Brand Loyalty Is Dying: Devora Rogers on Shopper Promiscuity and Modern Marketing

0:00Whether you're a big company or a midsize company, you've got to do the work to show up with the thought leadership, the data that says, here's what we're seeing. Will you take a risk on me? And then if it works, turn it into a massive thought leadership thing that you take around and give out. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about what you need to know now in business.

0:46Hey, even life sometimes. I'll give you some life advice. Probably more the marketing and business guy. And that's why I like to bring the best, the brightest, and some of the smartest people in the industry on the show. Sometimes we venture back into the things that I always kind of had my hands in in the agency world. Less today with the podcast network, but definitely keeping a pulse of what's happening in marketing and research and what brands are thinking about. And ultimately, I got to go to the source. That's why we've got the research poet. We have the chief strategy officer of Alter Agents.

1:17It is Devorah. What's up, Devorah? Hey, how's it going, Ryan? Good to be with you. Appreciate you coming on. I don't always get to get my nerdy marketing hat on, but I kind of want to get it on today. Is Alter Agents look, feel, act like an ad agency? I know you're not involved maybe in the marketing campaigns, but in many ways, is my mind in the right place? We're a full service research shop. I came from the ad agency world, so we have a little ad agency in us. Our focus group's still a thing. Yes and no. If you enjoy traveling and going and having shitty food in a back room while people talk about things for days on end, then you might do focus groups.

1:52And some people still do that. But honestly, we have moved to virtual focus groups because you get better respondents. People just don't want to leave their houses right now. We do them, but I would say judiciously and more and more, we're moving to something we call mobile ethnographies. They've also been called selfnographies, which is really freaking cool. It's important for people to know what the sentiment of today is. What's motivating shoppers and consumers? How does one learn? what's doing those things. What are the techniques today? When I have brilliant people like you on the show, it's like almost what you don't do and what you don't listen to sometimes, because I feel like the inputs can be so confusing now.

2:30That's the thing that just blows my mind with you doing what you do. I think about what I did years ago and the inputs felt complex, but they weren't. Now it's just like so many, how do you balance all of it? I have that same feeling that you have when I look at my clients who handle CPG brand marketing in a space where you've got to compete on Amazon. To me, that's now brain science. We actually literally do brain science to understand because the amount of channels that people can be in, the importance of being offline, online, a mix of both, dealing with private label, it is rough. It's our job to help clients focus on what's really going to matter for them when they bring something new to market or when they're trying to compete with their competitors.

3:12That's the thing that's interesting. I really want to dig under. I came up in what I feel like was a great mecca of brand marketing, the importance of that, of building brand over time and the resonance of that and reaching frequency and all of these things. And then kind of in my in-between land, the last 10 years of owning an agency, but kind of being on our own planet and doing podcasting and all that performance marketing, the savior of all things came in. I rolled my eyes a little bit, drove me crazy. You can't drive a sale until someone's aware of you. And last time I checked, you have to play that game too.

3:46But what's been your perspective the last 10 years? I want to turn to more specifically some of the nuances that you work in, but I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit. As someone that's in it with the consumer, the performance versus brand thing and the last 10 years of, hey, let's just scoop up all of the bottom of the funnel. Have we just completely lost our mind that we still have to You build somewhere along the way the awareness and the consideration. The bad news for brands is that consumers have more options than ever before. We call it shopper promiscuity. If I had four amazing suitors outside every single day standing outside my house, being like, you know what though?

4:23Like, I'm pretty great. Like, I'm an amazing chef. I'm really good in bed. It'd be hard to stay loyal. Let's just be honest. That's what brands are facing. Consumers have so many choices. They could go anywhere at any time of day. that access, the choice that they have creates this promiscuity. The difficult news is that brands continue to be brands. And what brands often do as brands, both in marketing and in research, is they do something we call brand narcissism. A lot of research is built on this idea that if you just track people's relationship to your brand, then you'll know enough and then you'll know what to do.

4:56It's called brand tracking. It underpins all of research and marketing. Many people hate it, including the people that use it because things don't shift that much. It's hard to really make sense out of it. It's narcissistic. Imagine Ryan, if you and I went out for like a little friend hang. And the whole time I was like, Hey Ryan, what do you think about my hair? What do you think about my cashmere sweater? What do you think about my friends? Did you look at my friends? Am I more innovative than my friend? He'd be like, get out of here. You wouldn't want to talk to me. And that's what brands do with their precious research.

