Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yellowstone national park right now. They have someone on TikTok just doing very sexual innuendo. Wild, crazy posting.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. I was going to say that as well. Why is Zoe Saldana doing a T mobile commercial?
[00:00:14] Speaker A: So I've heard six, seven, a thousand times in the last six months. Hold on.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: Buckle up.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Alice Earle would probably be at the top, top, top of the mountain of influencers. And she's literally like, I don't know, like 25 years old.
[00:00:28] Speaker D: Calling all CPG shippers, truckers and logistics pros, welcome to the truck. Yeah. Podcast, your ultimate cheat code for smarter shipping, smoother logistics, and dominating the shelf where it matters most. Buckle up. It's time to learn, laugh and get your freight on.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another edition of the Zipline Logistics podcast. My name is Jesse Jewitt. Joined with me as always, Teddy Lee Knox. Hello, Teddy.
[00:00:56] Speaker C: Hello. How are you?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. We got a special guest today. We are talking with Adam Brown, the founder and president of Circle Media. Good morning, Adam.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Good morning. Great to be here with you guys.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us.
You're going to help us talk about social media growth strategies for CPG brands. So let's just talk about your background, how we connected. I know you are, you have a connection to Brian Snacks, one of our customers. But tell us a little bit about your, your history with CPG and how you got involved.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah, let's do it. I really, I wish my voice was better. I hear your voice and it's just so perfect for radio. A voice built for radio. So let me, let me, let me work on mine a little bit.
Yeah, I, we. I started this company 14 years ago and in the beginning it was vertical agnostic. It was really all B2C, not B2B, all product, not service. But other than that, I did everything.
And then I sort of just zeroed in on this philosophy around expertise in industry being a differentiator. And as I was getting older and my, my kids were getting older and I was thinking about the things I put in and on my body better for you. CPG just started to be what I sort of like, gravitated towards. So in 2017, we went all in. We only work with CPG Beverage and Spirit brands, and we haven't looked back ever since. And my relationship with Rind is, you know, when I look for brands and I see their founders, I'm always looking for jockey and horse combinations. Rarely do I see both that sort of match up. And that's how I got working with Matt and the team over at Ryan's.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: That's awesome. That's very cool. So, apologies, were you out at Expo west in Anaheim?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: I was, I was. Were you?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: We, we were, yeah. We had a booth there, 5555. We were rerunning the show there.
It's, it's obviously a fantastic show to connect with those natural brands like you're mentioning.
So that's one. One of the reasons why we, we head out there every year.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Totally. Next time we'll have to meet up.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. So you've talked about, you know, been in marketing and sales for 25 years, focusing in on CPG over the last nine or 10. How has, what's the shift like in how brands grow?
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: I, I assume you're going to talk on uh, I was reading something about like crumble, like the TikTok trends, but kind of talk about how that's evolved in two and a half decades of work.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean what I've seen, I've been working around marketing since 1999. So like I graduated college in the dot com boom. Yeah. And I saw a lot of businesses thrive early, a lot that went bust. And then sort of the tried and true marketers that continue to maintain and still do so today are the ones that were never overly binary in one direction. So there are some darling brands today, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that caught lightning in a bottle. Maybe they were that TikTok darling or they had some major event that worked or they were like a liquid death that sort of everyone sees and they just can't believe how they do it. But I'd say the vast majority, 99% of the brands that have been successful, they're ones that are continue to grow and develop and are just always leaning into what's new. So it's, it's that consistent effort to lean into the new tools and always be experimenting so that you can be an early adopter and then leverage the early value that comes with it that differentiates. So when I created Circle, not only are we a social agency, but I just feel like we're here with the tools for brands that they can't figure out internally to keep them current. So it might have been TikTok when it was still musically it might be AI when brands are still doing photo shoots. It's always just staying on the cutting edge on how you can differentiate from a messaging and marketing point of view, which is where I've sit now and sort of always sat in and around marketing since I started My career.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: That's very interesting. I'm sure there's, well, I mean just in my, I'm 44, so I'm, I'm, I'm old in terms of, in terms of the social media world. Right. Like I, I to think that there's six to 10 apps or tools or whatever you want to call them that have evolved over the last 15 years.
So this is a, this is not on our show notes, folks. Side side question, what is the next tool or trend that you got me? You don't have to share your trade secrets, but is there one that's pending that, that you're excited about?
