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A Guide to Geofencing with Ernesto Cullari and Barbara Wardell · Talk Commerce

• Brent Peterson (00:01.065) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Barbara and Ernesto. They are with Kalari and Wardell. I think I got that right. Why don't you, Barbara, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us your day -to -day role and maybe one of your passions in life. And maybe then Ernesto go right after Barbara. Cullari & Wardell (00:10.446) You got it right. You Hi, Brent. Cullari & Wardell (00:20.334) Okay, great. Thank you for having us here. We're so excited. I'm Barbara Wardell and I'm co -founder of Calarian Wardell. I am a single mom with two boys, they're older. And we started this business to help small businesses grow after COVID. And it's a passion of mine, but I also have my family, my friends, and of course we have places that we... spend time and fundraise for different venues. One is the Philippines Street Kids and also a Women's Core event that I support as well. Brent Peterson (01:05.097) That's some thank you, Ernesto. Cullari & Wardell (01:07.502) Hi, I'm Ernesto Caleri. I'm co -founder of Caleri and Wardell and we're a geofencing ad agency. And as Barbara said, we started this company in the middle of COVID to help small businesses recover foot traffic. And, you know, my work is my passion, photography I love. I play guitar, sing, write music for fun. I used to do it professionally. And I have dinner with Barbara a lot. That's very fun. It's one of my passions. We eat well. We try to stay happy when we work. We have a very good time when we work. Work is stressful, so we try to make it as enjoyable for ourselves and for each other as possible. Brent Peterson (01:47.433) That's awesome. Thank you. There's one thing that I forgot to ask you about and what I'm going to do is just tell you a joke. I do this thing called the Free Joke Project. All I'd like to do is tell you a joke and all you have to do is say, should the joke be free or do you think we should geo -fence it in a place that nobody else would ever hear it again? All right, so here we go. My mother always used to say, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Cullari & Wardell (01:59.822) Okay. Cullari & Wardell (02:07.086) Hahaha. Brent Peterson (02:16.713) lovely woman, terrible surgeon. Cullari & Wardell (02:21.752) I think we should geo -fence that in somewhere. I have one for you though. Okay, why was Cinderella so bad at soccer? Brent Peterson (02:27.945) Alright, go. Yeah, perfect. Brent Peterson (02:32.903) Why? Cullari & Wardell (02:34.382) because she was always running away from the ball. Well done. I do have another one if you want. All these PG -13 jokes. I love it. Where do polar bears hide their money? In the snow bank. That is perfect. That's like, it's actually accurate. Brent Peterson (02:37.321) That's a good one. Yeah, I might I might use that in a future episode. Okay, go. Yes, please. Yeah. Brent Peterson (02:53.353) Where? Okay. Brent Peterson (02:59.945) Yeah, I'm coming to you from warm and sunny Minneapolis today where it's snowing and it's spring. So, yeah, we haven't had snow all winter and now suddenly it snows. Anyways, let's get started. I know I joked in the green room about geofencing being a online swordplay game, but tell us more about geofencing and how it fits in. It sounds like more about how it fits into retail traffic, but tell us in general what geofencing is. Cullari & Wardell (03:05.356) Oh wow. Cullari & Wardell (03:10.892) Hmm. Cullari & Wardell (03:17.518) You Cullari & Wardell (03:29.294) So geo -fencing is an advertising technology and tactic that takes advantage of the special relationships between smartphones and satellites. So with a satellite, you could draw a virtual fence around a location of interest. So say you're in the laundry industry or the restaurant industry and you want to, say, gain new customers at your laundromat or restaurant. So we would take competitor locations and we would draw virtual fences around them. And then when someone walks into a competitor store, we can send them an ad to your store. But when they do come to your store, eventually the satellite pings us, alerting us that a new visit has taken place. And each month, Barbara and I do across the country, Canada and Australia, US Canada, Australia, 5 ,000 satellite verified visits a month. And why this is important is because COVID really destroyed foot traffic across the country. I know in the Northeast, we lost about a third of all. small businesses and the big boxes really did well and they were using this technology called geofencing and so were the companies of like Chipotle and Burger King. So we saw what was happening and we wanted to bring this to small businesses. However, if you're an online business, you can use the same technology instead of driving people to your store, you would drive them to a landing page to make a purchase. Brent Peterson (04:53.225) That's perfect, thank you. So maybe Barbara can answer this question. How does it help the merchant to get more traffic? Cullari & Wardell (05:03.822) Oh, it helps tremendously because it count from your advertising. When they walk into that geo fence and they receive an advertising for that business or that website, it actually sends an ad, whether it would be a banner ad across the top of your smartphone, in the middle of your smartphone or at the bottom of your smartphone, or maybe in a native ad, because we advertise in apps and the wide open web. So once they see that, Ad we track them. We don't know who they are as anonymous, but we do know that their cell phone it's given an identifier and we track them during the time that They're running through their day. And if they go into that establishment, we know that they saw the ad and that they actually came into that establishment So it's all satellite verified Brent Peterson (05:58.163) How do you avoid the sort of creepy factor where you walk into, I walk into Home Depot and suddenly I'm getting all kinds of ads for Home Depot or getting all kinds of ads for Lowe's, let's say. Cullari & Wardell (06:12.846) So your device becomes anonymized, unlike with Facebook and other platforms. I suspect sometimes that they're listening to our devices. Has that ever happened to you? All the time. Brent Peterson (06:24.969) Oh yeah, you say something and suddenly Alexa is giving you all kinds of product recommendations. Cullari & Wardell (06:32.27) Right. So this is way less creepy. So we know that you have a certain interest for a product. Say you walk into a Topgolf or a golf shop or, you know, we know you're because of where you've been, you're interested in these products, but we then anonymize your device in a clean room. And then we are able to track you for a given period of time. But because we don't actually know who you are, we just make certain inferences. We actually do protect consumer privacy. Whereas I believe Facebook is not allowed to track you in and out of stores because they already know who you are. And there's no way because you have a Facebook profile that they can anonymize you. But since we can anonymize a user, we're able to track them without cookies. We're able to track them without, you know, betraying their privacy. And then as advertisers or as small business owners, we're then able to track conversions online or conversions into one of our stores. Brent Peterson (07:31.497) Tell me a little bit about the democratization of this. You've mentioned small business owners a few times and that maybe the big box stores can easily do this. Tell me how you've been able to make this available to a broader audience. Cullari & Wardell (07:47.502) When we initially started doing this and we were reading case studies, you know, we read it that Burger King anytime that someone with the Burger King app was in the vicinity of a McDonald's Burger King would then send you an ad. I forget what the what the actual loss leader was for that. And then, you know, Chipotle wanted to drive in curbside pickup. So when we when we saw that these big brands were doing this, we asked the question, what what will it take? to bring this technology to small businesses. So we broke into the laundromat industry. We were recommended by one of our clients to some of the biggest operators in the country. And so that was our test bed, the laundry industry. And we found that with a budget as small as $1 ,000 a month for ad spend, that we were able to drive, for some clients, we were able to drive over 1 ,000 visits to one laundromat owner. in the Carolinas with about 30 locations. So that's a thousand dollar budget driving a thousand visits per month, each month for over a year. And once we sort of learned how to hone the technology in for just one company, then we were able to take that case study, that successful case study, and we were able to bring it to laundromats all across the country. So now that we've mastered the laundry industry, We've taken this to private aviation, apparel, Mezcal brands. Aviation, I mean, HVVAC. Yeah, HVVAC. So we've been able to bring it to other verticals as well. Brent Peterson (09:27.337) Which vertical have you found the most success with this? Cullari & Wardell (09:31.758) So far, the laundry industry and the alcohol and beverage industry, we did over the summer, we had done electrical mezcal, which is an artisanal mezcal. And for each of the tastings, we had like over 100 people show up. So, and then I would say on a weekly daily basis, things like laundromats and car washes, really, they're doing very well with the same model. We... sort of have our own algorithms that we use that we've refined through the laundry industry, but we've taken that to other industries, but laundry mats and car washes and alcohol and beverages seem to do exceedingly well. Brent Peterson (10:12.457) That's interesting. So just not, don't, you know, you don't have to reveal all your, your magic data, but tell me a little bit about how you would identify somebody who's good for a laundry mat before they've been into a laundry mat. Cullari & Wardell (10:24.398) Okay. So one of the things we do, Barbara and I use technology that's really used for commercial real estate. And we identify