Opinion Party

Laura Jones (00:19)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Opinion Party. I'm Laura Jones.

Jason Gaikowski (00:23)
and I'm Jason Gaikowski.

Laura Jones (00:25)
And we're here today to dispel the most pervasive myths in modern marketing through the cold, cruel lens of data. Before we get into our topic today, I kind of just want to acknowledge the elephant in the room, Jason. We got some feedback on our last few episodes that our backgrounds sucked.

Jason Gaikowski (00:46)
Now Laura, let's not pretend this is the first, last, or the only time I'm going to be told how boring I am.

Laura Jones (00:52)
I think the direct quote from our producer was, looks like you guys are in an insane asylum or something like that.

Jason Gaikowski (00:58)
And who's to say I'm not? And who's to say I don't belong there?

Laura Jones (01:04)
Well, anyway, so we tried to jazz it up a little bit, keep it interesting, keep it fun, and we're gonna keep rolling with it. let's...

Jason Gaikowski (01:14)
one of us did

anyway. I mean, I'm still in a beige room. I'm in a beige room with a cat figurine. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves and congratulating me too much.

Laura Jones (01:25)
All right, well, hopefully that little kitty brings us some good vibes today and let's dive into our topic today. We're here to talk about the downside of fame. And I think it's a really great topic because I mean, honestly, what are we doing here but trying to get famous, right Jason? It's such an existential question.

Jason Gaikowski (01:46)
Are we, I mean, are we trying to get famous or

are trying to share some perspectives and some insight that we think might be important to our industry and to our colleagues and to our clients? I think you've heard me say before that chasing fame for the sake of fame, we know what that looks like. That looks like real housewives, right? Chasing excellence.

Laura Jones (02:09)
Yeah.

Jason Gaikowski (02:13)
For the sake of excellence, we know what that looks like. That looks like Taylor Swift. And I don't know about you, Laura. I have a lot more interest in being like Taylor Swift than I do like being a real housewife.

Laura Jones (02:18)
Mmm.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I am from Jersey, so I won't take that one personally, but yeah, I know, I agree. And actually, I know we've got some data on this topic, so why don't you hit us with a little bit of, know, why maybe it's a little bit of a fool's errand to just pursue fame for fame's sake.

Jason Gaikowski (02:45)
Well,

I mean, you and I have both been in this industry for a lot of years now, and I'm sure that you have heard, as have I, that we want to have more awareness. We want to have more awareness. We want to have more engagement. We want our brand to be famous. And I mean, I've been really curious on this topic for a few years now when a former client of mine, Harley Davidson,

Laura Jones (02:58)
Yup.

Jason Gaikowski (03:11)
in the same meeting that they were telling me that they were among the most famous brands in the world. That they thought that the answer to a sales issue was driving awareness. At the same time, they were telling me that they had a 99 % level of awareness. They were talking about driving more awareness. And as you and I both know from BrandAssetValuator, that we know that a healthy brand is

more esteemed than it is famous, right? That what you really want to be as a brand is you want people to like you more than they know you because then they want to know more. But if they know you more than they like you, then they're not so interested. You're not so interesting. So, you know, I went digging into the data. Let's test this question.

Laura Jones (03:44)
Absolutely.

As one does.

Jason Gaikowski (04:05)
as one does. And we looked at the most famous brands from 2003. We have sample of 375 brands. They were among the nations and the world's most famous. Coca-Cola, McDonald's, M&M's, Wal-Mart, Hershey's, Tylenol, Pepsi, Campbell's, Kellogg, right? Everyone that you can think of. And we looked at what happened 20 years later.

And interestingly enough, what we found is that over a 20 year period, 375 of the most well-known brands had about a 50-50 chance of increasing how well-known they are or decreasing how well-known they are. Right? Hey, mixed bag, not so bad, like 55-45, maybe I become a little more famous, maybe become a little bit less famous, but alarmingly, 80 % lost brand strength.

Laura Jones (04:48)
Not such bad odds, yeah, 50-50, yeah.

Really?

Jason Gaikowski (05:02)
Two thirds of them lost brand strength by five or more points versus only 10 % that gained five or more points. Laura, 73 % lost differentiation by five or more points.

Laura Jones (05:16)
Wow, what do you think's going on there?

Jason Gaikowski (05:17)
Well, you know, it might be little bit of fatigue. It might be a little bit of failing to recognize that what makes you special and different and better may not be evergreen. That once you become famous for something, your meaning can maybe crystallize. And when it crystallizes, perhaps it becomes less relevant or perhaps it becomes less special over time.

Laura Jones (05:22)
Mm.

Mmm.

Jason Gaikowski (05:48)
Right, we did an additional analysis that looked at the core meaning of these brands. And what you find is that whether brands over a 20 year period are winners, whether they maintain or gain brand strength, they have about a 90 % correlation to their past selves. Their core meaning is 90 % the same. Losers, however, over that same 20 year time period.

Laura Jones (06:07)
Hmm.

Jason Gaikowski (06:15)
86 % correlation to themselves. So it's not really a question of image consistency. It's a question of how are you maintaining and even elevating esteem and really investing in staying differentiated. What we really, really see in the data is very, very parallel to what Will Smith has said about fame. Becoming famous is great.

Laura Jones (06:41)
What was that?

Jason Gaikowski (06:45)
Right?

