Navigating the Digital Advertising Landscape with Abe Kasbo. Arthur's Round Table Podcast

0:03 Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Arthur's Round Table. We're super happy to be here with you and also happy to have Abe with us today. We have an interesting conversation that we'll have and hope that you enjoy it as well and share it with others. So Abe, thanks for doing this and making some time. We're super glad to have you, as I said, and if you wouldn't mind just starting with your journey and tell us how this all came about, that would be awesome. And you're right there. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So, you know, I guess I'll start from the beginning. You know, my, my, my parents and I immigrated here from Syria in 1980 and, and we moved right to Paterson, NJ from there, you know, public school, then private high school and then on to Seton Hall University right after that. I got my master's there as well in public administration. But then I went to work on Wall Street and, and then from there down to Lucent Technologies with and Carly Fiorina's organization, very low in that organization, but learned a lot then from there.

1:18 And that was a, a marketing position I found I, I really kind of found that, you know, marketing is teaching and marketing is convincing and marketing is influencing. So, so I took a liking to that early on and I built a career and a company around the idea of being a a consultant as well as a marketing firm to Fortune 500 companies, Middlemac market companies and and startups. So that that's been the journey.

1:59 I started there Sony in 2005. The kids or 2000? Yeah, 2004, 2005, the kids were like four or five months old with twins and left a very nice paying job to for no clients and a hope and a journey. Here we are, literally 20 years later. And so you're an independent firm which got your sea legs at big companies doing the marketing job with them, correct? Yeah. Yeah, I, I tell my kids that that that's the Goldman Sachs trade, right? You know, don't jump into entrepreneurship if you itch you to do it. But not that this is about my opinion, but yeah, it's go get your sea legs and build your Rolodex on somebody else's brand and then with a plan to bounce out and do it yourself, right? That that's right, that's right.

2:49 And you know, you, you talked about entrepreneurship and we're, you know, we're, we're not a big firm, you know, we're, we're actually small, but we have done some, some very interesting things. You know, I, I would argue that we, we launched the first healthcare YouTube channel ever like when YouTube was three months old, right? You know, we, we've done some interesting things like the first maybe the first maybe. And I say that maybe because you just. Don't. Who knows, right? Yeah. Yeah, with the web, it's it's unbelievable as you know, you know, we launched the first B2B healthcare healthcare store on Amazon for a global conglomerate.

3:34 So, you know, ideas don't come with size. Ideas can happen with and by anybody and, and, and we take those on and I tell our team all the time I said, you know, we're in the business sometimes of generating bad ideas because you can't expect to, you know, as human beings and not AI, right, right. HI, you can't expect to generate good ideas all the time, but the practice of generating ideas get you there, right? It's. Totally. I used to coach college basketball and I would liken it to practicing free throws, right? You, you, you got to keep shooting the free throws. And you're going to miss them and you're. Going to miss them and that's OK. But as long as you're proactive and as long as you're honest and as long as there's integrity behind that and as long as there's a rationale behind it, right, there's a there's an opportunity to move forward, right? And I also tell my team that that we inevitably are going to be wrong, right at any given moment, we're going to be wrong about something.

4:42 But what we want to do is set ourselves up to be directionally right, because, you know, it can go like this. And we have to ride that out. But if we are, if we've got the North Star going this way, then we'll get there. And, and that's our approach with, with clients, right? Because certainly in marketing there's a lot of waste. Arthur as you can imagine in the digital space, it it is a the hype is palpable and everyone is a marketing genius. Of course, isn't it interesting? I've I've the what you just said, I call as in life, business is a series of adjustments, right? Try something, you adjust, you try something you adjust, right? But isn't it interesting that on some level, it's perplexing what human nature tends to grasp?

5:43 You know, it, it's just like, what causes something to go viral, right? Why would anybody follow the Kardashians, right? That seems like a, a, a, a, a deep dark hole. But you know. You know, it's interesting you brought that up. Can I, can I just. Yeah, sure. Just a. 2nd So I actually talk about this in my book. So the book's been out for about 9 weeks. It's called irresponsibly digital and sorry for the for the pitch, but irresponsibly. No, don't apologize. You're welcome to. Yeah, yeah. You can get it. You can get it anywhere. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, that sort of thing. And you know, the whole Kardashian thing on social is interesting because we have those conversations internally and with clients and with everybody.

6:29 And I'll say, look, the Kardashian thing on digital didn't happen on digital. They were on TV for 20 years, right? I mean, you, you can, you can look at any of these for now. Yes, there's, you know, Mr. Beast and you know, some of these guys that have just, you know, taken on to digital. But if you look at who is really popular on digital, including the guy in the White House. Yeah. The guy was on TV for 14 years. I know, right? So, so fame has a lot to do with this. Yeah. You know, Fenty with Rihanna. I mean, you know, Fenty is a a global brand. It's a billion dollar company, you know, makeup, whatever, you know, whatever they do.

7:16 But Rihanna could have sold toilet paper and it would have been a billion dollar company because she was famous before all of this stuff or. So what? This isn't intentionally trying to pitch somebody else's book, but one of the things I read several years ago helped me understand why silly things like Kardashian became viral and I'm just escaping. Do you remember the name of the book Contagious? Why? Things come to catch on? Someone just help me with the name of the book. Anyway it it helped me understand that it in some level, Not sure this is true, but it kind of made sense to me that it appeals to the fight or flight makeup of the human design because we tend not to have that fight or flight. You're running from the tiger in real life now, and that that activates some part of that fight or flight mechanism within the human makeup.