locations and where people have been a half hour before and half hour after, you know, visiting a retail location, we can determine where they live, where they work. And then we build our target list around these locations where we've observed over the last two years. people have been in and out of these locations. So that's sort of part of our secret sauce. And then we apply algorithms that we've developed based on people's behavior. So say for example, say you drive a Mercedes. And so we're looking at, we're trying to identify people that have either A, purchased a Mercedes before. So then we will look at other dealerships and then we want them to say either purchase a car from us or service their car with us. So then we would look at places like Whole Foods, we will look at Pilates places, we will look at jewelry stores. And then, you know, we could basically come up with a persona, a buying persona for a given type of client and then send them ads and then track their visit to one of our stores. Brent Peterson (11:38.825) And I want to just ask about the Muskole because I'm a big Muskole fan. Yeah. Cullari & Wardell (11:43.446) Mm -hmm, Electrico Mezcal. Amazing. We talk about it every, we talk about it as often as we can. Brent Peterson (11:48.657) Tell us, I'm assuming it's one specific liquor store or group of liquor stores you're trying to drive people to to purchase it. What are the behaviors of those people prior to that that helped the liquor store owner to know that these are great candidates for this, Ms. Gull? Cullari & Wardell (12:08.078) So mezcal is a little higher end in terms of when you compare it to a tequila, for example. And so therefore, we know that someone who drinks mezcal, because they have a more discerning palate, they have a little bit more disposable income. We know that if we target fine restaurants, we know if we target high -end specialty liquor stores. We know that if we target certain hotels and even certain car dealerships and again, jewelry stores, we know that if we send ads to these people, that they're highly likely to consider coming to either the restaurant that carries it or to the liquor store that carries it. And they're even more likely to make that purchase directly from Electrical Mascale online. Brent Peterson (12:58.305) Maybe Barbara could help answer this one about the data location and how that is a great indicator for that product or the customer's identity, I mean. Cullari & Wardell (13:11.982) Well, data location is indicative of a behavior that we do every day, right? So online behavior is not the same. It's very different. You can look up like Ernesto was talking about our Mercedes. You can look up about a Mercedes, but unless you go to the dealership or you're doing something involved in it, that's your real behavior, right? It's indicative of your habits every day. And that's what we do. We do a foot traffic study. It's basically a mobile. foot traffic study of that business and we see where they come and where they go. And from that information, we know where they go after. So those are the type of people that are going to be serviced with that particular, say the Moscow or whatever merchandise or service that we are. So we do an in -depth study to see exactly who those customers are because With geofencing, it's very precise. We can target an ATM if we wanted to. We could do a phone booth and Lois Lane would know where Superman was all the time. I mean, this is the technology that we're dealing with and we figured out a way to bring it to the smaller businesses because the targets, all the corporations have this technology and their ad spends are so crazy. Oh my God, it's 30, $40 ,000 and they just let it run. We're stewards of their money and making sure that those ads are out there. And with the verticals that we do have, we change that if something's not working for that small business because we want them to get the best value out of that ad spend money. Brent Peterson (14:57.673) Is there a difference between big city and small city or is it the same across any type of demographic in terms of location? Cullari & Wardell (15:08.366) So we have several clients through New York and LA, and we find that we have to make the circles a little smaller depending on what the business is. So if you are targeting, say, you know, dry cleaner in Brooklyn, you know, you're really only talking about a few block radius where people actually would come to your business. And if you're in LA and you're talking about a fast food chain, then we have to be very specific and the radius might be a little larger. It is a little bit more challenging. But the great thing about geofencing, when you're in these big competitive ad markets, as long as you are very deliberately drawing your targets, you can still get the most return on investment. The difference between experience agency and an inexperience agency, is that an inexperienced agency just looks at a city like New York, looks at a city like LA, and they come up with their parameters to target consumers, but it's in general too large. So we get very specific, we get very precise with our