The Big Impression

Gopuff’s Daniel Folkman joins The Current Podcast to explore the company's philosophy, what differentiates Gopuff’s retail media network and how the platform’s unique proposition could help it capture incremental retail media dollars.

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The beverage brand’s former CMO, which holds drinks like Aperol, breaks down why events like Coachella, the US Open and Cannes Film Festival are so important to its marketing strategy.

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

[00:00:00] Damian: I'm Damian Fowler

[00:00:01] Ilyse: And I'm Ilyse Liffreing

[00:00:02] Damian: And welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast.

[00:00:05] Ilyse: This week, we're delighted to talk with Julka Villa, the former Global CMO of Campari Group.

[00:00:11] Damian: Founded in 1860, Campari is a household name in the global spirits industry with a portfolio of over 50 brands across world markets.

[00:00:20] We're talking familiar names like Aperol, Sky Vodka, Wild Turkey Bourbon, and Courvoisier.

[00:00:27] Ilyse: Julka is a marketing veteran with over 25 years of experience in the alcoholic beverage and beauty industries. A specialist in consumer focused brands.

[00:00:37] Damian: Julka is responsible for the marketing vision, strategy, and execution of the Campari Group's brands.

[00:00:44] At the same time, she has a bird's eye view of the company's worldwide presence, coordinating teams based in Milan, Paris, and New York.

[00:00:52] Ilyse: We started by asking her about how she balances the Campari legacy with keeping its brands relevant for today's [00:01:00] consumers.

[00:01:02] Damian: So Campari has a rich heritage. The company is now 164 years old. How do you go about balancing its legacy, the preservation of its legacy while keeping the brand modern and relevant for today's consumers?

[00:01:18] Julka: I think that, if we go back to the roots of the Campari brand, about being

[00:01:23] bold, about being visionary about investing in arts, think about Europe, Italy in the second half of the 19th century. There were so, few brands really investing Campari was one of the first really interacting with artists

[00:01:42] and designers and giving them the freedom to, the brand in the way they saw it. if you look at how we started, you how we moved forward along our, our history. You can see that, the [00:02:00] twenties and thirties of last we start cooperating with cinema, really asking the people, working in the industries and producing the movies, postcards, producing, you know, designs and drawings for us.

[00:02:16] You can see that, fast forward, to the eighties. We start cooperating with one of the greatest filmmakers. In the world, Federico Fellini, that was a big fan of the Campari brand. He was drinking Campari and he decided to cooperate with us to produce an advertising for the brand. And Fellini was the first filmmaker we cooperated with. But then, we kept this partnership, for instance, with Paolo Sorrentino 2017. And I was personally You know, working with him, it was a fantastic experience to see an artist really bringing to life, the brand, [00:03:00] respecting the legacy, but at the same time, renovating, since you're asking me how a brand modern still loyal to its root, it was amazing to see how we could kept the daring, attitude of the brand alive. According to his own style. 

[00:03:20] Ilyse: Wow,that is super cool. so is pop culture still as important to the brand even today? 

[00:03:27] Julka: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and this is so important for the Campari brand, but for many other brands part of our portfolio, just for you to know, we have more than 50 brands. in our portfolio, and if you’d like we can talk about some of them, but when it, comes to Campari, think about the fact that our partnership with arts, have been, more recently renovated in our, cooperation with the major film festivals, in the world. We, are [00:04:00] partners of the Cannes Film the Locarno, in Berlinale. weclosed the first, year of partnership with the Toronto Film that's definitely a modern way to the brand, extremely aspirational, but still to get in touch with so many consumers and possible advocates of the brand. One of the things we really care about is not just to communicate our brands, but to assure our consumer to consume our brands throughout the signature cocktails in the best way possible and definitely feel festival for us are a huge opportunity to provide liquid tulips, as we say, to our consumers current and future. 

[00:04:47] Damian: What's interesting is with these different brands, you're sort of talking about how they're valued differently in different markets. that's very interesting to me. How do you know and prioritize [00:05:00] which brands work best in which countries? 

[00:05:04] Julka: We have, well identified, what we call the global brands. The brands that should be built everywhere in the world. Of course step by step and respecting the life stages, the brand is in a specific geography. And definitely the one I mentioned so far, are global brands. And so also global priorities, for the company. And then, depending on the area of the world, the characteristics of the market and the consumers, each individual, operating company, can, compose, portfolio, to have the best performance on the market. But definitely there are priorities everybody to focus 

[00:05:51] Damian: if you think about the United States, is there a sort of priority?

[00:05:55] Julka: Yeah, 

[00:05:56] Damian: Leading brand here.

[00:05:58] Julka: definitely, [00:06:00] uh, the priority for the United our giant aperitif brands, such as Campari Aperol, Grand Manier, Wild Turkey, Espolon, and of course, the local team is really excited to rebuild the Courvoisier brand. always acquisition we have just finalized.

[00:06:21] Damian: Yeah, each of those brands has its own kind of, whole kind of narrative around them, I imagine. But I wanted to ask you actually a little bit about, The current moment that we're in, which we're seeing a kind of a lot of debate around alcohol versus no alcohol consumption, particularly when it comes to like Gen Z demographics. I mean, how do you think about and navigate these perception shifts? 

[00:06:47] Julka: That's a very that's a very interesting question. And of course, as you can imagine, we have been spending a lot of time and resources really to dig deep into these shift and [00:07:00] transformation in a way of our consumer ships. One thing that is not that evident to, to everybody is that differently from the past, there is a sort of coexistence of, people drinking alcoholic products and non alcoholic products, depending on the moment they are in, the people they are with, what they have to do the day after.

[00:07:23] And this kind of consciousness and, control on what to choose is even stronger in younger consumers as you were mentioned so they are more conscious they don't they are not you know afraid to make a choice that could be out of 

[00:07:43] their are pool of friends. Everybody's drinking something alcoholic There's no problem at all for one of them to say “Look tomorrow I have to wake up very early I have a very important day I prefer to, to opt for a choice, a non alcoholic choice.” So more than a counter position [00:08:00] today, we see the coexistence, of these kind of choices, which is quite interesting, honestly, also because it gives us the opportunity to be more, mindful and, intentional in developing also the part of our portfolio, which is non alcoholic. For instance, we have a product which is an extremely strong product in Italy and definitely in a phase of conquering of continental Europe is, the name of the product is Crodino and is definitely our non alcoholic, kind of spritz. is a product that was invented and launched in the market, in 1965.

[00:08:39] So this is a little bit a testament, to the personality of the company, wanting really to push boundaries. And actually we are preparing the launch of these fantastic product also in the U S, that we plan for next year. 

[00:08:54] Ilyse: So it sounds like Campari really anticipated this trend of non alcoholic [00:09:00] beverages in a sense. 

[00:09:02] Julka: Yeah, that's, that's correct. That's correct. 

[00:09:05] Damian: I'm just curious on that point, you know, as a marketer, you must get lots of data back in terms of like, who's drinking what, maybe by generation, maybe by geography even. I'm interested to know, do you kind of look at that in terms of strategizing and find the discrete markets? 

[00:09:24] Julka: even if, with the passing of the years, what we, really is of people. So demographics are not, gender or age brackets are not the main elements we look for because what really counts. Today is the mindset and the attitude of people, for instance, if I think about a product like Aperol with these with its signature cocktail, Aperol can see across generations drinking this product and across age brackets is the mindset.

[00:09:57] And you would be amazed how people approaching Aperol [00:10:00] Spritz, enjoying Aperol Spritz, they really have in common, the way they appreciate life and what they are looking for in that specific moment. Either they are, 25 or 60. So there are also, a number of cross generational, alcoholic beverage experiences, and so the way we look at data is really about the motivation and the attitude of people when they are about to make a choice. 

[00:10:27] Ilyse: Yeah, that kind of, shift towards mindset over demographics probably helps a lot when it comes to just I guess prioritizing channels for the brand and where to reach those audiences because I know in a lot of the times like Millennials and Gen Zers are in like social media and usually that's not an option when it comes to alcohol brands, is, so is the brand finding other channels to be just as effective, in reaching that kind of mindset that it's [00:11:00] after.

