075 - Kate Bradley Chernis: When You Have No Off Button (VIDEO)
Why do we often put up a front in our business lives to disguise our real selves? In this episode, Emily and Kate Bradley Chernis, Co-Founder and CEO of Lately, are breaking down that front for a refreshing take on being yourself in the business world. Plus, tips on navigating the psychological impacts of pandemic PTSD.
Whether you’re pitching VCs, talking to your team, or trying to appeal to your audience and customers, it’s okay to let people behind the curtain. So why do we often put up a front in our business lives in order to appear professional?
And how do you send a hug over Zoom?
Garyvee has used Lately AI to automatically post engaging video clips on social media.
Kate Bradley Chernis is Co-Founder and CEO of Lately, a startup backed tech powerhouses including angel investor Jason Calacanis with the LAUNCH Accelerator and Lately user Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerMedia. Kate and Emily Binder broke down the front for a refreshing take on being yourself in the business world.
With her XM radio DJ, fiction writing, and marketing agency background, Kate knows good words. She shares tips for the most effective language for your sales and marketing copy and social posts.
More topics include startup advice from two women entrepreneurs and navigating the psychological impacts of pandemic PTSD.
What is Lately AI?
Lately is an AI-powered social media marketing platform that helps marketers scale their publishing and reach. Lately’s artificial intelligence uses your historical social media data to learn what works with your audience and what to post next.
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About Lately and Kately
Marketers can use Lately AI to instantly transform podcasts, videos, and any online news articles or blogs into dozens of social posts that are automatically pre-vetted to resonate with your target audience.
Jason Calacanis interviews Kate Bradley Chernis about her company Lately on This Week in Startups.
As a former marketing agency owner, Kate initially created the idea for Lately out of spreadsheets for then-client, Walmart, and got them a 130% ROI, year-over-year for three years.
Prior to founding Lately, Kate served 20 million listeners as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM. She’s also an award-winning radio producer, engineer, and voice talent with 25 years of national broadcast communications, brand-building, sales, and marketing expertise.
TOPICS AND TIMESTAMPS:
02:30: Meet Kate Bradley Chernis and step behind the curtain with Emily
05:05: The kindness of strangers and the "translation of a hug"
08:12: Things that are keeping us sane during quarantine and the stress of the pandemic, and the value of self-care
11:30: How the pandemic is impacting body language, facial expressions, and our ability to connect with customers, friends, and family in a virtual space
Lately is an AI-powered social media marketing platform that helps marketers scale their publishing and reach. It can also transcribe podcasts and cut videos into short clips for social.
12:53: Diving into Kate's background and her experience with XM radio
18:55: There's a lot of VC money floating around there is possibly a hunger to do more and invest more to seek entertainment, excitement, and positive influence. Furthermore, companies naturally present themselves as strong or weak investments based on how they perform under pandemic conditions.
Kate Bradley Chernis and This Week in Startups Host and Lately Investor, Jason Calacanis with fellow LAUNCH classmates Taylor Monks and Max Coleman
"If you're surviving now as a company, you're suddenly very attractive. Because this is the hardest time to survive, so it's clear cut. You don't really have to explain the value of your company if you're making it in a pandemic: it's already there." - Kate Bradley Chernis
Most long-form content like blogs, videos and podcasts takes hours to create, then collect dust. Get exponentially more eyeballs on your hard-earned work by unlocking the value with Lately’s AI.
22:00: All about Lately.
It takes the average human 12 minutes to write a social post. In 1.8 seconds, Lately's AI will give you dozens. Multiply that times the hourly salary of any content creator on your team, and you have mind blowing time and money savings.
26:25: Showing personality can be difficult when it comes to your brand and social media.
Related episode: Robert Sofia: What Your Brand Should Say on Social Media
28:00: People spend more time on Facebook's platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp than any behavior outside of family, work, or sleep. That makes for a lot of data for marketers to comb through.
"That's the goal, it’s to learn what people care about, right? Because if you don't know what they care about, then it's pointless. And as I learned over the years, what typical marketing tools look at are numbers, and people can't read the numbers or translate them, and this is a constant problem." - Kate Bradley Chernis
33:30: We had to ask, what does Kate, a fiction major, think about the Oxford Comma?