[00:05:23] Speaker A: We're not necessarily like Nostradamus, like predicting the future. It's more like we're, we're already there when something is what people think is around the corner and down.
Yeah. So AI is not something I would say is next. It's fully here. Right. And people are dabbling in it in all different types of capacity. But I think the ones that are open minded to experimentation with it have an advantage. And I feel like there's a very low percentage outside of essentially replacing Google with ChatGPT, which is what most people do, there's a very low percentage that are really leveraging it. So we spend a lot of time on that and thinking about how we're doing it from a, from an efficiency point of view, from a content creation point of view, without removing the human element. Because I think especially with better for you CPG brands like, it still needs to be authentic, it still needs to be uniquely you.
But understanding how to do that and leverage that is really important. So we spend a lot of time on that so our clients don't have to.
And if you took, you know, 100 clients on our roster, there's probably a third that are like fully leaning in. There's a third right in the middle and there's a third with a head in the sand. So we're always just trying to like continue to move everyone downfield because by the time everyone catches up it's usually on to the next. Right. That's how we think about it. So let's, let's go with AI for now. Even though I think it's here and not down the road.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: No, I'm with you. Like you said, we're just scratching the surface there. We're certainly dabbling here in our business world of how it can impact. Right. And it's not going, I think, not to get off on too big of a tangent, but you mentioned AI. It's not about the replacement. It's about how you can harness it. So I think of like a. You mentioned the jockey and the horse. Like, at some point someone said, what if we had a saddle?
[00:07:06] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: What if we had a whip? What if we had reins? You know, there's all these things are complimentary and not necessarily replacements for.
For people or for ideas. So yeah, it's totally.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: And. And go ahead. Just to add to that, you know, being. So. I'm 49, so I have like five years on you. So like, I. I lived in even that little bit of difference. I lived in the dot com. Boom. So you. You graduated from college certainly after that. Right. So I was like, in it saw brands like, you know, we don't want to be on digital marketing. We don't. We think it's a fad, which was wild at the time. And now, now looking back, like, who you want to be, like, who said that? There's. Who I want to meet. The person who said that. It was everybody who said that. Right. You know, and so I had the advantage of, like, seeing that. Then, to be honest with you, I left and I went to the client side. I worked in the mortgage industry for almost a decade.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: So I did sales and marketing. We almost had a thousand employees at our height. It was a big company, sales and marketing, but in an industry I hated.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: And we were big marketers. We would spend 2 million a month on marketing. And so we would do television, radio, billboard ads, like, literally everything you could possibly think of from a marketing point of view. And then you started to just see that fade away. Like it was. It was going into more digital. And like, if people are in the car, they weren't looking at billboards, they were looking at their phones. And like, so it's really more just like, look at human behavior. Like, look at what, like your friends and your kids are doing, and then you got to lean into showing up where they are. And so whatever that is now and whatever will be in the future and what it was in the past, just understanding that I think allows businesses to get a leg up. I just being human and keeping your eyes open to understanding those types of things.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Speaking of so going off of the human behavior, I have two questions with that, so bear with me here. The first one is, you know, with marketing content, things like that, where do celebrities or influencers come in? I mean, there's a lot of times, a lot of brands that we've worked with say that, you know, they had a big success and they didn't even plan for it. Someone was eating their snack or drinking their beverage or had something on a, you know, when they were on news or walking into work and how people were excited about that, like how much comes into planning that or I guess riding the high that comes with it. If there is a very influential person showing it on TikTok or Instagram, I mean, I think that's where people find their products. Now, what to use. Similar to ChatGPT.
I need a new hair product. I'm gonna go look on TikTok real quick and see what my favorite people are using.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. I mean, I'll give you, I'll give you two answers, right. Alex Earl would probably be at the top, top, top of the mountain of influencers. And she's literally like, I don't know, like 25 years old and like a college student a few years ago. And she leans into the tools. So like everyone else was on and doing Day in the Life or Get Ready with Me and makeup, like she just went full tilt. I did not relent, kept doing it. Is actually talented at it, but has a very real side to it. She's got a beautiful side, but a very real side. Talks about like skin problems and real things that just really resonated with a lot of people on the audience. And she caught lightning in a bottle and was at a good stage because she graduated, got good people around her and runs a business. And she just launched her beauty line this week and it was a masterclass and it was built in awareness. So she is like, she doesn't need necessarily Bloomingdale's to sell her product like she is Bloomingdale's. Yeah, she'll sell the product. She has the built in awareness. So that's one example. Leaning into the tools. Now, Charli d' Amelio did that before her, but was in dance, was in high school, so a little bit younger and you know, I don't know, has she fills it out a little bit maybe like she was in dance, she was just on Broadway in and Juliet. But like, you know, it's also like, what do you do with that? And then do you continue to lean in where things are going? So I think where things are going now is social shopping, like literally like QVC for TikTok Live. TikTok Live Instagram. So you could also argue that other influencers, and they don't have to be Alex Earl, it could just be somebody with an audience can themselves sell tons of products. And I saw this guy, J.T. barnett, who's a great follow for anyone that listens to this. And for you guys, who's just a content creator and sort of advisor in the space, talking about how these influencers are essentially department stores, not even Alex Earle, just like they're selling so much product already and they're able to move product through TikTok shop or just through, like links and, you know, like to know it or whatever it is.
