ChatGPT — The End for Google?

Key Takeaways

marketing podcast live we have a killer episode today I was just saying to Jess since the thing that one of the main things we're going to talk about this week um it's been just occupying a hundred percent of my mental Ram since it came out and I can't mentally sit still so I'm absolutely desperate to get stuck into this week's episode Jess how you doing do you want to introduce yourself to people who don't know you I am my name is Jess I am a digital marketing fiend that's the word of the week um at exposure ninja I work in the internal marketing team yes Jess is responsible for a lot of our a lot of the stuff that you see from exposure ninja a lot of the stuff that we produce great um digital marketing news just kick us off well first of all we had a very nice awards win at the UK search Awards last week last Wednesday very very nice we won best local SEO campaign from a large a large business which was really really really nice it was a busy night lots of awards lots of big players um and so it was really nice to come away with that one um it felt really really good we also got a silver but unfortunately the thing that we got silver for has absolutely left my mind at high speeds but I know the name of the business that we got it for I think it was B2B marketing that we got silver that is the one yes yes that's the one um but yeah it was a really fantastic night loved it really great nice to see us getting recognized for fantastic work and we'd be uh for the for the best local SEO campaign large we beat stuff like home base uh visit Scotland one other like huge multinational corporation like that's my favorite thing about these Awards is that they judge the campaigns based on what you actually do so this isn't like oh wow they came up with this really creative activation for KFC it's like all right who got the best results and like what was the process that you used so yeah that was really really cool yes had a colleague say at the time oh we won't be we won't win an award because I don't know any of these businesses who we've heard winning so far and I was like they probably feel the same way about us unfortunately we know about us because we're we are us but um but yeah so I was like I already feel pretty positive about our chances and yeah we won a pretty awesome award for something pretty specific which I like as well so yes yeah we know about us because we are us that's my favorite quotes indeed indeed um but the next part of our marketing news for this week which has been a heavy debate topic for me and Tim before we started this podcast was about a new AI software called chat GPT now I think Tim knows a bit more about the logistics and the more technical side so I'll let you explain exactly what chat GPT is yes I've well I'm no by no means an AI expert but I think at this stage very few people are but this this chat GPT thing has has really caused quite a stir hasn't it it's um so for those who don't know anything about this let me just give you the the sort of Basics so there's an AI company called open Ai and they've made these different sort of language models and the most current model is gpt3 and there's a new one coming out called gpt4 but these are basically the underlying Technologies and then they've released this sort of uh sub platform called chat GPT which is basically it's like a messaging app if you like but you're talking to the AI so you can ask it anything you can ask it uh what should my vitamin D intake be if I'm a 36 year old guy who doesn't get out much and it will like it will give you an answer and you can do this for almost any question that you can imagine there are some limitations um and particularly with the chat GPT side there are some limitations that there aren't in the so in the in the main um gpt3 playground but this has blown people's minds I think for a lot of focus the first time they've ever seen and a hint at the capabilities and the disruption disruptive potential of AI so this thing can write script it can write code it can write poetry it can tell you a bedtime story it can combine different inputs from different things if you say like you know um tell me a bedtime story in the style of redneck Eminem then it will do a reasonable job of having a crack at it and the implications for marketers are absolutely huge almost difficult to comprehend huge which is my why my brain has been running on overtime since I've been playing with this thing at the end of last week um I think a lot of people are terrified by it for the potential implication on jobs for the potential implication under disruption to people's work habits and I think that terror is 100 Justified this is the most disruptive technology I've seen you know this is what when I started my career exposure ninja and built exposure ninja we were essentially taking business away from Yellow Pages and feeding it to Google right that was a paradigm shift and this is the first thing that feels like the next Paradigm Shift forward so yeah I'm I'm just my my default is to get super excited about these things and look for all the opportunities so I'm absolutely fizzing for this Jess I think I'm right in saying I don't think you feel this same level of excitement is that accurate I don't and I have to say I I said to Tim I'm coming at this from a slightly different angle because I've seen the impact of AI in the art community and design community and it has been a little bit scary and to some extent unethical in terms of the practices they're using for instance feeding art from artists without permission into you know the software to train it and then people are then using it to make their own art but it's not you know based upon other people's off I've even seen people post brand new art that they've made like you know people who aren't big artists and then somebody will respond to them they've put it through an AI and made something better and it can be quite heartbreaking uh to say the least and also like I said there's ethical side so I'm very conflicted on it because um there's also the potential of like taking jobs and I know that sounds really silly and I know there's a worry that I'm good it's gonna sound like I'm I'm using buzzwords but it's like okay cool if everybody starts using AI then what happens to the content marketers what happens to the video script writers what happens to all these people so I do think it is it is very scary I've seen some of the stuff that's come out of it you know um people scripting content for YouTubers for instance and what is coming out is practically the same as what you would expect from that video um so yeah a little bit a little bit worrying in that regard um I've also seen some comments for instance from Phil just said as a Japanese English translation business AI is a disaster which I totally totally understand um because AI will be able to understand the um the nuances and this is one reason why it's rivaling Google as Tim was saying because it can pick up on your intent a bit better but I would also argue that Google has been doing a lot to focus on intent and be able to give you the best results for what you are searching for um but what we're finding is that AI is doing it in almost a more human way um I've seen some comparisons where I'm like yeah the results that people are getting from chat are from chat GPT are better than