34:00: Opening the door to your audience and social media trends: what goes viral and what types of posts do Facebook or LinkedIn algorithms favor?
40:00:
What books does Kate recommend?
Prior to founding Lately, Kate Bradley Chernis served 20 million listeners as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM on “The Loft”. She’s also an award-winning radio producer, engineer, and voice talent.
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073 - Mikal Abdullah: Problem Solving With a Jiu Jitsu Master
Mikal Abdullah is an entrepreneur, Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu coach, and competitor, founder of Aces Jiu-Jitsu Club, U.S. Army Veteran, and professional fighter. Mikal’s diverse background makes for some very interesting conversation in this latest episode. Emily and Mikal talked about an array of topics including: entrepreneurship, problem-solving, branding, the military mindset, leadership, and more.
How does the philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu apply to solving other problems? Mikal Abdullah is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach, competitor, founder of Aces Jiu-Jitsu Club, U.S. Army Veteran, and professional fighter. Mikal’s diverse background makes for some fascinating conversation about an array of topics, including: entrepreneurship, problem-solving from a martial arts approach, branding, the military mindset, leadership, and more.
After honorably serving in the U.S. Army, Mikal started training Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai. He has competed and won in competitions around the world. Mikal now owns an industry-leading group of companies, including facilities, gear companies, and now an online training academy. Mikal also enjoys helping other business owners and entrepreneurs to reach their goals.
Topics:
Mikal Abdullah is an entrepreneur, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu coach and competitor, founder of Aces Jiu Jitsu Club, U.S. Army Veteran, and professional fighter.
02:00: Meet Mikal Abdullah, BJJ master
03:13: What is the purpose and thought behind Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ)? Why do people practice it?
04:40: Overcoming obstacles: you have to be in a clear frame of mind on the mat and in life.
07:09: What can people’s actions and tactics on the Jiu-Jitsu mat tell you about how they handle problems in real life?
“We call it a Jiu-Jitsu handshake...when you start to roll with each other, how they handle obstacles is how they handle obstacles. If they shy and wilt under pressure, then that is how they handle things.” - Mikal Abdullah
07:53: What do 360 reviews and rolling on the mat have in common?
“One of the greatest superpowers you can ever have is the ability to see yourself as others see you. The other is to see yourself the way you truly are.” - Mikal Abdullah
09:24: While perception can be a weakness, it’s also very important to be aware of in business, relationships, and Jiu-Jitsu.
10:39: Middle of funnel, top of funnel marketing, and Mikal’s company, Aces Jiu Jitsu Club International.
“When it comes to middle of funnel marketing, I think that community is a big deal. Conversations are king.” - Mikal Abdullah
13:00: Some aspects of the military can be incorporated into your marketing strategy. AARs or After Action Reviews allow for you to sort mission aspects for review and posterity. This inspired Mikal’s strategy of tagging conversations for review in defining the customer journey and their marketing/selling process.
Mikel’s marketing background is focused on top of funnel and middle of funnel strategy. “Branding is always adjusting or evolving.” - Mikel Abdullah
15:20: Branding: much more than just logo design
“As humans, when we use a compass to find a bearing and identify where we want to go and where we want to be, we often start walking, and we start moving in a curve or a zig-zag. It’s important to do a repeated check-in on where we are. For us, our branding is always adjusting or evolving.” - Mikal Abdullah
19:04: How do you form a subconscious or unconscious connection to your target audience? The ultimate success is connecting with your customer on this level.
20:26: Netflix, subscription businesses, DTC and virtual offerings. How did Mikal’s company Aces Jiu Jitsu pivot at the onset of the pandemic?
24:30: Harness the power to scale your business. Sometimes entrepreneurs aren’t thinking big enough at the beginning of their business journey.
26:17: The worst interview question: where do you see yourself in five years? Sometimes that can be a limiting approach to conversation and goal setting.
30:10: Words and language matter.
