:57
So thanks for that, Chris.
44:59
And, and again, thanks for having me on.
45:00
I really enjoyed this.
45:02
Absolutely.
45:03
I did too.
45:04
Thank you so much.
45:06
Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand.
45:09
Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice.
45:13
You can also keep up with the podcast on our website at webuiltthisbrand.com.
45:18
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45:22
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