what they're getting from Google explaining things in a way better way um but it is just very scary um and I saw a comment from Sam saying do you think AI generated art is unwholesome does it look a little bit uncanny valley well I will say I have seen some stuff this week that is indistinguishable which is where it starts to get a little bit worrying so yeah that's my take on it we're coming at it from totally different sides Tim which I think is really really interesting um and I think my main thing for marketers is if you are using software like this do your research I've seen so many content creators this week using AI art software and you know then people saying hey this is actually unethical and then them going oh I didn't know and it's like okay cool do some research please I think there's going to be there are so many unanswered questions like that aren't they about about ethics about um who owns so like ownership and Licensing and and all of that type of thing and it feels like a lot of the laws that we have in place around copywriting and stuff like that um really aren't built or optimized for a world where AI is potentially you know such a significant or could be such a significant force in all of our lives so it seems like there's going to be some really difficult conversations there and uh yes it's almost unimaginably disruptive I think at this point because you can either go down the route that like uh James is saying unless it's a search engine Google has nothing to worry about well it it potentially is a search engine and you know the chat GPT thing has limitations if you go into the gbt3 playground you can say to things you can say to it you know find me five uh a local accounting firms or five find me the five best accountants for a small business and it will give you answers so in that sense it's you know it's directly taking on Google the chat GPT thing is a bit more limited they don't sort of search the internet for stuff but you know this is this is potentially a direct competitor to Google I think for marketers I've been thinking there's a there's a sort of a few different ways that this is going to disrupt us firstly as a as an alternative to Google for informational search so a lot of the stuff that we do for clients a lot of the areas that we've had success for clients is building massive amounts of content at the top of funnel so that people who are starting to research from different options but they're at the very start of their purchase Journey can get information on our client sites go to our client sites we convert them sign them up to an email list and you know build a relationship with them over time that flow if this becomes mainstream that flow is totally disruptive disrupted because rather than going to Google to do your top of funnel research you will go to this tool and you have the research it happens in a completely different way right let's say I wanted to find the best external mic for my phone so I can make tick tocks with better sound quality which has been my mission this week um previously what I would have done is gone to Google and I would have typed something in Google wouldn't have given me the answer it would have given me a bunch of websites which claim to have the answer I would then have gone through and I'm still starting to compile different bits of information log it in my head and then I might draw up a sort of mental list of three or four which I might then research further and then make a purchase on GPT this is completely different you might say something like which is the best mic for iPhone uh using lightning connector so I can make videos on Tick Tock and it would then give you an answer right so it's a completely different proposition and just like when Google took over Yellow Pages it was so obvious that this was the Next Generation I feel like a similar sort of thing here so I found myself using GP chat GPT over Google within one day of playing with this tool now the stages are really early beginner you wouldn't use it for everything so if you did want to find a microphone for example you actually wouldn't use chat GPT because it doesn't have products you can't shop through it and it's all fairly Limited in that area but I think as marketers we cannot underestimate how disruptive this could potentially be so I think that's the first thing is that if it disrupts Google then a lot of what we do on a daily basis is totally different a lot of how we get our businesses found by potential customers is completely different because we need to figure out what the recommendation engine is between Behind These artificial intelligences to make sure that when someone asks for recommendation we're being found there so it's a sort of sort of Game Changer there um it also potentially uh disrupts any business which makes money from sharing expertise because this platform is sort of optimized for answering questions that you might have to ask a professional for example so if you're a nutritionist or you're a or you're like a fitness person well you can go on here and you can type build me a fitness plan based on this equipment or build me my you know my recipes and my calorie intake based on my needs you know and it will do it so if I'm a business that's offering those services for clients I'm thinking oh hold on a minute my clients might be able to actually get that quicker free I might need to think about how I play with these tools so I think it's it's super disruptive both in how people find businesses and also what businesses sell now of course there's always opportunities every time there's disruption there's a challenge and there are business there are people like you said yes there are people who will lose their jobs because of this just like there were Yellow Pages Google just like there were printing press you know just like there were clothing looms and you know artists and crafts people there will be people who lose their jobs there'll be huge disruption there'll be lots of conversation there'll be political follow-up this is you know this is a if it is a paradigm shift that it looks like it could be they'll be all that sort of Fallout but a lot alongside all of that there's massive opportunity because this is now a tool that we can play with that we can optimize that we can use to supercharge whatever creative or strategic output we have if you want to build something you can build it much faster the the possibilities and the opportunities of this are they're difficult to comprehend because they are so Broad and so deep so I'm viewing this as extremely exciting but it's a big butt but it's extremely exciting if you're committed to figuring it out getting to know it having a play with it and working out how you're going to use it it's terrifying if it's just that other thing which you're trying to ignore and you're hoping isn't going to happen because hoping a new technology technological Revolution isn't going to happen has not historically been a winning strategy so yeah it's gonna be fun yeah there's a lot of things that I think we're just not gonna know how it's going to play out at all until it actually plays out because obviously we're both quite technological people who are quite connected to that space so of course we feel like everybody is talking about it whereas actually maybe people aren't talking about it as much as it feels um we had a question