And there's no doubt that brands that go from low levels awareness to moderate levels of awareness to high levels awareness, they do see that that drives growth.

Laura Jones (06:55)
Absolutely, especially in the lower part of the curve. Single digit, unaided awareness.

Jason Gaikowski (06:58)
Right? Yeah, if nobody knows about

you, as more people know about you, more people buy you, it's fantastic, of course. Being famous, however, it's a mixed bag. Right? You got a 50-50 shot at kind of maintaining your fame, but even if you maintain your fame, like you are at very real 80, 75 % risk of losing what made you special. Losing any amount of fame whatsoever is very, very painful. Right?

Laura Jones (07:25)
as Will

Smith would know. Yeah.

Jason Gaikowski (07:28)
Right? And so I

think what we see is that fame has value, but a kind of blind faith in fame is overvalued. Right? That organizations would be much better served focusing on what makes you special, different, and better. And then let awareness, let recognition, let fame follow naturally, as opposed to saying, I need to drive awareness, I need to drive awareness, I need to drive awareness.

Laura Jones (07:37)
Mmm.

Jason Gaikowski (07:57)
I'm going call this the Taylor Swift Principle.

Laura Jones (07:58)
So Jason,

I was gonna say maybe she's onto something with this eras thing. I mean, I don't know. Seems like.

Jason Gaikowski (08:06)
We can't question the results.

She's one of the most powerful brands in the world. And you know, with that Laura, I think we've got a guest today.

Laura Jones (08:15)
Yeah, we do. Let's welcome in Jason Falls. Give him a second to come out from backstage.

Jason Gaikowski (08:23)
Come on in, Jason Falls, author of Winfluence book, host of a podcast also named Winfluence, University of Louisville Professor of Communications. I'm sure he's got a lot more accolades of which I am unfamiliar.

Laura Jones (08:39)
Yeah, he's an award-winning strategist, an industry pundit. And he's here, he's here with us. Hey Jason, welcome to Opinion Party. We're doing great. we're in a double Jason situation here. Jason squared. Got it.

Jason Falls (08:48)
Thanks for the intro, Mom and Dad. How are you?

Jason Gaikowski (08:48)
Jason, welcome.

Jason Falls (08:57)
You can call me Falls. Falls works just fine.

Jason Gaikowski (09:01)
Double Jason Jeopardy, thank you for that Jason. I've often had to battle other Jasons for custody of the name. And so...

Jason Falls (09:08)
You're welcome

to it.

Laura Jones (09:11)
Well, I'm glad I didn't have to get my lawyers involved on that one. But Jason, yeah, welcome to Opinion Party. And tell us, let's just jump right in. Tell us a little bit about Winfluence. Such a great name, such a great principle. What does Winfluence and fame have to do with one another?

Jason Falls (09:30)
So, influence is kind of the term that I came up for as I was trying to build out strategies for clients with influencer marketing. And I kind of came up with a different concept and Winfluence is just a slight variation on probably what people would typically think of as being strategically successful with influencer marketing. And I just felt like if you approach influence marketing strategically and you're really goal focused and you do it

what I would consider if you do it right, it well, know, do it very well, then you're winning. So you're winning with influence. And so it's just a clever way to put it together, put the two words together to make that make sense and be a different, you know, brand. But ultimately what it comes down to, influence to me is again, being very strategic in your approach to using influencers and using influence. And I...

kind of delineate the difference between the two. There's influence marketing without the R, which is in my definition, win winfluencing. And then there's influencer marketing. And if you think about, it's just one letter difference. But if you think about the difference, it's a very important delineation because if you're focused on influencers, you're focused on the celebrity, you're focused on the person. If you're focused on influence, you're focused on the action, you're focused on the verb.

Laura Jones (10:31)
Hmm.

Jason Falls (10:54)
This is what I'm trying to do. This is the goal. I'm trying to influence an audience to take action or to think differently about something. And that's ultimately what you're trying to accomplish. We're not trying to accomplish influencers. We're trying to accomplish influence as a brand. And so even though it's just a semantic difference, it changes the way you think about all the decisions that you make, everything from what your goal is going to be to the types of content creators you're going to work with, to how you're going to measure success. It just changes your

Laura Jones (10:54)
Mmm.

Jason Falls (11:24)
the filter with which you see everything, and it makes you think a little bit more smarter strategically when you're engaging influencers or other people of influence to help you move your marketing and communications goals forward.

Laura Jones (11:38)
Yeah, absolutely. That's fascinating. And it sounds a lot like what Jason and I were talking about at the jump, which is which pillar of that whole equity puzzle are you really focusing on? Are you focusing on that awareness that becoming famous? you on the influencer for influencer's sake? The person, much like the brand. Are you actually putting the time and the effort to define the story, the call to action, it sounds like, the meaningfulness of the actual engagement?

And that sounds like what WinFluence is all about. Very cool. So a little bit, you know, I loved the etymology of the word WinFluence. Can you give us a little bit of the background of the setting of what you were seeing happening in the influencer space, in the online marketing space that really had that light bulb moment for you that was like, there's something else going on here.