8:28 And that gives that viscerally excites that part of thing that's innate within us. And like I said, I don't know if that all made sense, but it made a little bit of sense of me at the for the time, 'cause it's inexplicable, right? Why somebody would spend any amount of their time paying attention to that nonsense, right? Well, I, you know, I, I don't know, I First off, I have to get that book. I mean, I'm very interested in this stuff because you know, what I talk about is marketing as behavioral, right? So if it if there wasn't a social platform, it would be something else. Right. But it's it's sort of interesting that you see that because, like, why did people buy Pet Rock? Right, Good marketing is #1 right? Right.

9:17 Right. But but it if if the Kardashian thing, right? If, if we're starting from a position where that's irrational. We as a nation, Pat Rock. Right. Look at that. The extreme right? Right. Totally. And what is that about? I think that's novelty, right? I don't. I think that it's. A story. Yeah, it's a story. Well, let's face it, everything people buy stories, they don't buy stuff. Right? Right. Exactly. So, so, so yeah, I think you're right. I think, you know, when, when some of my friends, you know, will talk about the rational market, you know, I, I'll have to agree with Charlie Munger. I, you know, I mean, I think he knows and so, so does Mr. Buffett and that, you know, there is really no such thing. And you're dealing with human beings and human emotions and human rationale.

10:12 You know what? Why do people continue to spend, you know, 1900 dollars or whatever it is for the iPhone And, and just think about what the NFL is doing, right? Like tickets are already through the roof, but now you have to pay, you know, $25,000 for the right to buy those tickets. It's. Is that a rational thing? No, no, it's not. And I mean, I, I love football. Like we really enjoy watching it and there's all kinds of reasons why maybe I would consider, not because of this stupid shit that they're doing, but it is encouraging to me.

10:53 And thanks for letting me editorialize a little bit. Oh. Please I this is great. When you look at college football and you see the stadiums filled up and you see those kids committed, wow, I love America. Like that gives me hope for America, right? Not it doesn't even have anything to do with football. Let's do with community, right? Community. Community, absolutely. Yeah. And and and and, you know, the the college scene is about community and it is about, you know, it is about also tribalism, right? We we tend to be tribal. And you know, I'm a Seton Hall guy, so I, you know, right now I'm having a hard time trying to justify the Villanova has the boat come on guys, right.

11:45 So go pirates. But yeah, absolutely we are, you know, as far as you know, I, I could gather we're, we're not irrational, we're not rational beings. So we're more irrational. So how do you explain in your book, for example, that viewpoint, if you're trying to market something to somebody and you're, you go down the road, as you suggested, make some mistakes to get to it, an end point that makes sense. How much of the rational expectation do you discount I, I?

12:31 Juan, I will tell you, I don't know, but but here's here's what I do know. There needs to be a certain level of emotion in all of this, right? When you're, you know, people don't sell beer. I mean, just think about, think about, think about Range Rover, OK, right. I mean their TV commercials, you know, they're going up to 999 stairs, you know, they're jumping off of that. They're going into the ocean. But I what I see is, you know, people going to the supermarket with Range Rovers, right? Well, not only that they're they break all the time. People buy them, Yeah.

13:14 And so, you know, the rational thing would be like, hey, the Range Rover will get you to the supermarket. It will, you know, it will do this. It's a features and benefits kind of thing, right? But none of this game is from from Range Rover all the way down to buying tires, right? You know, the, the tire situations like, you know, they'll scare you to death, like, you know, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll show the car going off the road or something like that. And so there needs to be a bit of emotion in this. But I will say that that frankly, it literally depends on the product, service and idea. That much that in with Range Rover by the way, don't you? It's really simple to me.

13:58 It's status. That's that's the emotion that compels people to do it right. It's it's status, it, you know, Rolex, same thing. Yeah, same thing. Right. You know any of those, you know, luxury brands, if you if you're buying a refrigerator, it's a different argument, right. But if you're talking about some of the top line stuff, well, where do you find that top line stuff? Well, you find it in certain outlets and in certain media that's not accessible to a particular, you know, class and, and so you have to be where your market is. I don't think I'm saying anything, you know, world beating here. But ultimately it's also about consistency.

14:40 What what I think the, the medium, the mid market and even some, you know, some of the large companies because we've we, we kind of live in a world of short termism, right. Especially in the public markets where it's quarter to quarter or, and even if it's not, you know, we're going with these eight KP is that may or may not mean anything but that we need to hit those numbers. Well, OK. You know, on the digital side, there is so much fraud in that business. And I, you know, I'd love to talk to you about that, that, that those KP is, may be meaning meaningless. And a large part they are.