[00:11:00] Julka: when, I think a strong, distinctive characteristic Of our marketing and activation strategies, really investing very seriously in, in events, because definitely there's a lot of will among consumers of all ages, really to leave, events, in person really experience, on their, skin, much more than in the past.

[00:11:24] and then we amplify, if you want, through social media, those events. But, a big part of our investment. is really, put on organizing, these kind of events. When we, when it comes to the U. S., think about Coachella, which is, more than a music festival, is a lifestyle festival, as we all know.

[00:11:43] Think about the U. S. Open. uh, but also if we go on the other side of the world, in the APAC region, think about, The Australian Open, which is for us a, opportunity to reach so many consumers. about [00:12:00] hundreds of thousands live offering our best signature cocktail in our, fantastic lounger and then we can definitely amplify this content on a number of social media where. alcoholic beverage can, have a direct relationship, with their consumers. So for us, it's always a mix. we really believe that we have winning products, very straightforward drinking strategy, and that's why we care so these to life in real life for we don't see this business as happening just, just virtually. Definitely. 

[00:12:42] How do you kind of maintain and sort of keep tabs, as it were, on people who are loyal to the brands that you market?

[00:12:52] definitely over the yearsWe invested and we improved, our, CRM, capacity, so [00:13:00] throughout, social media and massively through events, we gather as much as possible information about our consumers so that, we can definitely keep them, up to date. On our, yearly, program, but also we can establish a more direct dialogue.

[00:13:18] Sometimes we consult them, a part of them for new projects. we listen to them, ask them questions about, trends, want to know more and I think that, especially when it comes to a lab important.

[00:13:39] Feel part of a feel, really listen to is something as important as enjoying your favorite, brand and your

[00:13:50] Damian: And what's interesting to me is I was thinking about this because about, maybe 12 years ago, I have a friend from Venice who lives in New York and we went to a [00:14:00] restaurant and she ordered an Aperol and at that, point it wasn't very, nobody really knew much about it here.

[00:14:06] And since then, of course, it's huge. It's like a probably one of the most popular, cocktails around. I was just at the U. S. Open in the summer and I could see, your your

[00:14:16] plaza there with Aperol everywhere. I guess it was, there's a sponsor, a partnership 

[00:14:20] Julka: Mm hmm. 

[00:14:21] Damian: But my question is, how did you could you walk us through how you, built that awareness from, that moment, however many years ago when it wasn't such a big, obviously big in Venice, she said it was the Venetian drink.

[00:14:34] So I was like, Oh, that's interesting.

[00:14:39] Julka: yes, I am. 10, 12 years ago, not only in the U. S., but in many other places outside Europe, definitely it was not established. you know, staple it is to die. and at the very beginning, we really faced, some very basic, difficulties. I have to say, it was not easy, to start [00:15:00] talking about, a signature cocktail that, needed, a bottle of Prosecco to be open, to be prepared because.

[00:15:07] You know, if you are familiar with sparkly wines, the problem with it is that if you open it and you use just a little part and then you keep the bottle for a couple of days, the carbonation will just, yes, go away. So it was really. a very precise, consistent, and stubborn work of education.

[00:15:28] There's just one certainty about education, which is that, you know, when you started that you will never know when you will finish. And actually it's a never ending story in a way. So we, in the past we put, and we keep putting a lot of, effort and an investment in educating the trade the bartenders bar owners But also the final consumers because at the end if the final consumer knows

[00:15:52] the best way to prepare an upper spritz They will be your advocate and it happened to me so many times in the past [00:16:00] when I was receiving at the table in upper spritz that was not preparing the way It should have been, I was going back to the bar and I was saying there's something wrong with my cocktail.

[00:16:13] it's a double, a double direction 

[00:16:16] Julka: Yeah, 

[00:16:18] efforts. And, Also, a very important part is, what we call, the oil spill approach. What does it mean? We start with the city, a major city, we start with the specific neighbors. and key on trade outlets in this neighbor.

[00:16:39] We build a relationship of partnership. We invest on these venues and we create the phenomenon of the cocktail and then we expand. So distribution and presence comes just

[00:16:52] after having started trend with a very high level, of the serve in a smaller [00:17:00] number of venues.

[00:17:01] This, has been the approach in the U. S. and in every other part of the world. You mentioned Venice, which is the place where the brand really, started being known and appreciated and, recognized as, the champion of aperitif. But the phenomenon of Aperol Spritz started in Venice, expanded to the Veneto region, which is the region of Venice, and then expanded Milan and from Milan to the rest of Italy.

[00:17:28] So the oil spill approach, as we call it, has always been, front and center of the strategy, of, And it's building. 

[00:17:38] Ilyse: So interesting. when you think of Campari brands, it also sorts of implies Like a level of sophistication. in a sense, are marketing just drinks or is it something more, I don't know, like lifestyle? 

[00:17:53] Julka: definitely. I think that,our brands are starting from, The most important ones really [00:18:00] stand for a certain lifestyle. you think about campari, it really represents the Milan. And, the lifestyle of the city. If you, think about aperol, you're talking about a more democratic sort of brand, really more casual. welcome. and, So they,

[00:18:21] reflect a way of living and today even more important. If you think about the trend of escapism, traveling without traveling. I need a break. I need a moment for myself of real enjoyment with my friends.

[00:18:36] brands like this, and they are signature cocktail, let's say Aperol Spritz for Aperol, Negroni, for instance, for Campari makes you really full for half hour, one hour you're spending with your friends in another place. So they really stand for a way of living for a place and for a moment in life where you really, recharge your batteries and, [00:19:00] you dedicate really a true moment to yourself. 

[00:19:03] Julka: And that's it for this edition of The Current Podcast.

[00:19:05] Damian: We'll be back next week, so stay tuned.

[00:19:08] Ilyse: The Current Podcast's theme is by Love Caliber. The current team includes Kat Vesce and Sydney Cairns.

[00:19:15] Damian: Cairns. And remember, 

[00:19:16] Julka: we really believe that we have winning products, and that's why we care so these to life we don't see this business as happening just virtually. 

[00:19:29] Damian: I'm Damian.

[00:19:30] Ilyse: I'm Ilyse.

[00:19:30] Damian: And we'll see you next time. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave us a review. Also, tune in to our other podcast, The Current Report.

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Samsung’s Olga Suvorova sat down with The Current Podcast to discuss engaging with Gen Z audiences, balancing omnichannel strategies and tapping into cultural trends.

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

[00:00:12] Damian: This week we're delighted to talk with Olga Suvarova, the VP of Mobile Experience Marketing at Samsung.

[00:00:18] Olga has recently overseen the launch of new Galaxy foldable phones and family of new wearables powered by Galaxy AI, a watch, buds, and a new smart Galaxy Ring. 

[00:00:35] On a recent LinkedIn post, Olga wrote, “We are reimagining how we create, interact, work out, communicate, stay healthy, multitask, travel, capture ordinary and extraordinary with Galaxy AI.”

[00:00:47] That, sort of, almost sums up the human experience.

[00:00:51] Ilyse: So much of phone tech is tied up with culture, and that's where we start.

[00:00:55] Damian: So Olga, we know culture plays a large role in smartphone sales. Do you think this is even more true today? 

[00:01:04] Absolutely. Phones, smartphones, wearables, tablets are such an important part of people's lives. More so than it has ever been. So we're thinking about not just driving sales and connecting to culture, but understanding what are the cultural spaces, what are the nuggets of interest that are resonating with our consumers and how can we build experiences specifically for that?

[00:01:33] Whether it's the new ways to create things thanks to Galaxy Eye, whether it's the new ways to track your health and sleep and overall wellness, or a completely reimagined experience of productivity and work.

[00:01:50] Damian: And as you said in that LinkedIn post, the phone is connected to all these different aspects of our lives. That's kind of mind blowing when you think about it.