Jason Falls (12:30)
Sure. At the time when I came up with these concepts, I was working at an advertising agency. I've gone back and forth from consulting role to ad agency, worked at a couple of brands as well in the course of my career. But I was working at an agency and we were talking about creative ways to incorporate influencers into what we were doing. Everywhere that I went, if I interviewed someone on my podcast or if I went to a conference and people were talking about influencers,

Every single person, regardless of how big of a brand they were, how big of an agency were, or how much money they spent or made, or what experience they had, everybody was saying, we want to go find people with big audiences and we want to pay them to talk about our product. And that's the elementary core of what influencer marketing has been about for decades. But I kept thinking, yeah, but the influencer is not the important piece. It's actually what you're getting the...

you're trying to persuade an audience to take action. And that could be through an online content creator with a lot of followers, but it could also be through traditional media, or it also could be through community relations. And the example that I kind of came up with, I was actually driving by about two miles from my house, there's a parent teacher store. And so it's an educational supply store for mostly for...

Laura Jones (13:32)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Falls (13:54)
Home school parents and maybe teachers and administrators at elementary schools and whatnot. They have you know supplies that you buy for your classroom I'm obviously not a teacher so I don't really know what they sell but yeah Exactly. So it I'm driving by this store and I think about okay and and actually I had seen a local interview on television with the owner of that store

Laura Jones (14:04)
love those stores. I love stationery, but I digress.

Jason Falls (14:20)
And they were doing some sort of PR push interview with the local TV to get people to come into their store. And I thought, how does this location use influence marketing? And I thought it doesn't make any sense for them to go out and find an Instagrammer with 500,000 followers because this is a single location in Louisville, Kentucky of a franchise business. And that 500,000 follower Instagrammer might have 0.002 % of their audience is going to be within 50 miles of this store. Makes absolutely no sense.

However, it doesn't mean they can't use influence marketing. They just don't need to be using these big influencers. They can certainly look at local influencers, but why don't they think about influence instead of influencers? Why don't they reach out to the president of the local PTA groups? Why don't they reach out to whoever is the person who is the sort of regional person who gets all the homeschool parents together for events? Why don't they reach out to youth sports coaches, right?

Those are people who are talking to every day, talking to parents, teachers, educators in this area. Those are that particular store's influencers, if you're thinking about it as influence marketing, not just social media people who have lots of followers. And so as I started to kind of circulate these ideas through the agency I was working at at the time as Cornet in Lexington, Kentucky, we actually had

a client that came to us and said, we want to drive a bunch of people to watch the video that we're going to post on Facebook. This was several years ago. That is going to launch this campaign for us. And it was important for them to drive a lot of views to this video. And so I said, well, we're going to use influence marketing. We're going to find the online social media influencers in and around Lexington, Kentucky that we can engage and maybe pay if we have to, but

get them involved to help them promote going and watching this video. But we're also going to think about influence marketing. We're going to think about, let's get the mayor involved. Let's get the president of the urban league involved. Let's get the music director at the local Presbyterian church who's really active in the art scene and touches a lot of people. Let's get a pediatric dentist involved who talks to parents every day. This was for a healthcare brand.

And so ultimately, you know, the population of Lexington, Kentucky is about 300,000 people. drove almost 900,000 views of the video in the first month because we didn't think let's just get the head coach at the University of Kentucky basketball team to do it and hope that it works. said, let's find all of these pockets of influence and tap into a much broader audience so that at least we were reaching more people. If not, we were reaching more people over and over.

Laura Jones (16:50)
Wow.

Jason Falls (17:09)
And so that's kind of the difference. It just magnifies and amplifies what you're trying to do.

Jason Gaikowski (17:13)
So there's so much I love about what you're talking about, Jason Falls, not the least of which is any time that you can create a small difference with an enormous distinction, just as a strategy nerd, I love that, the difference between influencer and influence. And what you're talking about reminds me of some of the work that we've done on how customer experience impacts brand equity.

What we've found is that customer experience drives more than half, 60%, of the equity that a brand develops. And brand equity, of course, is a kind of psychological capital that firms get to have an opportunity to convert into actual capital at some point in the future. And...

In our work in customer experience, one of the questions that we frequently focus on is, are you investing in trying to help people pursue their agenda? Or are you investing in trying to get people to pursue your agenda? Right? And you correct me. You tell me where I'm off base. But it feels like the local teacher, the local influence.

like really is about helping people in that community to make decisions about what to buy, you know, versus a celebrity that's just trying to get people, right, to do what the brand wants them to do. Am I off base there? me, tell me.

Jason Falls (18:46)
Mm-hmm.

No, you're not off base at all. I really love that distinction. And if you really drill down and think about it, if you go back to 20 years ago when we were talking about brands tiptoeing into this cesspool called social media, it was the same kind of thing, right? It was like, hey, if you just try to be useful and be helpful to your audience, you'll succeed here. If you come in here with your megaphone screaming Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, they're probably going to throw you out. And the brands that have succeeded with social media,

Laura Jones (19:04)
Hehehe.

Jason Falls (19:20)
have the same sort of DNA as the brands that have succeeded with social media influencers or influence marketing. They're going at it with how can we be useful in helping that audience accomplish what they want to accomplish rather than just checking off the boxes of driving this much revenue growth and this much sales and this many conversions and so on and so forth. So you're spot on. It's the same thing.