targeting, and we could be just as effective in large advertising markets with the same amount of money because we're only going after people who are specifically interested in our products. So if we're selling luxury watches, we're not targeting all of LA. We're only targeting buildings, neighborhoods, where we know that, and stores where we know that people are spending that kind of money. Brent Peterson (16:48.809) I was going to make a joke about Starbucks and a coffee shop and how you have to target to the store next door, keep your bubble really small because the next door could be a coffee shop. But in reality, my friend is opening up a scooters franchise, which is made for smaller cities in rural America. And they he him him and his partner actually went down and counted cars on the corner to see is there enough traffic to support this? How can? How can that, and let's just say the town is whatever 5 ,000 people, I'm assuming in that type of thing, you take the entire location of the city and do that, or is there even smaller bubbles that you can focus in on? Cullari & Wardell (17:29.55) So you're telling, you're sort of retelling a story that we often tell about our buddy who wanted to open up more laundromats and he would sit outside with a clicker. Even if it's a small town, we're able to, with mobile traffic, mobile foot traffic studies, we're able to look at street corners, we're able to look at neighborhoods, we're able to look at retail locations. And even if it's small, even if it's a small rural town, we're still able to accurately measure the volume of devices that have gone in and out of the place over a given period of time. So we could do the last six months or we could do the last two years, but mobile foot traffic studies are very accurate. We use two competing systems to validate our data just to make sure that we're giving an accurate picture to someone who's looking to open up a new business. Brent Peterson (18:21.211) Tell me a little bit about the businesses and in the supply chain of that business. Does this apply to maybe the B2B market or anybody else that has, that's not retail but has part of that retail supply chain? I guess the data would apply but is there any other applications outside of retail? Cullari & Wardell (18:46.702) No, we can do B2B, which is retail. We also do services. We also do track website traffic. And private aviation. And private aviation. And now we even have a nutrition company that we're doing geo -fencing for to bring in the visits as well as sign up for some of the activities that they do at their stores. Brent Peterson (19:14.441) So I want to just dive into service businesses a little bit. And if it's a, let's just say that it's a either a vacation rental business or a sort of a retreat business where you're trying to get people to come in from a broader place and you want to, let's just say you want to get them to go to Puerto Rico. How do you, I guess you have to know that that client and then you have to try to dial in on. on that behavior and then the bubble gets really big, right? Does this kind of break the model? Cullari & Wardell (19:47.022) Even if you're looking, so we had a client in Australia with a bet. They had like a bed and breakfast. And so for a client like that, we would, we did some due diligence and research to find out where and what what parts of Australia people were coming from. So you take so Barbara and I live on the Jersey shore. So for example, when we do foot traffic studies for certain tourist locations, we can look at neighborhoods in New York City, neighborhoods in Staten Island, neighborhoods in Florida. We can see where people are actually coming from and we can send ads to consumers like that even if they're not living within driving distance of a location. And then, you know, you can look at other sorts of data. You can look at, you can look at other sorts of tourism based data. And a lot of times we ask our clients, because we're not experts in everyone's industry. So we often ask them. Really? Come on. We often interview them because they have the precious data. They have the precious information. Even if it's an existing client list, we can target their neighbors. If we have access to their existing client list, we could target them and their neighbors. So there's other sorts of data out there. And part of the process is... really being the listeners and asking our clients and people that we're consulting for information that would be vital for targeting. Brent Peterson (21:18.209) Tell me if you've had a win, something that the client was very skeptical on, that you were able to turn into a big win for the client. Cullari & Wardell (21:32.142) Tell them about Michael Jones. Okay. So, he wasn't skeptical. Well, he was a little skeptical, but he was living in his own laundromat when he first, he had bought it. He was, he had, he worked for the financial industry and he literally at one point with the storm and everything else that happened, he ended up living in his laundromat when he called us. to figure out how to geofence to get traffic into his store. And he just sold it for a nice amount of