15:24 Yeah, I'll give you an example. And, and this is in the book, but it's also, you know, I think you're, you know, your viewers, your listeners can, can check my mouth. They can Google everything I'm saying. Or, but maybe like 3-4 years ago, the CMO of Uber, right? Like Uber doesn't have stores, right? Uber is an app. And so you would think that Uber is hiring the Creme de la Creme of marketers and people. And, and they have fine people. They, I'm, I'm sure they're great and they don't need me to tell them they're great. But the CMO went to the board and said, I have $150 million budget. I lost 100 million of it on digital ads, right? So the question is, you know, how, how did that happen? And he couldn't really give anybody a straight answer. And I don't think it was his fault, right? Because because we are almost being gaslit into handing over money to, you know, Google, Facebook and those guys. And there's a black box around it. And there are people much smarter than I, I mean, you know, I, I don't even scratch the service. There are people like Augustine Fu who who do some great, he's an, I think he's an MIT guy who do some great research in the field about ad fraud and stuff like that. But but it is incredible that

16:55 that we kind of live in this world where we say we want to manage by data, but we don't understand the data and then we don't know what to do about it. Is that, is that in a more a little bit of a pedestrian way of explaining that is when you do an ad spend, because there's no way to close the loop and your sales go up incrementally and you discount anything else that you might be doing at the same time that you can credential that ad spend based on your sales going up a little bit. Like you can't tie it in exactly. Well, the, the, the promise of digital and social is that you can and, and in many ways you can, right? But because there are so many tolls along the way in, in a digital media buy, like in a traditional media buy, you know, let's say TVI want to buy a program on CNN or I want to buy a program on The History Channel. And, and, and you can do that through cable or you could do that through, you know, you know, your ABC or some, somebody.

18:04 Terrestrial TV, Yeah, right. Exactly, exactly, But with with the promise of digital was Hey, I have a demographic, you know, there's, you know, look alike audiences. There's a psychographic I'd go in boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Well, you know that that's great. But on the other side of these things are thieves who set up fake websites with the same right, with the same demographics and Google place ads, right, They're placing ads and those guys are getting the money. People aren't seeing your ads. So I'm not the smartest guy in the book to, to even explain it. I just, I know the problem exists. I know it's pervasive because, you know, we go through some of these things and, and I know that people have been taken to the, to the cleaners, which is why we recommend caution on, on, on this stuff.

19:05 I'm not saying we don't do it. You have to do it, but I think you have to do it with eyes wide open. Is there, it's interesting the nuance that you just mentioned that Google knows that there's bots on the other end, but there there's no incentive for them to police that it seems right. Correct. Facebook says it and this is according to Statista. They say that they purge a billion fake accounts 1/4. I believe that there's probably a billion more there, right? That probably right.

19:45 So I mean, if, if they're doing that and there's a billion more there and, and like, you know, OK, so maybe the ads are being seen and I'm I'm sure they are because, you know, Facebook has driven a lot of business and made a lot of people very famous. But what we don't know is where the waste is because it's just not there. So I don't know how much money is going to waste. On those platforms, right? The other thing is I had to stop the presses to put this in the book. So the book was supposed to come out like in July and we were in the works. And then I saw an interview with Mark Zuckerberg and Mark said he said something like, you know, we just did some research and we found out the people generally have about 3 friends and they're in the market for 15 friends.

20:40 So we're going to create 15 AI, you know, additional friends for them. What right digital friends? Right, OK, so I mean, look, there's you know, there's digital porn, there's all kinds of stuff going on. But but if you're going to do that, then what? What am I going to like as a, as a quote UN quote CMO right or an advisor to CEOCFOS or you know, whoever you want me to spend my clients money, you want me to advise them to continue to spend money on your platform. So. 3/4 of the people I'm reaching are are fictitious friends.

21:21 Yeah. Are AI OK now? You know, I, I, I know you know, that might have just been thrown out. But what tends to happen in this field is, and I call them the clichocracy. These people are clichocrats. Yeah, OK. And they will go up on stage and they'll promote this stuff because by promoting this stuff, it's, you know, they seem cool and, you know, you got the guy, you know, yelling at you from the back of the cab and you know about all this hustle porn stuff. I just think we need to stop all that garbage and give just take a step back and have a much more realistic look at where we're investing our marketing dollars, why we're doing it, how we're doing it and the expected outcome. You think that's realistic meaning can you, can you get there right?

22:15 I have to tell you, I've been fighting that battle. It's it's almost like like riding a bike going down the hill and spitting in the wind. Yeah. I've been that fighting that battle for a long time. I lose a lot, but for, for the clients that choose to go on the ride with us, it is not a meteoric spike. It is steady growth. And, and, and that's, you know, I and we built relationships over the years because I think I'm, I'm not saying we don't, we make mistakes all the time, but I think that because we're so transparent about this, I think people tend to trust us. And of course, you have to deliver. Right.

22:57 Right, so there's like no bullshit when it comes to this stuff. Like, you know, we'll, we'll look at data and we, we did a discovery for a, a firm in, in New England. Their marketing budget was $6 million. It was, it was an audit, more of an audit, right, $6 million. We found that we can get our hands on because the digital marketing company would not give us the keys. Oh, it's proprietary information. We have other clients on, on which is kind of BS. Like, I know it's BS, but people do that. Well, $6 million, we, we, we found like $1.2 million in AD fraud and we don't know.

23:41 And because we didn't have access to all the keys, the doors, we don't know whether it was say, the digital agency, Google, a combination thereof. But I mean 1.2 million in digital fraud is nuts. That's a lot of money. For for for $6 million, yeah. Spending, what do you think? So people got burnt drawn in some sort of a corollary here. But see, people got so burnt from people who would develop developers that would keep the source code and not do the job and then not give it to you because you didn't pay them because they didn't do the job, right.