Laura Jones (19:43)
Yeah, that actually just made me really nostalgic. Maybe not nostalgic, maybe a little bit frightened about the same time period where people would just come to us at the agency and say, we want to go viral, right? You know, to me, that was always just a prime example of we want to be famous for fame's sake. We don't really even know, nor are we going to put the amount of effort in to understand why that's going to connect, what's going to work, why people should even be just

Jason Falls (19:54)
Yeah.

Laura Jones (20:13)
want this to go viral and you know so much has evolved since that time but I do think we still see a lot of examples of you know the influencer piece of that and yeah what are some of the most you know pervasive examples of where you know an influencer brand is just really kind of connecting in the wrong way.

Jason Falls (20:36)
Well, I mean, in the wrong way, it happens every day. All you got to do is look for hashtag sponsored or hashtag ad anywhere on Instagram or TikTok. And you're going to see a bunch of influencers who probably have absolutely no connection to a brand whatsoever. And they say, this is sponsored by so and so, or they'll say, hey, I want to give a big shout out to this company for giving me this free thing.

Laura Jones (21:01)
Mmm.

Jason Falls (21:02)
and

they kind of fumble around with it describing what the product is, or you can tell they're reading a script and checking the boxes of all the marketing speak and the unique selling propositions and all that stuff that we talk about behind the scenes. Rather than seeing a content creator who creates a piece of content that is ultimately interesting, entertaining, and useful to the audience.

And there's a brand that's kind of woven into it, but you never really think you're being sold to. Those are the ones that are succeeding. I remember it was actually during the pandemic, one of my favorite influence marketing examples and brand integrations was with the cocktail mixer company, Q Mixers. And they partnered with an influencer, Patrick Janell, who is a guy named Patrick at a guy named Patrick on Instagram.

Laura Jones (21:48)
Hmm

Jason Falls (21:57)
Several hundred thousand followers, sort of New York City lifestyle influencer. He did a little bit of cocktails and cooking stuff from time to time, but he mixes his content pretty, pretty well. And during the pandemic, they had engaged him to do a piece of content. Well, he's friends and business partners with apartment bartender, his name is Elliot.

And Elliot lives in Denver and Patrick lives in New York. And so during the pandemic, they decided the way they were going to do this execution for QMixers was they were going to do a Zoom call. And then they were going to have their production team basically kind of over the shoulder point of view, filming these two guys having a conversation via Zoom. And the conversation was, how are you dealing with the pandemic? And what's your, you know, and,

Laura Jones (22:42)
Mmm.

Jason Falls (22:49)
I think at one point Patrick said, everybody out there wants to know Elliot, are you single? Right? They had this like really just cool, fun conversation between two friends. And in the middle of it, Patrick's like, well, you're the apartment bartender. What's your favorite cocktail? And here's my favorite. Well, how do you make it? Well, I use Q-mixtures because they have fresh stuff and da da da da da. And so they had this conversation. The brand was intermingled in there. It was fun. It was engaging.

Laura Jones (22:53)
You

Jason Falls (23:17)
very creative way to attack, you know, creating content during the pandemic because they couldn't be in the same room together. And ultimately it was just my, one of my favorite examples because you watch this and yeah, it's got the, you know, hashtag sponsored or hashtag ad or, you know, QMixers brand collaboration or whatever, but you're actually engaged in the conversation watching these two guys have a conversation and being friends. And it's really inviting and engaging without you ever thinking about the brand.

The brand's there, the talking points get made, but it gets made in a way that you come right thinking, cue mixers, huh? I got to remember that, right? That sounds like a good idea. I'll pick some of those up when I go to the store next time, but you were really coming away from it, know, entertained by the content. And so there's a lot of bad out there, but the good does shine through when you see it. You don't always notice it at first, but then you go, wait, did I just watch a, did I just watch a sponsored post? Holy crap, that was really good.

Laura Jones (24:16)
Yeah, and a little bit of behind the scenes, right? As an agency guy and as a consultant who's been on maybe the brief side of that or the brand side of that. How does that magic happen? What direction or kind of advice or inspo can we give to our brand marketers out there to make the magic happen?

Jason Falls (24:37)
So I think the magic always comes from your choice of creator. Because what brands don't often realize is the way to make magic happen is for the brand to get the hell out of the way. Let the content creator figure out how they're going to connect with their audience in a meaningful way that is going to help communicate the message. Stay out of the way, get the requirements, get your legal team and whatnot to just sit in the corner and be quiet for a little while.

Laura Jones (24:42)
Mm.

Hahaha.

Jason Falls (25:07)
And just give the brief to the creator and say, we want you to communicate this message, but we want, we know that you know your audience better than we do. And you know how to create content that engages them better than we do. So we just want you to do that. Now, what that requires though, is on the front end, you got to do a lot of digging and a lot of research and a lot of content review to be able to find the Patrick Janells of the world and go, this guy knows how to do this. He knows how to create compelling,

Laura Jones (25:27)
Mmm.

Jason Falls (25:37)
social media content that really engages and connects with their audience. If you're looking at someone's feed and you watch three or four things and realize, mentioned three or four products and I didn't even realize he was mentioning the products. That's a lot different than this post is sponsored by so and so, da da da da da, buy this thing, right? That's a whole different reaction. So you got to do a lot more research to be able to identify the right creators on the front end and then let them do the creating, stay out of their way.

Laura Jones (25:54)
Mmm.

