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Show Transcript

Shane Madden: Hey, guys. Thanks ever so much for joining us today. This is "Off The Clock" brought to you by Shane Madden, senior director of TransPerfect, and my co-host Whit Harwood, who’s with NBC Peacock. Our special guest today whom I'm really excited to introduce you to, a long-time TransPerfect friend and someone that I have had the pleasure of not just working with but learning from, a good friend of mine, Steven Moy from We Are Barbarian. So Steven, thanks ever so much for joining today's pod.

Steven Moy: Thank you, Shane. And thank you, Whit, for having me. My name is Steven Moy. I'm the global CEO of Barbarian and, we are 20 years old. We call ourselves the first digital agency. If anybody remembers 2004, the subservient chicken, the viral marketing, digital platforms filled by Barbarian. So we've been around for that long and very excited to be here. And one thing just for the audience, Barbarian is part of Cheil Worldwide. We are a global holding company and part of Samsung Group and publicly traded. So, happy to be here.

Shane Madden: Yeah, well, that's great. So, Steven, you have probably 20 plus years’ experience in this whole digital transformation ecosystem and today's topic of interactive reality and kind of where this thing is going. And you know COVID has been the great accelerant. You would probably agree that with the shifts and the paradigm changes in e-commerce and interactive experiences, this topic is definitely front and center with people. So what I'd love to do is kind of kickstart the pod today with understanding a little bit more...you gave us an amazing story earlier in the week or last week to Whit and I, where you explained a little bit more about the Mucinex activation that you carried out. So I think it was, you developed a new form of interactive engagement. So, do you mind maybe sharing that story to our listeners and kind of giving us some context as to what that was all about?

Steven Moy: Yeah, absolutely. It was a very exciting experience for ourselves as well, and so in July, about the summer timeframe and not too long ago—and can you believe that was only a few months ago—in July we were contacted by Mucinex and we also are handling KY as another brand that we're handling and Durex. So, you know, someone who you'll need to call for sex, drugs, rock, and roll would be Barbarian. So when Mucinex reached out, I think that was a great challenge. We spent two weeks in an innovation sprint and we are looking into territories because the ask is, how can an over-the-counter drug brand reach the new audiences of Gen Z of the world. And Gen Z is half our population and they only interact with you through mobile devices and 95% are on a social platform.

They don't watch TV, broadcast TV, and how can you engage that? So we did a two-week innovation sprint in July, and then we identify many territories from gaming to like just TikTok, if you will. And also we landed on, what we call using live streaming to engage this audience by expanding the brand ecosystem for Mucinex because the brand promise of Mucinex is about making people feel better. And how wonderful would it be? Not only do you have them internally, by taking Mucinex, and also creating the, one-of-a-kind, sick-wear that is apparel, a capsule collection that is designed for people when you not only are taking the Mucinex drugs, and also when you wear them it makes you feel better. We really apply the science, technology into the fabric we're making, for example, one of the hoodies actually has a built-in pillow in it.

So, when you when you need to take a rest, you can sleep better. So that concept territory we created was very well received within the organization. And then we've quickly gotten into a four-week design scenario sprint. So what we have done is not only identify which social platform we should leverage—and keep in mind that was in July—so we talked to every single platform, TikTok, Instagram, Amazon Live, YouTube Live, Twitch, everybody, talk to the product team and understand what we can do, what we can not do. It was only five months ago and believe it or not, there was no commerce for TikTok. TikTok then announced the connection with Shopify just a couple of months ago. Amazon Live wasn't ready. So we ended up picking the right platform, but also the right audiences.

It was down to Instagram versus YouTube Live. And that's what I mentioned is very interesting. In order to pull off a live fashion show, the idea is having influencers wearing the same wear and then doing a live fashion show and talk about how they feel about the garment and how do they feel about the sickwear collection. The browser’s actually a more appropriate platform and format to do in live streaming for a fashion show, because you can imagine, both TikTok and Snap and also Instagram with these, are for mobile, and with mobile viewing, you have limitation. And all of a sudden, the browser becomes a little bit more popular choice. And we decided to go with YouTube Live in the fall, which not only did we identify the platform, but we figured out how to do this solution integration. They have a pin chat capability on YouTube Live; you can pin and also tell people to go to the website and start buying the garment.

