The following is a transcript from:
PreEmptive E-commerce Podcast Episode #2: Consumer Communication Fatigue- Is Direct Mail the New Vinyl Record
Introduction:
Jon Carmine 0:02
Welcome to the Emptive podcast, where we chat about cloud based solutions that make selling your E commerce products easier, more profitable and effective. Today we’re going to be talking about and breaking down consumer communication fatigue. But not just that, we’ll be breaking down what makes a network a network and how they can lose effectiveness with too much noise. And also the rebirth of some old mediums like the mail at home catalog. And to unpack all of this, we have our usual Emptive team, let’s get started consumer communication fatigue. But to what is it you know, it’s when you get an influx of communication on one medium, or multiple mediums. And you get so much of it that the value of that message starts to decrease, and you get sleepy, and you get sleepy. And it’s really frustrating. And we’re going to get into like a couple, you know, what makes a network? How it can degrade over time, the history of catalogs and at home mailing? Topic, okay, little AI at the end. Different marketing mediums. Yeah, we’re gonna cover a wide, that’s interesting. Okay. Yeah, wide range of stuff. So let’s let’s dig into it. What makes a network? Now Dave, you know, you’ve been around with the network’s
David Waterman 1:31
back in the day with brick and mortar who helped invent the internet, remember? Yeah.
Jon Carmine 1:36
So, you know, I’m gonna use the the fax machine. I think it’s a good over the
David Waterman 1:42
road. Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah. Okay. It’s
Jon Carmine 1:44
not too new. I was around when that was. It’s pretty. It’s pretty old at this point. So the fax machine first came out. There was one fax machine. The value of the fax machine was expensive, right, right. Oh, yeah. But it wasn’t as high. Because there weren’t a lot of other fax machines. No, you can fax it to anybody. Right. If there’s no one to receive it, what’s the point? And that that’s kind of the thing, like each time you add an additional fax machine to the network. got bigger. Yeah. And the value and the value of that message and the value of that, that that networking system increases? Yeah. And so I think there are tons of networks out there that have fallen, and that have come into popularity. Right? Yeah.
David Waterman 2:35
Like facts is kind of just on the heart. I think people still use it. But I’m sure there are especially
Jon Carmine 2:40
Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m sure there are, there are still people who are like faxing information back and forth. One of the examples, I have a failed one is the in the early 2000s, there was this device called a Cybiko. It was marketed to kids. It’s like these bright punchy colors. And it worked over this like its own
David Waterman 3:02
a quick confession. Was it you being the kid and it was markeed to you and you don’t
Jon Carmine 3:06
100% Yeah.
Just and, and I was a bit older. So for me, I was probably like on the tail end of it. But I being like a tech guru was like, oh my god, I could message somebody without like, Wi Fi wasn’t a thing. So Right. I think it used UHF or something like that. It went like 800 feet. The idea was it would connect all of these different. All the different handsets to build a network kind of content around a community. intranet is how they coined it.
David Waterman 3:40
Oh, is that right?
Jon Carmine 3:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cuz you could only send like mail and stuff, and chats within the Cybiko network. Mm hmm.
David Waterman 3:48
Mm hmm. So it’s so it’s like a closed loop network. Right? Yeah. I see that. I never heard of this. How did it was the United States or is it Japan? Or? Yeah, it
Jon Carmine 3:57
Yeah, it was it was in the US. I mean, it was a Russian company, though. It because listen, it failed. That’s crashed and burned. Right. That’s all I have about Cybiko . This isn’t about that. Now, that’s it. That’s the end. It was a failed network. The reason why it didn’t work? Nobody. Nobody was joining the network. Right. There weren’t enough people, the distance was too far between them that the communication was, was sort of useless because nobody could get it.
David Waterman 4:25
What is that? Like? So is that like the Oculus Go? I have one of those. And I you know, I love it. I play with a few friends. I can’t seem to find a way to really that never. I’m really curious how that’s gonna go with Facebook. Yeah, it’s so hard. I try to give it to like my sisters and my friends. And the learning curve is seems to be too high. We try and people just don’t join. They know they have to go buy one. And I really want the network to improve. But I mean, what do you think? Is it going to make it or is it going to be another Cybiko?
or another Cybiko because I That’s tough. I got a lot of money behind it. Right.
And Mark works right behind that on Facebook or meta.
Jon Carmine 5:07
Yeah. We’ve had the, the the process of building networks, I think in a public sphere. So we sort of like, know. Okay, this is how you build a network.
David Waterman 5:19
Yeah, he got you. Right. He’s already got a network. Yeah. But Well, I’ll tell you later, disaster stories about it, and then you’ll realize it still is in its infancy. And it’s not. All right.