Yeah, that's really good advice. Do you think the rise of, you know, what we can call influencer culture, and I see actually back to this education example, our superintendent in our school district here gave a presentation about how what kids wanted to be when they grew up has kind of shifted from the time that he's been a superintendent. And it used to be, you know, that they'd want to be more of the traditional kind of either doctor or astronaut or, and now people are saying they want

to be YouTubers, right? And so how has the rise of this influencer culture kind of maybe complicated that whole dynamic of brands and fame and integrity and kind of what can we do about that?

Jason Falls (26:36)
Yeah.

I

love the fact that you used the word integrity because that's probably the one thing that's been destroyed more than anything else. What has happened here is social media, which is the avenue with which these channels have been created, the Instagrams, the TikToks, the YouTubes, et cetera. Social media democratized media. It made everybody a publisher. Unfortunately, most people have become publishers.

Laura Jones (26:53)
Hahaha

Hmm.

Jason Falls (27:17)
And I say, unfortunately, because 99 % of people don't know how to be publishers. They don't know how to create compelling content that engages an audience over time. Most of the content you see out there on social media is crap because these people don't know what they're doing, but they're also using it for different reasons than just becoming famous. Some people log on to social media and just use it as a daily journal or follow their family and friends and they don't care about all this brand influencer stuff.

Unfortunately, the democratization of media has made it so that everybody thinks they're a publisher and everybody, know, not everybody, but most of those people try to gain followers and whatnot. they if I have this many followers, I can get free stuff from these brands. And if I have a little bit more, maybe they'll pay me. And so that kind of starts the cycle of wanting to be famous. Unfortunately, part of the influencer lifestyle is to

mislead people into thinking that you have a fabulous lifestyle. The truth of it is, is the vast majority of influencers are making less than 30 or 40 grand a year doing it. They have full-time jobs doing something else to pay the bills. They're acting like they have this fabulous lifestyle, but they really don't. And they're doing a lot of content for product exchanges and things like that, hoping to build to a point where they are making enough money to do only that for a living.

Laura Jones (28:18)
Mmm.

Jason Falls (28:43)
And it's unfortunately, I think having a negative effect on younger generations of people who see that and think, ooh, I want to live that fabulous lifestyle. And it's really not that fabulous a lifestyle. It's hard work to do what these content creators do. The select few that make a hundred thousand dollars a year or more doing it, you're talking probably one tenth of 1 % of everybody out there trying. You know, it's just like being a

a famous actor or actress or singer, songwriter, or a sports star. One-tenth of one percent of everybody who tries actually makes it. I think that's true. Maybe the percentages are a little different in influencer marketing because the democratization of media gives more people a chance to do it than professional sports and things like that. But at the same time, it's hard work to sustain and do this on a consistent basis.

And I mean, you guys know because you're around the media, you're around professional content creators from traditional media, it's hard work to make, to get an audience, much less maintain it. And so I think the problems with the future generations is there's going to be far too many people thinking this is the career path for me. And they're going to be rudely hit in the face with, man, this is really hard work. This isn't an easy lifestyle where I get to jet set to Bali on

some brands dime every two weeks, it's actually learning how to grab an audience, compel an audience, keep their attention, and keep doing it over and over and over again so that you can maintain that revenue stream of brands coming to you.

Jason Gaikowski (30:23)
Yeah, and I think that, you know, I think you make an important point, and I think in that important point, there's a pretty important lesson that we can see both in the data and in the world. Lesson for aspiring creators and for brands alike, right? Which is metrics often create a kind of perverse incentive, right? Like,

You know, one of the most common metrics that I hear bandied about, and again, it's one of those things that it's taken as gospel, right? There's sort of an unquestioned belief that what you want to do is to maximize engagement. Right? Now want to pause on that for a minute. Maximize engagement. There's a natural experiment in the world. We know exactly what content businesses look like when they seek to maximize engagement.

That's called clickbait. We know what it looks like. We know due to some unfortunate quirks in human psychology that content that creates fear, content that is salacious, content and ideas that are extreme will in fact maximize engagement. But so often that comes at the expense of quality.

Jason Falls (31:23)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Gaikowski (31:48)
Right? And this kind of ties back, I think, to what are some of the dangers of pursuing fame for the sake of pursuing fame, as opposed to pursuing excellence in a craft, right? Excellence in comedy, excellence in infotainment, right? I've got a good buddy of mine. He is a legit expert in the world of cycling.

Laura Jones (31:48)
Mmm

Jason Gaikowski (32:16)
Right? He is low key famous in the world of cycling and he's like, I am not an influencer. I am an expert. Right? And the, and the credibility and the reputation impact by having that pursuit of excellence rather than pursuit of engagement. Like I see that in the data of individual influencers. And I certainly see it in the data as it pertains to brands.

Jason Falls (32:41)
There's a great, and this is a fun way to transition into advice for brands out there. I happen to have a client in the appliance space and there is a appliance company in store, a retailer that sells, I think they have several locations. think they might actually, Laura, be in your area. It's called Yale Appliances. And I think they're New Jersey, Boston, Connecticut, somewhere up in that.

Laura Jones (33:06)
Hmm.