So, again, just understanding the tool, going 1000% into that tool and then reaping the benefits would be what those people are doing. And so I think that's where influence comes in, because they may have started not as an influencer, but by doing it and staying the course, they became one just by practicing what I'm preaching, if that makes sense.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think what's wild too, is the scale of those influencers. Like, I mean, obviously there's. You said Bloomingdale's, but there's like a local department store in Columbus, Ohio, that. What did I. Lazarus. I don't know if you ever heard of Lazarus. Maybe that was not local, but it's the same thing, right? There's people who I follow on Instagram who are maybe parents who are just like talking about their cleaning products like, it's wild. The. The levels of. You don't just have to be the tippy top, like an Alex Earl. And I also think it's interesting to see their brands and the creativity. I don't know why I'm thinking about this, but the Entourage, when Vince got into the Tequila with Turtle. Right. Like, you're seeing those examples with people. Obviously George Clooney with Casamigos is a big one, but it's happened all, all around.
I remember LeBron when he was at the Olympics with Beats by Dre and the headphones. He gifted all those to all those guys you're creating organic moments to. And they're intention. They're intentional about it because they have either a piece of the pie or a small ownership stake or maybe a big ownership stake. And that just drives the brand even further. I think that's come a long way in the last 15 years. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know. Just observing that and seeing it is. Is super, super interesting.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: I. I think you're totally right. And I just rewatched entourage with my 18 year old. I haven't seen. And it's. And it still holds up. It's so good. And I was thinking like, you know that Avion, like the guys behind Entourage knew the guys behind Avion of course they did. The intelligence to integrate that into the show. It was very meta and it was just very smart because there was nothing bigger in the zeitgeist, like, than Entourage when it was on.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: And so it's just like such a smart play and then bringing in the celebrities that they already had relationships with. And it was, it was funny. Like, those celebrities kind of wanted to be on that show, yet the show wanted those celebrities. And so it was this, like, environment of like, mutual benefit that really helped it be like a meteor. Yeah. But now, right now there are a lot of brands you just mentioned, some big ones that I think the people were very involved with, like George Flooney. But there's other ones that have. Most have failed where the, where the, where the influencer or the celebrity really wasn't that involved. And so it's not just doing. It's doing it right and understanding the tools. And I think that it's becoming more common now because first of all, without going on a full, like, diatribe and like the future of entertainment, like, for some actors, you know, it's harder to make money. It's harder to just make $25 million every film anymore. So that's why you're starting to see, like, you know, my friend lives in L. A and he's in the movie business. I'm like, why do you have all these huge actors doing like T mobile commercials?
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Oh my God. I was going to say that as well. Why is Zoe Saldana doing a T mobile commercial? Right. She's been in the two largest franchises in the last 10 years and she's doing a T mobile commercial.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: I actually think I heard a podcast interview with Zoe Saldana. I think she's actually been. She's had the most billion dollar enterprises, maybe like five franchises or something. She's like the highest grossing female entertainer in the movie business of all time. But anyway, yeah, like so. So he's like, yeah, look, it's harder.
It's harder to make stuff in la. So a lot of times you can do T mobile for like three days, five days, and you can stay near home.
That's an upside. And they're getting big checks.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: I'm sure they are.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: They're getting like 1-1-3 million dollars to work for like a week. And so you'll see Adrian Brody and you'll see, you know, all these different guys just doing commercials. So that's like, it goes back to even. What I'm saying here. I didn't know this is where the conversation was going to go, but it's like, where is culture going? Yeah, there's more on Netflix. You can't ignore Netflix and just say, I'm a movie purist. So, like, what is Netflix? I remember when Netflix, like first came on the scene and like the Oscars and the Golden Globes, it was like everyone hated it. Now it's like the core. Yep. Right. So it's like you got to pay attention to where things are going. And Even like for B2B businesses, whether you work in logistics or you.