Jon Carmine 5:30
Right. Right. But that, but that it’s tough. I mean, it’s a different way of thinking, you know, is it you need developers and in that network, right, so they, the platform managers have to kind of foster a place that brings developers in, so that they kind of create that first bit to then get people to join based off of the third party things that they kind of create. If not, and then it works, empty its boring
David Waterman 5:55
and I’m not gonna stay on that subject. But they also make so many games for single player. And just think about that there’s only a few that are up for two or four players, how you building doesn’t make any sense. So even their their developers are, I don’t get it. It’s like, I don’t want to go on Oculus just to play with myself. We don’t mean, it doesn’t make any sense. But go ahead, because I don’t want to stay on that.
Jon Carmine 6:18
Yeah. So this trend, right, we’re seeing we’re kind of describing is it’s not new, right? I use the example of a bar, or, you know, it’s an early I used to work at a bar. So it’s the early morning shift, or early afternoon shift. And, you know, people come in and come out. And because there’s nobody in there, they kind of they leave, they stay for a minute and they go, they don’t stay, right. So because they want a busy bar, they want people they want noise, and you got to get that hook. If you don’t get in, then the people just keep leaving. And if everyone in the bar would just stay, then it would be cool. Yeah, right. Right. I get it. Yeah. It’s littered with these failed. You know,
David Waterman 7:02
I have to say we could probably do a whole show on just failed networks and work right.
Jon Carmine 7:08
Windows Phone. I mean, their app store. That’s like probably the biggest expensive tech blunder. I’m not the biggest, but you know what I mean?
David Waterman 7:16
Yeah, yeah. Well, so what do we do? I mean, so you know, what, let’s just go what are the different networks? Or what are the different means of communicating with people that some of the staples, right what are this? Okay, staples of communication and marketing today, right? We have
Jon Carmine 7:31
we’ve got some of the the written form. been around forever, like tat literally clay tablets, chilling
David Waterman 7:37
and tablets, right. Newspapers, magazines, from your generation? Yeah, yeah. We got the phone, obviously. I mean, that’s all you know, telephone. That’s it. Now it’s everybody walks around with a personal computer in their pocket.
Jon Carmine 7:50
You can say audio like auditory radio, radio, because they can come over the computer. Right? I can multi media anything visual, right? If you have the mediums and you also have the Transcript that how you’re transferring it, which would be like the internet transferring audio, like a video. So they’re sort of mixed their networks kind of mixed with content?
David Waterman 8:10
Right, TV? The most expensive
Where is SMS/text message marketing heading?
Jon Carmine 8:12
I think, right now I’m going to watch a TV. What’s the point? Well, and that’s expensive. SMS MMS, in Mutli multimedia message. I think it frustrates me in we’re at the place we are in time should be further Yeah, just like, why why do we have these two separate, like, protocols? Like what? What’s happening?
David Waterman 8:34
Well, I email which will be written for him, but also Internet, right? Is that kind of crossing? And I’m like, as email hasn’t evolved, and we could do a whole show on just that. I mean, it’s the show the people trying but I think
Jon Carmine 8:47
in this in this episode, we’ll kind of be focusing on a couple of those like email, SMS, and mixing in some some of the old ones like the mail at home catalog, or the mail. Direct Mail, right. And dealer that
David Waterman 9:02
somebody can bring the old timer with. Yeah, yeah.
Are direct mailing catalogues dead?
Jon Carmine 9:05
You’ve had that document Print industry? You know, I think you Yeah, why don’t you tell us a little about the history of the catalog?
David Waterman 9:15
Wow. Well, I do know a couple facts. A couple of interesting ones. The everybody thinks it’s the Sears catalog, right? Everybody I mean, that’s if you talk to people to go What’s the you know, because of course it’s US market. Right. Right. But um, in the US it wasn’t it was Tiffany. Oh, Tiffany accompany right. What is blue?
Jon Carmine 9:34
Was it like the Tiffany blue or do
David Waterman 9:36
they call it like, I think a blue catalog or something. But yeah, I gotta remember what they you know, do you get in too deep but I do know that it wasn’t Sears but everybody thinks is Sears and when I grew up Sears was the catalog and there was a JC Penney and there was a there was always Sears and then my grandparents. We talked Sears catalog, so it was the early mail order they buy a house You can buy a house,
Jon Carmine 10:02
or like, like, huge
David Waterman 10:04
Yep, they’re still out there. So somewhere in I don’t 1980s, you know, something like that Sears catalog was around. So it’s been around for a long, long time. And then I think there’s other examples as you go along with people who reinvented the catalog and reinvented it, but you know, it was all because people had leisure time, they had more money. And you know, they just basically couldn’t spend their money, they could flip through a catalog and order something that they could not get in their neighborhood, right, you know, what I mean? Or their, their specific area, and it was hard to travel back then. And so even as things got, you know, in the 20s, and 30s, the more money you had the more disposable income, you would use a catalog, and it was just the way to buy things. And, you know, it’s kind of waned since then. And I think in somewhere around when we had some of our big recessions, people just abandon the catalogs, right. So that was
Jon Carmine 10:57
technology.