24:27 And so that happened, you know, like forever and ever and continues to I imagine is the are the ad agencies especially like in $6 million of big spend, right small are are are they conspiring against the customers and all agreeing not to release the data for reasons that kind of make sense but aren't real like you suggest we're it's other clients information, etcetera, etcetera. Can't you hold the gun to your head and say, look, we'll we'll engage you, but we need the data is that they acquiescing? So, so I, I, I, I don't know, I, I mean, there's plenty of honorable folks, I mean plenty of honorable folks in the field who, who I think are working in the best interest of their clients.

25:20 But I do think there are opportunities because you know, like, you know, you take, I'm not a mechanic. I take my card and my mechanic. And, and if, if, if I, if I don't know and, and that mechanic is not, you know, wants revenue, then stuff's going to come up. I think it's human nature. And I think it's case by case. I don't think that this is a rampant thing, but I do think that the, that the fraud sort of landscape in digital is rampant because of the bots, because of the fake accounts, because of the fake websites. There are numbers out there like right now on the organic side, website traffic could be as fake as, as, or as high as 60% fake, right?

26:16 And, and, and despite what everybody thinks, it, it's not coming from Russia or China. It's actually coming from the United States. And this is according to, you know, a bunch of data that anybody can Google, right? So whether you know whether it comes from China, Russia, Ukraine, wherever it comes from, it's still fake. Yeah. Right. So we have to, we have to take those those things with a grain of salt is what I'm saying, because the amount of dollars, time and effort and energy sort of chasing this stuff is staggering. Yeah. So you sort of have to live with it, right?

27:01 Well, I think, I think you have to live with it. But, but I do think that you have to, you have to try to figure it out. In 2017, Procter and Gamble, which at one time or another was the world's largest marketer, cut back on whatever the, I forget the percentage right now, but it was a significant percentage. They cut back and they saw no, no adverse impact whatsoever on their business. And, and in fact, certain areas of the business grew, right. You know, I just read somewhere, I don't know, maybe like 2-3 months ago Bose decided to to cut back as well because they're like, well if people are searching for Bose, why should we pay Google for our own name?

27:55 Yeah. But because of brand power. Brand power, yeah. Yeah. So, so the, you know, we have to think about different strategies. How do we build build a brand? How do we build a brand offline, online, you know, where at what point does it come together? And these things aren't, you know, everybody wants the easy button and everybody wants the the person who is the most eloquent with the deepest voice because that's the person they believe. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. So I, I don't live in that world. I live in in the world of sort of ambiguity about this stuff. Yeah. But that's that's reality to me. So what's what?

28:37 And this may not be a fair question, but what's a good customer for you? Like if you could profile a good customer, what does that look like? I, I would say, yeah, I, I, I would say a good customer is somebody that wants to, that wants to build the business and doesn't have unrealistic expectations from marketing, because marketing sort of like CM OS are, you know, like, I think they get fired in less than two years.

29:25 Agencies are let go very, very quickly. If there's if they don't perform well, if the life cycle of the business isn't right, if you just started your business, well, you have to invest. If you don't have money, you're expectations of to meet that. If you're, you know, if you're, you know, a, you know, if you're a large company and you've got a specific business line that you're going to that's mature, your marketing spends going to be X, it's not going to be Y. And if you are selling the business and the brand is less than well, in order to get that 17 to 20% more, you need to pump up that brand. Well, then how do you do that?

30:07 So our customer is an educated customer and somebody who's willing to have a reasonable sort of expectation about marketing because right now we just don't live in that world. Yeah. So is it a Fortune 500 company? Is it a company like? Yeah, I mean, we, we work with Fortune 500 companies we work with, we work with middle market companies we work with. You know, I chair, I'm the former chair of Seton Hall University's again. Go Pirates, Seton Hall University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. So we see a lot of startups, not that they become clients, that would be unethical, but I do work with a bunch of those folks.

30:56 So yeah, Fortune 500 companies that need that need a little, you know, punch in the arm because we're very agile. We move very, very quickly and and also too, who need that sort of, you know, that person to say, hold on a second that Provocateur because they are being pushed to do certain things. And we could bring in data, we could bring in business cases and use cases and say, let's put it on the table and let's look at all this stuff. You might not have access to it, and then let's make a decision. Yeah. Can we talk about your client that we mentioned before we hit the record button and what you're doing for them? Remind me?

31:46 Right, right in your state. Right, right in my state. Oh my gosh. I'm, I, I'm. Losing with longevity. Oh, got it, got it. Yeah. Well, we have a, a longevity center that we work with and, and they are the dominant brand in this area and they've grown, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're in Virginia, they're also in Connecticut. And their target market is actually your target market and your audience, family offices, high net worth individuals.

32:31 And they've built the business also sort of being outside the mainstream of modern medicine at, you know, 20 years ago. Yeah, they've been around a long time, yeah. Yeah, they've been around more than 20 years ago and, and, you know, so, you know, Doctor Fine has been, you know, a leader in the field. You know, when he started, he, you know, traditional medicine was tough on him, but he stayed with it. And if you look around now, longevity is, you know, everybody's talking. About it, everybody's. It's in vogue. We got billionaires, you know, claiming they never have to die. But you know, that's a sound bite.