We can also integrate to Shopify, which powers Mucinex.com. But also we found two designers, local New York designers, and how wonderful to partner with someone for manufacturing the garment between New York and China. And also we find a fulfillment partner that can deliver that unboxing experience, two-day delivery or 24-hour delivery. So that whole process for four weeks and it's the month of August. And then, of course, the rest of this is about production and waiting for import, export for some of the garment. We do have a washer and silk manufacturing in China can take a while because of COVID, and also the trade war between the US and China. We were originally planning on launching the live streaming in September, right around the fashion week, but because of all the import-export delay, we ended up right behind Amazon Prime Day and before Single's Day. We launched it in the end of October. It was a wonderful experience. We pulled it off, and all the garments sold out in 24 hours. We got 91 million earned media impressions. We have 6,000 people watching the fashion show, and also first time for Mucinex, the direct-to-consumer e-commerce sellers had a 500% increase, that's in one day.

Whit Harwood: That's incredible, Steven. I think this idea is so interesting because it takes kind of what clearly was laid out as a brand strategy, and then it builds it out in real life. And then you basically looked at the various digital products and platforms that could best fulfill the ultimate KPIs. I would love for you to touch a little bit more on kind of the product research that you did around YouTube Live versus Instagram and how you foresee that space playing out, just based on this initial discovery process that you went through.

Steven Moy: Yeah. That's a great question. And really, it depends on what audience we want to reach, what type of content we want to express, or the activation we want to communicate to the audience. And then we determine which platform. So for us, it's doing a live streaming fashion show with influencers. The criteria we look at is the screen format, and also the integration of other third-party platforms, for example, e-commerce, and all the other capabilities, even their direct-to-consumer side. And then we evaluated down two firms, a platform in that scenario for sickwear, we’re down to, as I mentioned, Instagram and YouTube live. We thought the other platform way back in August wasn't right, and now everybody's doing it right.

Only three months ago. So after the format and, because we're doing a live streaming fashion show, we were looking for a larger format, bigger screen, higher resolution. You can stream on your TV, right. You can do YouTube on your TV or browser. So we ended up with that platform. Now, not saying that's the only platform for that. Lately we were working with other brands as well, and, to your point earlier we touched on, a lot of problems are... the interactivity component is not there, the content is not great. I've been seeing a lot of live streaming commerce and to be honest, no offense to those two channels, is more like a QVC and HSN with a person who talks about a product with a 1-800 number.

That's not going to work especially the younger audiences. So I think we really have to go back to, say, for any other digital initiative you have to understand the audience, one audience, and what medium that we can use to reach them. And then you determine your tactics and activation, for us for the sickwear, it is based on those criteria. And also we want to have end to end expenses including boxing. So we ended up finding a fulfillment partner that can deliver in the box we design and people can open it and post on Instagram.

Whit Harwood: You just made a really good point, which is, I feel like a lot of times when you're going through this kind of ideation process for any kind of activation, a lot of folks look at it almost aspirationally. This is where I think I want this product to be. This is the market that I think we should take it in, in reality, what you're talking about is almost a different type of product-market fit, right? You're kind of saying we have to get this audience involved. And so we have to take the products that align with it. And I think that a lot of people who were in your position might've said, you know what? TikTok is hot right now. This will make the trades, but you were looking at it from the KPI perspective, the holistic audience perspective, and saying, you know what? We actually need to maximize clicks on the screen. We need to maximize interactivity. We need to get people moving around the experience virtually, as opposed to just saying, you know what, I really want to pipe this thing through TikTok, and that's all that matters.

Steven Moy: You're totally correct. It's just like anything we do, you have to understand the audience and the purpose. I think I mentioned to both of you, I recently hosted our internal innovation conference and I got the opportunity to have a fireside chat with the chief content officer from Essential, they own Cannes Lions and Media Link, and talking about that industry. So we were talking about how Cannes Lions instead of the one big event in June, they have a huge success and they've been doing that live event. They capture, they reach a hundred thousand audiences by doing every month. Cannes Lions Live is a new format they're doing. But I can imagine they went through a lot of research, like what platform they're using, what content.