David Waterman 10:58
Technology came up, yeah, lot of money for producing them. People said, we don’t need them. We’ve got the internet, let’s use email. And I can tell you, there’s some people who really made that successful. And there’s some people who really failed. Yeah, it’s close because of that. Yeah. So it’s an but so you take this old marketing tool of the catalog, and you get to see some really good examples out there of people that kind of use it, and make it work for them. And I guess the real question is, why is it working for them? And why is it not for others? It’s a really interesting topic. And I think we can come up with there’s some new examples, right? Like one of them be Bonobos. Yeah.
I was earlier.
Yes. Thank you. That’s a really good example of one who’s made a catalog really work. And I think you you have a couple of you said, you got an Amazon catalog.
Jon Carmine 11:52
I’ve got my Amazon catalog. Yeah.
David Waterman 11:54
So I didn’t get one. That’s why
Jon Carmine 11:58
you’re not cool enough. They said, they said this guy. He knows what a catalog is. If we send it to him, he’ll throw it out. Bottom of the stack. Just this is this other guy. We’re gonna send it to him because he’s
David Waterman 12:10
early adopter Amazon. I just feel cheated on that. I don’t understand it.
Jon Carmine 12:15
Now you don’t use it. So you’re right. I can’t talk about I’m not using Amazon.
David Waterman 12:21
Everybody uses Amazon whether you know it or not. But um, but yeah, I think that’s a good one. So why is Amazon doing a catalog? I think dead catalogs are dead. Right?
Jon Carmine 12:30
Yeah. I think there’s some interesting things in here though. It’s, I’ve taking a peek through it. It’s very much geared toward kids. And
David Waterman 12:40
okay,so he feels like maybe more like the old Sears catalog.
Jon Carmine 12:43
Right? Which is funny boys and kids drive the you know, drag the parents to the store that whole like that
David Waterman 12:49
circle got a big marker and circle we used to lay it out acres.
Jon Carmine 12:53
In this they can do stickers now give you stickers now and I save the page yet, so they give you love
David Waterman 12:59
stickers. Yep. And kids love sticker keeps them busy. Right? And mommy. Yes. In this in this great marketing,
Jon Carmine 13:07
highlight magazines when you were a kid in the dentist’s office. Ooh, you know, seach search and find and like stuff like that stickers. It kind of reminds me of that. Just like the the way kind of either,
David Waterman 13:21
like 4 or 5,6,7,8 year olds that they love stickers on everything.
Jon Carmine 13:27
I think what’s interesting about catalogs is closed. It’s sort of a closed network, right? Like, once you get it. It that’s it, it’s static. And I think for kids particularly that works well. Because their attention span is lower. I mean, like Blue’s Clues runs they run the same episode five days in a row, and they found that the kids increase their their attention span and how much they enjoy it. In that that window as time petition of it right, right. Yeah. Which is it’s yeah, it’s weird. You would think it would they would need something new and fresh.
David Waterman 14:06
Now might be a good time to bring in Bruce a conversation we had last week. He has a company that uses catalogs very effectively. And we we had a great interview with them. And I think it would touch on some of these points that we’re talking about. So this
Jon Carmine 14:20
is Bruce from DixonDale Farms. And he’s also known as the onion onion man. Hey, Bruce, wanting to tell us a little bit about your operation.
Bruce Frasier 14:31
We grow probably 95% of the annual plants grown in the United States. So we have a pretty good sample of what the demand is. And plus we’ve been doing this for almost 110 years now.
Jon Carmine 14:45
You know, some people say we catalog you know catalogs are dead, but for you it’s it’s been a completely different experience.
Bruce Frasier 14:52
Well, I think it’s a matter for them to relate. One is you know, Jeanie, my wife and I, you know, she she actually owns a company, I just married into it, that she’s, she’s the fourth generation. So it gives him a, you know, a farming relationship. You know, people want to deal with the, you know, local farmer to know where their products coming from. And plus the fact that it’s so full of information about growing techniques and things like this, in addition to just selling product, they keep it as a reference.