[00:01:58] So, you know, you, talk about [00:02:00] culture and it's very interesting to me that culture and pop culture in particular is so connected to the idea of smartphone sales.

[00:02:09] I mean, it's a fashion item as much as a, you know, a utility item. How do you tap into sort of current trends and fashions? And how do you tie that to marketing the phones and the wearables, indeed? 

[00:02:24] Absolutely, and because smartphones are at the center of what we do every single day, whether it's more of a utility or truly fun and delightful experiences, we have always been big on driving partnerships and collaboration with like minded change makers and incredible players within different cultural spaces.

[00:02:46] And fashion is one of the greatest examples because when we think about technology and fashion. At the core of both is this relentless drive of inspiration and creativity and [00:03:00] self expression. So just recently, we've built an entire partnership around New York Fashion Week, partnering with an incredible designer, LeQuan Smith, and working with him to put the smartphone and the smart ring, so foldable phone, fold six, and the galaxy ring at the core of his creative experiences.

[00:03:25] And redesigning and reimagining what it could be and launching an entire new collection that we called Lucid Dreams by LeQuan Smith. But what was very exciting about it is not only finding a way to build something incredible together, like this new collection, but also watching and getting inspired by LeQuan using  our incredible Samsung Galaxy technology, including Galaxy I throughout the process. So for example, Live Translate and Kohl's being automatically translated in over 15 languages [00:04:00] that he used to drive a lot of conversations with partners and vendors around the world.

[00:04:06] Ilyse: Now I want to get into how you think about your audiences. As you said, everybody uses a smartphone these days. Obviously there's a lot of focus on reaching Gen Z audiences who are, to put it, lightly less than brand loyal sometimes. How do you appeal to these potential customers through your exploration of culture?

[00:04:27] Olga: It's definitely not a one size fits all approach. And the ways they behave and where they spend their time could be different than other audiences. And we think about all those elements as we design different experiences.

[00:04:51] We're not just trying to target them with the same ads, no matter how amazing they are, as we would do with like the other [00:05:00] demographics. and that's why, when it comes to Gen Z and engaging them, deploying other strategies comes into play. for example, We've built an entire ecosystem of team Galaxy creators that are fantastic at building relationships versus trying to transact with that audience, and they are the champions of our brand, but they also the incredible connector to what those audiences care about and help us build that meaningful conversation with them.

[00:05:30] Ilyse: What about outside of, say, social media? Because we're really living in like an omnichannel world now. How do you layer in different channels when it comes to your strategy, and how do you balance brand awareness and then performance? 

[00:05:45] Olga: I know there is a lot being talked about brand awareness versus performance, but I really like to think about it as not one versus the other. Brand drive performance. And it's about building that puzzle [00:06:00] together and finding how different pieces come into play. And for us, it's really building this omni channel approach, and it's not just the social media.

[00:06:09] It's building that reach ecosystem off experiential activations, partnerships, tapping into influencers, thinking about how can we create media worthy moments. So for example, Team Galaxy Creator Collective is one of the ways we drive that relationship and engagement. Building a lot of conversation and community engagement in our social channels plays a huge role.

[00:06:35] Experiential and partner activations, whether it's New York Fashion Week or our partnership with Red Bull, and reimagining how we show up at incredible first female competitions like Magnitude or a cliff diving or something else incredible.

[00:06:52] Damian: mean, one of the challenges of your job is to stay on top of the fast moving, nature of culture. You have to be responsive. And I [00:07:00] think one of the most brilliant illustrations of that was earlier this year when, there was a certain ad that was that rolled out called, crushed where creative tools were being smashed into a tablet.

[00:07:10] And Samsung had a quick responds with an ad called Uncrushed. Could you talk a little bit about that, that moment and what happened there and how you responded and generally about how you need to be sort of quick on your feet when it comes to being a marketer

[00:07:25] Olga: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes down to a combination of being very clear about what you stand for as a brand and what your reason for being is, and being quick and nimble and constantly evolving to be at the center of that conversation.

[00:07:43] And for us, when that, um, competitive ad came out, that was pretty much against everything we stand for. Which is open innovation and forcing and fueling the creativity and self expression on people's terms. And that's why for us it [00:08:00] wasn't just a rebuttal, but it was a very thoughtful It was a very, very quick response to, even though very, very quick articulation and expression of what we hold near and dear to our heart and championing that incredible community of creative people, and that's why we call that response and crash.

[00:08:15] It wasn't a campaign plan for months. it was a very quick response. it went on social because it was so true and authentic and because it was executed in a very quick manner, we were able to garner. A lot of response and a lot of coverage without actually spending any money on it.

[00:08:34] Damian: That's amazing. Do you think sometimes those quick response, campaigns, if you like, or ads, in some ways, are kind of more unexpected ads, are more, what's the word? effective in some ways than ones that may have taken a long time to plan.

[00:08:48] Olga: It's probably a combination of both because I don't want to say don't plan, go with the flow and try to do everything within 48 hours. I wouldn't recommend that. But as you said, [00:09:00] The brand's ability to stay current and to stay top of mind for consumers is being constantly in tune with what consumers are doing and what they care about and what's happening in the competitive environments and what is top of mind for people.

[00:09:17] So it's probably a combination of both and that what defines the brands that are able to champion what they stand for in a way that never loses authenticity and relevance.

[00:09:28] Ilyse: Originally I saw a lot of backlash when it first out. Did you look at that backlash at all? Or was it something that you weren't even paying attention to and you just wanted to jump on it regardless?

[00:09:40] Olga: wanted to be very much focused not only on what we're against, but what we're for. And that's what drove that response. We are about creativity, we are about open innovation, we are about celebrating the expression, and we're about pushing boundaries [00:10:00] rather than crushing everything underneath that. So that was probably as important, if not more important than trying to think what people are pulling apart around that original ad.

[00:10:11] Ilyse: in a world where there's two operating systems, okay, you have iOS and Android. How do you view the competition in the space? Is it one system versus another? Or is it all about the product?

[00:10:25] Olga: Well, at the core of the Samsung mobile brand has been this idea and ethos of openness and open innovation and collaboration and building the products and experiences and the ecosystem of products that pushes away the boundaries that might be forced on those products and ultimately deliver subpar experience.

[00:10:47] So for us, it's relentless focus on delivering that. Open innovation, and that comes through how we build products, how we design those experiences, how we partner with like minded change makers in the [00:11:00] industry to really reimagine what those experiences are. Products could be whether it's partnering with Google to build circle to search, incredible functionality or Qualcomm or Microsoft for us.

[00:11:12] The fewer barriers there are in the world, the further we can all go. The more we can drive towards that truly accessible, equitable, representative world and human innovation. So I would say I like to think about it not as a competition per se, but, What is our enemy? And oftentimes the enemy is the barriers and complacency and the inertia that exists within the industry or within the consumer behavior.

[00:11:43] And how do we build not only the product experiences, but also incredible marketing messages and campaigns to really shake that up and drive towards progress.

[00:11:56] Ilyse: Now when you're marketing, and especially when it comes to like [00:12:00] new products and new pieces of technology, what would you say is a sell for a new piece of tech? So is it the technology itself or is it looking at the tech and how it can enhance creativity for that user?

[00:12:14] Olga: One hundred percent the latter one. It's all about it's never about technology and the conversation. We started with is smartphones and tablets and the mobile experiences being at the core of what we do every single day. So our focus, even with the latest launch earlier this year of Galaxy AI, has been how do we showcase what it could do for people, whether it's sketching AI photo editing, whether it's communicating across boundaries, because you have this wonderful life translated.

[00:12:48] you know, reimagining your capability or reimagining how your earbuds connect to your phone and your tablet in a very, very seamless way. So it's all about what you can [00:13:00] do with it, whether it is something to help you save time or it's truly for fun.

[00:13:05] Damian: fun. Now that brings us to the question of A. I. And the integration of A. I. Into new phones. And that for sure is a hot topic right now. And it's not just phones, of course. Could we talk a little bit about, you know, your thoughts on A.

[00:13:19] I. On and the marketing of the products that you there on your watch? A.