At the end of the day, if you look at other events, including Cannes Lions—I can name a few: Adobe Max is one of the pretty good events we’ve seen and Apple, every time, Apple is launching a new product, it's not an infomercial—they really use technology to enhance the experience like Apple uses AR VR to enhance some of the events that they have. I think that every brand should think about their entertainment company. You have to have content that's engaging, which is great. People's attention span is so sporadic right now. Scott Galway said, TikTok versus Netflix in an hour of watching content... on Netflix, for a 60-minute program, you can publish 10 data signals because you're watching the same content, and TikTok 450 to 500 data signals.

So think about how much they're targeting, you really have to pick the right format. And also you got to be courageous. It depends on your format, type of event, people talk about CES, or what's going to happen to CES in a couple of weeks. You look at all the sports events. I think at the end of the day, not only the company needs to be an entertainment company, I will touch on more. As an agent in my category I think everyone needs to be a customer experience agency right now because we are creating a customer experience. Before you before you go to the event, even though it's live streaming, could be Cannes Lions could be CES, during an event that's a different setup and also post.

It's kind of like wedding planning, to be honest with you, how you get people to engage people. And during the event that memorable experience that you have, interaction is very important. Chat capabilities are very important and we got trained by Slack. A lot of chat programs. Very easy to do. If you use our platform, the chat capability is not good at all. Barely only there. And how about post? You capture a lot of data doing the pre- and during events. What kind of communication do you want to reach out to them? So I think, the two yin and yang in the category, the agency needs to be a customer experience agency, doesn't matter what purpose you're doing, at home, experiential, the brand needs to be an entertainment company. You look at how Disney or Marvel do it. We got a lot to learn.

Whit Hardwood: I think that's a great point. And it also ties to something, a conversation you and I have had before, which is around content and developing every part of our day based on the action that we're taking, the device that we're using. And I encourage all of us and also the audience as well to think about devices more than just your phone, your desktop, what have you. But I think you gave an example last week, a little bit around the work that you've done with Samsung around, what does content mean for your refrigerator? What does it mean to have content that's focused on your washing machine? And certainly kind of the golden goose at the end of this is, what does the self-driving car content experience look like? How do you think we get more content tailored to tthe individual and slightly granular experiences of our day?

Steven Moy: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think people need to understand, first of all, the customer journey really got disrupted, especially with COVID. The first mile of the customer journey is home. We all got stuck at home or stay at home, being immobilized, we are stay-at-home customers. We have to understand a new touch point created by all the technology and innovations. It’s from zero dimension to two-dimension to multi-dimension. Let me explain. Zero dimension: it's not that old, in terms of voice and Alexa and voice came into the home, just two years ago, all of a sudden you got a new touch point. And at one point remember Alibaba introduced, you can pay by smile facial recognition and not a touch point.

So you are sitting at home, you have zero dimension interface, two dimension new interface, meaning watching a connected TV show, your mobile. A really progressive brand knows how to mix these two together. Also mixed with multidimension. Who's stopping air drones to deliver to your New York apartment? If you want to really touch less, I don't mind a drone coming to my window, opening my window. And a 3D printer, at one point you can print a burger. And also I wouldn't eat it. Remember a lot of skincare brands looking into the second scheme, 3D printing lipstick, all of a sudden everything is available right now because you got stuck at home. Don't forget VR/AR before COVID was not gonna happen.

The first battlefield for all the brands will be a stay at home. You have a lot of dimensions to work with. From zero dimension to two-dimension, the multi-dimension, I'm talking about like VR/AR and 3D printing. I recently had a partnership discussion with Roku. One of the streaming platforms. You look at all the content creation. They also introduced technology for a second screen... interactive TV.

Watching their pilot, they have overlay technology. You can ticket current TV commercials. You can put an overlay on top, saying the call to action. So we can tie up touch point. You get a either an SMS message or QR code. And then you connect the dots. So all of a sudden I will argue, we'd help. To be honest with you, it's starting from your home because you're viewing the shopping window or changes could be connected TV, could be social to your browser and mobile, right? And then you look at the retail format that used to be a destination. It used to be, you communicate to me, set and forget. I somehow show up at your store and go experience the product.