saying do you have to pay for it right now I think it depends on the software you are using chat GPT is free but last time I checked it wasn't we weren't able to access it right now because so many many people are trying to try out that their servers went wrong I think the other challenges are that if you are using this as a replacement for knowledge um sometimes it responds with really confident factually incorrect answers so you could let's say you started a business that you don't know too much about yet you're trying to build your credibility you could use something like this to create content for your site and then end up saying things that totally ruin your credibility to anybody who's in the know um so you do have to be careful with that but it will be it's worth keeping an eye on and making sure you're aware of it if this is the first you're hearing of it make sure you have a look um because it could just come out of nowhere and destroy everything you love though it's just how I feel about it right now um but we've had a lot of conversations oh I'll let you answer this question and then we will pop on to the next bit of news yes sorry I was just gonna say um James race is really interesting point in the comments saying and they've been saying that voice search was the next big thing yet it's still lagging the average Joe will take forever to catch on Maybe I'm Wrong I I know what you're saying James and you know we've been I've I've personally been sneering at voice search being the next big thing since it came out because voice search was so obviously not the next big thing because Google was sort of limited to feeding you information from one place at a time and trying to guess the answer based on not a huge massive amount of knowledge but actually just each individual website's knowledge um it basically voice search is the featured snippet right and the featured Snippets are very rarely perfect they're still useful but they're very rarely perfect and particularly you know e-commerce through voice search never taken off Amazon are just in the process of killing some of their Alexa division not not literally but you know killing the the project to an extent because the voice search piece hasn't taken off uh for a product purchase in the way that they'd hoped so I think that is it's a very um sensible caveat you know a lot of people got really excited about blockchain and said similar things you know the whole world looks completely different now I understand blockchain and this is the most disruptive technology and people don't get it and then it turned out that there were no sort of useful applications for it for me the difference here is the fact that um this already has useful applications like we use AI writing in our content marketing team already now it needs a pilot it needs somebody to drive it and it needs somebody to optimize the results because like Jeff said it can feed you very confident but wrong information I asked um the the open AI playground today who is Tim Cameron kitchen and it told me that I was an I was leader of an investment firm Cameron kitchen Associates and a philanthropist based in London I'm that was news to me so it's not always right and I think what's important to say is at the moment everything that we're playing with and everything we're looking at it's pretty early stages this isn't even the most this isn't even the latest tech this is like their beta version that they're just throwing out there to see what people do with it um I think so yeah I'd say the applications are already there we can already see how we would use this we can already see that the results are better than what we would get yeah Elsewhere for some queries and I would also look at the the level of the people that are getting excited about this so employee number 23 at Google who created the uh the G or was in charge of Gmail and um made their don't be evil tagline he gives Google one to two years lifespan based on this new tool so he's he's like an educated person in the space has been there from the start and he's calling time on the status quo so yeah I think it's not it's not voice search I think it's another level beyond that it's it's a paradigm shift rather than voice search is essentially a different implementation of the same technology this is a different technology completely completely well we will hop on to the next bit of news because else we could definitely talk about this for the entire podcast which isn't in our best interests but the next very very quick bit of news before we hop on to discussing this week's video is that Tick Tock and YouTube have released their top list for the year their top creators and their top breakout creators as well as their top advertisers and if you are doing any marketing either on Tick Tock or YouTube or doing any video Marketing in any form it's definitely worth looking at these creators even if you're like well these people aren't in my Niche you know Mr Beast is at the top of the YouTube why should I look at that because these creators are getting attention and doing things in ways that will benefit you maybe the content type or the topics they're covering won't benefit you but it could potentially be the way they keep their viewers around the way they pick up on Trends the way they use a current Trend in their own style and it's definitely worth look looking at that as well and that's a nice segue into our YouTube channel Tim and the wonderful video that was released this week about e-commerce digital marketing yeah well I I before we move on there Jess I just wanted to ask you because you're a very Tick-Tock and YouTube Native you're the cool one um what were there any surprises or any sort of common threads that you noticed about the top YouTube and Tick Tock creators this year anything that was sort of stood out to you yeah so with YouTube If you are a white man you're probably gonna do really well because I would say pretty much I think there was one woman in the whole list including the breakout list as well um yeah yeah which is quite shocking and maybe like three people of color so it's very um very Bland list but in terms of content there was a lot of high-speed content definitely some stuff that was targeted towards younger audiences but again there is definitely things that you can pick up for from this and convert it to your own content and your own audience even if it's just you're like I really like the way they did this or I can see that this is the pacing um so that was one thing that I did notice on Tick Tock much much more challenging to sort of figure out what content was good because Tick Tock are quite wonderful and do the whole of Europe but that means that half the videos don't know what they're saying which is on me for not knowing enough languages um but you can still visually look at some stuff I was admitted that I was more interested in YouTube um in terms of advertising on YouTube as well Super Bowl ads did really well so there is a challenge there if you are a smaller business and you're seeing these ads and you're thinking I can't do this I can't get these famous people I can't do you know this big budget you've got to look at it and see okay what can I do what's actually the draw here is there a really heartfelt message is there something like that that I can use in my own ads so definitely have a look at all the creators