I, I chose a chiropractor. My back was bad last year. I went online, everyone looked the same. I went on Google. Everyone's blue link looked the same. Everyone had like a first time visit offer. Like all the crap that we thought about, you know, during our last, you know, being in our 40s. Like, you go on Google, you search whoever has the best SEO or pay per click, you know, that's who you go to. But I found a chiropractor in New York who's highly active on TikTok. Yeah. And he's just like, funny and interesting. I can tell his employees love working there. You could. He gets like some clients in there, they're like dancing. And I'm like, you know what, it's worth a shot. Like, he differentiated himself and I loved him. And he kept, he took this thing that was like, scary. I'm like, are you gonna like, literally injure me? And made it less threatening. And so I think that's a good takeaway. Also, I don't know, like, everyone that listens to your podcast, but like, there's a whole manifestation in B2B and in less sexy verticals if you want to really understand and use the tools the right way.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: So that brings me to my second question of using the tools, which requires a little bit of a rant before my question. So hold on.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Buckle up, everybody.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Buckle up.
So one of our, a couple of our podcasts previous to this one, we use term called involuntary sampling. And this comes from utilization of tools like grocery pickup at different grocery stores, your favorite grocery stores, delivery, or, you know, even people like me who still like to go into the store occasionally. Not being able to find what you wanted, the brand that you wanted, or even the product that you are looking for. And you are forced, you know, based off of time to pick something else, pick a different brand, or redo your entire meal prep for that week and change things up and over time. People will be like, this is annoying. This, you know, type of food or beverage Tends to not be on the shelf. I have to go to multiple stores, causes them to either. Either leave that store so they no longer go to Kroger or Costco or Walmart where their favorite brand is, because it's not on the shelf.
So that retailer loses consumers. And then the brand could possibly lose consumers as well. So, like, how things like that, where, like, there are issues with whether it is the retailer, the inventory or the transportation, it's not showing up on the shelf on time. People are no longer have access to it, buying it, they don't. I know people who refuse to use Amazon as much as they can. They don't want it delivered to their house.
How does marketing can. How can marketing impact those things where you're seeing loss of sales because something's going on behind the scenes where it's not there, or people are now going to something else that is available, whether it's more expensive or not? It's always on the shelf. It is always there versus its competitor that is a little bit more hit or miss. For whatever reason, those things are harder for a consumer to see. I see that and I know right away, well, I know this is imported. I know that there's a delay. I know that it took them an average three days longer. They missed the end date, and that's why it's not on the shelf. But it'll be there tomorrow. I don't know that everybody thinks that way. So, like, what from a marketing perspective can be done or is done to help prevent that or fix those issues?
[00:19:03] Speaker A: Why buys really early stage brands. That's why they have to really win at home before they start spreading across the country. So they're like, they get like delusions of grandeur or they, they meet a buyer from Publix, but they're in New York and they're like, this is so exciting. And, you know, now they're in a totally new market where they don't have boots on the ground, where they're not even physically and they can't see what's on stock or in stock or look at the lag sometimes between what you think is in stock and is not in stock, where when you're hyperlocal, you can go to the store, you can see, you get to know the merchandisers at the store. And so I think it's really important, early, early stage to win locally. I saw a podcast, I think, with the founder of Poppy, and she's like, we had to raise a lot of money and I think they got to like 500 million in under five years in the fastest growing beverage brand ever. And she's like, we, we just had to make a lot of decisions about spending, about always being in stock. We just had to be in stock no matter what. In stock, in stock, in stock. And I think that's the right way to think about it. And it's hard when you're early because you always have to punch above your weight. So you're always like gambling. You don't have to fake it till you make it, but you have to gamble like a little bit.
But I think that's dangerous because then you lose. You have attrition. Like, if I see it and I'm interested and I go, and I want to try your better for you soda, but you're not there. And then I could buy Olipop instead. If I like the Olipop experience, then it's game over. And now you lost me.