money. He just reached out to us the other day. And we've had him for definitely over a year. Everyone in his strip mall couldn't believe the traffic that was coming in. So they were giving us a call saying what? Like. How did you do this? We need help. Because they couldn't believe it went from really little traffic, just exploding. And that's what we do is because you can't take as a business owner, right? You can't take for granted that you're in a parking lot and you have other stores around you that they know that you're there. They don't. Everyone is in their little bubble of doing whatever they're doing. You have to be front of mind. Um, our, our targeting is retargeting. We were always out there getting your message, whatever message that is, whether or not it's a safe environment, whether you have certain products, um, everything's about the message, right? And we're a marketing firm. So everything that we do to get that message out has to attract that customer, right? Once they're in the door. It's up to you. It's up to you. You have to upsell them, right? But we're capable of getting that interest going in because your cell phone... Cullari & Wardell (23:35.758) is where it is now. This is where you need to advertise. That's where people's attention spans are. I mean, this is where it's not going away. Brent Peterson (23:46.517) So tell me about the types of ads and where they're being delivered to on your cell phone. Cullari & Wardell (23:54.574) So we deliver a variety of ads from display ads. And so geographically, it could take the bottom or the top of your phone, maybe the middle of a phone as you're working through an app. We do native ads, which are large 1200 by 600 pixels that take up the major real estate of your phone as you're browsing. And we do video ads as well. So those are pretty much the main. inventory that you would see a geofence ad in. So a display ad as you're in an app, a native ad as you're reading a news story, or a video ad as you're surfing the web. Brent Peterson (24:35.369) That's perfect. First, let me ask Barbara, as we go into 2024, as we're in 2024, what do you see as the big trend for commerce right now? And you can't say AI. Cullari & Wardell (24:52.014) Oh, we can't say it yet? No, that's okay. I'm okay. I think it's going to be a hybrid. I think we're going to go a little bit back to old school as well as integrate. I think that's the best way to go because you still want that foot traffic because we're not going to get rid of stores. I mean, I love to go into a store, though I love ordering online. I think it's going to be a good mix. I think with the technology, as long as we keep it, to where we're respectful of everyone's privacy, as well as just interaction. Because, I mean, there's times that I go to make a phone call and then you got to press all these buttons and you get frustrated by the time that you get to the customer service. So there's got to be a balance to that because you have to have that human factor. And I think that's more important. It's like with our advertising, we always put a face or... something warm to attract you to that act. Brent Peterson (25:53.511) That's good. I'm going to comment on AI because you said human factor. And I believe that, you know, the watered down AI versions of anything that's out there, people are now really recognizing what they are. And I use AI in my business. And then I have a bunch of automations that happen after maybe a blog post goes out where maybe it writes a little tweet or something and exciting news and delving into or diving into our words now that have suddenly become into our vocabulary that people didn't normally use in day -to -day life. And that I think you're right, that people are gonna spot those as being non -human. Cullari & Wardell (26:35.054) Yes, because you can see an ad right now and then that's generated. We always are looking at new technologies to have. We always like to take parts of technology to put it in our tool belt to help with our B2Bs to make sure that they're getting the best out of us. So we're always looking into these technologies and we have seen some ads and we're like, yeah, no. Because that's not going to relate to someone. Brent Peterson (27:03.785) Yeah, I always describe it as a bot advertising to a bot. And at the end of the day, somebody wants to read or actually use something that you're trying to sell. Cullari & Wardell (27:06.958) Yes. Cullari & Wardell (27:15.694) I think that if you integrate both in a respectful way, that will work. Brent Peterson (27:21.713) And Nesta, what do you think is going to be the next big trend? Cullari & Wardell (27:26.84) Um, the next big trend. Well, I can certainly say Barbara and I got into this industry because location based technology is growing. It's, it's, it's the past. It's the present. It's the future. It's really underutilized. Geo -fencing is really underutilized. Um, we're contacted by other agencies all the time. Um, agencies that, you know, specialize in programmatic ads, but the one thing they don't understand is geofencing. So I do believe that before people start buying locations or