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6:05Less friction means fewer missed opportunities. And when that order comes through and you hear the Shopify, it's a reminder that the business is moving. Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world, from major brands to entrepreneurs just getting started. It gives you the tools to launch, sell, market, and grow in one place. Sign up for your trial today at Shopify.com slash Ryan. Go to Shopify.com slash Ryan, R-Y-A-N. That's Shopify.com slash R-Y-A-N. If you're like me, you probably spend a lot of time paying attention to what's happening in the world. markets, business, crypto, interest rates, sports, politics, all of it.

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8:16We have really drawn a line in the sand. Our CEO, Rebecca Brooks, wrote in our book, Influencing Shopper Behavior. In a chapter in that book, she wrote what I call her Jerry Maguire letter, basically, to the research and marketing industry saying, we're missing the boat here. Brain tracking isn't delivering the answers that you want. Add to that insult to injury, and then I'll tell you the good part. The challenge is that when we survey shoppers, by generation, brand loyalty basically stair steps down. So if you're a boomer, then you're pretty likely to keep buying, let's say 60 % of boomers are going to keep buying products that they've been buying.

8:50By the time you get to millennials and Gen Z, it's 17 % of them express that same brand loyalty. That's the bad news. But I would agree with you that performance marketing has shown us that the answer is not just the race to the bottom. Yeah, you can get people to buy things if you do enough coupons and promotions or whatever. Yeah, you can, but you may not have a lasting voice or presence in the space that ultimately means that brands still do have to do the hard work. What's interesting though, I think, and I think where the opportunity for brands is, is that brands have this idea that it's either all or nothing.

9:26I'm going to put my brand out there, show you my brand logo again and again and again. I'm going to have my billboards up that You won't even know what my website is or what I'm selling. They think they could do something because we're just so recognized. It's just so distinguished that people will get there. Either we're going to go the all in. It's just our brand name, brand recognition, build brand. Or we're going to go all the way to the bottom and give you all these little details. But actually, the center space is where we really see the opportunity for brands. Tell them about your products and what they do and why they're better and why people should believe in you as a brand.

9:59Essentially, what we've seen is consumers and shoppers becoming really, really smart. Every piece of research that we've done over the last decade shows that people consume more information than ever before about everything, but also all of their purchases. More sources than ever before, more knowledge than ever before. And I'm going to put implied words in your mouth. They know they're being marketed to. And they're okay with it too. And that's the thing too, is that brands don't have to pretend like they're not. We've actually seen an increase in people accepting advertisement as a useful source of information.

10:33They get the exchange, but do better. Tell me more. One of the few people I would call mentor, Christopher Lockhead in marketing. I don't know if you know Chris. He's a category pirates is his brand. He doesn't believe in brands. He just believes in category creation to where you carve out exactly what you are. You market the problem and you become the solution. I think that's a little bit of what you're saying with telling people about what you are. I agree with about 75 % of it. I choose to believe the brand isn't dead. I would agree with you. At the end of the day, people, where our brains work, we do neuroscience.

11:08Turns out half the reason we like our spouses is because we see their face every day. It's a brain thing. So the next time you get in a fight with your spouse, just be like, am I with you just because I see you every day? And that's the same for brands. Brands, you wouldn't want to give that up. It's a name. It's a logo your brain recognizes. It's a logo or a service that you associate with something good. If that goes away, it makes it harder for consumers. They'd have to do more work. It's not to say you couldn't. And I do think category matters a lot. And if everybody could do what he's suggesting can be done, cool.

11:41But I don't know that everybody has that benefit. Not everybody's going to be the category king. There's a lot of money to be made as the second person, second best in the category. And look, as somebody that's very competitive that doesn't like to play for second in much of anything. Or even like 5%. Being top 5 % pays the bills. But the brand thing is interesting. The familiarity, the promiscuity is like the biggest thing. Does it matter its single moment of truth if that performance bug comes in? I'm keeping it simple here, like the store. But whether it's a luxury thing or not, luxury is a whole other category.