“We are attempting to communicate so many ideas in just a few words, and it’s so important to be effective and efficient so that you don’t have to go backward and correct things, or correct them as little as possible.” - Mikal Abdullah
34:00: Mikal‘s book recommendations
069 - Steve Pratt: Podcasts - Your Brand's Unfair Advantage (VIDEO)
What makes a good podcast? How about a great podcast? In this episode, Emily and Steve discuss the best ways to create a valuable message to grow your podcast audience as well as how companies should be approaching podcasting as a new form of content marketing. They also discuss emerging opportunities with audio content and voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
Why do Facebook, Dell Technologies, Mozilla, Slack, Red Hat, NYT T Brand Studio, BMW, CBS, Charles Schwab, and more top brands come to Pacific Content when they want to create a branded podcast?
Steve Pratt is the Vice President and co-founder of Pacific Content, a company of 30 passionate podcast nerds that focuses exclusively on creating original podcasts with brands.
Play the video:
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Pacific Content joined Rogers Media in May 2019 and is one of Entrepreneur's 100 Brilliant Companies. Their shows have won Webby Awards, Digiday Branded Content Awards, MarCom Awards, and Shorty Awards.
What makes a good podcast? How about a great podcast? In this episode, Emily and Steve discuss the best ways to create a valuable message to grow your podcast audience as well as how companies should be approaching podcasting as a new form of content marketing. They also discuss emerging opportunities with audio content and voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
2:20: How Steve started working on branded content and more details on his background.
3:00: Sirius XM and the first podcast ever.
4:19: Getting bitten by the "podcast bug." Opportunities to generate exposure for new bands in Canada emerged through licensing agreements for podcasts.
4:35: The new wave of podcasting hits and with it the need for podcasters to think and act like media companies
5:37: Companies begin realizing a new medium to generate content to increase exposure, without overtly tying it to their brand. It doesn't sound like an ad.
Choiceology with Katy Milkman is an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It explores irrational decision making. The show was created by Pacific Content.
"They all understand that you have to put the audience first, and you have to have a lot of empathy for the people that you're creating this for. Anytime anybody makes a piece of content that is about themselves, it's an infomercial." - Steve Pratt
"If we make something that's about us, maybe people will listen once, and then they'll never come back." - Steve Pratt
7:22: Traditional advertising is becoming less and less effective due to the economic and global impacts of coronavirus. Advertising isn't always about showing off your brand and product; sometimes it's about just about creating something that adds value to the user's experience.
"This is a time for brands to serve instead of sell" - Steve Pratt
Loyalty and ROI
9:00: How do you play to the unique strengths of audio, and how do you measure your success in harnessing it?
11:10: Podcasting can reach people when screens aren't available
Podcasting hit a watershed moment in 2019 when, for the first time ever, over 50% of the U.S. adult population had listened to a podcast.
13:39: Everyone has a podcast, and the market is increasingly growing. Discovery and promotion can be a podcaster's biggest hurdle.
14:48: The same tips for growing your podcast can be applied as you're building a voice experience on Alexa or Google Assistant.
"This is all part of the concert of the marketing instruments; they play together." - Emily Binder
17:58: Word of mouth can grow ambassadors for your podcast or voice experience.
"You can't buy listens in podcasts, you have to earn them." - Steve Pratt
18:30: Goodpods is a platform for users to discover new podcasts and can help podcasters capitalize on the "word of mouth" marketing in a digital form. Goodpods is founded by JJ Ramberg, see our conversation with her here.
19:56: Establish patterns and comfort with users, and it will make them more drawn to new mediums. This will reduce friction to new technology and drive adoption.
"When we first had smartphones, you had to teach someone how to download an app and close an app...now, it has become second nature, and we can't live without it." - Emily Binder
23:05: This is the time to experiment with technology
24:53: Smart speakers are the training wheels of voice, but voice assistant is on so many more devices than just a smart speaker
"We had a 70% YOY increase in global shipments of smart speakers in 2019 over 2018. And voice in the car is actually the fastest growing and number 1 use case of voice." - Emily Binder
27:17: What has Google been doing in the podcast space?
Books and Podcasts Steve recommends:
Connect with Steve and Pacific Content:
Steve Pratt is Vice President and Co-Founder of Pacific Content, an award winning podcast studio
Follow @beetlemoment on Instagram:
065 - Alison Greenberg: What's in a Name?