David Waterman 15:26
Okay, recipes too
Bruce Frasier 15:29
30% of our customers request not to be sent a catalog. That’s, that’s increasing. But we’re still mailing out 100 over 100,000 catalogs standard individuals. You look at that front cover there, that company right there, that Turnip Farms in the Washington State, you know, they just said, please send us 40 catalogs, we made your front cover. So we put customer photos in there. And we put the customer’s name in the state or city, city and state that they’re from, we’re that way people will say, Okay, wait a minute, this variety was grown in Pennsylvania, and that’s where I am. So that’s a good variety for my area,
Jon Carmine 16:14
sort of reinforcing some of the educational piece through consumers, actual consumers to
Bruce Frasier 16:21
and inputs, it gets customers, sending us photos to let us give us feedback, especially when new some new variety,
David Waterman 16:29
you know, most catalogs, you get our product shots or studio shots, you know, and yours is chock full of customer shots, you know, photos of the babies and particular and small children. And when did that start? Because I mean, it seems to be kind of a Hallmark for you guys. And I know it’s popular.
Bruce Frasier 16:48
I got educated by the association that Dave in our in the mail regarding Association, Direct Gardening Association, back in the days, they were talking, you know, you put pictures of, of young people, where people want to share it with young people, you put pictures of dogs to wear this is it’s not just growing a product, it’s the enjoyment of spending family time out in your garden growing.
Jon Carmine 17:18
So people use the catalog go on the website in order, or are they checking boxes and then mailing that order in with like a check or something like that?
Bruce Frasier 17:29
Where about 90% are placed orders are placed online?
Jon Carmine 17:33
Okay, there’s no it’s you’re using or the, the catalog is almost like a marketing tool, even though the majority of the orders are coming
Bruce Frasier 17:42
in more price structure is the more they order, more bundles of plants they order the cheaper per bundle they get. And so we have a lot of people that sit around a kitchen table with their gardening club and say, Okay, let’s let’s get our DixonDale annual plan order together. You know, we deal a lot with people that, you know, Amish and, you know, some things that, you know, are not online. So we still offer that as an option. But, you know, the number of online orders increasing dramatically.
David Waterman 18:21
That’s I remember asking that question because I know a lot of catalogers that still do catalogs, they made him smaller, leaner, mostly for weight or paper printing, but they also dropped the insert because that costs extra money to add the insert, just like you said they use this, you know, in groups or families to figure out what they’re going to order. That was fascinating.
Bruce Frasier 18:43
So tablet or whatever, calculator, it
David Waterman 18:47
cost you extra money, doesn’t it for that insert? .
Bruce Frasier 18:49
Sure.
David Waterman 18:50
Yeah,
Bruce Frasier 18:50
it’s now 10 cents on Enter.
David Waterman 18:55
Wow.Let’s talk about cost for second
Jon Carmine 18:57
That’s where my head was going.
David Waterman 18:59
Because that’s why a lot of companies say we don’t need a catalog and I get it. But but but if it’s, this is a great case where it probably would hurt your business dramatically if you didn’t have one.
Bruce Frasier 19:10
Oh, yeah. Me screaming. Yeah, let’s so our cost involved, you know, obviously, you know, right now, I mean, it’s with out $1 , 1.15, 20 To print the catalog mail. You know,
Jon Carmine 19:28
that includes postage, right? Because I know the postage
Bruce Frasier 19:32
time around. And then after that the people that request a catalog, you know, online, call in and request catalog. We mail it out of here. Now with the post rates it cost us almost 70 cents to mail. So
David Waterman 19:47
you do you do a large drop and then you keep a bunch on hand and send them when people request. Do you do just one drop just curious or choose? One just to circle back and that’s why I was questioning the count catalog was really, I don’t think you could replace it.
Bruce Frasier 20:02
It’s gardening, maybe, maybe with other items, but I’m never quite understood why someone would want to even leave 15 or 20% of their sales. Because you’re not putting a catalog.
David Waterman 20:20
The uniqueness is really the relationship you have with the customers and putting the photography on it. And there’s a lot of things that go into that. The recipe that you know to make.
Bruce Frasier 20:30
Alright, but wait, the good thing is onions. Okay. Nobody cooks at home without putting.
Jon Carmine 20:37
Right right, it’s a staple.
Bruce Frasier 20:39
It’s a staple, and the freshness of the onion. And the fact that you actually produced it and grew, it adds some value to the family. It puts them back in agrarian life. I say we take the mystery out of growing. Because people think there’s mystery.
Jon Carmine 20:58
It’s all the layers.
Bruce Frasier 20:59
Yeah. We cut. Oh, that sounds good. I might. Anyway, yeah, we were doing a one layer at a time.