Jason Falls (33:10)
you know, General of Ascending Northeast. And they decided several years ago, we're going to take our subject matter experts within our company and we're going to put them on YouTube and other social media channels talking about the appliances. And here's the difference between, you know, a top load and a front load washer and what's good about one and bad about the other. And here's how this brand compares to that brand. And over the course of the last few years,

There's two or three gentlemen in the business who have become kind of these industry thought leaders in the appliance space. And they work at a retail store. They sell appliances. That's what they do for a living. But everybody in the industry, including the brands, are like, we got to get on these guys' good side because they're creating videos that are driving 65, 85, 150,000 views.

on YouTube when they say, let's compare the Samsung X to the LG Y. And now all of a sudden people who are going and shopping, doing their research online are coming across Yale Appliance videos. Those people may never purchase from Yale Appliance, but I'll guarantee you that Yale wouldn't be doing it as long as they've been doing it if it didn't mean they were getting good business out of this. But what people are doing is they're going and basically what's happened is the brand has become an influencer.

Laura Jones (34:29)
Mmm

Jason Falls (34:36)
the business has become an influencer in the category and in the space. And I can promise you, if you contact a marketing manager at any of the major appliance companies, I can certainly attest to it with my client, but with all the other ones, they know exactly who Yale Appliances is. And they make sure that everything they do, someone calls and holds Yale Appliances hands to introduce new products to them and whatnot, not necessarily because they want

Yale Appliance to sell those appliances on their showroom floors. It's because they're going to turn around and create content on YouTube for it that hundreds of thousands of people are going to see. And so when you think about influence, the Yale Appliance's YouTube channel is not considered an influencer. It's considered a brand. But they have far more influence than 99 % of the people who are trying to be appliance influencers on the internet.

And that is your business model moving forward as influence marketing evolves and becomes more and more impactful to consumers as they're making buying decisions.

Laura Jones (35:45)
Yeah, falls. I love how you've connected and Jason the concepts of excellence, expertise and influence. And it does seem like those three things at least are the recipe for success, if not inexplicably linked, inextricably linked. And, you know, I wonder about the relationship in between fame and innovation. Is too much fame

Jason Gaikowski (35:45)
Cheers and I.

Laura Jones (36:15)
a detriment to innovation, do you think?

Jason Falls (36:19)
Definitely, I would say yes in general. Although, I will say this, from the influence marketing perspective, there's still value to fame. If you want 50 million people to know about your product by Monday, you take out an ad in the Super Bowl and hope the Super Bowl is on Sunday. So the sheer size and reach and volume of the message sometimes matters.

Laura Jones (36:46)
Mm.

Jason Falls (36:46)
If

you have a style, fashion, or beauty product, and it is imperative for you to sell tens of thousands of units by the end of next week, then one of the Kardashians should be on your shoppers list for influence marketing. Because when they post about a lipstick or an eyeshadow or a pair of shoes or whatever, bunch of people go out and buy it. Right? So there's merit to these high volume celebrity influencers for one thing or another. But when you're talking about

building a brand and building credibility and influence for and around your brand over time, you've got to stop thinking about the follower counts and the reach and start thinking about what Jason was referring to, the credibility, the thought leadership, and the trust that you're trying to engender in the audience that you ultimately want to sell to. And if you triangulate

third party influential people, whether they're influencers or not, doesn't matter if they have true influence over the audience you're trying to reach. And they are reinforcing the message that you are a trustworthy, reliable brand product service thought leader. And then you're also proving that through the content that you're creating and the things that you're doing with and for your customers and your clientele, then long-term you're going to be far more successful than anybody who's able to do

sponsored posts with one celebrity or another.

Laura Jones (38:16)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Gaikowski (38:19)
Well, certainly we can see in the data that the most well-known brands really, really struggle to hold on to differentiation. And we know that innovation is one of the most substantial contributors to differentiation.

That's how brands grow, that's how they remain evergreen, that's how they maintain relevance, that's how they maintain esteem in the marketplace over time. And so, we found that what you are known for is far more important than whether you are known for it. And there's no doubt, you need to be sufficiently well known.

Jason Falls (38:58)
Absolutely.

Jason Gaikowski (39:04)
to prosper as a business. But there does seem to be a tipping point where that fame becomes more of a burden than a benefit. Like you get locked into being known for a specific thing, which begins to limit optionality. It begins to limit the amount of choices that you are willing or are even allowed to make.

right, on both consumer markets as well as on stakeholder markets.

Laura Jones (39:36)
Yeah, and.

Jason Falls (39:36)
Yeah. I mean,

you can look at dozens of examples of that, know, Blackberry, Blockbuster, you know, they were, they were well-known brands, but they didn't innovate.

Jason Gaikowski (39:42)
Right? mean, yeah. It turns

out that brands can be typecast the same way that celebrities can.

Jason Falls (39:50)
Absolutely.

Laura Jones (39:52)
When are they gonna make a movie about Blockbuster? Is there a movie about the rise and fall of Blockbuster? I know there's one about Blackberry. was pretty decent. Do see it?

Jason Falls (39:59)
Well, there's

a fantastic documentary, I believe maybe on the Netflix, I'm not real sure, but it's about the last blockbuster. And it kind of chronicles that whole downfall a bit, but from a a skewed perspective a little bit. yeah, I'm a documentary freak, so I've seen it and it's good. I've saw the Blackberry one too, it's good as well. But definitely go out and find that last blockbuster documentary, it's worth watching.

Laura Jones (40:07)
The last.

Jason Gaikowski (40:08)
Yep.