We cannot do that anymore. A lot of retail formats, especially in New York, has become a service center, You need to return something. I need to do an alteration. I bought a jean that is too long for me. Or you go in there and you just go in and out. So all the scavenger hunting, the shopping sprint company destroyed. So how are you going to create leveraging those destinations? And I was sharing with you, I can imagine if I were Samsung working with Best Buy now, no one can go, I still can go to best buy within reason, right? They have all the appliances right there already. What if they turn it into a broadcast center? It's like doing a TV cooking show, if you can, right. You know, why not? Right. They have all the technology out.

One thing a lot of companies need to think about the ecosystem they are building for direct-to-consumer in the world we're living in is they need to think about digital product innovation, but also service innovation. So, I was at CES not too long ago, less than a year ago. I was at the Samsung area, I look at the new fridge with a big screen, what they can do right now, you have a reverse camera. You can take a snapshot of what you have in your refrigerator. And then they do a computer vision. You only have eggs and bacon, you don't have any milk. And then they show a demo integrated to Whole Foods or Amazon. So all of a sudden you can put all the ingredients, drop them in a shopping cart, and get it delivered to your home. But in order to do that is product and service, and integration needs to happen together. So I can imagine going forward a lot of, TPG companies, consumer electronic companies, they need think about not only building the product, we need to build digital services to link everything together. They could own my home, right. Everything should be connected with services that say Google and Apple, everybody should be connecting. The world we're living in is so very exciting.

Whit Hardwood: And it actually made me think of something that we haven't talked about before, which is the state of the brand in a world where, everything is analyzed by the various parts of your home. So let's use the example of the refrigerator, right? You have eggs, bacon, you don't have milk. The default to, okay, Whole Foods then is my grocer, and then there's going to be a second decision on top of that, which is what brand of milk do I select? What happens when that is shrunk, right? And consumer perception is kind of taken out of the equation. What happens to individual brands in that scenario? Because there's a world where this kind of lends itself to commodification and ease of use, as opposed to necessarily brand voice. What does this brand stand for? Is this something that I want to align myself with, which are all the parts of the consumer equation right now.

Steven Moy: Yeah, you're right. I look at it two dimensionally. And I think one is the conversions between communication and commerce really. Like China, the number one in the world. When you see a Burberry show, you see it, you want to buy it. The more Alibaba generated billions of dollar, right? And now this year, they actually made $500,000 per second live streaming. Talk about a crazy number when you see buyers because of isolation. So that’s the first thing, but to answer your point, I think, and not a prediction, when we are competing, go back to brand, it's not about technology. Technology created a ecosystem for us to compete because at the end of the day, you know, if you look at the population today, right? The Gen Z, I'm not Gen Z anymore, I’m barely a millennial, but we learn they sense BS very quickly.

They really want to understand what your brand stands for. So I think that prediction, go back to the old school a little bit, go back to the basic... I saw a lot of that at CES, what is the brand value you provide. So a lot of the health category, the purpose and brand, is actually the number one fastest growing for a lot of brands, including Unilever and Procter and Gamble and so forth. So I would say a lot of brands need to think about how you articulate and communicate your brand purpose to the different touch points. I think that would be a new battle view. How does it differentiate? I think Shane, three of us can launch a new sneaker next year.

Whit Harwood: Let's do it. I'm in

Steven Moy: We can rival Alibaba, we have the same stack, right? Meaning I can do live streaming, all integrated, all available to us. Why are we competing ? With Nike, it's a brand, right? They are a little bit more advanced. So I think brand purpose is, people need to go back to the basic really. We developed a brand purpose. My humble opinion to really engage every single touch point, every single audience, and we earn their trust.

Whit Hardwood: Yeah. I love that. In a more commoditized world, what we wear and what we do then represents who we are. Because that is actually the action that signals to the other people around us who we are. And in some ways you can make the argument like you just did, that brands matter more.

Steven Moy: Exactly. So I think that I can predict will be more dominant in terms of all boardroom conversation. And also to think about the explosion of direct to consumer during COVID and post COVID, all of a sudden we got more data. Not only already we have new customer data. You know, IBM estimated like 90% of the world's data was generated just the last two years. I can imagine even more as brands become more direct to consumer, the number one thing, they can get first-party data. So first-party data can inform not only how to extend your brand ecosystem, basically better product service design, if you can, really understand the consumer behavior, real-time and then they can develop better products. So I think that's very interesting.