Alison Greenberg is a naming expert, brand strategist, and verbal designer. As of 2023 Alison is the Co-Founder and CEO at RuthHealth. Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of aflow, a conversational AI studio designing and building AI-powered, NLP-backed chat and voice assistant experiences. Over the past 12+ years, she's helped brands find their voice in the marketplace.
Alison’s branding and naming work includes brands + agencies: McCann, VSA Partners, Siegelvision, Elmwood, OpenIDEO, Edwards Lifesciences, Stryker, Summit Health/City MD, Pfizer, General Motors, McDonald's, Hungryroot, The Helm, Fidelity, Llamasoft + others. (Alison Greenberg- LinkedIn.)
Alison Greenberg, Co-Founder & CEO of RuthHealth, and brand naming expert and strategist. Twitter: @ALiS0NLAURA
Emily spoke with Alison about her approach to naming products and brands with a few great examples from fashion to CBD. Plus, should voice assistants have a gender? And what makes a good chatbot?
This episode has good old fashioned branding, voice and conversation design (VUI), startups and women creating cool products for women, and the keys to designing a great chat experience for your customers or audience.
Bottom line: Naming is the way that you take language and make it work for a brand.
Topics & Timestamps
1:50: Alison shares her background and how she became involved with naming brands.
2:15: Language is a currency and in any form of advertising, marketing, or branding it is the core piece of the craft. Naming is the most condensed way to apply language to a brand. Naming is the way that you take language and really put it to work for the brand it’s poetry, but it’s also a strategic execution of ideas.
3:35: Naming can be subjective, so how do you objectively define the success of a name?
3:50: You can’t decouple a name from what it represents. The naming doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but the success of a brand is mostly qualitative. Is it succinct? Does it telegraph meaning?
5:20: Successful names often stop us in our tracks. In B2B naming you don’t have much of an opportunity to do that, but it’s becoming easier to be creative and innovative with naming.
6:00: Slack is a great example of this. It resonates with the user. People often say “slack it to me” or “slack me.” It’s simple and surprising: two criteria for a great name.
6:55: There’s a science behind why names with harder consonants such as k and z. Experts in linguistics study sound symbolism, phonosemantics, and phonaesthesia: the idea that the way a word sounds have lexical meaning and meaning in the way that they sound. It’s all about the relationship between sound and meaning.
'Phonaesthesia occurs when certain sounds become associated with certain meanings, even though they do not attempt to imitate the sound (as in onomatopoeia). ' 'Phonaesthesia has been described as a type of conventional sound symbolism.
Women in Voice is building community for women in this new technology space. Alison is chapter founder of Women in Voice NY.
9:11: Often, brands run into legal problems when trying to establish a name to their brand. One such company that Alison worked with is Where Mountains Meet. Brand owners approached Alison after being hit with a cease and desist letter for the brand name they were originally using when launching their sustainable women’s clothing business. See more about Where Mountains Meet on their Instagram.
11:05: calmbound is another female-owned business that Alison has worked with whose owners had a passion for language and creating a brand of CBD edibles curated with the proper dosage of CBD and available to people of all walks of life, i.e. veterans, elderly, etc. calmbound echoes the literal compound used in CBD, but also has a deeper meaning that resonates with the brand’s hope that users would be “calm bound” with their mental and physical health. See more about calmbound.
12:45: There is always a need for naming. Whether it’s podcasts or brands, the ability to be clear as well as memorable is a true art. -Alison Greenberg
14:25: Some of the most interesting perspectives can come from an intersectional and diverse background. When we’re thinking about voice, having a background in understanding the human element and how language and communication function on a level with human emotion is really helpful.
15:30: Being brief and getting your message across concisely is key. Brevity goes beyond just the way you look at brand communication. It has to be done visually and verbally because we are constantly being bombarded with information.
17:15: You don’t have a lot of real estate with voice. You have to use as few words as possible to get your message across.
Voice User Interfaces (VUI) are the primary or supplementary visual, auditory, and tactile interfaces that enable voice interaction between people and devices. A VUI can be anything from a light that blinks when it hears your voice to an car’s entertainment console.
18:34: When you’re building a custom voice experience responding in the fewest amount of words while maintaining a personality and conversational flow is a balance that you have to strike.