33:12 Right, exactly, exactly. But I will, I wanted to give you an example of a another client that we work with, sure, out of Michigan. And when we met them about five years ago, they came to us for social, right. They're like, oh, you know, we need social and yes, of course we need social, right? But we looked at the total business. We recognized they needed to go through digital transformation first because like, even if you do social, they got to come back, you know, you got to send them back to your website because remember, you don't own anything on social. Facebook tomorrow could go and then what happens? Right.

33:52 Yeah. So the only, the only. I'm sorry, explain digital transformation before you. Maybe that's what you're about to do. But yeah. Yes, I yes, I I'm going to do that. But thank you for that prompt. The only thing that you own on the web is your website and your e-mail, right? Yeah. I mean, even this Arthur, you know, Riverside goes away. You know how how are we going to do it? How are we doing? Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Right. YouTube goes away, you know all that. So, so it's really, really important that you bring things to the web. And they were an offline company and they couldn't scale fast enough. So we said, look, it's going to take two years, but we're going to, we're going to do this and we're going to build an app and we're going to move basically to training business online. And then we're going to project the business using webinars. And what we're going to do is we're going to partner with larger clients, right, or larger partners who have a much larger audience.

34:57 And then we would be able to work together to capture e-mail. Believe it or not, e-mail is a, an outperformer. I mean, it just outperforms social because according to rivals IQ, which is these folks do God's work. I think in this space, you know the average engagement rate on social, on just organic, what do you think the number is are there? Like as a percentage of time or the percentage of overall reach like 2. Percent if you're on, yeah, if you're on your, let's say, Facebook account and you type in, you know, I'm having a great conversation with Abe, right. And you had a 1000 people that are relevant, by the way, not bots, Yeah.

35:46 What do you think the engagement rate on that is? Less than 10%. OK, it's .03. Yeah, All right. It's like, what are we doing that's less than 1/2 a person. Yeah, right. Which is why we counseled him to other channels, but we didn't discount it. We do have a presence. We just don't go crazy there. We're focused on webinars. So in five years, we went from having like 3000 emails to literally like almost 150,000 customer emails that we sell to Yeah, right. And now these folks have a place to come back, they have a place to buy stuff and they have a place to train, right? It wasn't simple, it wasn't easy. We made mistakes along the way.

36:33 But it, you know, the CEO of the company was so gracious to allow us to, to do this. And, and, and all of our clients are gracious to allow us to do it, to do the, the, the, the work that we do, including the Fortune 500 companies. Yeah, the iterations make sense, doesn't. I mean, you have to just keep on trying. Exactly. And and what tends to happen is people will say, we tried this and I'll say, well, one, how did you try it? Like the how is important because the creative piece is also important. Here. I'll, I'll give you an example of bad creative. You know, bad creative consistently does very well, right?

37:19 So it was, it was like a dentist in Ridgewood, NJ and he would buy the back of this is like 20 years ago, he would buy the back of New Jersey monthly. I mean, this is a simple, but I think it's illustrative, right? He would buy the back of New Jersey monthly. I mean, back then it was like twelve, $15,000, right. And now I would look at the ads and I'm like, you know, he like his ads to me were like terrible, you know, like it's him drawing, right? Or, you know, smoking a pipe, right? Or, you know, bourbon by the fire, whatever, right? So I saw him one day at a convention and I said, Hey, you know, I want to talk to you about your ads.

38:02 Can I, can we talk? He's like, oh, I know you, you young guys. I know what you think. You, you, you know, he was like in the 70s at the time, he was like, you think my ads suck? And I'm like, yeah, they suck. He goes. But I know what you think. I said what? He goes. You think they work? I'm like, yeah, so I'm going to quote this. So you know what he said to me? He goes, he goes all these fucking young guys, they're in the magazine. They're out of the magazine. Do you know who gets the fucking new patients? I do. I've been there for years. I'm never leaving that that. And that's a quote. Yeah, right. The consistency factor is crucial. And.

38:47 And if you own that Channel, own it. Own it. If you're going to be on the radio for a long time, own it. If you're going to be on TV for a long time, own it, yeah. That's good advice. That's really interesting. And what you said, bad ads or bad marketing or whatever, in this case, the ad consistent works, even bad ones work. That's really interesting. Right. I mean, I mean, remember the Crazy Eddie commercials? Of course, yeah. They weren't bad ads. They were, they pulled you in. They got people were looking forward to seeing that, you know, the guys throwing TV's at the screen, right?

39:28 But they're sort of irrational. They're not like, you know, but people look forward to that. People look forward to, if you think about like the GEICO commercials, I think Jared Jewellers would was advertising inside the GEICO commercials. Yeah, it's wild. Now, Can you imagine if now insurance is pretty stodgy, right? Like, you know, I'd like to imagine what the discussion was like when somebody went to the board and said we are now going to be advertising using a lizard. A lizard, right, right. It's like Mad Men, right?