The other topic if you remember it, we were talking about Cannes Lions and SXSW. I predicted, before COVID I said, there's too many events, I have to pick. I think the event business has become more competitive because we think about the cycle. Let's say everybody can only go to one event per quarter because you need two months to quarantine for yourself. You can only allow to send so many people. So where do we send them? I can imagine CES and NRF the first way. You have to pick one of them and then you have to wait for a month to quarantine for yourself. And so you go to SXSW. So my whole point is I think another prediction is, you will see better experiences for event to make more people go to the event. So like next year, because the CES and then Olympics is coming, I'm sure people would love to see the Olympics in some way. So I think it would be interesting to see who creates the best social experiences, who will follow what we described. Reaching the audience persona, is very interactive, with great content, and it would be interesting to see who wins.

Whit Hardwood: I love that because in a lot of ways we're building these muscles that we didn't have before by experiencing things online. And the technology is kind of being built in parallel in a way that I don't know, I don't want to speak for Zoom or anyone at that company or others, but they never expected to have the 2020 that they had. And I think that in a lot of ways, even though we've experienced it for 10 months and it's very much been our world, we're just kind of at the beginning of what face-to-face virtual experience really entails. I'll speak about one company I've become aware of... Lunchclub is one I've become aware of... where basically you're paired and you meet new contacts algorithmically based on your interests. It's something that would have seemed so foreign in December of 2019, and here we are now, and I'm counting down the minutes until I make my next networking connection.

Steven Moy: I can imagine if I were the big event company, I would do a JV with a travel hospitality company and create a more safe space for people to travel. How about an autonomous car? This is the time to do it. I don't want to go sit on a plane for a few hours, everybody's wearing PPE. What if there's a car to come pick me up? I put some people in and overnight I'm in San Francisco, instead of taking the train. So I think that's a lot of innovation. But still go back to the point, who can create the end to end customer experience will be the king. And I think a lot of companies will have that permission to do it.

Another prediction and a lot of joint venture leveraging each other's strategic assets. You've got some people at Cannes Lions who partner with shoe buyers, autonomous car companies, maybe there's some intersection there with Olympics and Tesla. Amazon, they have all the logistics ready, so what's stopping them. I remember one point, for contactless payment, two CESs ago, I was listening to Visa. They talking about what if your car is a credit card? I think it makes sense. Meaning you don't have to do anything, you just drive through. And then you pay with your car. So I'm excited to see what's going on next year. I can imagine a lot of new things, with the customer behavior this year, including ourselves. We love to experiment. I mentioned to you in the first month of COVID in the US, the number one selling grocery product. Can you imagine what it is? Not toilet paper, but...

Whit Hardwood: Number one, grocery products, um...

Shane Madden: Toothpaste?

Steven Moy: Bacon. Not suggesting everyone is a good baker, but people got nothing to do

Whit Hardwood: Right, right. Yeah.

Steven Moy: So everything, toilet paper, number two. Bacon, I was surprised, maybe I'll do some more baking. So people love to experiment. So I would encourage people, don't be afraid. Try something. You’ve got to take a calculated risk, make sure you understand your audience. Make sure it's something relevant. Be authentic about it for your brand. Do you have brand permission to play and then try it. People will try it, nothing's stopping you. Who would have thought TikTok and Walmart. Never thought of that. And I think it'll be fascinating. Hopefully we do another podcast in three months and see.

Whit Harwood: I like that.

Shane Madden: I could listen to Steven all day. Actually I have a quick question. We're running out of time here. So Steven, you and I were, were speaking just before we started the pod about Shopify, big commerce. So the big e-commerce companies, and then we were looking at, Airbnb's market cap, which I think is 90 billion. But if you look at Shopify, in and around 134 billion today, what do you think the future looks like for companies like Shopify, big commerce and your traditional e-commerce companies? You think it's going to be filled with acquisition flurry? Or what do you think that shakes out to be looking like?

Steven Moy: Yeah, great question. I think we'll have a couple of scenarios happen and one would be acquisition. You see a lot of people buying a low co if you will. That really true cloud platform. One thing good about Shopify, I mean, we have used it in the past for activation. And instead of going through the traditional, enterprise commerce cloud, would take months to implement. So a lot of people now go back to experimental. I can launch a direct to consumer site within weeks, and I can start selling and collecting data and engaging customers. And that's more valuable than having BPAY, what a more superior technology to be honest, technology is so mature. You can scale credit card transactions, check out. The other thing on Shopify, they are smart, they also do more vertical integration, like last year, people were questioning why they were looking into fulfillment, because if you and I talk about a year ago, people think of a fulfillment as moving boxes. Who would have thought e-commerce?