19:00: How do you bake the tone of the brand into pre-programmed chat responses while maintaining brevity?
19:19: You need to remove the formalities and just focus on conversation with chat. Telegraph meaning and utility. The whole point of a chatbot is to get something accomplished. -Alison Greenberg
20:35: Make sure that your chatbot voice is honoring that brand. A beauty brand might use emojis while an insurance brand would be establishing trust.
22:10: Bots and voice should use language to be solution creators, not just problem solvers.
23:10: Make it known that a chatbot is being used from the beginning. The BOT bill (Senate bill 1001) in California makes it illegal for bots to pretend to be humans online.
24:30: Considering gender with virtual assistants: The term virtual assistant is a better term for a chatbot. Using the first person plural can be a good way to stay gender-neutral.
25:40: There is no reason to give a bot a gender unless it’s strategic. For example, the brand Swoobie’s target customer is a female, so it makes sense for their voice and chatbot to take a female gender. In financial services, it doesn’t matter.
27:45: Staying gender-neutral with voice can be tricky.
28:48: Female topics can often be taboo, but some brands in femtech and sextech are starting the conversation around them: Lola, Cora, etc. Chatbots allow for these topics on women’s healthcare to be explored in an environment that feels safe and non-judgmental.
30:21: Book recommendation: Questions of negotiation are really common in the voice industry, especially for women. Alison recommends “Getting More” by Stuart Diamond.
Learning Links: Symbolism in language
060 - Does Digital Kill Advertising Creativity? Claire Winslow
Guest: Claire Winslow, CEO Best Practice Media joins Emily Binder to discuss the evolving definition of creativity in advertising, plus the problems with the ways that we recognize and award women in business.
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Claire and Emily discuss whether “advertising as we know it is dead” - prompted by Larry Light’s opinion piece in Forbes. The author writes:
The focus on short-term, disposable viewership is an unfortunate byproduct of the digital age. Sustainable advertising campaigns designed to create and reinforce brand loyalty will be a thing of the past.
The love affair with digital, data and devices has eclipsed the understanding that truly creative, memorable, persuasive and consistent advertising has an important role to play in brand building. Advertising is not a single use wet wipe. The primary role of marketing in general, and advertising in particular, is to create, reinforce and increase brand loyalty. -Larry Light
Audience segmentation and funnels are the new form of creativity
We should not limit the word “creativity” to a traditional definition of coming up with the ideas - it’s more than the ideas because it also involves the technical skill and strategizing of promoting the message, which can be done creatively even if it doesn't resemble Mad Men
The evolution of language: it always changes. Look at Olde English. Old people always dog young people - it’s the pattern of humanity.
Instead of taking slogans from traditional media and putting them on social ads, reverse it and let inexpensive social advertising inform the traditional ads which are more expensive to produce:
Case study from Claire's agency Best Practice Media: Buc-ee's Texas road stop, an amusement park/gas station - how Claire’s team is helping Buc-ee's choose effective copy for their road sign using digital (A/B testing 15 slogan options on Facebook to inform outdoor advertising).
More info: Buc-ee's, the convenience-store chain with a cult following and 'world-famous’ bathrooms
Female Founders Are Changing the World. Please Stop Calling Them 'Mompreneurs' and 'She-E-Os': Enough with the cutesy nicknames - Inc piece by Leigh Buchanan
Get in touch with Claire Winslow:
Social Media Week Austin: smwatx.com
Twitter: @bestpracticesmm
SPECIAL EVENT: SkillSetters Flash Networking at Project Voice on January 14, 2020
The official Tuesday night event at Project Voice:
Increase the discoverability of your Alexa Skill or Flash Briefing live at #SkillSetters premiere cocktail hour!
Come share your Alexa Skill or Flash Briefing, speed dating style! 50 Alexa Skill creators have the opportunity to give a short elevator pitch for your Skill in 1 minute to each person in the room. After each interaction, guests can scan each other’s QR code badge that opens their Skill on mobile.
You’ll leave with up to 50 new users, new friends, and great ideas! Come network with the #SkillSetters at Project Voice!