Laura Jones (40:29)
Yeah, you know, looking at those two brands from a data point of view and from the brand asset valuator data, we've been studying those brands through their rise and fall. have 30 years of data. And actually, I'm picturing a particular chart that we show to our clients all the time. You know, when they question, well, how can a brand that seemingly has lost maybe relevance with consumers, it hasn't really been an it brand for a while, know, a brand like Sears, like isn't that brand people might even be asking, isn't that brand out of business?

it still on either the upper right side of what we call the power grid or why isn't it lower down than we think? And a lot of times, especially when you look at the Blockbuster versus Netflix example, you know, you can see that it takes a lot longer. And maybe one of the insulating things about fame to a brand is you can buy yourself a little bit of cushion with fame, right? The current operating value of your brand, once you've got that level, you know, it's not

Jason Gaikowski (40:59)
You

Laura Jones (41:29)
to fall off precipitously overnight, just like, you know, we still talk about the stars of yesteryear, Marilyn Monroe, etc. However, once that drop off happens, or once someone comes in, know, and switches their business model from mailing DVDs to streaming and broadband catches up, you're just off that cliff, you know? And so I think a lot of brands can get a little too comfortable, can get a little bit too resistant to change, as Jason

Gajkowski said around just thinking, you know, it's not that bad. We've got this high level of awareness that is going to buy us a lot more time and brands think it buys them a lot more time than we think and then the data shows as well.

Jason Falls (42:13)
Yeah. think a couple of other examples, when you're thinking about brands that maybe thought they could bide some time and they didn't have enough time to stay relevant, you think of the Doc Martens of the world, the Pappas Blue Ribbons of the world, the brands that disappeared seemingly for a while and then came back. They came back because they basically figured out, we need to become cool again. How do we become cool again?

because Doc Martens didn't really change, Pabst Blue Ribbon didn't really change. They just found a different audience to talk to and reframed their unique selling proposition to that audience in an interesting way. The PBR example is really more of a word of mouth marketing example where the brand started to reintroduce or introduce for the first time the brand to a younger, sort of off the beaten path, kind of

you know, leather chains, dive bar audience. And all of a sudden PBR over the course of a couple of years became cool again because they found a different audience to talk to than they were talking to 20 years before. Doc Martens was kind of the same way. You know, all of these brands that kind of lost their way a little bit figured out, okay, if we're not going to innovate and do something new and different, then we've got to find a different audience to talk to in a different way. And

then you can do it. But at the same time, I would argue that PBR today probably needs to figure out ways to innovate or do something a little different because they're just becoming another beer that people drink as opposed to the hipster beer that people drink. So.

Laura Jones (43:53)
Mmm.

Jason Gaikowski (43:53)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I call that the Travolta strategy, right? Which is like, look, you can be peak fame and you can absolutely reinvent yourself, but you have to almost go dark for maybe a generation or so, right? And there's no doubt that younger generations on about 20 year cycles,

Jason Falls (44:01)
That's good way look at it.

Jason Gaikowski (44:23)
actually love to rediscover something that was kind of cool, super famous, super differentiated, like slightly before their parents' times, right? And so the Travolta strategy, I think, is a fantastic strategy for brands and one that is not well pursued because they fear becoming unknown.

Jason Falls (44:25)
You

Jason Gaikowski (44:50)
which is really the only chance that they're gonna have at a legitimate rebirth, right? Like if you look at the data, Kodak is one of my favorite, I call them zombie brands, where I'm like, they're hanging around, like they do have this kind of psychic equity, but.

Laura Jones (45:02)
Mm-hmm

Jason Falls (45:02)
Yeah.

Jason Gaikowski (45:12)
I'll be damned if they have seen any real traction in rebooting that business to anything like its glory days. And I think that perhaps in part they need to be a little bit, or even a lot bit less well known in order to be rediscovered and reinvented.

Jason Falls (45:29)
Yeah, that's a good example.

Laura Jones (45:31)
Yeah, Kurt Cobain would probably be shocked and a little horrified that there's a bunch of tweens running around with Nirvana sweatshirts on in the suburbs and they think Nirvana's a brand. They don't even know it's a band. But that's a good point about going a little bit underground and then to your point, Falls, thinking about influence, what are new markets? What are new groups of people that we can shift and focus and influence on to take maybe seemingly

Jason Gaikowski (45:40)
I think you'd love it.

Laura Jones (46:01)
what was once something for one group of people and and broaden it up. Well let's talk a little bit, let's start to round this back to our end game here. What do you think's in store for the future of Fame Falls? You know, what do you see as some things that should go away and never come back and what are some things that brands should be aware of that are emerging and should pay close attention to?

Jason Gaikowski (46:23)
You

Jason Falls (46:28)
Yeah. I think what we're about to see start to happen in the next couple of years, and if this does happen, then I'll just say it right now, five years from now, people are going to call me a genius. But I think you're going to start to see the over-saturation of advertising on Instagram and TikTok is going to start to push consumers away from those platforms. And you're going to see something else emerge. It might be a new social network. It might be a...

a pivot of an existing social network. I do think there's a bit of a race to the top between the Instagrams and the YouTubes and the TikToks right now. But the over-saturation of advertising is what led people to those platforms from blogs and MySpace and things like that. And as marketers follow, marketers then run people off because marketers don't know what they're doing typically.

and they scream too loud and they make it not fun anymore. And so I think we're gonna start to see a shift in the next couple of years. There's gonna be consumers are gonna go somewhere else and it's probably gonna be some emerging social network. Maybe Snapchat falls in there somewhere although they're pretty saturated too. So I think that's gonna happen soon. What I really feel like brands need to do to combat that is go back to the original things that we talked about when we talked about being successful.

on digital channels and social media. Be useful, be thoughtful, help first, sell second or third or fourth or not at all, and build that trust so that when people turn to the internet to find information about whatever it is you do or sell, they find you. And they find that you are engaging and you're helpful and you're not constantly trying to sell them something.