I think the YouTube one is literally if you just type into Google like top 10 YouTube creators of 20 ready too it should come up on their official website and I think Tick Tock was called The Tick Tock Awards 2022 um so yeah definitely definitely worth checking out for sure great great comment about pacing as well I feel like that's one of the biggest shifts that's going on with content consumption at the moment we're noticing that you know I'm finding my own attention the more time I spend on Tick Tock more of finding my attention drift particularly on YouTube or any sort of longer form stuff even in TV and I think whilst a lot of this stuff is happening to younger audiences than maybe listeners Target customers are going to be just as Facebook used to be for people at school you know and that was that was basically what it was when it first came out this will seep through all of society or most of society and what happens here what happens in the bleeding edge in Tick Tock will eventually make its way through and before you know it your parents are going to be on Tick Tock and all the old people are going to be on Tick Tock and they're going to be doing their old people stuff on Tick Tock it it's already a travel isn't it they already are over 55 fastest growing demo so yeah really interesting okay um this week's video topic then so the video that we published this week was all about e-commerce digital marketing in 2023. Jess anything that stood out for you I'm assuming everyone has already watched this of course if you haven't then go and check out our YouTube channel go check it out after this thanks it's really great with um pop-ups so you said about pop-ups and that people hate them and it's this well-known thing that pop-ups suck and we hate them but actually I don't think there's I think there's a different type of pop-up I think there's those pop-ups that we associate with like Y2K you know and like viruses all popping up on a page where you can't access anything and then there's the pop-ups that are like get 10 off that I try and Trigger when I'm on a website so that I can get that discount you know I'm like oh this is a new website I want to buy from them I'm going to wait till I can get that 10 so I thought that was really interesting do you see in the consumer space that people really do hate pop-ups or do you think it's actually because a lot of people in the marketing space are in the business owner space are only familiar with pop-ups in that kind of Y2K way that was a really roundabout question but I hope it made sense yeah yeah I think it's it's the the you know the user testing video the feedback or the heat mapping where you can see them going straight for the X it's I think pop-ups have always been one of those things where there's there is a bit of a trade-off if you just wanted to make something that was purely um purely user focused it's a bit like what we talk about you know with YouTube like where do we put the call to action in the YouTube video because if you just wanted to make something purely for the people you would not have a call to action but if you wanted to make something that was purely for business you'd pack it with ads and I think it's the same with pop-up so whether you're looking at heat Maps or user recordings or you're getting you know live user feedback on a website the pop-up you know the the keyword for pop-up is annoying right these annoying pop-ups are everywhere oh I'm just close another pop-up and then it's that thing of yeah I know they're annoying but when you look at analytics and what I do to a conversion rate we we're going to keep them despite them being annoying so I don't think that yeah I don't think they're going anywhere I think I remember interviewing someone on the exposure ninja podcast a while ago the really interesting angle on on pop-ups and this type of thing and they had they viewed it as more like an incentive so you could incentivize a bit like what you're doing here so you're saying I know that I'm going to get a pop-up offering me a five or ten percent discount for sign up so I just I want that I don't care about the annoyance I I just want that thing and it's seeing if there's a way of implementing that so that it's least annoying so for example a pop-up as soon as the page loads that can be really pretty annoying because you don't yet have the context to know that that discount has any value whereas if I land on a product page and then I get a pop-up ah okay that's less annoying to me because I'm a little bit further towards that purchase that 10 now has higher value to me than if I just land on your you know I'll land on a Blog Page and there's information but you're already popping me up so yeah things about when where you trigger that and making sure that the incentive feels like an incentive and it has enough context to be valuable um yeah I think my favorite implementation of that kind of discount thing is when you are at checkout and it says don't forget if you're a new new visitor you can use 10 off um but I suppose it's unless people have actually got to check out which maybe they need to be pulled in with the discount and then pulled in with the email automation it doesn't necessarily work but I have to say if you're on those brands that says don't forget there's a discount on at the end to check out you're my favorite and I feel a lot of affinity towards you but obviously I already need to be at that um that purchasing stage um do you have anything else you'd like to say about the video this week Tim uh no other than people should be collecting data so if you whether it's a pop-up whether it's some other incentive you know it's we're talking about e-commerce marketing but I think the race is on to capture customer data the reason people have pop-ups as soon as the page loads is because then they can get you on browse abandonment they can get you on basket abandonment you know even if you didn't get to basket so that really is the play for next year is is capturing customer data as soon as you can and as much of it as you can particularly now that we're getting less data you know Facebook uh in the iOS 14.5 we've got Google Chrome ending cookie use uh at some point that they keep kicking it down the road but you know the game is all about collecting as much customer data as you can that should be the aim of every single website whether you're e-commerce or lead gen um so just go and collect some data and do what you have to do to get it completely completely yeah it's it's very it's a very important element I think there's definitely some something in there Tim about what you said about we do want the website to be user friendly as possible but sometimes we have to make sacrifice for instance including pop-ups because we have our goals and we need to make sale if it was just about user experience we'd never sell anything um exactly you are not a charity you have a brand of the week which I actually don't know so thank you for introducing me to a new brand every single week it was actually Sam who introduced me to this brand um in our group chat and I thought was very very interesting um and it's another one of those where I saw it at face value and thought this is fantastic then as I started to get a little bit further in I was like ah there's so much opportunity but I think they've got something really good here so the brand is called