David Waterman 21:08
I think thank you for sharing that. I’m sure our audience will really appreciate some of the insights. What did you think of that? I mean,
Jon Carmine 21:16
yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting to see that, like, they print so many of them. I mean, think rarely. No, really, we think a lot. For me, I’m like, that’s like seems like a lot of catalog, like a lot of weight.
David Waterman 21:28
Yeah. And you wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. Right. Right. I would say
Jon Carmine 21:32
yeah, I mean, obviously, something is working. And I think that goes into kind of what we’ve been talking about, like picking the right medium for the right customer, of being able to feel it and look at it. And I think that that’s if we’re if we’re talking about different mediums, and how over time, the mediums, they they sort of change, but there’s something inside of it, which is the message or the you know, the product, which is the message how that
David Waterman 22:01
inspire you, though, right? Don’t they don’t I mean, some right to get out. LL Bean is another one, I keep Burpees they inspire LL Bean, I mean, I really rarely buy anything anymore. But it does make you I actually we I know the marketing person who we have had many conversations with them and how they make you feel part of the company. It’s all there. It’s not accidental. Let’s just turn that. And then same thing with Burpee, it’s the gardening catalog is to make you think ahead for gardening. They send it now they make you start thinking about it. You know what I mean? Yeah, you do something over those cold winters here in the northeast to think about. So I’m sorry to digress, but that’s the feeling you get through a catalog I don’t think you get so much from the web page. That’s
Jon Carmine 22:46
And people will say that about books, too. There’s something there’s also the mentality, and we’re gonna I’m going to talk about generations in a second, too, and how to how the generations absorb different media contents differently. But I think it’s interesting how you don’t always, like I’ve lost completely lost my train of thought.
David Waterman 23:11
Well, but maybe take it from there. I mean, the different mediums, I mean, catalogs are just one medium. Yeah. And you know, why? Why are they seem to be working?
Jon Carmine 23:22
Oh, right. Okay. So here it was, it was a diminishing effect of that. So as the the network increases, and then you get more people in it, that you lose volume and novelty. Right. And so, you know, 10 years ago, catalogs, they lost a lot of that novelty. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And now, can we get some of that? Like, can you revisit
David Waterman 23:47
to come back into catalogs? I would think, right, yeah. Right. Because you’re, you’re gonna stand out, it used to be, you know, you get hundreds of catalogs. Everybody was doing it, and then everybody kind of dropped out. And now the only ones left are the ones that are succeeding, you know, theoretically and right. They’re novelties, and there’s a reason for it. They can come at certain times, and they can be targeted to certain people. You know, I mean, I think that there’s, there’s a place for that, you know, anyway,
Jon Carmine 24:17
I know, I think it’s we were I think we were going to the place of how do you customize that, that experience? Customize that experience a little bit. I know that you’ve had a lot of experience in the personalized like document print world where they can kind of customize it now a little bit more than they used to.
David Waterman 24:38
Yep. Yeah, they’re good point there, because personalization was you know, obviously was that few years back that was a, you know, many years back was kind of the big thing. You got something in the mail that said, Hey, John, you know, whatever. But what really, it’s hyper personalization, where it’s tailored to you, I think, is what we’re talking about now. And yeah
Jon Carmine 24:58
sorry to cut you off. But tailoriing the content, not just
David Waterman 25:01
content, not just the name,
Jon Carmine 25:03
okay, personalication is maybe Hi, I’m John.
Communication and digital transformation
David Waterman 25:06
Right. So yeah, so I did you know, I work a lot with, you know, Chili Publisher and Page Flex back of the day. And I understand the technology behind it extensively. But what we used to do is, I’ll give you a great analogy, we used to do it with banks, we were I was in a big board meeting for banks. And the thing was every poster that they had on the wall when you know, outside their banks and their downtown Manhattan streets, didn’t have the city that they were in, was kind of dumb. So one of the first things we did was start personalizing all the material, the printed material to the location. So if you were in New Orleans, or you were in, you know, Charlotte, wherever you were, you would see their building their skyline, their people, their faces, their ethnic, you know, makeup, and it became much more personal one on one. Now, I think it’s hyper personalized. Now you can start adding in right AI.
Jon Carmine 26:00
Yeah, I think I think that’d be really cool. I don’t know how much I think sometimes it’s tough to know how much research has gone into, you know, very variable data, printing or composite. What do you guys call it something like that variable? Data?
