"What was a slow-burning retail apocalypse for many retailers just turned into a full-fledged firestorm. Shopping will be forever changed post-crisis, and while the dislocation of people and capital will be painful, both will be reallocated to more efficient models." - John Andrews

John and Emily talk about marketing and retail during and post-COVID-19. This episode has it all: social media advertising, the future of shopping, ecommerce, Amazon, and which brands will survive.

Video:

Guest: John Andrews, CEO of Photofy, a community content creation platform, is a media disruptor. Leveraging over twenty years of experience in consumer packaged goods marketing coupled with eight years of social media knowledge to build new media formats in the shopper marketing space. He helped build one of the first ‘people as media’ platforms at Walmart called Elevenmoms, founded Collective Bias (Acquired by Inmar in 2016), and teaches as an adjunct professor at NC State University.

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Topics:

02:30: Curbside is the winner of COVID: How retail has advanced during the pandemic.

04:40: Consumers are drawn to products and services that help them enjoy more “productive time” (e.g. riding in an Uber instead of driving).

06:00: Walmart was ahead of the game with their curbside shopping and pick-up process. They have been doing this for years.

07:00: HEB, a regional grocer in Texas, was beating out larger grocery chains during the peak of the pandemic because larger chains couldn’t keep up with demand and the need for new curbside services. HEB was stated to have begun preparations for curbside pick-up as early as 2005.

A pair of Nike shoes that John, a self-proclaimed sneakerhead, bought off Instagram.

11:25: Nike is one of the few companies that is managing a transition into digital retail very well, and it’s all about the difference between the use of push marketing and first-party data.

“Nike is using its direct understanding of its data to perfectly market to me what it knows I am interested in.” - John Andrews

16:30: Marketing advantage through data and the Nike app

19:35: Two recent global studies from Kantar and Edelman reveal that advertising and social media in particular are at new all-time lows for consumer trust. Just 17% of people trust news from social media.

“Public favorability towards advertising was 25% in December of 2018, but in 1992 that figure was 48%.” -Edelman Trust Barometer

21:00: Media companies are built on advertising, and they have had to be creative about their ad-driven tactics. Instagram does a good job of curating content for unique users but can bombard users with ads based on their interests.

24:40: What is an email address worth in five years? Will email marketing become a thing of the past?

30:00: What platforms are the best for targeted marketing? How do sound and voice play into this?

“There is an advertising opportunity in [the voice assistant’s recommendations] because everything is predictive.” - Emily Binder on the future of advertising

John’s recs: Podcasts, book, & WallStreetBooyah Twitch channel:

Podcast: Joe Rogan Experience: #1470 Elon Musk
Podcast: Social Geek Radio with Jack Monson, CRO at Social Joey
Twitch: WallStreetBooyah
Check out Episode 71 - VIDEO podcast with WallStreetBooyah and John!

Book: Ichigo Ichie, the Japanese philosophy of living in the moment and putting randomness into your life: (recommended by Scott Monty)

Ichi-go ichi-e (Japanese: 一期一会, lit. “one time, one meeting”) [it͡ɕi.ɡo it͡ɕi.e] is a Japanese four-character idiom (yojijukugo) that describes a cultural concept of treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment. Ichigo Ichie is the idea of living in the here and the now and embracing each day as it could be our last.