status and they are a headphone brand they sell over ear headphones in-ear headphones and they have absolutely fantastic positioning and that they are putting themselves as the brand for audio files if you love great headphones that sound amazing and you know all these things about audio these headphones are for you so even like as soon as you land on the home page the first thing you see is like a deconstructed earbud so it's got like all the different pieces of what goes inside these headphones all laid out and it's like amazing inside you know they know that their target audience want to see all this technical stuff they want to see what is inside it I need to remember that this is a podcast recording Tim so even though I brought this wonderful website I need to make sure that I describe it very very well um but yeah so it's very much targeted at these experts um they even have a quiz at the top which is like I think you're an audiophile take our quiz which I disqualified myself from on the first question because I was like I don't know the answer and um I still don't know how many points I got they eventually sent me an email to be like check your answers but by the time I got the email it was really delayed and by the time I got it I couldn't even remember what answers I put in so when you get to the end it'll say like you know you're um your I said that I was like newbie or something um so from these two things I was like this is a brand directed exactly at experts in audio um and then as I started to learn more about them this started to disintegrate a little bit so I don't know if they're in the process of repositioning themselves or if they are trying to cater to everyone um but one thing that stood out to me and this is a conversation we have quite quite often and it was actually that I thought the products were too cheap so at the moment the flagship headphones their best of the best sorry not their best the best but their Flagship headphones are 65 pounds when they're not on sale their core headphones are 82 pounds 140 for the earbuds and it just feels almost like not expensive enough for the people they're targeting um and I remember looking at it and thinking this must be wrong because I felt like when I'd been on the website before and looked at it I thought this is really expensive but that wasn't actually what happened I think I must have just assumed that so I think actually some people who are coming onto this website and see the positioning see it being dismantled see them using the word audiophile doing this really technical quiz would be expecting more expensive headphones because often we associate price with quality which isn't always true um but then doing a bit more research there was some parts that were like you know we want to make it affordable for everyone um and then also there was some phrasing that said like in I think it's in the sound standard section of the website it says for everyone everyone who loves music is an audiophile but I love music and I did the audiophile quiz and was absolutely clueless so I think this brand has such a good option to position themselves as the brand for people who really love music no music super well um and then it's kind but unfortunately it's kind of diluted itself down into being a brand for everyone which can be a good idea but I feel like they could do so much more like they've got all these other things as well like they don't put logos on their products because they know that audio files kind of don't want to be defined by a logo and they just use these tiny little serial numbers that are like etched in and stuff like that and I feel like everything about it has been created for a very specific area of people and then they've been like actually it's for everyone so yeah I'd love to know your thoughts Tim yeah on that I that I think you've nailed you've nailed the the kind of interest about this company this is this is super fascinating there's there's a couple of brands that um I can't remember either for their names there was one that was positioned they're a wine company and they're a position their positioning was um hit when you're buying a cheap bottle of wine here's what you're paying for right and it's it showed that in the wine it showed like 80 or whatever it's like Supermarket markup and then 10 is the wine and then 10 of the packaging whatever and their thing was that we're gonna sell you our Wine's gonna be cheaper but it's actually going to be better you're spending more of your money on the actual wine which I think is a really compelling story to tell if you're a direct consumer brand like this is and you want to sell at the luxury end but you still want to be accessible right you're saying basically you know when you're buying a pair of Apple ear airpods what are you actually buying you're spending x amount on you know the fancy Apple thing and the research and development and then you only you're actually only spending a tiny amount of money on the on the airpods and you could do a similar sort of thing here right you could say when you're buying for most brands you're spending you're buying like Billboards and TV advertising all this Gunk that you don't actually need what you're buying with us is just the sound quality so that allows us to make a better product at a cheaper price and then it makes that cheaper price feel more consistent what you're talking about is that dissonance between this is a higher quality product than you're used to but the price is cheaper that doesn't feel real to us and that for me is is the danger here there was a fantastic Instagram the second brand that this reminds me of a fantastic Instagram ad campaign from an earphone company where I if Samuel Lloyd's listening he'll probably know them but um where they gave these earphones to like producers and mixers and mastering engineers and the the video ads were like people's reaction to this incredible sound and that was such a good way of demonstrating that this was a sort of next level in audio quality because the other challenge a company like this has is they're trying to demonstrate audio quality through a web page which is purely visual so you don't actually know how good these things sound until you've used them so it's a very difficult pitch so you've got to then rely on which is the bit that's missing for me like they've got some reviews but I'm looking at the reviews thinking I don't know how qualified these people are so especially some of the the wording that they use makes me think well these people aren't like audio experts at all so do I really trust their opinion so yeah I think they've got to find a way of doing the demo in a compelling way that doesn't involve you actually making the purchase this is why both for years gave the you know they had a massive money-back guarantee of like 30 90 days 100 days whatever you buy their product you use it you fall in love with it and then if you don't like it after 100 days or something you can send it back because they knew this is a new sound technology we can't demonstrate this through a magazine out or whatever let's say how to find a way of doing it so I think you've articulated their challenge perfectly but I love the I love the angle I think I love the the look of the products is is greater particularly the earbuds I think they look really striking really different it's just at the