Those are the brands that are going to succeed on the digital space long-term, regardless of what happens. So it's really all about be useful, be helpful, be a good steward of their attention, and you're going to be successful. I hope that things like Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul mean that fewer and fewer influencers are going to think they can box Mike Tyson and do stupid stuff to get attention. And we're going to start to see a little bit of a calming down of this like

Laura Jones (48:43)
Ha ha ha.

Jason Falls (48:50)
attention grabbing behavior. But then I talk to the average 20 year old these days and I don't believe that's going to happen anytime soon.

Jason Gaikowski (48:59)
Jason there's a there's a couple of points there first I think there will always and forever be a market among young men For men doing stupid stuff. I just think that that's just that stuff's funny I mean, I'm not a young man and I I'm very entertained by men doing stupid stuff Let's just let's not pretend the men aren't dumb On the more important point My sense of what you're describing

Laura Jones (48:59)
Yeah.

Jason Falls (49:11)
Agreed. Yeah, it's good.

Jason Gaikowski (49:27)
as the future, like where brands need to go, is in this just usefulness, helpfulness direction, right? And Laura and I have talked about, we've been able to show this in the data, that too often brands are operating in a kind of relationship paradigm that is juvenile and self-obsessed, right? Like, do you like me?

Jason Falls (49:56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Gaikowski (49:56)
Do you think I'm pretty? Am

I popular? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And what we're seeing is that the winning brands now and into the future are moving towards a more adult version of a relationship. We're in it together. And I am at least as interested in the health and wellbeing of my customers as I am in the health and wellbeing of my business.

Right? And, you know, I think that perspective may extend into your perspectives on social and influence. Right? We're in it together. We're in it for the win-win. Let's be great together.

Jason Falls (50:40)
Yeah. And if you think about adult relationships, when you are as invested in the other person as you should be, they're as invested in you. And that happens with customers too, as a business. If you are really there and invested in helping your customers be successful or solve their problems, then they become loyal and they become fans of your brand and they advocate you to other people, which helps grow your business. it's all pretty, I mean, it's not rocket surgery. All right. Let's get this thing done.

Jason Gaikowski (50:50)
Absolutely.

Laura Jones (51:10)
Yeah, great advice to wrap it up from falls. Don't overstay your welcome at the party, brands. And Jason, don't be whiny. Two great pieces of advice. And to kind of wrap it up, this just reminds me of just been devouring Ina Garten's memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, and one of the best relationship pieces of advice that she gives with her 50-plus year marriage.

Jason Gaikowski (51:10)
Yeah, that's perfect.

Hehehehehe

Laura Jones (51:40)
to her lovely husband, Jeffrey Garten, is both parties in the relationship have to feel like they're the one that's getting the better end of the deal. And so that's probably really great advice for brands and marketers as well. Jason Falls, thank you so much for joining us today on Opinion Party. I'm gonna throw it over to you one last time. Where can people find you? And if there's any influence you want to sprinkle on us, where can...

How can we help to influence anything that's going on in your world?

Jason Falls (52:15)
I'm, thank you very much, Laura and Jason for having me. I've always loved talking to you guys. I'm Jason falls everywhere. If I'm not Jason falls, I'm the Jason falls, which I think is just mostly on Tik TOK. I talk a lot about music these days, marketing a little bit less, but I'm always available and happy to help just shoot me a message wherever you can find me. And I'm happy to chime in and answer if I can help you.

Jason Gaikowski (52:39)
That's fantastic. Thanks so much for joining us at the party.

Laura Jones (52:45)
All right, well that was so fun. Jason, I always love a good opportunity to talk about Taylor Swift and fame and help some marketers make some good decisions. Any last thoughts to kind of close us off?

Jason Gaikowski (52:49)
He was great!

I don't know, think Taylor's gonna join us at the party?

Laura Jones (53:04)
We'll see. I don't know. Ina got to play beer pong with her apparently, so. Maybe, maybe if we see him on the runway outside that... man.

Jason Gaikowski (53:06)
Probably not, no, no, we probably can't get Travis Kelsey either.

I mean, you can. Nobody's returning my calls.

Laura Jones (53:20)
Alright, well, that's all the time we have today. The party's kind of winding down. It's gonna close. We hope you all had as much fun on Opinion Party as we had with you today. Remember, everyone's invited to Opinion Party, so if you like what you heard or you want to hear more, just follow us over at TheOpinionParty.com or check out the AI show notes. You can get a lot more information about all of the data that you heard today. And if you want to hear more, just hit that subscribe

button but from Jason and myself. Thanks so much for coming to the party and tune in for future episodes. Thanks so much. See you Jason.

Jason Gaikowski (53:58)
Thanks for joining us.