[00:13:26] Olga: and Galaxy Eye that we introduced in January and since then rolled out across the portfolio of our mobile products is not just a fancy and flashy new feature. It's truly at the core of where technology is going and how we can make it more accessible. More exciting, more delightful, more useful to our consumers.

[00:13:48] And we see that in how they have been using that technology. Right now there are over a hundred million devices. All around the world that have been using [00:14:00] Galaxy AI. We know that just in the US alone, within a week, there are

[00:14:05] Damian: are 78

[00:14:06] Olga: 78 million of instances when people are using those Galaxy AI features. And that's an incredible consumer response that tells us we're in the right track and we're building something that people love, that people find value in, and that helps us get more ideas for how we can innovate further.

[00:14:24] Ilyse: You know, on that note, you are a big proponent of brand love and, and really diving into what I guess makes consumers keep coming back to a brand. Why would you say it's important to generate that kind of buzz around a brand?

[00:14:45] Olga: It's really important to keep being relevance and being meaningful to consumers. It's important for people to feel something about your brand and in order to build and nurture that brand [00:15:00] love. We need to be very, very clear about what is that reason for being? What do we want to be remembered for, known for?

[00:15:09] How do we want to make people feel? And on the other hand, continue to constantly evolve based on what people are telling us. Being open to it, having the desire, having the drive to really, keep reinventing ourselves without ever losing that core and that ethos of our brand. And for us, it's always been that idea of openness and open innovation and relentless pursuit of breaking barriers and pushing boundaries. 

[00:15:40] Ilyse: So, Olga, how do you layer in different channels when it comes to your overall strategy?

[00:15:46] Olga: It's a combination of different channels that help us in a very personalized way reach Diverse communities and audiences from the demographic from the psychographic perspective, so we think about our [00:16:00] universe, including online video advertising, because that creates the opportunity to be extremely targeted and very measurable.

[00:16:10] We also deploy, um, a lot of our advertising through programmatic ads by similarity. It allows a lot of precision and a lot of scale, but we also layer in different approaches to social media platforms. So, for example, how we build for platforms with matter is different for, uh, What we do with snap and spotify and twitch, which again allows us to show up in a consistent way, but in a more relevant and tailored approach, obviously, that all is connected to the work that we do through our partnerships, through our influencer work and a lot of our experiential and out of home media. 

[00:16:51] Damian: I have to ask you though we mentioned at the top the Galaxy AI ring, you’re wearing it. Can you tell us a little about it? 

[00:16:59] Olga: a [00:17:00] huge fan. I can't get enough of it. It's an incredible piece of technology. Again, it's powered by Galaxy AI, and it's an incredible device that allows you to track your sleep patterns, your health, your energy score.

[00:17:16] So it tells you basically how you are doing, what you could be doing differently to feel better, gives you What we call wellness tips, and it's perfectly connected to your other devices, whether it's watch or the Samsung Galaxy phone, so you can actually get obsessed about those metrics. I have to say, I haven't been the healthiest person, according to this ring, but I have tons of wellness tips to get me to a better place.

[00:17:40] Damian: That's great to hear. Well, thank you so much for speaking with us. 

[00:17:46] Damian: And that's it for this edition of The Current Podcast.

[00:17:48] We'll be back next week, so stay tuned.

[00:17:51] Ilyse: The Current Podcast's theme is by Love Caliber. The Current team includes Kat Vesce and Sydney Cairns. And remember, 

[00:17:59] Olga: We are [00:18:00] about creativity, we are about open innovation, we are about celebrating the expression, and we're about pushing boundaries rather than crushing everything underneath that.

[00:18:11] Damian: I'm Damian.

[00:18:12] Ilyse: I'm Ilyse.

[00:18:13] Damian: And we'll see you next time. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave us a review. Also, tune in to our other podcast, The Current Report.

Dive into more insights and inspiration from leaders in ad tech: https://www.thecurrent.com/

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The founder and CEO of The Trade Desk, Jeff Green, talks about the evolution of the premium internet, his obsession with the ad tech supply chain and why the connected TV (CTV) ecosystem is ready for an upgrade.

Green explains why The Trade Desk is launching Ventura, a streaming TV operating system, named after the California beach town, to improve the CTV ecosystem for publishers, advertisers and consumers.

__________

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.

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Toby Espinosa, the VP of DoorDash ads, reflects on the tremendous growth of the delivery platform, saying the key to this is local businesses.

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

Damian: [00:00:00] I'm Damian Fowler.

Ilyse: And I'm Ilyse Liffreing

Damian: And welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast.

Ilyse: This week, we're delighted to talk with Toby Espinoza, the VP of DoorDash Ads.

Damian: And Toby is responsible for connecting brands, local and national, to the more than 37 million customers who place orders on DoorDash marketplaces each month.

Ilyse: At this point, DoorDash is a household name, no pun intended. It has more than 7 million couriers delivering orders for DoorDash from around 550, 000 merchants.

Damian: Hard to believe that the company was founded just over 10 years ago in 2013. And Toby joined the company in 2015. So he's seen DoorDash go from strength to strength.

Naturally, we start by asking him about how the company has changed over the last decade.

Ilyse: So Toby, DoorDash celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. And I, I remember when you guys launched, I would just say, because I was like a hungry college student at the time.

And it was like, perfect timing to get [00:01:00] anything delivered to my dorm

Toby: And where were you?

Ilyse: In San Francisco.

Toby: Francisco? No way. Oh, awesome.

Ilyse: was like, yeah, it was like I was in the right place at the right time for sure. Yes. And, so how would you say has the company evolved from a food delivery platform to the platform it is today?

Toby: When I joined the company, we were in 4, 5 metros.

And we were completely focused on one product in four or five markets. And back in 2015 when I joined the food delivery market, as you remember, seamless reigned supreme in New York. Grubhub was in Chicago and everywhere else food delivery was pizza: Domino's, Papa John's, Pizza Hut. And a few local restaurants that were able to afford having couriers. The market, everybody thought, was saturated. We entered, the company had a thesis that the market itself, given the advent of mobile technology, we believed that [00:03:00] if you took this device, this mobile device, where now a dasher had a mobile phone, a consumer had a mobile phone, and actually restaurants had access to this mobile superhighway, that if we connected all of them, there would be a larger opportunity for growth.

Growth being the key word there, because as much as DoorDash has changed over the last 10 years, we have gone from a one product, one market business to a multiple product, multiple geography business, with 37 million monthly active users, over 15 million monthly active subscribers to our platform.

If you go back to our founding story, Tony, Stanley and Andy, when they started DoorDash, walked down University Avenue in Palo Alto and they went from store to store asking every local business, how can I help you grow? That was the founding question. It wasn't can I build a logistics network, it wasn't, can I build an ad business? It was, “Hey, how can I help you grow?” And the opportunity they found was let's do a restaurant oriented delivery network for everybody across suburban markets. And that's what took off.

Ilyse: How would you say that growth has like translated on the ads marketplace side of things? 

Toby: Yeah.

The hard part about building something at the scale that DoorDash [00:05:00] operates is the consumer side. Building a consumer promise and then making that promise better and better and better every day, getting faster and cheaper, that is actually the harder part to find.

Product market fit from a consumer perspective. Once we have that, and once we have that, we want to continue to compound that over and over and over again

About four, four years ago, five years ago, our merchants and so stores within our ecosystem raised their hand and started to ask us, “Hey, do you have any tools to help me grow even faster?” That's how the ad business started. It was a it's very fundamental. It's a core to who we are. It's a growth business. We have customers who want to grow [00:06:00] faster. And what we then tried to figure out was how can we help serve this promise for these customers while also helping our marketplace continue to grow?

So the best way to do that is to align incentives, uh, show us the incentive, and we'll show you the outcome that we're driving towards.

Our AD team is incentivized both by driving incremental return from a spend perspective for advertisers, as well as driving incremental volume for our consumer marketplace, which is very different than most advertising platforms. Most advertising houses, you have product and tech on one side driving growth, and you have ads trying to monetize it on the other side. We wanted to bring those together to make sure we were able to continue to grow on both sides and serve our customers best. 