moment it's I think it's going to be missing the Target I don't think it's going to be converting anywhere near as well as it actually could do and it's that positioning piece which is missing for me 100 I think you have to add as well I think it's interesting that you remembered the unique selling points or the positioning of those two other brands but couldn't remember the names of them so it could almost be that they went too far the other way of being like with a new thing mystery but then if you forget this is not great like um but I can see Dale Davies left in the comments of our YouTube live saying Naked Wines was the wine one and I recognize the adverts that you described for the headphones but I couldn't tell you which headphones they were um but very very interesting um yeah yeah I think some of this is like I'm not the audience for the wines or the headphones really I'm not I'm not bothered about the the sound quality so I think if you were then you'd be motivated to make a purchase you might care more about other space I've never drunk a glass of wine I've enjoyed so I'm definitely not an acre of wines customer but yeah thanks Dale for the reminder very very helpful Tim your exposure ninja campaign or lesson of the week what have you got in store for us this week so I know yeah we've got big carried away last week and didn't have time to fit in so I'm very keen to hear what you have to say this week we did so every week on the podcast we are on this new format we share a lesson or a learning from one of the campaigns that we work on or that you know we consult on or that we run and this week I want to see something a little bit different and talk about exposure Ninja's own marketing because I feel like sometimes you need an outsider to give you a Bop around the side of the head to remind you of some core principles um so exposure ninja we've since we started the company I remember sitting in a room with a guy in our latest video I think we talked about I'll talk about it and he said no one's ever going to buy from a company called exposure ninja that's a ridiculous name like no one's going to take you seriously it sounds unprofessional blah blah blah and I remember thinking he he does he doesn't get it like if whether you're selling marketing or whether you're selling accountancy like you can be fun you can be fun you can be interesting you can be entertaining you can be the most boring B2B in the world I mean if you're in like corporate reputation management maybe you might want to be a bit boring but other than that you can be fun you can be interesting and I think over the years as we've worked with larger and larger companies we've become a little bit boring and you know we tone down our branding we tone down our look and feel we we've got this amazing character Shinobi if you're watching the video you can see behind me but we never you know we were all very cautious about overusing Shinobi and making ourselves look too playful and uh we had a meeting with uh one of our our board advisors um amazing guy Andrew block who um from Frank PR he's Lord Sugar's um PR guy and uh was at least partially responsible for the meerkats from compare the market and he told us the story about compare the market and said that you know they were quite close to being in serious trouble that business and the meerkats whilst you know I've laughed at how stupid it is to have like these basically semi-racist meerkats representing an insurance comparison website he said they did wonders for that business they saved the business because they built something about the company which is more than just Insurance comparison and it made it sort of a household name and I it made us reflect on exposure ninja and how we've sort of muted our own brand over the years in order to try and appeal to larger clients and I just thought how interesting we spend our entire lives telling other businesses what to do with their marketing and yet we were sort of blind to this we needed an outside perspective and it made me think two things firstly the value of an outside perspective and sometimes you need someone who isn't so familiar with your business that they're not you know emotionally attached to any one side of an argument you need somebody else to just come in and say look here's what I think someone who's qualified and you know has a good track record in this space and then the second thing is just just to emphasize again there is absolutely no need to be boring as a credibility tool it being boring is not a credibility so being boring is not a selling point and yet so much of particularly B2B branding but a lot of branding is about being boring looking professional and looking safe I'll tell you what's professional it's being really good at what you do and being able to demonstrate results of the things that you do that's professional right people work with all sorts of crazy characters who aren't quote-unquote professional but they do they work with those people because they'll get results so yeah it was just like a bit of a oh mate what have we done here but the good news is we've got some crazy ideas Jess we've got some crazy ideas well I don't know but I I've you know I'm getting some good vibes so that's super exciting and you know what's relevant to that is Dale sent me a fantastic post on LinkedIn this morning about my Nemesis the Duolingo Tick Tock account because I find the Duolingo Tick Tock account very funny but I always feel very conflict Afflicted about it um and because it is so off the wall and so different and in this LinkedIn post they shared a bit about why they made that decision and they said you know there's only so many ways that we can promote a language learning app and they made the choice to meet Their audience where they were with the jokes they make about Duolingo with the you know the weird things that people say on Duolingo or how it feels like the owl is threatening you when you don't do things you know and it's very passive aggressive and they really played into this on Tick Tock and we saw the exact same from Ryanair to the most popular brands on Tick Tock Ryanair absolutely leaned into the fact they are the cheapest you know they you know people are constantly complaining I was on Ryanair I didn't have any leg room and they'll make a tick tock saying you didn't have any leg room you paid 99.99 for the flight what do you expect you know and they found a way to make it you know they could just show us amazing holiday destinations or luxury things and that's not what Ryan is about Ryanair is about getting the cheapest flight POS possible to a random destination that you didn't expect to the amount of times that my siblings come to me and go going on holiday next week because Ryan I were doing nine pound deal you know so I think yeah Duolingo I think they're very extreme I love them and hate them um maybe I love to hate them who knows but uh I think they're a really good example of how you can take something language learning is was a constant pain for me at school I can imagine it was for many other people and they've made it really fun and when I was learning Japanese Duolingo was my go-to app and I've had a streak of like 170 days I think um so you know their app is good and the way they've managed to get it in people's brains and Reach people is through their Tick Tock so I'm being silly and really push pushing