David Waterman 26:14
Variable Data composition? is a term you
Jon Carmine 26:17
and I don’t know about the AI technology in terms of like, actually taking the different pages of the content and moving that around and adapting that to the different things you can do
David Waterman 26:27
it? Are they doing it? And and who’s doing it, I think is a good discussion matter. Right. And the technology exists, and I think it’s all there. But you’re right, you need a smart AI brain behind it to do it correctly. We used to just do it with spreadsheets, but so much,
Jon Carmine 26:44
which Yeah, which you know, you just have a couple different user groups, a couple different roles, and then
David Waterman 26:49
a lot of them but yeah, it was really, to me, it was very expensive, it’s
Jon Carmine 26:53
even more time and money. I think using AI to reduce that.
David Waterman 26:56
I think AI is you might be starting to get catalogs, I you know, one of my things is, and I’m not, but I’ll hear from other people. Why are you sending me like, why are you sending me small children? You know, baby stuff in my catalog, right? I mean, maybe you think I know somebody who needs a baby, I guess. But if you knew me better, you’d know, my babies are all grown right? You wouldn’t want to, you know, so know me better know me more helped me build me something that I could use, I think is the future. I think this idea of everything for everybody is sort of waning in.
Jon Carmine 27:30
Yeah. So this also, it’ll kind of bring bring us into. We were talking about novelty before and how, how these businesses and companies are looking and marketers are looking for new mediums. And that’s kind of always we’re always looking for new mediums. You know, we talked about some of the old ones. But, you know, how do you reach customers? I think some now we have virtual reality. Augmented Reality VR, AR You know, they’re acronyms for it. That’s, that’s an interesting area. And I think
David Waterman 28:06
so new John. Yeah, yeah. Just want to tell you the horror story it’s kind of funny. So I had, you know, Facebook bought Oculus. So they they were two companies. You had originally had an Oculus login then if they wanted it to be your Facebook login, and they joined them. Somehow mine got our joined. Yeah, somehow I got unjoined. And all my purchases are on Oculus. And you don’t I mean, the games I bought
Jon Carmine 28:32
things just connected network.
David Waterman 28:35
Yeah. Well, I called a broken because it wouldn’t work. Well, I get on support. And it’s kind of cool, because you’re but they’re not Oculus support. You think I get an avatar, right. But you can keep going. Right? No, it was. And then on the support the guy actually we were chatting, which was kind of cool chatting in VR. I thought that was cool.
Jon Carmine 28:52
But you got to explain this. I have never personally seen this component of it. So like when you’re saying you’re chatting to an avatar like so you’re standing there in person as your avatar talking?
David Waterman 29:01
Yeah, I would be my avatar. I was saying I should have been talking to an avatar but I wasn’t okay to make a point. They haven’t elevated to the correct level. If you really want to get into it. That’s what but I was on a chat window inside my world. I was sitting somewhere at your desk type, right? Okay. Right. I was in a desert and, and I’m typing and the guy who was I imagine I feel so bad for him. But he was an Oculus. He knew what the problem was he needed to reconnect the to account, which by the way, they’re still not connected correctly. He had to be, could you scan your receipt, like for my, he wanted my serial number, which I had to take it off my head and there’s actually a serial number that was one. He wanted four points of information. One of them was a receipt and he said, Can you scan it and send it to me? And I laughed and I said, Are you reading a script from your web portal? You know, I can’t Can you scan inside Oculus? You can’t write and if I couldn’t scan, how can I send it to you? He was I was like Did your this is not going to work? He gave up. He just said he eventually Believe me that I own one, I gave him my serial number. And we moved on from there. But I still save that little piece of the five things he wanted from me. And three of them were not possible in the platform. They’re around, I think
Jon Carmine 30:14
you’re wearing like a device
David Waterman 30:15
like you’re wearing it, right. So before it was, some of these platforms still have a long ways to go because they’re not. You know, they’re not they’re not fully grow.
Jon Carmine 30:26
Yeah. And I think that, well, these new mediums are great. And they’re fun. And they’re experimental a lot of the time. Right, they have to start somewhere. But a lot of advertising there is Yeah, but sometimes the problem is it requires so much brain power from the individual. Because you have that, that learning curve.
David Waterman 30:48
I could see it for classes, though or teaching.
Jon Carmine 30:50
Yeah, right.
David Waterman 30:52
I could see it for educating and buy this product. And while you’re buying this product, you know, here’s how you use it.
Jon Carmine 30:59
Yeah.
David Waterman 30:59
Because you could then demonstrate things and it would be amazing. So I do see with the power,
Jon Carmine 31:05
educational perspective,
David Waterman 31:06
and products, you know, here’s how you use that product. Right? Or the problem, you get something in the mail, and you have an instruction manual.