And so when I think about retailers, I had a call yesterday. Somebody just got really good news. They're going to launch in a thousand targets. And they're like, you know, what do we do? And I'm like, well, what is the geography and how much money do you have to spend and how are you thinking about blanketing in certain geographies? And they were like, oh, we have no idea. We haven't even thought about that. I was like, all right, well, let's take your budget. Let's assume it's a dollar. If you only have a dollar to spend, that's not going to go that far.
And so we have to figure out, like hyperlocal, where do we get the most bites at the apple? So first would be like, maybe just asking the target buyer, where do we have to win? And sometimes they'll tell you, we really look at Chicagoland or we really look at the Mid Atlantic or whatever. Without that information, I would also look at a map and say, where are our targets? But where do we also have a pretty good, you know, foothold of like, retailers of second cracks, bites at the apple? I think just from the brand point of view. So we'll try to like, lay a map. So, you know, you started in, in Ohio. So like, do you have Kroger? Do you have, you know, other stores that even if the target doesn't roll out, there's a secondary option where they can maybe buy your product and you can win. And so we'll literally, like take those zip codes, cross reference those, and then really spend the lion's share of our money. There's because I think it goes. The whole spirit of the question is, and it was the same with D2C before retail is you have to be able to consummate the sale if you get them to the finish line. And if you can't, it's going to go from a positive experience to just a negative experience.
And the cost of getting that person back is very high, almost impossible. So that's some ways I would think about that. Hopefully I answered most of your question.
[00:22:07] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Really helpful that thinking about like a heat map or for a sports analogy like an NFL draft, when, you know, some of these smart teams talk about not drafting for need, but drafting for either the best player available or like a strength.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: If you got a, like, I'm a Lions fan, they've got Aiden Hutchinson. Well, what. And they have the seventh pick, right? Yeah, of course.
And instead of reaching on a wide receiver or something, they say, you know what, what if we just took the best guy available who happens to play next to Aiden Hutchinson and now we've doubled down and, and been even better in that area. Right. That's a really interesting strategy to think of on, on the marketing side or the brand side of, you know, boosting it up versus trying to spread it out and, and hope that something else works.
And on the other side, on the transportation, we. I was actually talking to another group yesterday about. It's funny you mentioned Publix. You know, it was a West coast or Pacific Northwest based company and that's where they shipped from. And they're like, hey, you know, our sales, I just came in, we're into Publix. Well, Publix is in the Southeast, so that's great. Other than you got to figure out how to get your product from Seattle to the Southeast and you sell it for, you know, two dollars and fifty cents. So going this is probably not where we wanted to be or, you know, it's great, it's exciting, but we got to figure it out. That's very, very interesting to think of kind of expanding locally out into the, into the the world. That's. That's a great way to think about it.
Totally. So you mentioned some CPG founders. One of the things about social media, right? I think the evolution of social media, there's been a lot of like food, pictures or things like that. What are you seeing? Where do brands get tripped up on using the social media?
And what do they get wrong?
[00:24:11] Speaker A: I think they get most things wrong, to be honest with you. And it's because sometimes they're working with Old data. Right. And this isn't like a, that's not like a jab, it's like the function of like the game that they're, you're playing. So, so by the time you like analyze and really like come to a place where you feel comfortable, like the ball has moved. That's the nature of social, it's so fast moving. So it's like, it's why whether you work with like a company like mine or not, like you need some external firepower advisory. It could be following somebody like me on LinkedIn and just, and just like drinking from that faucet. But it's like you have to have someone outside of your walls, non insular, thinking about where things are going. So I think that's one, I think second is people get very, very binary on content.
So you know, 18 months ago everything was like color, vibrant, like poppy soda. Every call I would have, everyone wanted to copy poppy soda. And right now it's the total opposite. It's like very like user generated content done with an iPhone, lived in real. And the truth is it's not either one of those at full tilt. Those are like the protein on the, on the dish right now. But there are still side dishes. And I think brands just go too long in one direction and they're copying the bigger shiny brand and by the time they get there, that brand has left the party and moved on to the next thing. Yeah, so it's hard to just chase that and go too binary on any one thing. And so a lot of brands we deal with really early stage. A lot of times the founder who has a million jobs and is very close to their baby because it's their brand, gets so caught up in that. Or if they're a little bit further along, maybe like north of 10 million in revenue and they've, they've brought in some firepower. You get a lot of times a snooty creative director. And I mean snooty in the sense. Like some creative directors just have a sense like I am a creative director for a reason, because this is what I like. And that makes sense. It comes with the territory of that role and that title.