the limits um so yeah really really good topic Tim for sure and I think what you've said there about both Duolingo and Ryanair as they've adopted a a personality a single personality on social particularly on Tick Tock and they might have slightly different personalities across different channels but for me social most businesses haven't got to grips with social media they've never been able to to to do it they've never been able to post in a way that actually gets traction or customers so they'll post stuff out but it'll get very little engagement and it's terrifying to nail yourself down to one personality and say right we're going to be a cuddly owl that makes really super risque Dua Lipa jokes and all this stuff and it's like slightly deprecating and takes on Google translate whatever it's very scary to do that but it's actually kind of required if you're going to get Traction in social media I found out today that the Ryanair Tick Tock account there's one sign off there's one person who signs that off and again it's pretty scary to put that in place because it is we saw you know we're about to cover some marketing fails what can happen if stuff goes wrong how quickly things can go viral good vial or bad viral it's very scary to do those things but if business is going if marketing is going more Tick-Tock if my you know it might not be but if marketing is going more to that route businesses are going to have to adopt a personality because the stuff on Tick Tock that gets traction and stuff on social more generally that gets traction has a personality so there's going to become this point where even boring companies they either have to have a figurehead or a face or a bunch of faces or they adopt some sort of personality and I think it's it's something that most marketing teams aren't well set up to do and it's going to be painful yeah I think sign off is does limit people especially if there's a trend on someone like Tick Tock where it is so quick and sometimes you can't explain it some of the stuff that goes on on Tick Tock I'm like I do not have time to explain this to you just let me make this weird video like I can't go through the layers and layers of how deep this is like just let me make this video so yeah yeah but talking of um as we said not you know having sign-offs that are too quick or not totally being on top of stuff I will start with my second marketing fail of the week which was Balenciaga so if anybody is you know connected to any social media you probably would have heard what happened with Balenciaga this week I will try to discuss it in the most sensitive way possible basically they had some ads going live which had child models quite young maybe three or four holding bears that were bags that looked like they were wearing um adult clothes let's say things that aren't appropriate for children to interact with um and after seeing this people then spotted some other ads that had copies of court rulings that were discussions on child exploitation like in the bags it was just a really strange combination of things and whether or not it was a case of literally accidental or not um it definitely caused a star and Balenciaga maybe didn't handle it in the best way they did a huge jump and pointed in every direction and said it was the photographer it was this it was this it was this you know there was stuff like the photographer always does photography of children so naturally it makes sense they would hire this person to do a photo shoot with children the photographer wouldn't have made that decision themselves and there was all this these things um they also threatened to take legal action against the creative directors and whatnot um and even Kim Kardashian was like I'm gonna be questioning my relationship with them and I think she's quite a big spokesperson for them being connected to them for a long time but then three days later after everything Balenciaga took responsibility for it all made one post where they took responsibility for some of it and all of it deleted that posted it as just a story made another post and it was just very much felt like nobody knew what they actually wanted to do [Music] um and then they sort of said oh we don't know we don't know how this happened but they're a huge company and it's sort of the difference between having very limited approvals let's say to put something quick out on Tick Tock and not having enough approvals or not having enough as we discussed on the podcast last week not having enough sense checks to say what might be wrong with this image um and so I think people people are going to be seeing that company in a very different light I mean they deleted all their social media posts on Instagram I think they deleted their Twitter account um and the lesson for me really those two lessons here check your marketing campaigns and make sure you've sent checked them you know especially if you're dealing with protected groups like children like minorities because you need to be double triple quadruple checking every single thing um and the second one is the stick to your story and maybe I'm not saying that Balenciaga should have continued with a 25 million pound lawsuit but that's a very big lawsuit to make a decision on on a whim to then retract and I think that's just almost made them look worse in the long run really so yeah it's kind of like uh oh we made this thing oh who did it oh it's you you did it oh I'm so angry about it and that put you know the agency obviously like well hold on you briefed us you signed it off multiple times throughout the process you were there like what and they're like oh no okay all right no it wasn't you it's like they've been caught they've been caught firstly running the campaign and they've been caught really really pathetic attempt at covering up it's just really bad crisis management isn't it it was such a cluster mess up so it was just extraordinary just extraordinary particular brand That's So based on perception and based on you know people's feelings and Balenciaga is a company that can literally sticker you know their logo on the front of a hat that's a you know pretty um a pretty ordinary looking product and charge like 10 15 20 times as much so they understand customer perception they understand how people think that's how they've built their entire brand so it's extraordinary that they weren't able to at least see this coming completely it could have been that they got too comfortable which actually leads me on to my second brand fail of the week which will be a speedy one which was um since we're live on YouTube sorry if you're listening to the podcast afterwards but since we're live on YouTube please comment in the chat the last Disney movie that you remember hearing about um because I can nearly guarantee you it won't be strange world and it probably won't even be light year either um and basically Disney had a movie go out um this week called strange world and it's on its way to lose 100 million at the box office and light year which was like the Buzz Lightyear spin-off was also a huge flop now I only first heard about Strange World when I was hearing people say that it was a flop and strange world has all checks all my boxes we have lgbtq characters we have people of color we have loads of you know diverse characters and I haven't heard about it which is really strange for this to happen to me um so I was