Damian: And cut to date to this rise of, spectacular rise of retail media, which of course is one of the hottest topics right now in our space. DoorDash of course has built its own retail media network in recent years. Could you talk a little bit about how you took some of those concepts you just talked about and built the network?

Toby: Yeah, absolutely. So we, again we wanted to be completely aligned with the customer. So the first customer that we started to think about was the SMB owner operator restaurant that we all know, that's in our town.

In San Francisco, it's Suvla. In New York, it's Electric Burrito. These places that, these brands [00:08:00] that we are absolutely in love with. What we quickly realize is that person, that customer, there's two fundamental things that are very difficult.

The first is that they have to be an expert at 15 different things So, if we own a local restaurant, a local retailer, We have to be great at real estate. We have to be great at marketing. We have to be great at financials. We have to be great at accounting. We have to be great at customer service. We have to be great at creating a great product, which is food, right?

And so when we look at this core customer, they're supposed to be an expert at 15 different things Our job is to go after one of those. And make sure that they don't have to think about that growth as [00:09:00] much as they used to by putting a little bit of the burden of that growth on our shoulders. What that means in practice when we launched the business for for SMB customers, we focused on building an economic model that worked for them. 

Last week, in San Francisco, I went and picked up a salad. at, at one of my favorite, favorite places. And there was a restaurant right next door that had just opened a month in. A month in, and nobody in his restaurant.

Completely empty. Maybe three or four people in a, in, that could otherwise have a capacity of 50. And I went online and I looked. He was running advertising across a bunch of different channels that we all know. Snap, Google, Meta, etc.

This person was in the red month day one of the month.

It's one of the hardest things in this country. These small businesses that start [00:10:00] negative every single month. And on top of that, they also had to layer in more spend on Google and meta to try to get out of that hole.

We took the premise of we want to be your growth assistant and we took the premise of it's really, really hard. for you to basically grow your business without having to also add more money into this negative cash cycle.

And we said, let's build a product where you do not have to pay us unless you get an order.

So unless we send you money, you do not have to pay us. And those two things together have helped us build one of the fastest growing retail media networks, particularly focused on a customer that was completely underserved. 

Damian: Could you talk about, a little bit more about how you [00:11:00] kind of expanded those relationships with both the national brands, tying that into the local, the business works at a local level fundamentally.

Toby: So in the restaurant space. The vast, vast majority of restaurants on Main Street are local. Even if you are a McDonald's franchisee, so you have one of the largest brands, you're a, you're a small business owner.

Really, the, the Starbucks, the Chipotles of the world that are corporately owned restaurants at scale are actually the smallest. They're the 10%, not the 90 percent in the U. S. And so our ad product designed on a CPA based level where we can be the growth assistant for all these owner operators is really for the 90.

It's built for the majority. Um, that being said, we also just launched, uh, last week the our new product, which is our ad manager and our [00:12:00] ad manager for the enterprise restaurant segment is designed actually to help both the C. M. O. Of McDonald's and the owner operator franchisee within the system. And the way that we've done that is we've actually built the first of its kind way of buying or thinking about purchasing across

A national media buyer, an agency at the national level, a district media buyer, most of these franchisees actually also have districts, or DMAs, where they have their own pools of funds that can be allocated for growth, and then also at the local level. Incremental to that, not only is if you're a franchisee and you own a couple McDonald's and a couple, uh, you know, a couple Subways and a couple other brands. Now you can also manage your business across brands. It's really the first of a kind product in its space, designed entirely to kind of work between local and national brand.

We also, of course, support local. started to invest in larger CPGs. And there, you know, we really look at some of the other large retail media networks in the [00:13:00] space. You know, today I was reading the the amazing work that you all did with a woman who leads Kroger's retail media business and built it from scratch.

We find a lot of inspiration from those folks learning, understanding how we can add an incremental service to folks that are already spending a lot of money at other retail media networks. And, um, and I think we found Uh, some very cool opportunities for us there, 

Ilyse: Very cool. You were saying how it's about 90 percent SMBs and 10 percent um, big business. Um, how does that play out within the DoorDash platform?

Toby: yeah.

yeah. So so it's really and when I meant that it's kind of think about where the dollars are coming from. So You might think of DoorDash Volume as large businesses. You know, a lot of people are ordering McDonald's. But the reality is the, the spender, the buyer of media could be a local franchisee.

So the brand is national, but the spend is still local. That's kind of what I was saying there. On [00:14:00] the, as you know, also on the CPG side, uh, large brands like Pepsi and Coca Cola and P& G, those are large, national, entrenched franchises. Brands. Those are timeless, timeless brands that have been around for a very long time.

And so the question there is, how do we build products that are timely to help the timeless? And that's been a very interesting journey for us over the last two and a half years. It's a, it's a new space for us again, as I said. Um, but it's going swimmingly well. And, and today we have the opportunity to sit on stage with, with Pernod Ricard, which is, of course, one of the storied alcohol manufacturers.

Ilyse: Um, can you talk a little bit about the Partnerships and how you actually go about working with like those brands and retailers that are using your platform so much 

Toby: We, like I said, were founded as a growth helper. So built in our DNA is working with others to help them grow.

We obviously have a [00:15:00] very large consumer marketplace that is that has helped those businesses grow. And so some of us think of in the same You know, uh, letters of other large consumer marketplaces like an Amazon, uh, like a Walmart e com.

But we are fundamentally built in our DNA a partner oriented culture. What that means is first we get to partner with great local brands, mid market brands, national brands, add in the manufacturers, but that also means we get to do fun things like Add in Max, or add in Chase, or add in other folks where there are a lot of people, if given the opportunity, want to help local businesses grow.

Our job is to help figure out a way to make that happen. 

Ilyse: would you say that is captured users I guess and they're

Toby: It's a, no, it's a great question. The underlying thing is, how do we do it in a way that continues to compound our consumer promise, which is faster, better, cheaper. And, and, you know, we'll be the first to say there are some partnerships [00:16:00] where it doesn't necessarily help that much.

And then there's other partnerships where it has been critical. Think about our Chase partnership and, and the depth in which we've built that partnership over time, where everybody that has a, you know, a Chase credit card has the opportunity to participate in one of the largest subscription, local subscription programs, uh, in the world.

And so, some work quite well, others are challenging, and we're a first principled company that, that tries to get better every single day.

Damian: Just to on that point are you very strategic about looking for new partnerships you know, that's an interesting one chase and of course there are many others but how do you think about it and go about building those different partnerships.

Toby: Yeah it's a collaboration Internally within DoorDash, we have, uh, general managers that run different business units, just as myself. We have functional leaders like our incredible, uh, CMO Kofi, who has built one of the world's largest brands in a span of years, not decades, which is incredibly, incredibly amazing, and he is a celebrity. If you ever want to feel like a [00:17:00] celebrity, just walk with Kofi in Cannes for about 15 to 20 minutes and it'll be the coolest thing you'll ever experience.

Um, next year, exactly, exactly. Um, but It's a collaboration across different functions, and then it's a collaboration with a partner. You know, one of the most interesting partnerships that we've launched in the last two years, from my vantage point, is we are a close partner with Amazon in Canada. Now, a lot of folks, when you think of DoorDash and Amazon would say, competitors, that, that doesn't work.

Right. But we work really, really hard to try to figure out anywhere, if possible, with the largest businesses and brands that we look up to, is there a place that we can collaborate and again, help local businesses grow. That's the fundamental premise behind the whole thing 

Ilyse: very cool now what about when it comes to like an ad perspective. How are you working with these brands and partnering with them?

Toby: Yeah, we are, I think in the ad ecosystem, you know, it's, it's, it's, there's a simple recipe that we're trying to follow. One is access. So can I [00:18:00] provide access for people to purchase? We, very early on, our first investment was in a self serve ad manager, so that local businesses could purchase our products, both promotions and our ad products, live themselves, without needing to talk to somebody.