Jon Carmine 31:14
Oh, like a how to but it’s like, now you go to someone
David Waterman 31:17
Nobody reads the printed one anymore, right? That was it, then you go to YouTube, and you look for the video first. Right? Well, now the next thing is you got to use the the VR I think and then you can participate and probably talk to a bot or something. Yeah, person.
Jon Carmine 31:32
There’s there’s this, if we’re talking about like brain power, humans are notorious lazy. So, you know, when you’re trying to get someone to use a network? I mean, you like that stuff. So you’re you’re an early adopter? I don’t know, really, in that sense. But when marketers are trying to reach customers? Yes, technology has changed so quickly, right? So the generations, it’s the age groups and the age ranges are shrinking. So for me, by the end of high school, I might have had a cell phone with, you know, t nine word which was, you know, typing on four keys or the number pad. Now, that’s in five years from there. I mean, imagine like the technology change so much that the kids were then using and growing up with, with iPhones and things like that. So you used to have these really big age groups, when you’re marketing to people, you know, in the 40s, in the 50s, back in the day, and even before that, but now it’s like we have to micro shrink those networks down. And there’s a huge learning curve. It’s Snapchat, for example, versus Instagram. The demographics on who uses those and why. Yeah, is, you know, pretty, it’s interesting to see that they’re not that far apart. But what the platforms and how they behave, are completely different.
David Waterman 32:57
Yeah. Yeah. And how you advertise all of this. Exactly.
Jon Carmine 33:01
I think that’s what’s really interesting about Snapchat, right? Oh, my goodness. Right? Yeah, tick tock, too, is how have you have you seen Snapchats? Like, filter building for marketers? It’s in. It’s cool. Like it says, application you download. And you you can build these like, AR It’s like Photoshop mixed with?
David Waterman 33:19
I know, I’ve seen I know how people could really use them. I played with it, but I couldn’t find the use. But I know there’s a use case somewhere in there. You know,
Jon Carmine 33:27
yeah, yeah. And they figure some of them out. But so that’s that micro, right, like even the difference between five years, it not like it’s such a different way that the applications are designed for those different kinds of people’s Snapchats. It user interfaces, kind of unique. It’s not the traditional, like hamburger menu and which Instagrams a little more on that, that traditional set,
David Waterman 33:56
but is it the demographics that they’re going for John? I mean, because, you know, you know, the we we represent a couple different generations here just on this podcast that so I mean, you know, what I might gravitate towards what you might gravitate towards, or, you know, my son might gravitate, there are three different things of, and I guess, as a, what are you selling would dictate kind of which ones you pick? Right? And, yeah, but, but I mean, catalogs aren’t dead. They’re even younger generations that are using those, right. I mean, I’ve heard that statement. Just like they’ve said, direct mail is dead. It’s not dead. They keep calling it dead and dying. But it’s not emails, not dead. Right, right. It’s just changed. They’re all just changing and evolving, right?
Jon Carmine 34:39
I think now we’re seeing something happen with SMS where it’s a newer medium, it’s a hotter medium, and now that everyone has it, and we have unlimited plans and marketers are hopping on that bandwagon, and people are like, oh, man, here we go. Now we’re on text, which text marketing can be very effective, but it can also be annoying spammy annoying. Right. And can also it’s just gonna, it might, it might go backwards. It might not, it might not make it the same way. Because it’s a little too personal sometimes.
David Waterman 35:11
Well, let’s talk about that for a little bit. Yeah, the creepiness, right. You know, email never really got too creepy because it never got to personalized, you know, I mean, they got a little bit,
Jon Carmine 35:21
but it doesn’t come into your handset the same way. Like you had to open your application. A text message is more like, in like, in your face. It’s Hi, I’m here, I’m a friend, right? Are you
David Waterman 35:34
right? In where you get, you keep getting the same spams. And you can’t stop them to you know, it’s like, right? Or the shoe thing. But the common shoe thing we always hear right? You know, I was looking at shoes over here. And the next thing I’m getting a text over here that creepy. Facebook was in the news for all that, you know that whole? It’s just too creepy.
Jon Carmine 35:55
When you have a conversation with somebody, you’re like, wow, I swear that that heard that conversation.