opening up a new retail location, that they're going to do better due diligence than just asking maybe one of their distributors, you know, what business is like here or what business could be like here. They're going to look to independent companies like us to verify the data that they might be presented with. And then they're going to look towards location -based agencies to then go out and draw people and bring people in. And then towards, you know, we talked a little bit about AI. You know, some forms of AI are really great for helping, you know, create content and things like that. The world's best visual, visual models do not create faces that resonate with people just yet. I'm a, you know, accomplished published portrait and headshot and commercial photographer. And I look at, you know, there's dating profiles out there that are just like, ridiculous. You could just look at them. You're like, ah, you could tell this is a bot. And then I've seen plenty of advertisements, uh, that look amazing. But when it comes to the eyes, a human being is programmed to spot micro impressions. And that is kind of what makes us good communicators to each other. You know, it allows us to read a room. It allows us to say, Hey, I'm talking to this person. Am I getting across? Do they like me? Do they hate me? AI, despite its brilliance, is still incapable of producing a face and just the eyes that resonate with people. It comes down to those micro -expressions, and that's something I don't believe we'll ever be able to teach a machine, is that je ne sais quoi, that what is that? Cullari & Wardell (29:54.604) connection that I'm having with someone. You know, that's why organic real salespeople do so well, because they're able to read people well, and they're able to communicate to people well. And I just don't think an AI will be able to do that anytime soon. Brent Peterson (30:07.881) Yeah, I would agree with that. Barbara and Ernesto, we have a few minutes left. As we close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. So today we get to do two shameless plugs. Barbara, why don't you go first? Cullari & Wardell (30:20.334) You, ah, shameless plug, huh? Well, I have to say it's a Calaria Mordell, the geofencing ad agency. We give free consultations and very important. One of the things that we do do is a mobile foot traffic study and that we can do before you purchase that business to see exactly what their. business actually is drawing in because some of them are still like laundry is still some are still coin and you they don't have good records right but there's also ones when you're starting a business and you're in a geographical location and you're putting that business there but you're not quite sure what the demographics would really support that business this is where we come in with our with our mobile traffic study. Brent Peterson (31:14.921) Perfect, thank you. Ernesto? Cullari & Wardell (31:17.39) Yeah. So Rocky was one of my favorite movies, right? And even though there's 20 Rocky movies, he somehow is always the underdog. So Barbara and I really do represent the underdog. We took what happened to us and to other businesses very personally during COVID. So we look at our company, Clarion Wardell, we look at it as an opportunity. to put power back into the hands of small business owners and empower the underdog so that even in competitive markets where ad spends can be very expensive, we have it set up so that with a very modest budget, you could do a lot of damage in your market and really slay your competitors and grow your business day after day, week after week, and month after month. And so you could be like Michael Jones who was living in his laundromat. And within a year, and I would say four or five months, he was able to turn around and sell that laundromat at a very nice profit. In fact, Michael Jones called us the other day. Um, you know, it seemed like out of the blue, he's like, Hey, Ernesto, how's it going? Barbara, how's it going? He's like, by the way, I'm on the phone with you and I just sold and here are the new owners. I want to introduce them to you. They want to continue doing geo -fencing. So it works. It changes lives. It changes the trajectory of your business. It makes you hyper competitive. We're passionate about it. We're pissed that a third of small businesses were closed during COVID and success is the best revenge. So if you want revenge, come to Calerion Word Up. We're gonna kick some ass for you. And we're really good at slaying the competition. Brent Peterson (32:54.889) That's awesome. Just tell us how they get in touch with you. I will put all the contact details in the show notes, but tell us how they should get in touch with you. Cullari & Wardell (33:05.026) We're at Kalari media .com. Look us up and check us out. Look at our website. We've got plenty of information on there to learn about geofencing and geotargeting and all the things that we do. Brent Peterson (33:23.881) That's awesome. Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Caleri, thank you so much for being here today. Cullari & Wardell (33:30.318) Thanks for having us. Thank you.