40:09 Coming to the table and saying, hey, trust us, right, Let's give it a try. So I happen to understand because I've owned a company on a very small scale that had the insurance company balance sheet leverage. And it's fascinating to me that it's not just that GEICO lizard. The GEICO has persona and a life of its own. They keep on doing it because it it gives people confidence when they they they're look shopping for insurance and they just go, OK, It's like a perfunctory OK guy goes OK, right.

40:50 It's it's like the guy Malcolm Gladwell who wrote the book about thin slicing, right? When you reach for a can on the shelf, it's because you've been conditioned that Campbell's is going to be OK. All progressives good. You don't even think about it, right? That's right. Same idea, right? That's exactly right. And and you know, at the end of the day, the consistency piece is a propaganda piece, right? People rely on you because there's a certain comfort in seeing that, right? There's a certain comfort in seeing something and experiencing and and but but that requires risk. I mean, again, you know what Can you imagine the discussion, right? It was whoever the CMO was at GEICO at the time and the board, they took a risk and then progressive said, well, if they could do it with a lizard, we're going to do it with a duck or whatever it was, right? You know, maybe it's not progressive, I forget, but it. Was Aflac, Yeah.

41:45 Aflac thank you, yes. And then the the liberty with the with the would they help? Emu. Emu. Like right? Then we talk about copycatting, right? But, right. But, you know, I all of these guys, and there's a lot of copycatting in this business, but you know, hey, I'll subscribe to the Burger King theory, right. McDonald's opens up there. They have more money. They did the research. Yeah, I'm opening up a mile away. Like, yeah, why not? Yeah. Of course. Yeah, right. And you know, that's the entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship approach. Do you think back to the ad spend thing for a second? Do you think we're stuck with, I think it was Gimble that originally said the big department store guy, He said 50% of my ad spend is wasted.

42:34 I just can't tell which 50. Do you think we're stuck with that especially? You, you, you could, you could tell no, I mean, now, now with all of the analytics and if they're set up correctly, at least you know where a portion of your money is going in digital, right? And in fact, you could be advertising on the Super Bowl and it's trackable now, right, because of QR codes, maybe certain, you know, engagement mechanisms. It's, it's definitely a lot better. But on the other side, you've got, you know, people like Uber that we just talked about. TikTok also was sort of caught in that situation. There's a company called Analytics and they do a report every year and they basically will present all of the companies that have been scammed in the space. So if you call Analytics, you'll see the reports. And how legit is that data?

43:42 Like how do they get that data? It is hardcore data. I happen to trust their data. And the reason why I happen to trust their data is because when I follow them, but some of the other sort of counter cultural guys who I follow also follow them. And I do read the reports, they're lengthy, they make sense to me. The source data makes sense. The source data seems reliable. On the other side, we, we go through, you know, let's say Google Analytics or certain ad buys, and some of the holes are glaring, like we don't know why that's there, right?

44:25 And Google will not tell us why that's there. Yeah, it's interesting to see Google starting to advertise on TV, on cable, in the throes of being usurped by Chat TTP and perplexity as a search engine. We just came back from Europe and almost everybody that we encountered in Greece and Italy, they don't use Google anymore, They use Chat TTP. Right. Well, I, you know, I, I, I don't live far from New York City, but when, you know, when you're taking the tunnel, right, you know, there may be 3 Amazon billboards in the tunnel. Well, Amazon is a digital company. They don't really have stores or you're, you're getting direct mail probably from digital companies. Why does that happen?

45:17 Well, because those channels also work right now. Those folks have outsized budgets. They have, you know, right, large teams. But those channels have to align the channels, the creative, the messaging and the consistency. If you could align those, you know, you could do that, You know? Yeah, you certainly do that for Amazon. You can also do it for a pizza shop. Yeah, right. And, and everything in between. And, you know, I work with founders all the time who, who think that there is even today a, a, a, a gold rush around digital like that's digital first.

46:00 Well, if you're raising money, you should get your digital house in, you know, in order, absolutely, because investors might want to go and check you out, right? Whether it's a company or LinkedIn, whatever. But you're not going to raise five $6 million or $100 million without sitting across the table from somebody. Totally. It is not going to happen. It's true. All right. It's true. So unless there was a trust trust bond created prior where they already did something and then you can raise money on that trust bond, that's completely different, right? Absolutely different, but but even if, you know, like if, if you look at, I mean, Elon Musk can send an e-mail to whoever right, to his network and say I'm doing whatever and, and you know, and he could do that.

47:02 But your average founder or even your if, if your average investor is not going to do that, right? So, so it's AI talk about this all the time. You know, sometimes we as mere mortals think that we are right. So I'll say to folks, I'm like, listen, I, you know, I'm a guard in basketball, right? I'm 5, seven and a half. I'm, I'm sure the Internet knows that already. OK, but I'm a guard and I was pretty good at the time. But like, do you want me to play for you? Because Michael Jordan is a guard. Yeah, right. Exactly. Who do you want playing for you? Exactly, Yeah.

47:42 Right. And we have to get our expectations right because we all think we we have Coca-Cola, we have Coca-Cola Dreams and sugar water budgets. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So LinkedIn, are the stats available? And if so, are they the same? In your Facebook example where there's 1000 people and you get point O3, is it the same on LinkedIn? So, so rival IQIII want to say I don't I don't know, because rival IQ just started to to count LinkedIn and and I don't know why I think it might have been back, you know, access to the back end and and.