And so a lot of times they come in and they just want to do something and that something is usually too binary, like it might alienate other people. So they don't really pay attention to what people want to see or hear. They're just sort of going either by the founder or the creative lead or a marketing lead. And I just think that's a Huge, huge mistake from a visual point of view on how they're showing up. And then the other side is just on, like, overly religious about and like, like, like line in the sand about a philosophy. Yeah. So some brands are like, we do not use influencers.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: And I'm like, well, why you wouldn't. Like, if your friend's daughter had a million followers, you wouldn't use her if she was free. Well, yes. Well, what if it cost a dollar? Well, probably a dollar. Well, then what? So it's not not used. It's that you have a price threshold. So we try to get them thinking more holistically, even with AI. Like, you can't just say, we're not going to use AI forever. So it's like, how do you want, how and where and why do you want to use AI?
And I think it's just like having more of an open mind, optimistic, last half full, how can we do it? As opposed to sort of a guarded, pessimistic, how can't we do it? Mentality. And so I think brands get tripped off in either all of those or one of those in any given moment.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: That's really interesting. I was listening, piggybacking on that. I was listening to another podcast. They were talking about the types of clicks. Right. Click clicks is great, right? That's the goal. You're driving people to your brand. But for a content creator, this was a content creator and like, the difference between like an authentic story with real examples versus just to use poppy, like top 10 burps created by poppy. Like, the top 10 burps might get a million views or whatever, but is that what you. You have to be able to do both. You gotta be able to kind of spread it out. Maybe not top 10 burps, but I think you understand what I'm saying totally. That, you know, it has to be more dynamic and, and, and true and, and authenticity does go a long way. So that's interesting. You talked about the creative directors who are maybe holding things tight. Well, I want to make a art house film or whatever. It's like, dude, we're selling freaking candies. Like, what are you talking about?
[00:28:20] Speaker C: Yes, I always think, and Jesse hears this all the time, but it takes the average person six, seven times to hear something before they will understand it or apply it or do something with it. And is that, is that also similar for consumers, for, you know, marketing and for social media? Like, you have to have it six, seven times, but different ways. So you gotta have the burps, but then you gotta have the, you know, like the, the classy, the dinner party. Poppy. You know, like, things like that where it's like. And is that with going TikTok. I imagine that's a much shorter span. Not over a quarter, but maybe over a month or even a week that you have to have that variation.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and it's funny that you just said six, seven. Obviously all the youngins will appreciate that. And, and, and that's, and that's a great example. And, but that's a great example of marketing. And, you know, I'm nothing other than like, I'm a salesman and a marketer. Like, I, I, I, I'm not good at a lot of things, but those are things that, those would be my two skill sets and how I created my agency. And so when I think about six, seven, is it that you're saying six, seven subconsciously? Because you hear it all the time and I hear it all the time. Yeah. Or was that sort of. Or did you just say six, seven because you've heard that it takes six or seven impressions before somebody takes action. And I interpreted it at 6, 7, because I hear it all the time. Yeah. So it's like chicken or the egg, which one came first? But that's marketing. So I've heard six, seven, a thousand times in the last six months. So now it's in my brain.
[00:29:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
My kids say it all the time.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Yeah, of course, of course. So, so that's what I'm saying. By osmosis that's gotten into your brain and you just start seeing it everywhere. You see it on a football player's jersey. You see, you're like, oh, six, seven now. Six, seven was always there. You're just seeing it now because it's marketing. So that is the power of marketing. And that kind of answers your question. But to actually answer your question, like in a more specific way, it's like, yeah, I think it's awareness, consideration and trial at retail is what most brands in CPG should think about.
My philosophy is that pre iOS change and pre pandemic in 2018, a lot of people could sell you product online.
Like Magic Spoon Cereal could do a million dollars in revenue per month, just DTC. And then the iOS change happened. It was harder to track. And then we had a pandemic and people did buy at home. And now that the pandemic is over, I don't believe that a lot of people find new CPG and beverage brands and buy them from their website. Just as a human. I think people either can go to Instacart, they can go on Amazon, they can go to GoPuff, they can go to the store.
So if I'm a new challenger brand, I don't think D2C is where humans are. I speak to people all the time that are like, all right, I'm launching my brand. I'm going to be D2C for the only first two years because DTC is higher margins. And I'm like, stop. Where'd you hear that? And there. That was like something someone told them from, like, eight years ago. I'm like, that is not true now.