So that was first. So one is access. That's the news also from last week, where now we provide access to the largest restaurant brands, DMAs, and franchisees across the country. first of a kind product. Again, I know I keep saying that, but I'm very, very proud of it because not many people, not many technologists build for franchisees in this country.

And they are one of the largest, um, one of the largest, most hardworking groups of individuals that that again, we look up to. Um, so one is access Two is providing the tools to get the best return possible. So that is, can I do better targeting? Can I? Are there new access points that I can, that I can get to?

Along those lines, we've invested a lot in in better targeting again for those enterprise restaurants. [00:19:00] So today you can target new users, you can target lapsed users, you can do that if you're a brand, a small brand like a single owner operator, you can do it if you're a national restaurant, and you can also do it if you're one of the largest brands in the country.

So one is better targeting tools and incrementality. And then the final is, is impressions. So, You know, DoorDash, again, we are humbly one of the favorite and largest marketplaces in the country. But we very well know there are other people that are hungry on a daily basis who are not eyes on DoorDash.

And so, can we provide the ability for people, uh, for brands to reach those people using our data? And that was one of the announcements we made last week was as well.

Ilyse: so one of the things I feel like DoorDash is almost known for in the advertising marketing space is it aligns itself to big occasions throughout the year.

Ilyse: I know we saw [00:20:00] DoorDash for the Super Bowl, Mother's Day. Can you talk about how you plan for such occasions? And maybe what's your favorite one to work at on and be like present

Toby: maybe what's Yeah We have learned over time that these occasions. Because we learned from our core customers, both the consumer and merchants that these occasions are important to them.

So if you think of, if you think of Super Bowl, imagine you are a local owner operator of a wing restaurant in Tulsa. Super Bowl is your Super Bowl, right? It is the biggest day of the year where you sell out your entire inventory at the staff up, you have to build for it. We wanted to follow our customers into that moment.

Mother's Day, huge moment.

Both for folks where it's a special day to remember somebody or for folks that are trying to be a mother for the first time, right? So you have this both, both signs, [00:21:00] an incredible opportunity to reach consumers

from an advertising perspective. Again, going back to partnerships, they're tricky.

You have an advertiser who's excited to also follow you into that occasion. And what we try to do with these three way partnerships, we've done them with Wendy's, we've done them with Roku, we've done them with many others, trying to find three way alignment of incentives to, to again, drive local growth for our customers.

Damian: I think one of the best gifts I ever got, was when my son was born somebody bought us a DoorDash gift card which was so helpful to have food delivered you know when you’re at home with this tiny little baby.

Ilyse: Showing up at those occasions, but also, you know, just ongoing brand campaigns. How does that proximity, why is it important for brand building? How does this, like, enable you to extend into new categories?

Toby: Yeah, have you? Um, Our Super Bowl commercial is a great example of this. This past year, uh, the words were a door to more DoorDash went from again being a single vertical single product company to a multi vertical multi product company in a very, very, very fast time frame. Now, consumers are incredible.

They learn very quickly. Habits are harder to change and harder to adapt and move over [00:23:00] time. And so we are in the earliest innings of our consumers really understanding that now you could actually get a pair of sneakers delivered to you on DoorDash when you need a new pair, like I did this weekend in order to go for a run.

And in that moment, being able to kind of jump on these large consumer moments help from our vantage point.

Our 37 million monthly active users start to understand that really DoorDash is here as an assistant in your life across all of these categories and verticals whenever you need us. We aren't just Thai food, now we're also the ability to get something, uh, to get something when you're feeling sick.

And, um, and we're very, very proud to do that and very humbled to do that for our customers. 

Damian: Yeah. that's uh, expanding the whole concept of, of of DoorDash. Um, speaking of expanding the concept, you know, you've also cultivated good partnerships with streaming partners, and you [00:24:00] mentioned Max a little bit earlier. Why is it that streaming and delivery seem to kind of work in synchrony? 

Toby: it's again, I think it goes back to the moment. There's a very happy moment in my household when we finish work. And we have some, we get a little, a door, a little ring on our door, and there's a package outside, and it's filled with two burritos. And we get to turn on Max and watch industry. There's a sliver of moment in time where we're just feeling absolute happiness and joy.

Now, that is a moment that a lot of consumers around the country and around the world feel. We're trying to give everybody a little bit of time back. Again, this concept of putting the weight of other things on our shoulders as a company to help people, to help local economies grow, to help [00:25:00] save consumers time, to help Dashers make a little bit of extra money.

That is what we are trying to do at Dash. And so, aligning ourselves in this moment of peace. This moment of just absolute happiness with a streaming service, which all of us experience,

is a very nice moment to be right next to, uh, to be right next to these brands from a consumer perspective. And so they've been, they've been very, they've been great partnerships so far.

We're very excited, uh, about, about thinking about finding more of those opportunities as time goes 

Damian: about door dashes as a way to get time back, you know, but of course it does does

Ilyse: There's too many things to worry about outside of that. 

Damian: we're going to ask the inevitable question about AI and how, you know, obviously door dash must be integrated with AI technology. But how do you think about it as we look ahead?

Toby: We, as a company were very [00:26:00] data driven company. We have been from our founding. Again, we are riding on the backs of one of the largest technological revolutions of our time, the Internet and then the Internet plus mobile. And so to say that we want to be and continue to be students about how this next revolution will change, both from.

from our merchants, consumers and dashers lives. We are in the very earliest innings and we're trying to learn as fast as possible. Um, I think what's very exciting if you kind of take a step back and you again put on the mindset of the shoes of we are trying to be an assistant for all of our customers across a bunch of different ways.

Dasher Make, uh, from a financial services perspective, helping them make more money, helping them find more opportunities to make money, consumers saving time, and merchants making more. If you kind of put yourselves in all those shoes, and we're trying to be an assistant, AI as a technology will only help accelerate our mission of doing that and then unlocking growth for local.

I think we're going to [00:27:00] see one of the largest increases in, in growth that we desperately, desperately need for those. Places that are our favorite coffee shop, Thai food place, uh, and, and, um, you know, and place to go pick up your, your, your meds when you're a little sick. And so it's, it's a pretty cool future.

We're very excited for it.

Damian: in his 50 seat

Toby: I, we are absolutely, we, to be, to be clear, we DoorDash. He's now using our ad product. So if we can send them any incremental customers, it'll help them. It'll help them grow his business. 

Damian: There's one more question, I guess. And it's a sort of like a forward looking question. And it's are there any innovations that you're thinking about into 2025 that can help with this growth mindset that you've been talking about? 

Toby: we, We've done an okay job. We've done a great job of the access point, which is opening up an ad manager, [00:28:00] opening up a self serve sponsored listing, allowing CPG brands to access our consumers. We've done it. We've done a great job at that. We've done an okay job at the second two, which is.

once you open up a lot of this inventory and help find ways to grow, it gets complex.

I think we've added incremental complexity so far to our customers' lives for most of our customers, our advertisers, and so our team is extremely excited, looking forward to continue to take more of the complexity out of our customer's lives as we layer in more complexity. On the product and engineering platform that we've built internally, and that is a very hard problem to solve, but I have one of the best teams to help us go solve that, and we're very excited to take it on.

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SiriusXM Media’s Lizzie Collins joins The Current Podcast to discuss artificial intelligence, omnichannel campaigns and how influencers should utilize podcasts.

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

[00:00:00] Damian: I'm Damian Fowler.

[00:00:01] Ilyse: And I'm Ilyse Liffreing

[00:00:02] Damian: And welcome to this edition of the Current Podcast.

[00:00:05] Ilyse: This week, we're delighted to talk with Lizzie Collins, the SVP of Ad Innovation and B2B Marketing at SiriusXM Media, the advertising arm of SiriusXM, which includes Pandora, the SiriusXM streaming network, as well as the podcast network.

[00:00:21] Damian: There are likely very few people who know more about audio ad innovation than Lizzie, who was actually the very first salesperson at Pandora back in 2006. 