48:25 API or something? Yeah. Something like that. And but LinkedIn doesn't throttle you. So if you're a business page and you, you know, if you have a, you know, whatever family office, if you've got an, if you're an investor pizzeria, if you're Microsoft, if you are doing organic social, it is to Facebook's benefit to ask you to boost it. So they're not going to right. They want you to work for your money. They want you to dance for your lunch. Yeah, right. Right, Well, if that's the case, then so on LinkedIn right now, everybody could see your post right now, right?

49:10 As opposed to Twitter, which is completely, I mean, you know, look, I have my own opinions about Elon, but I, I, I think that there is a huge chunk of revenue opportunity that he's missing because of the way that he set up his algorithm. But that's, you know, that's how I think about it. Yeah, LinkedIn, you go on there, your network will see your post. Yeah, yeah, I think LinkedIn is somewhat lame, but it's good enough that just my opinion, right? Yeah. I mean, people are living on LinkedIn today. Totally, Yeah.

49:52 People live on LinkedIn and, and, and I, and I also think that like psychologically for us, you know, when, when you see that stuff, I mean, I, I don't know, and I'm not a sociologist, I'm not a physiologist. I, but I do read, you know, some, some of the psychosocial studies that come out about this stuff. And our brains are just not developed enough to be able to to handle all of this input every day. Yeah, it's too much. You know, as as humans and I know there's a bunch of studies out there by very reputable, you know, universities and organizations that basically say it's impacting our brain and our behaviour. I believe that I had somebody criticize me when I said they said something about a LinkedIn communication or post or something on LinkedIn.

50:51 And I said, well, I didn't do that. And they go, what do you mean you didn't do that? I said I had somebody else do it, which is what I have somebody else do most of it, right? And they go, what do you mean it's your LinkedIn? I go, yeah, but I don't have time to. It's kind of like what you're saying, whatever, I can't take all that fire hose and still do all this other stuff that are priority. I just have to have somebody else do most of it right. Right. But Arthur, that that's an impact on your brand. Yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, and, and companies do have to be careful and people have to be careful because, you know, I said this like 2025 years ago. Your digital reputation is your reputation today. Yeah, fairly true.

51:36 You know. What Let's talk about What would people expect to get from the book that you hope would be a good outcome for them? So I'm hoping the book presents a lot of data, like some of the stuff that we talked about today. It also presents a lot of cases like business cases like we talked about today. But what I would hope for everybody is that it helps them ask the right questions of their agencies. It helps them ask the right questions or better questions rather right, because we're you know, I tell people like I, I'm not interested in being right. I'm interested in getting it right and getting there sometimes just takes longer, right? So, so if, if I could help people ask better questions, then they are going to question that spent. And it may be viable, it may be the right thing to do, but we have to continue to question it because the the, you know, the the avatars that, you know, some of these billionaires want to create for us.

52:50 Well, businesses are impacted by that, right? Yeah. So if we can ask better questions, I think I've done my job. Yeah, that that's, that's really, really helpful to know. Do you remember everything that happened with Cambridge Analytica? I do. So I'm bringing this up because it seemed like at the time, what you could do with Facebook was miraculous, might have been illegal, might have been uncool, but it was, you know, even if there were 20 percent, 60% bots, the outcome worked, right?

53:33 And I'm bringing it up because I happen to know Brittany, who is the whistleblower, and I interviewed her on this podcast and we've been friends. The day she blew the whistle, I met her and at a party in New York City, and she needed to escape because she was like, in trouble, right? Like everybody hated her. And so I said, I own part of a hotel in Tuluma and I sent her down there and we've been friends ever since. But it was really interesting if you, because I looked under the hood after a while of how they were doing all that stuff at Cambridge. It was fascinating. I mean, talk about smart people, right? And.

54:15 The, the ability to, to manipulate using these platforms is, is really incredible because the amount of control and, and this is the, the, the other, you know, this actually brings up another point that Mark said, which is right around that time, he said, what we're going to do now is we're going to discard the agencies and, and we're going to have our team just generate AI customers. And then we're going to connect to your company's bank account. And then we're going to just run your ads and again, the click across.

54:55 So wait, wait a minute. It doesn't sound good, right? I mean. Just like if I'm any Fortune 500, If I I, it doesn't matter if I'm a rational business person, if I'm a Dean of a Business School, if I'm a professor, if I'm a business student, if I am a, if I'm breathing, I'm thinking this guy's going to control my market. And commit fraud in the process, right? Fine. And let's say it's perfectly legit, Arthur, right? He's going to control my market and my money. Yeah, and people cheer for that. People, what are we doing?

55:36 Seriously. Like, what are we doing? We, we have got to take a step back. Business is human. Last time I checked, no bot bought a refrigerator, no bot bought a newspaper, if that there is such a thing or an online subscription. And maybe they will, right. But right now, we have to understand our, you know, how behaviors are changing because of what we're doing online. And we also have to understand that, like, you know, if your end customer is me, why would I buy your stuff? Yeah. So how are you going to talk to me? Where are you going to reach me? Those questions are rudimentary. And I think we're losing that because of let's do this and let's do that and let's try this and let's try that.