So you gotta pick your poison. If you're a chip brand, you gotta be thinking retail. Yeah. And even, like, what you're saying about, like, clicks and different clicks are different things. So, like, it's like this. If you wanna. If you wanna sell in retail and work with influencers that create awareness, or you wanna sell on your website and get people that just get people to buy. It's like a vision. Like, they're both two bars. Like, where you go drink. Yeah. One is a casual family bar where you're just going to. And you're drinking and you're watching a game and you're doing all those things. And one is a singles bar. They're both bars, they're both selling alcohol. They're both meant for very different things. Yeah. So the singles Bar is D2C. I want you to know something, buy something from a click and convert. That's a singles bar. So that's your game. Which if you're a supplement brand, maybe a pet brand, definitely a power and beauty. DTC is still a thing. So then you need affiliates and people that know how to sell product. But if you're a lifestyle brand, like most CPG and beverage brands, then you got to go to the other bar and you got to work. So you got to talk about the product, show people the product, let them see it. So when they go home the next morning on their way to Publix, they're like, yeah, I want to check out that cereal. And then they pick it up and they look at the box and they see what's in it or what's not in it, and then they buy.
So, yeah, like, you know, it's marketing 101. You have to have enough impressions to even feel that opportunity. And I think if you're just going for the transaction, you. You might miss out on that opportunity. So you have to pick your lane and go as deep into that lane as you can to win in my opinion.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Man, what a, what a recap. That was awesome.
[00:32:45] Speaker C: Yeah, that was wonderful.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Is there anyone right now that you're super excited about a brand that's doing all the things you just mentioned?
[00:32:52] Speaker A: Yeah, you know, I'm, there's tons of brands fresh off of Expo. Like, yeah, you know, I, it's, it's, you know, we work with probably like 150 brands, maybe like 5, 600 brands in our lifetime. Yeah. And there's 4,000 brands there. So every time I think I'm like, man, I need to expand category, I'm like, you know what, there's so many brands that we have not even talked to yet that we can be working with. So I think that a lot of the brands that are out there that have gotten back to brass tacks, that are understanding this omnichannel and retail velocity support mentality that I'm talking about, they get me excited. So when I speak to somebody who's only D2C, whether they're early, like I just said, or late stage, I sort of tune out. I'm like, oh man, this is, they don't get it.
Or they're, you know, they're not thinking about emerging platforms or they're doing six month RFPs. I'm like, but by the end of six months, your RFP is going to be useless because anything in your RFP is going to have changed. So like, what are you doing? So those things don't excite me. I'm not really answering your question.
What really does excite me is brands that have good economics, that have really good marketing, that have smart founders, but also a good marketing team that understands omnichannel. And I won't, I won't. I've learned in the past not to single out any clients because when I get it, I'll get an email like, Adam didn't mention me. I'm so angry. So I love all of our clients.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: But you know, I mentioned this like sunshine buns brand. I keep giving them love.
I feel like many people thought they were like the best tasting brand at Expo. They're like from Utah and it's like, it's cinnamon buns, but like insanely delicious that you buy in the store and make it home. And I'll give them some love. I'm kind of, I don't think you're protein based. I think they're just like real deal. There's that one brand that's not about protein based. That there. One of the only, one of the only that did not have massive protein in it. But yeah, I was, I was psyched about it and then I was. And what I'll say is that afterwards I didn't know anything about them and now I see like, they're all about it. They're all over social, they're having fun, they're experimenting and I'm like, oh, that makes sense. That actually tracks. So I, I'm excited to see what happens with those guys.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: That's cool.
Thank you for sharing on Sunshine Buns out of Utah. Is there a, a time frame on brands expecting social media to kind of impact revenue? So like if you start a initiative or whatever in quarter one, what's the return like? Uh, and on the speed, does it vary?