Who would have thought Uber would buy Postmates, and all of a sudden own home delivery. So that I think would be more merger acquisition, more vertical integration. But at the same time, the biggest, the top 10 player in the marketing tech world, Adobe and Salesforce, I can imagine they are working on copays. The bigger, the more complicated e-commerce platform take years. Remember target.com took the agency four years or two years. Now we're talking about, we want to launch something within four weeks. So I can imagine if I were them, that would be a lot of accelerator or IPE or copays that allow a more powerful platform can just...with a couple of quick configurations, you can launch a new store. For example, Salesforce e-commerce should be able to launch something within 30 days.

So you will see a lot of innovation there as well. But I think today's world is about commerce. And I hate to say that because I'm a technologist by training. It's not about technology. The ecosystem is so mature. If you look at the biggest ecosystem, Apple, Google, Amazon, China, Baidu, Tencent, and they are already there, and also your own ecosystem. I can imagine ecosystem...the two worlds will combine and merge, meaning your external retail ecosystem with your partner and your own will become one. The smaller brand knows how to create, integrate your ecosystem, get more data, and know your customer better and target them more successfully. I think it would be interesting. Speed is an element. No one’s waiting for six months to launch a website.

Shane Madden: The e-commerce chain, that whole group of players, it's not the thing. It's just one part of the value chain. And you think it's going to break out into other players getting into the market, for small cap, localized versions, as you say, with Salesforce. That's super interesting.

Steven Moy: At Instagram, you go to the shop, you click, you connect it to a website, either powered by Shopify or Facebook or whatever platform you buy. But the whole experience, that is just the beginning, you're waiting for a product to arrive, and to see how fast your products arrive. I'm making a complaint already, I bought a nice stand from one of the leading furniture stores. You imagine I've waited two weeks with no tracking number. You buy from Wayfair and Amazon, we are trained that way. Where's the tracking number? I should see my tracking number. No wonder that you see even Wayfair as the top 10 e-commerce player of this year. Whoever can get that end to end visibility to transparency and managing an e-commerce business, it's more than just a shopping cart. It's the whole end to end.

There's a lot of start ups in the in the world. I know three of us can start a company with a two-hour delivery with a startup, and that's a startup called Happy Return. They can go to your house and pick up the package for you. You don't have to buy UPS. So I think e-commerce, people should think about the end to end customer experience. You have to meet the audience where they want to meet you, so today's voice live streaming, social, hey, who knows, maybe in the future magic mirrors are back. When you’re brushing our teeth, we can buy stuff from your mirror.

Shane Madden: Maybe that's our next podcast. While you're speaking about it, Steven, I need to give a plug to Wayfair. My wife and I bought a picnic basket that stores outdoor lounge material and it arrived and unfortunately one of the pieces was broken, so we couldn't put it together. But we reached out to them immediately. Their customer service was incredible and they refunded the full amount and also shipped out a new basket within, I think it was two or three business days. Totally seamless. But to your point, it's a fall, there's many steps, there's many pieces of this e-commerce value chain. And then I guess the e-commerce platforms just need to fulfill one of those pieces.

Steven Moy: I would say you're not going to be differentiated your view, even from a customer buying behavior point of view, that you tell me you're on Shopify, that's an entice for me to buy from your brand.

Shane Madden: So Steven, as always, we really appreciate you coming on to the pod and taking us through what your vision is. And also just how you know, it's such an interesting space. This interactive reality and engagement space. So thank you very much. I know that you are a busy guy. Do you mind sharing with our listeners your Twitter or LinkedIn handle and any other thing you want to share about We Are Barbarian.

Steven Moy: Oh yeah. Yes. My Twitter is Steven_P_Moy. And my LinkedIn is just my name, Steven Moy. Very simple. Please reach out. I have a lot of opinions. Well, next time you should put me and Scott together and then we’ll all know each other, but I can make fun of him.

Shane Madden: We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Awesome. Thanks again.