[00:00:31] Ilyse: As a leader at SiriusXM Media, her focus is growing the largest digital audio ecosystem in North America.

[00:00:39] Damian: So without further ado, we'll start by asking Lizzie about what advertisers need to know about the audio ad opportunity in 2024.  

[00:00:47] Ilyse: So Lizzie, tell us, what is it that advertisers need to know about the opportunity to reach people on audio channels?

[00:00:55] Lizzie: Yea, and thanks for having me. I love what you said about, I know everything about audio, but it's been quite a ride from 2006 until now. And I'd say that in this current moment in time, audio has such an important place in the consumer's life. 31, 32, whichever number you want to get hooked to percent of time spent with media is the audio format, and yet marketers are only allocating somewhere between 8, 9 under 10 percent of their media investment to this format.

[00:01:21] So first and foremost, I want advertisers to know just the power of audio. It is an opportunity to reach customers in places where you can't reach them via display or video. It has the power to turn on their brain in a unique way because you have the theater of the mind that has to like fill in the pictures and the faces.

[00:01:38] And so cognitively, it's just such a powerful way to message. And so when you match the power of the format with, Oh my gosh, there's all this incremental time that I'm not messaging to them. We just think there's a real opportunity in audio in general.

[00:01:54] Ilyse: So looking at podcasting at least, podcasting isone of the fastest [00:02:00] growing digital channels. How have you been able to grow programmatic at Sirius XM and Pandora?

[00:02:49] Lizzie: Well podcasting, I think we all love. We're here on a podcast. So this is very meta talking about podcasting on a podcast. I love that. I want to point that out for the listeners. podcasting is not [00:03:00] necessarily new, but the ability for advertisers to buy it at scale with maybe an audience based buying strategy with all of the tracking and targeting that they're used to in digital is what we've really foundationally been putting in place for the last two years.

[00:03:13] So what many don't know is that SiriusXM Media, Pandora, SoundCloud, and all of our other partnerships operate on the AdsWiz platform. And we are an audio first technology company. We built all of our own audio, ad delivery, ad serving, tracking, and whatnot. The opportunity to modernize the podcast space is what's really been the key factor for us to drive revenue in that space.

[00:03:35] And then specific to programmatic without those pipes, right? Without that ability to do dynamic ad insertion, to target audiences, to onboard data, and then digitally deliver those ads, you were going to have buyers doing what they were doing historically one show at a time. I can't tell you the stories, the horror stories of going into the clients and saying, here's our spreadsheet where we're tracking the [00:04:00] podcasts we think we should be buying based on Joe podcast guy in the corner who just happens to know the most about podcasts.

[00:04:06] So It's, the first step was putting that foundational ad tech in place. And the second step has been taking all of what advertisers appreciate in terms of programmatic transaction and bringing it to podcasting. And that's where IAB and others are referencing this significant growth because it's this bringing the best of two worlds together into this medium.

[00:04:26] Ilyse: What would you say are the advantages to programmatic ad buying on audio networks? How is it audience first? Well,

[00:04:34] Lizzie: Well, I think overall you're seeing a big trend in advertisers. Brands, even within the client agencies, publishers wanting to reduce friction on the buy side and the transaction as a whole. So programmatic obviously has been that promise for, gosh, over a decade now, right? To Create just an effortless buying transaction.

[00:04:57] And so when we think [00:05:00] about audio more specifically and audience based buying, like we have to be able to connect all of those pipes and be able to not be this hard to buy. Product. And so we've, you know, I spoke to that in my last example. that's been so much of the work we've done the last two years.

[00:05:16] And then because of all of that, we're a little different than some other audio partners were open ecosystem. So we will work with any third party measurement vendor, transaction partners like the trade desk, um, targeting partners like Comscore and advertisers obviously have their own data and their own ways in which they want to measure.

[00:05:34] And so that's also been, a huge breakthrough for us. For us in terms of allowing you said audience based buying. I mean, just allowing our clients to address their customers in this format in the most effortless way 

[00:05:46] Damian: One of the things that's interesting about audio is how it's different from, TV, which has traditionally been a big brand building medium. Of course, that's changing too because of CTV, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts on how Pandora thinks about [00:06:00] his ad offerings in terms of the balance between big brand campaigns and performance.

[00:06:06] Lizzie: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think what's hidden in this question is creative in general and trying to help brands understand the power of what audio creative can do. It can create. effortlessly travel cross device, right? It can reach customers where they're not seeing a video ad or they're not seeing a display ad.

[00:06:27] It can get right literally into their ears. And I talked about, the power of that. And so we, I would say, do talk to our customers about different products, drive different results. Of course, you might want mass reach and super efficient for, some effort. That you're trying to push maybe top of funnel or you need something super geo targeted You want to move specific product off a store shelf?

[00:06:50] Yeah, that can impact targeting and that can impact some of what we sell you based on price But we spend a lot more time through our in house agency studio resonate [00:07:00] Helping to educate our customers on the right way to bring the video message into the audio format. If they're a video first creative agency, and that starts with an audio brief, you'd be surprised how many agencies do a creative brief and it doesn't include audio as a way to interpret the brand or determine the call to action.

[00:07:20] And so once we get going in that direction, then we can take all aspects of their KP eyes and build custom creative to meet the needs of whatever they're trying to get the consumer to do. I love

[00:07:30] Damian: I love that, can I ask a follow up question about that? What would you say are some of the salient points about building a good audio brief? Well,

[00:07:47] Lizzie: is the largest podcast network for women in the United States. We beat everyone else. And it's that type of insight and then the creators that are within our podcast network to say, look, [00:07:58] Lizzie: Ashley Flowers is here.

[00:07:59] She's a [00:08:00] massive star in the podcast world. She really has a tempo to her shows. It's true crime. These listeners are so leaned in that you don't need a music bed. You don't need a scream at the listener in that example, which might be more of a sort of traditional upbeat 15 second audio spot that might live in a music station.

[00:08:19] And so a lot of it is trying to understand the customer. Then. What is the, context in which we're targeting? And then of course we have a million best practices about, testing creative. And we use a lot of third parties to come in and actually pre test creative. of course we have all of our own technology, which I mentioned.

[00:08:34] So we'll AB test creative. and again, what I love about audio is that it's pretty effortless to build an audio ad. you can go from brief to a spec spot, 30 minutes. Or less if we're talking about a I produced creative, which we can talk about, too. And so to be able to have all that optionality for an agency to play with actually helps inform a lot of landing the brief.

[00:08:58] And then, of course, we have something to [00:09:00] live with throughout a campaign to reach back to

[00:09:02] Damian: So it's getting a lot more nuanced now that you mentioned creativity, and that's very interesting.

[00:09:07] Lizzie: It's getting more nuanced because, look, you said I was the first salesperson at Pandora and I was, and we were only ever inserting a 15 or a 30 second spot in between your favorite song. Now we're talking about spoken word content, podcast, it could be sports, it could be country music, you're talking about, and then in car.

[00:09:26] at home mobile. So the good news is all of that signal capture we do on our end that we can understand where ultimately this ads running and then that informs how many creative options you need. But it's not like video where that would take months to do, right? This is copy to add is quick.

[00:09:54] Ilyse: When it comes to being more nuanced, looking at podcasts for instance, there’s so many different types op podcasts like true crime you brought up. I like those ones as well. Like crime junkie, [00:10:00] for instance. What kind of audiences are they attracting? And what does that mean for advertisers?

[00:10:06] Lizzie: So the Sirius XM podcast network is over 2500 shows. So you're talking about we're have the most shows in the top 50, but we also have great shows, middle and long tail. And so, it's as diverse as everybody's tastes. I mean, everything from vibe check, which is three African American gay, really outspoken guys that do the latest on news interpreted from their eyes and their ears all the way into crime junkie all the way into sports.

[00:10:34] we have shows about car racing, right? So it's That's what's so special about podcasting. But what's unique about Sirius XM and our specific network is that you don't have to come in and buy one show at a time. You can come in and say, I want women over index and true crime. So that's going to be a nice part of your buy.