David Waterman 36:00
But like everybody’s had that covers. Yeah. Right. But you’re sharing
Jon Carmine 36:04
what’s interesting, too, is like when you go to your friend’s house and you hop on their Wi Fi network, your phone automatically does it. If you have the password or whatever, like you then it knows that it picks up those cookies from that network. And then that’s like, a lot of times they make that correlation. And they don’t have that. You have that conversation. Do you you did have that conversation that night over dinner? You also were on their Wi Fi. So it’s not that they’re listening in that way, but
David Waterman 36:29
it seems like it that’s creepy, right? Everybody turns off their Amazon? You know, mutes their Alexa? Yeah. Because, you know, and I’m like, Oh, she really wants to hear. But I think Well, I think to be honest, I don’t think it’s the mediums of the real, if you want to bring it back, it’s gonna be back to AI a little bit. And I think you know, getting smarter with every one of those mediums and understanding the customer better, I think is the next 10 years. You know, if you think in terms of decades or whatnot, yeah, how do we get better at that? But how are you doing it with Emptive? are you what are you doing towards that? You know, you’re getting smarter with your
Jon Carmine 37:10
that’s, that’s the stuff that excites me. I mean, I love I love AI machine learning. That’s
David Waterman 37:17
little scary, too, though, scary. I
Jon Carmine 37:19
know, a lot of times we’ll really be used for the general application, they call like, the general intelligence that people talk about the fear of it coming. Yeah, now we’re just using algorithmic based logic and neural networks to kind of do some really cool things. And Emptive, what we’ve kind of been working on is working on ways to gather data from all different revenue, and revenue streams, social streams, all different places, ecommerce, purchase history, and then calculate recommendations, but then also take those recommendations and put them in usable content formats
David Waterman 37:59
and your marketmedium. Right, right. Yeah.
Jon Carmine 38:02
But now it’s okay. How do we, how do we give somebody something that’s AI generated? That’s valuable, and not just gibberish?
David Waterman 38:11
But that’s the thing. I think that’s the risk. If you start spamming people with gibberish, then it doesn’t make it any better than what we already have. Right? Right, right. And if you’re only doing what, like we were doing with personalization, years ago, with spreadsheets, then you’re really not doing you know, if you could get me a catalog if I’m just using catalog, but it could be anything else attached to an email. And it was personalized, but not creepy. And targeted. Because you know, my true interest, right? I would I would embrace that I would write I think some companies can are working that direction and doing very well. Also, if you can educate me, I think that’s the next generation don’t just sell me, educate me, you know, show me, then I think I’ll be more attached to your brand. And if your AI knows that I this is the part I think your it should know that I don’t know. Or it should know that. I do know. Right. Right. You know what I mean? And how does it figure that out? That’s yeah, it’s I keep going back to we don’t ask enough questions, you know,
Jon Carmine 39:09
right. Right. And sometimes it’s nice to just ask, right? Information. I
David Waterman 39:13
know how to do this. I mean, great. I might say no help me, you know, but nobody ever bothers to ask, they just want to sell me something. And, you know, that’s, I see that in the next 10 years.
Jon Carmine 39:25
Sometimes there’s also a disconnect into like when you ask somebody something, and like what really works, and I think that’s where AI will become beneficial. Because it’s a really great starting point to first ask not just spy on them. Now they’re now we just like some companies will just spy on you. Yes. It’s creepy. Yeah. First is ask get some of that information. But then also use some AI to watch some of the behaviors and then suggest additional content or follow up on what feedback they give you. We noticed this, does that still hold true?
David Waterman 39:58
Right? That’s the thing if you ask I have an expectation that you’re going to do something, at least something small with it, you know, may not write huge expectation promise if you ask all these questions, and then still send me the same crap, you know, then I’m going to get one bad taste in my mouth. Right. So I think there’s a delicate balance in learning that, you know, when and what to ask and how to utilize it. And I think I think we haven’t really figured that out yet. I haven’t seen great examples of it. They probably are out there. Just maybe not in my notice them.
Jon Carmine 40:29
You don’t
David Waterman 40:29
right. If it’s done really well, maybe that’s the trick. Maybe it was really well, you don’t notice it? i So
Jon Carmine 40:35
we tried to do right. You know,
David Waterman 40:37
I’m very curious to see how you keep going with that. And we will I’m sure I’ll talk about it some more. But I mean, I have strong opinions, but I don’t really have all the answers. Right. Right.
Jon Carmine 40:47
Yeah. So I guess in the we could talk about the AI component. And yeah, that could be marketing content. That’s a whole nother thing. We’ll get there. So I think in closing, it’s sort of this this can be on the lookout for consumer messaging fatigue, right? Don’t Don’t exhaust them to the point that they don’t hear your message. Use the proper medium. Use the proper medium. Don’t be afraid to go back in time.
David Waterman 41:15
Don’t be afraid of catalogs and things. Yeah. And really work. Yeah. Or sign in a window. You know, and think. Bring your customers into your Yeah.
Jon Carmine 41:24
So Thanks for Thanks for joining us, everyone out there. And until next time, Dave and John saying goodbye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