like what is going on now there is some stuff happening at Disney where they kicked Bob chapekout who was the new CEO and brought Bob Iger back in there's so many people involved um I should know because I'm a bit of a bit of an animation fanatic but they've had a lot of things move around and My worry is one that maybe they thought that they were Untouchable and Kanto did so well Frozen did so well you know we don't need to promote it's fine we can save some money we've got negative balance sheets for November let's save some money on Advertising um because people will watch people watch and that is not what has happened um but I hope that by bringing I think it is Bob Iger I think I'm getting all these names mixed up are you just coming back in here yeah I'm just coming back but I was like are they both called Bob or am I just messing up my words I think that's just me messing up but anyway um I hope that they're not just going to do the same old same old I feel like we've seen no innovation in terms of marketing from Disney for a very very long time um you know most of the time I'm just like oh I saw a YouTube thing or I saw somebody talk about it on Twitter um so I hope we're gonna see some Innovation but really the lesson here is that don't rely on past success for future success if you have one product that did really really well don't expect everything else to do that well or be like well we only promoted this on Tick Tock so it's obviously going to be successful and I think people also run into that um issue if they see another business similar to them blow up on Tick Tock and they're like we just need to do that and we'll have the same result it's not necessarily going to happen and you need to make sure you're diversifying your marketing and not just thinking oh we'll go easy on this launch because we've had success recently people will still be thinking about us no they're not as Tim said earlier people have very short attention spans so yeah be be very very careful and also if your thing fails there's going to be a lot more awareness and a lot a lot more news about your thing failing compared to your previous successes then there will be about how good your thing is I still don't really know what strange world is about um but and it's just like all I know is that it's flopped so yeah two very very important lessons there from our marketing fails of the week yeah great great lesson cool um marketing question of the week so every week we answer one of your marketing questions you can email us hello at exposureninja.com and if you put in your subject line podcast in capitals then uh as long as it's a question we might read it out on the show and we might try and answer it um so this week's question Jess is was um Airbnb has destroyed its website according to commenter commenter DaVinci Resolve how who commented on a previous video it's actually our video about Airbnb um they were saying that they they feel like they've destroyed their website what do we think because I expected to go on the Airbnb website and see something absolutely tragic and I was pleasantly surprised I'll do my best to describe it to podcast listeners while um Tim brings it up but basically Airbnb used to have kind of a basic landing page when I wrote about it anyway it was quite a basic landing page it had a picture of like a yacht or something and was like your next adventure um and then you could enter at the top you know with your dates and where you wanted to go and if you're flexible and if you weren't and now when you land on their home page they have all icons along the top of all the different places that you can visit and straight away you're seeing the the products essentially the products the places that you can book um there are some downsides to this but I actually really like it um but I'd like to know your initial thoughts Tim uh minus your thoughts this is another business moving away so there's two ways to search and browse right this most vocalists have search traffic and they have browse traffic and historically marketing has been targeting search traffic like Google um and then Tick Tock has made people think about browse traffic and now a lot of sites and social networks have some form of browse algorithm that's designed to sort of show you stuff which might pique your interest so they can space purchase even if you weren't originally thinking of purchasing which is exactly what it looks like they're trying to do here to start this as a sort of inspiration Place rather than a find something where you need you know Airbnb used to be I'm going here I need somewhere to stay on these dates and then you know Mike hear my criteria whereas this to me looks more like I just want some inspiration and it looks like that's what they're kind of going for um yeah I mean from an SEO perspective I'll be like where's the copy yeah that's so so true so the only headline is introducing our winter 2022 release that means absolutely nothing to me Let's ignore that pop-up because it was very much aimed at people who wanted to make an Airbnb as well which just I'm not in that audience so I was not interested I am very excited to share what I thought about this because I as much as yes from an SEO perspective it's not good at all especially because you're like where's the copy whereas the way that I saw it is I've definitely seen a lot more conversations online where people are saying things like why get an Airbnb when a hotel is the same price and you get your towels and you get breakfast included and I agree I will more often than not now book a hotel because I'm like well all my towels are sorted and I don't have to worry but I think that might be why they're repositioning themselves like this because pretty much all those icons included across the top are very unique things like you've got the log I think it starts with log cabins or it did online they have log cabins castles Yurts tents like all these different things and I think it's because they're trying to reposition themselves as the alternative to a hotel but not because of price it's because they're offering unique experiences and places um and so I did think that was that is probably a really smart move from them just because they don't totally control the pricing it's up to the individual host to do that and if the hosts want to charge more than a hotel they're going to charge more than a hotel and airbnb's gone are very far gone very very far away from the air bed and breakfast that it stands for where it literally was about blowing up an air bed in somebody's house and stopping on an air bed um to being I want to book a hotel for the weekend um so I think that's why they've repositioned themselves definitely um yeah that's that's my thoughts anyway because you can still search right at the top of the page but the site is showing you what you can get immediately you know exactly what you're getting when you're on this site from the get-go in my opinion um but maybe not we'll see it might just be me because I know everything I've used them for a number of years um but yeah there we go that's that's my insight on that great shout so if you've got a question about digital marketing hit us up hello at exposureninja.com and we will do our best to uh to answer Jess thank you so much for joining me thank you everyone for tuning in and we will see you next week we will see you later