56:20 It it's, it's a little insane. So one last question, because I had cause to get involved with NDC seven years ago and they were bragging about how network television still is viewed and has a great reach. And it was true, like people watch network television not and there's a lot of people don't have cable and so they're they're watching terrestrial. They got their antenna up. It's digital now, right?

57:00 Remember when that all transformed? They required it to be digital. It comes through clear like 4K, right? Is, is that still a legit, you know, we're watching CNBC and whatever, whatever. And you know, people are spending tons of money, I guess. So like, I don't know how much it costs you. You probably do advertising shit on it, CNBC and repeating it and I don't think they keep on doing it. If it didn't work, maybe what do you what's what's your view on that? The, the, the numbers say that it is, it continues to be a viable, continues to be a viable channel. All right.

57:43 And it, it's funny you said that because I don't know, 3-4 days ago there was a Google review for one of our clients, which we do TV commercials for. And it was like, I love your products, but can I go 5 minutes without seeing your commercial? That was the review. Now that is a sample of one. It's anecdotal evidence, but right now politics is on Twitter, it's on social, it's on, you know, wherever. But in political season, where do people go? Right. In the NCAA tournament, where do people go? the Super Bowl?

58:25 May I, I wrote an article in 2017 saying that the Super Bowl one day will be on Amazon. And, and how about that? It literally is it. It's still online. They're they're still, they still think there's value in that little thing. So who knows? But but yeah, 2017 and 2016 I said that's going to happen. But. But all of these folks and, and, and people like NBC, they're going to have to bid for these leagues and, and they're going to have to go up against Amazon and, and these guys, right? So, so I am a, a proponent of television where it warrants it. And again, it's like a mutual fund, right? Depending on the client, you sit down, you say, where am I going to invest my money?

59:13 How am I going to invest my money? What is the mix, right, growth stocks, whatever all of that and, and you implement it and you have to give it some time because time, you know, Warren Buffett talks about that all the time, right? He talks about the time value of money and the time value of stocks. There is such a thing as the time value of marketing. Yeah, I believe it got to give it a chance. And repetition works. This so happens. That's right. Do you have a copy of your book there you can hold up for everybody to see? You know what, it's funny because I, I gave the last ones. We, we, we had a, I'm on the board of the Schills Entrepreneurial Fund in New York and we had our gala and I gave out every last one. But it's irresponsibly digital.

1:00:07 It is on Amazon and you know, but if you're a Barnes and Noble person, you can get it there. Do you believe we have a Barnes and Noble that just opened up in Park City? I love. That I, I, you know, you know, I'll, I'll go to the Barnes and Noble around here. And, you know, there's an Indigo here in Short Hills Mall. Yeah, I'll go and hang out. There's still a Barnes and Noble 5050 third and and 5th. In the city. In the city, yeah. OK, Yeah, yeah, there's, there's, you know, there's another one here and I want to say it's Rockaway or Randolph. I mean that, you know, there's still aren't people, you know, I'm starting to leave the house now without this. Good for you.

1:00:47 I, I I don't. Last night, last night I went to a, to a dinner at Botha's Roll. Oh, great, great, great Golf Club. Yeah, yeah. And, and people were, were, you know, they were all taking pictures like, well, you know, can you take a picture with your phone and send it to me? And I'm like, I don't have my phone. Yeah. I, I, I, I need a break from that personally. And so now when I go out with my family, it's very hard to do, especially in the in in our business when I go out with my family or if I'm going to go out to a special occasion like like last night, I'm leaving my phone at home. Good for you. Yeah, Good for you. Yeah. I get yelled at at the gym all the time. We we go to the gym together and I've got my phone in my pocket and.

1:01:33 Yeah. I'd probably leave it at home. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the gym. It's an hour, you know, I, you know, sometimes I want it to be 1989 all over again. I know that's not going to happen. But like, you know, for me, I, I, I need to, I need a break from that then because I am addicted to it. Yeah. I think we all are. I think we are and I find it useful, so and productive. And I tend not to scroll so I've been able to like. I love Rogan's post and Ghost, right? He doesn't look at anybody's comments, right? It's just, of course he's in a different league. But I don't look at any comments, right? And I don't post that often.

1:02:17 The only place we post is on LinkedIn in X. But it's all business related. There's nothing political or personal that we put right. Right, right. Yeah. I mean, you know, and, and it's, it's, and I try to talk to my kids about this too, because, you know, we held out with the kids for a long time, but as soon as they got it, because all of their friends are on it, they were, they, they were sucked in. So I, I think this is, this continues to be a brave new world and it, it keeps getting either braver or newer with AI and I don't know what's next and the impact of that, but I'm a skeptic.

1:02:59 And so I I want to guard my clients money first. Yeah. Before we do anything. So, you know, I, I do feel like there's a fiduciary thing going on there with our relationship simply because I, I've experienced the waste and I, I don't want them to experience that. Yeah, totally appreciate that. Well, this has been super funny. Thanks. I'm so glad you were able to do this. Yeah, me too. Thank you. Thanks for your time and thanks for the opportunity. You're very welcome. We'll make sure you get a copy of everything and share it with your folks. And I'll, I'll, I'll send you a book. Just send me send me your address. I would love that. Yeah. And I'll read it. I know people say that, but I'll read it. Please.

1:03:39 Great. Thank you. And thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Till next time. Thank you. Bye. Bye.