YOUR HOSTS: SkillSetters and Finalists for the Flash Briefing of the Year Award:
Emily Binder (Voice Marketing with Emily Binder)
Daniel Hill (The Instagram Stories)
Amy Summers (The Pitch with Amy Summers)
With featured guest Bradley Metrock, host of Project Voice along with Audiobrain and more great sponsors! Register now, spaces are limited.
053 - Brian Roemmele - The Key to Successful Branding - Voice and Beyond - Pt. 2
Listen to Part 1 - podcast with Brian Roemmele about Alexa hardware and more
Brands have defining points with their customers, as any human relationship does. What makes a brand successful longterm? How does voice play a role?
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Topics and Timestamps:
02:00 How do we build a relationship in which our customer is the hero? (A la Storybrand framework)
02:53 All products, companies, and brands are a relationship with their consumer.
03:20 Every purchase is an emotional purchase because it is defined by neurological reactions - neuropeptides bombard every cell of our body when you make a purchase
04:00 Every brand has an emotional connection to the people who use their products. Some covet it better than others. This means a narrative is being spun overtly or covertly all the time.
Apple has a powerful brand narrative on a cerebral (higher brain) level
05:45 It took millions of years for apes and chimps to speak and listen: we had to create a new O.S., the neocortex on top of the limbic system in order to communicate
07:15 Neuropeptide release of a transaction or purchase - pleasure in the body, your cells will remember this
08:15 Carl Jung - the twelve archetypes
Archetypes, introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, are models of people, behaviors, or personalities. Jung suggested that archetypes are inborn tendencies that influence behavior.
08:30 Voice has the opportunity unlike any other one (including film) to create a rich deep emotional lifelong connection with the customer. If you do this ethically and build the persona correctly for our brand that resonates with your cohort
09:00 The human agenda is connection
09:45 Brian consults with brands and tell them to understand where the transaction and neuropeptide release occurs
09:55 A voice comes from a person - it’s not a thing - it has a persona (a life, a gender, a background) - we are hardcoded to assign these traits to a voice
10:25 We instantly categorize anything we hear or see anthropomorphically because of flee or flight mechanism
11:05 Your brand has a voice: who is it? Fashion brand example from Brian’s work
11:30 It is impossible to make a persona that caters to everyone: there is no voice of everybody
12:05 You need to assign a Jungian or Myers Briggs archetype to your brand
12:30 Your customer is on their own hero’s journey, along with you (Apple and Patagonia and Tiffany and Starbucks do this or have done this well)
14:00 Why is Alexa female? This could be a smart move by Amazon: female voice = authority on a neurological level! - profoundly important. Google has an androgynous voice - a mistake? Brian would argue yes.
14:15 The voice of authority is and always will be a female. The first voice your hear is your mother. Long before eyesight you have the resolution of identifying your mother - this is a survival mechanism evolution has granted. That is why we are wired for communication and voice.
15:40 We can’t change our hardwiring in our brains - female voice is authoritative, especially one in tune with your mother’s voice (can prove this neurologically)
16:10 Anthropologically and culturally, the wise woman (hence the archetype) was always the leader of the tribe until western culture labeled them witches
17:30 The divine feminine and goddess culture came because women were the voice of authority, which we knew instinctually. Women became the voice of the tribe and holder of wisdom. “Don’t eat that, you will die.” Sounds like mom.
18:40 We are a victim and a success story of our reptilian brain
20:15 If a brand keeps us too reptilian we are probably not going to be longterm fans or customers; jealousy or FOMO pulls at the lizard brain but that is short term thinking. Apple is successful because they get cerebral (higher brain, invoking ideas of fashion)
19:15 There is more to this than throwing out an app, you are building a tapestry to weave between the customer for life. We define our life by our brand relationships to some degree, e.g., “That’s when I owned that car, that’s when I got my first iPhone…”
Thomas the Tank Engine helps children make sense of the world
20:20 It’s not the brand we connect to, it’s the story and its role in our own narrative (e.g. Thomas the Tank Engine helped kids understand the confusion of the world with “The little engine that could.”