[00:10:53] and that's something unique , to what we offer. 

[00:11:00] Ilyse: It's surprising to me, women and true crime for some reason. 

[00:11:01] Lizzie: I know. You know what? I think it's because so many women want to escape. They're day for a moment, all of our beloved housewives at home, like commuting kids around. And it's very cerebral. what's really cool about true crime that I don't think a lot of people understand if you don't listen, is it's problem solving.

[00:11:21] It's like really detailed, trying to get to the bottom of what happened with the story. And I think it turns the brain on in a way that is invigorating. 

[00:11:29] Ilyse: Yeah, on that note, is True Crime like one of the most popular or what are some of those popular genres

[00:11:36] Lizzie: there's so many. Comedy is very popular. Team Coco with Conan O'Brien is within our network. Smartless is a really popular TV show. Sort of mixed in with almost pop culture and comedy. sports is growing fast and specifically, women's sports, which is great. And what, I think is fun about that is there's so much story to tell behind the scenes in sports.

[00:11:58] And I think podcasts can do that in a [00:12:00] way that linear TV can't, news, true crime like we mentioned. And yeah, those would be like my tops.

[00:12:07] Ilyse: Very cool. Why do you think women's sports is growing

[00:12:09] Lizzie: I just think there's so much of a story to tell about a lot of the women athletes and it's all over the news, right? What's happening in women's basketball, women's soccer is now a professional sport where you can make a career at it. I think there's just so much growth in terms of audiences leaning in and there's a bunch of commercial opportunity there.

[00:12:29] And so, women want to tell, women want to tell their story. And you can do that in podcasting in a way you cannot do in other media types. That's why we're here!

[00:12:38] Damian: exactly. Yeah. Now, according to your research with Edison, 66 percent of Gen Z podcast listeners say they listen to or watch podcasts to stay up to date with the latest topics. But only 17 percent say they trust the info they read on social media, our podcast hosts, the new, more trusted social media influences.

[00:12:58] Lizzie: I mean, yes, [00:13:00] short answer is yes, but I don't think it's just podcast. I think any influencer out there that is very invested in their craft and their trade and having a commercial opportunity and being an influencer understands the power of how podcasting and audio more specifically helps them reach their audience.

[00:13:16] So Ashley flowers is a great example. She's on social all the time, whether she's talking about fashion or her famous lip color or what shows are coming up next, different cases that she's, researching.

[00:13:28] And so you'll often see her listeners kind of go back and forth on social and that ultimately informs her show. And so this, ecosystem connection is what these influencers are after. And I think the power of the podcast format is they can just tell deeper stories and therefore tell deeper, you know, why to buys for the products that are integrated.

[00:13:49] So some are probably more comfortable than others, but the audio influencer, and the other thing to add is just like they're connected to their audience in a way off social media and into the [00:14:00] podcast where they can just use more words. They can just describe something beyond the snippet based format that is social for all of us..

[00:14:12] Damian: And why is that effective for advertisers? Why is that helpful?

[00:14:14] Lizzie: I just think they can riff. It's just it's out again outside of the 15 or 30 second window. They can riff about why they like the product. They can go deeper into the benefits of it or what is cool about it to them. so personal endorsement. I mean, that's what they're able to do in that space.

[00:14:29] And it's a super powerful way for advertisers to drive, their KPIs. 

[00:14:34] Damian: So, when it comes to that omni channel experience, podcasts are, and you mentioned that you're part of this open network. It's good for advertisers to be able to reach their audience on the podcast, but beyond that, it can obviously, drive an omni channel campaign.

[00:14:51] Lizzie: Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up. We were so curious about what is the true income mentality of a podcast listener. And [00:15:00] so for the last year, we've been analyzing campaigns. We actually analyzed over 2000 campaigns to determine when we add podcasting to a streaming plan, how much more incremental reach.

[00:15:11] And it depends on the campaign. But the mean was 32%. Incremental audience was captured in the podcasting line, essentially being added to the order. And so without that, those customers would have never been messaged. And I think that's just a really good example of the power of what Sirius XM media brings to bear.

[00:15:29] Even in the audio space, we have such a multi channel opportunity for our marketers.

[00:15:34] Ilyse: So, I saw an interview with you last year talking about how advertisers can use AI to save costs. And that's seems like a very common refrain in the industry right now because things have moved very fast on the front. How are you thinking about a I in 2024 this year? Yeah, you

[00:15:54] Lizzie: you know, there's a lot.

[00:15:56] Lizzie: around AI, a lot of buzz and how does it ultimately [00:16:00] land for each of us to make our lives easier or to augment what we're already doing. And one of the things that we see with smaller brands and smaller buys is that sometimes they feel like there's a barrier of entry if they don't have audio creative.

[00:16:17] And so we've done a lot of testing to leverage AI to be able to like. self service, the creative process. And so, that's where we're leveraging AI, which is just to take a company that, might be in media agency. That's of one person, right? That kind of like kitchen counter, digital marketer that might have a couple clients.

[00:16:35] Maybe they have a couple car dealers or maybe they have a couple of doctor's offices. And so we have a really great product that they can use in our audio go, which is our self serve buying tool to just come in and quickly make an audio ad. and they're off to the races. And so that's where we've tried to bring it forth is just where can we make someone that might be stuck because they don't have the resources, how can we help them scale?

[00:16:58] And so AI [00:17:00] helps us do that. I think there's also a future of where we'll see AI show up and how we're just crunching numbers for our clients and how we're processing data. It's just about speed and scale. It's not going to replace our creators. We're, there's no AI Conan coming anytime soon.

[00:17:16] Ilyse: a particular sector of brand that have been, more friendly towards audio ads or have approached audio? More enthusiastically than others? Mm

[00:17:29] Lizzie: years into this selling audio business. And I would say years ago, yes, it would be, entertainment really understood the power of it. And maybe someone like CPG was like, ah, if I don't show the girl shampooing her hair, how's anyone going to understand how this product works?

[00:17:44] But we're so past that. There's no one vertical. I think just the one. Overwhelmingly, it's just an underspent problem and that audio and the consumer behavior and audio is outpaced the marketer's investment. So that's just most of what we spend time helping them to [00:18:00] understand.

[00:18:02] Damian: Do you still think, given the big opportunity that audio represents, there's a lot more education to be done for marketers? And what does that look like? Yeah.

[00:18:28] Lizzie: is last click attribution. Not to say that everyone's doing that now.

[00:18:31] Many of our customers are going to more of a mixed media model. And so it's just helping them to figure out where do you put audio in your measurement plan? How do we work together to make sure you're understanding where you're delivering impressions against what customers and how ultimately that's driving your KPIs.

[00:18:48] But it requires a conversation and education because they're not inherently, if they're not buying it, they don't know how to measure it and they could be undervaluing it or giving value to a different partner because they weren't capturing the right [00:19:00] data signal.

[00:19:01] Ilyse: How do you guys measure it?

[00:19:03] Lizzie: So it depends on what they're looking for. Of course, there's many amazing third parties out there that were integrated with to measure everything from store traffic to attitudinal intent. but again, back to the fact that we own all of our own ad tech, we sit on The right data in a very privacy safe place to be able to work with clean rooms or work with advertisers directly or partners to share impression level data or whatever is the right signal in order for them to recognize if that customer converted so it's not rocket science.

[00:19:32] All of us that are in this space understand how it works, but because we sit on all of our own ad tech and we're open to working with anyone, we personalize it for whatever the customer wants. 

[00:19:42] Damian: And that's it for this edition of The Current Podcast.

[00:19:44] We'll be back next week, so stay tuned.

[00:19:47] Ilyse: The Current Podcast's theme is by Love Caliber. The current team includes Kat Vesce and Sydney Cairns.

[00:19:55] I'm Damian.

[00:19:55] Ilyse: I'm Ilyse.

[00:19:56] Damian: And we'll see you next time. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave us a review. Also, tune in to our other podcast, The Current Report.

Dive into more insights and inspiration from leaders in ad tech: https://www.thecurrent.com/

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