[00:35:23] Speaker A: It definitely varies. I mean, as far as like what we do, we're mainly like a staffing company. Yeah, that, that's like an easy way to think about us. Like you hire a circle because you need Jane Doe, but Jane Doe does not exist.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: So the, the performance and ROI I think is looked at differently with an employee. So like our goal is to 10x any employee you've ever hired. Yeah, we're going to crush the role. We only know cpg, so we're actually going to elevate your whole team and we're going to bring in like all these intangibles. Like we know other agency partners in every category at every price point that will unlock. We'll be able to assess your current agencies and see who's good and who's not to save you money there. We'll negotiate better with influencers and save you money. We'll make sure influencers come through and save you money. We'll go in influencers comments and we will find new conversions that will make you money because there's people asking the influencer if you did a good job finding the right influencer and she posts about your product and someone's like, is it gluten free or is it sold in Columbus, Ohio? You got to go in there and respond to that to convert. And so when I start to explain all these things, brands start to see all the attrition that's probably not happening, let alone like, what's the roas? It's like, wow, we're probably squandering opportunities because we don't do community management or we don't respond to influencers, or we don't know how to negotiate with influencers or we have an Amazon agency and we're not sure if they stink. Right. So your ability to help us answer all those questions would be amazing for the business and would really be a feather in the cap of the quote, unquote employee we just hired.
So we think about it that way. But, you know, I think a lot of other brands, if you came from D2C and you're now social media for retail, it's a struggle because it's not as clearly, you know, rose driven where you can. Yeah. So I think brands struggle. You have to believe religiously and philosophically that social media and those channels are the way to communicate, which I think most brands would say, yes, Adam, I do. And then I would say, okay, great. Then you just need to have a ninja Sherpa running it. It could be circle, it could be your niece, but you have to believe that you have a ninja running that important channel and then you got to empower them to do their thing and then not measure everything down to a penny. You have to, you have to give them that opportunity to shine. And some will do it, some won't. But that's how I think about it.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Do you probably find this is another side tangent? Do you find that like talking about that creative director and some brands who maybe take themselves a little bit too seriously? So I think of an example, I don't even know when it was, but Columbus based company Wendy's. Right, Wendy's Fast Food, like, they, however many years ago blew up on Twitter because they had someone that was pretty active in the responses and like getting aggressive. I think they still do. And maybe 20 years ago someone was like, we can't, we can't say that on, in a public forum with our brand behind it. And that triggered, you know, responses and engagement and hopefully increase revenue. But you probably. Do you run into that sometimes.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say, like, I, I don't, I haven't looked at their account in a long time, but they were always like the industry standard, best in class.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Ok, good.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: Right. Because whoever was running it was able to just like get weird and go for it.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: And I applaud that. Again, I think you need to pick your game. Like, are we playing football or basketball? Right. And then like, what's our philosophy going to be? And then we stick with the program and we get the right team together to like, again, going back to Michigan Wolverines, they brought in a great coach in the last two years. He went out and got the right players and knock on wood, like, we'll see what happens in this tournament. But like, it's a clear philosophy around a clear vision and the right personnel around It So I think that that was a zag when everyone else was digging that that brand did in the QSR category that I think most people would say is a brand that stands out. And I'll give you one better Yellowstone National Park.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Right now they have someone on TikTok just doing very sexual innuendo, wild crazy posting. And it's the biggest thing on TikTok and I went on it this morning and I went down a 20 minute rabbit hole and I'm like I cannot believe that this is allowed. Well everyone's talking about Yellowstone and you got all these people posting like I never even thought about going to Yellowstone but I am going to Yellowstone now.
That person needs a raise. And so I think it's like you got to pick your lane and they just want awareness for something that dying like interest in national parks which is such a shame.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: And that was a tactic. Most people would have said no. So whoever gave this guy or gal, I think it's a guy but whoever's doing it, they're giving them the ability and it is working. Now the trade off is maybe some conservative people don't like it but it's highly effective for awareness and consideration to go to Yellowstone National Park. So anyway it's something to think about.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: You'll have to come back and talk about that dynamic because there's all sorts of conservative versus liberal ideologies of again buttoned up versus the whole world's a lot more casual. So have fun with it.
Adam, I really appreciate your passion. It's. I mean this is awesome. Thank you for joining us.
Is there a way for people to get a hold of you if, if they would like or what's the best way?
[00:40:51] Speaker A: The best way is I'm on LinkedIn all day. So it's Adam Brown and that's a very common name. So you'll see a lot of Adam Browns but I'm a red avatar, looks like a little cartoon guy with black and you know, a little salt and pepper hair.
And I'm also in. It's Adam J. Brown, 23 if you actually want to specifically look but you could also just look by New York and look for a red avatar. That's probably the best. We are Circle Media S I R C L E Media and we can be found on any social channels at Circle Media.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: That's great. Thank you so much for joining us. For our listeners, please leave a five star review. Share the episode on Apple and Spotify.
As always, the show notes will have information about Adam and Circle media. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on another edition of the Zipline Logistics Podcast. We'll see you next time.