21:00 90% of what we do on our computers is trying to make sense of the world, e.g. social media as confirmation that what we did was right
21:15 Brand expression is to attract members of a desired tribe (e.g. why I use Apple)
22:20 When we build voice brands (brands around voice, which are coming) - ask: what does your brand sound like? Who is it? Where did they grow up? This is more than a Hollywood storyboard - and this is why you need experts to help with branding.
CONNECT WITH BRIAN ROEMMELE:
051 - Alexa, How Can Brands Can Sell and Engage More? Bob Stolzberg, Voice XP
Plot twist: how could Alexa hurt Amazon sales?
Guest Bob Stolzberg, Founder of Voice XP, and Emily dug into a key question about where e-commerce is headed: can brands stand as independent ecommerce channels while reaching customers through Amazon Alexa?
Furthermore, will branding really matter in an increasingly AI assisted future? (Bob and Emily disagree here. And we’d love to hear Brian Roemmele’s take!)
Bob Stolzberg, Founder Voice XP, Alexa Champion
The convenience factor of a single voice command could reinforce brand loyalty. If you can have a company call you back or send you a car or a pizza hands-free, you might just go direct to them and never shop around (and that could be through their Alexa skill). Or maybe the voice assistant of the future does the research for us and we don’t bother remembering brands anymore.
Personal assistants will help us buy things and it doesn’t have to be direct from Amazon. Ecommerce businesses can build voice experiences directing users to buy direct from them (e.g., via text message or multimodal touch screen that opens a separate page). Think about this for DTC (direct to consumer) like a Casper or M Gemi.
Topics in this episode:
What you can do today to improve customer experiences for shopping and getting information
How voice will impact the future of advertising
How you can create a custom skill which lets your customers request a call-back from you through Alexa
How to engage people with your voice experiences - omnichannel marketing and voice as part of the funnel
Get in touch with Bob Stolzberg:
Twitter: @BobStolzberg
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043 - Mics and Podcasting - Ben Thompkins, Blue Microphones
Guest: Ben Thompkins, National Sales Manager- Pro Sales, Blue Microphones
Topics:
Ben runs professional sales for Blue in North and South America, has been with Blue ten years
He handles B2B business, distribution, and educational sales
How does Blue differentiate in the microphone industry?
Blue’s unique history (very music focused, podcasting has been recent)
Started as a high end microphone company (many of their mics are still $6,000-$10,000)
Took premium sound and made it affordable (see their podcasting mics)
Blue’s marketing stands out - fun names like Yeti and Snowball <— please use my link if you want to buy a snowball, this helps support the show!
4:34 Story: Snowball was originally called Softball - founder story
Softball (Snowball) was built for GarageBand, per Apple’s request- a simple USB mic
Founder Skipper turned them down
Emily used Snowball on her first podcast (throwback: The Digital Dive Podcast)
Blue Microphones are the #1 SKU on Amazon for Music / Musical Instruments (these mics are not in the electronics department) - if you want to purchase a Blue Yeti, please click here to use my link to support the podcast!
Hear about podfading (half of podcasts fade after 6 episodes) in Emily’s episode with Phoebe Mroczek
8:10 Emily asks: are people ready for a more passive media experience (e.g. podcasting and voice - audio content) due to social media overload?
"Half the picture is sound" - George Lucas on the importance of audio in film
High quality audio is paramount for communication and marketing
Bad audio on YouTube is worse than bad visuals
Ben is seeing a trend of XLR mics, not just USB mics (XLR is used at major music recording studios)
If you’re paying for an expensive computer and Alienware, it makes sense to upgrade your audio too
Video games are part of his market - gamers are buying nicer mics
Joe Rogan uses a broadcast mic
People are spending more money on higher quality mics
Ben is seeing a consumer purchasing trend with XLR mics, not just USB mics (XLR is used at major music recording studios)
If you’re paying for an expensive computer and Alienware, it makes sense to upgrade your audio too (gaming)
Video games are part of his market - gamers are buying nicer mics and willing to pay
Example- Joe Rogan uses a broadcast mic
Ben with Chino Moreno, Deftones singer. “We all had the same music manager for a bit. Alice in Chains and Deftones are still with them but I’m a mic guy now.” - Ben Thompkins
Instagram: @bthompkins, @bluemicrophones