12:14I mean, you go in and I buy Armandham a toothpaste. pace. But if there is a half price deal on Colgate, am I cheating? Think about all the places in our lives where we make left turns. It depends. Mustard is a category that I like talking about. And the reason I like talking about mustard is that there are people that don't care at all. They're like, I just give me the gravy pond or give me the cheapest. I don't care. Is it yellow? Fine. My father-in-law is like that. Doesn't care. Maybe if there's like a flavor, he might splurge, but otherwise it's just like yellow mustard is sufficient. And then there are mustard aficionados, mustard sommeliers.

12:45And they're going to know every little thing. They're going to do little tastings. There are in every category mustard aficionados. You may not be an aficionado in one category in your life, but randomly in another, you might be. Even among people who consistently choose value, I'm somebody that chooses like, I'm like, oh, is there a more expensive price that I can pay out? I'll do that. But there are people that are the opposite and it doesn't matter if they're wealthy or not. They're going to consistently choose the value option. We tend to leave out a lot of the people that are choosing the value option in our research because they tend to not be very interesting.

13:18But I guarantee you, whoever they are, one thing in their life, most likely, unless they're just like a total weirdo, they have something that they really want to be higher quality premium. And for that, they're willing to do the research. They're willing to do the looking and they might be harder or easier to move. So that's the other thing is that this promiscuity means that there are a whole group of people who are just promiscuous and they might be amazing to initially grow your brand because let's say they become obsessed with a direct to consumer underwear brand. People become obsessed early on.

13:45They're the explorers. They're the ones finding new things. They're evangelizing. And they are the ones that you can lose very easily. So you kind of have to know at every stage of building your business, the idea that you could just have loyal people that'll stay with you and that's everyone is just no longer true. You have to sort of plan for, I'm going to have these people that are going to come in. They might help me build my brand early on, but then they're going to defect because that's what they do. And then I've got to get the other people to fill up the back so that we don't completely lose when the explorers and promiscuous folks go away.

14:13You have a lot of job security because you know why, you know what I just heard Devorah is, and it's very true. It depends word. It's so unique to every different brand and every different category. I know this instinctively, but I almost forget it too, because I think we all like to paint with broad brushes and make statements like TV is dead or Facebook is dead. The truth is, but it depends because depending on your product and depending on the categories of consumers that buy that product. They can be very promiscuous in one, but brand loyal in another. Years ago, I did a call with someone who was very senior at the milk board.

14:51The call went very poorly. She had seen the work that we did with Google, the zero moment of truth work. And she's like, I want that. But I don't believe that people are doing a lot of different searching and researching and sources using a lot of different sources for milk. Milk is an everyday household item. And I tried to convince her on the call. I was like, listen, I know you think that. And for a lot of people it is, but even if for 15, 20 % of people, it starts to shift. What's that going to look like? She didn't believe me. The call went poor. I didn't win. Never heard from her again. It was like really a bad call.

15:21Look at where we are now. Go into the milk aisle and tell me that that wasn't completely disrupted. There is pea milk. There is goat milk. My child's doctor told me to get camel milk at one point. We're in a different world. Anyone who thinks that a category is never going to shift or be disrupted is in for some surprises. And once it does, you either are ready or you lose your share. And that's why you got to get underneath it to know within your own product and your own category, what the mind shift, what are the media, what are the mind thought process, what are the problems that you're solving or not solving.

15:58And it's hard. It's frustrating because we want, and we've been chasing, especially, which is where I want to go next door, is attribution. Ultimately, that's right. I don't forget who says it. I know that 50 % of my marketing works great. I just don't know what 50%. And we've been chasing that attribution game. Where do you fall on that? I get hand raisers on Google. SEO is important. They're searching for you and it gets a lot of credit. But did my friend down the street, good old fashioned word of mouth, put it in my brain? And so who gets credit and how do I know what to do more of? There were folks who built these tech stacks and they said, we'll be able to answer it all and we'll know everything.

16:34It didn't play out that way. And certainly now some of the changes that have occurred in tech and some of the questions calling into question whether cookies are workable and privacy, all kinds of different things, has shown us that there isn't an easy fix for attribution. There's no special key that just unlocks it permanently. You have to do the work and you have to do the work among humans. Now, working in research, we have people who are trying to use synthetic respondents, which, by the way, that means not a real human. Artificial. Artificial, not real, fake, to essentially answer research surveys.

17:15I look at that and I go, why would you do that? You could use big data to do that. You could use any number of things. Nothing, nothing reveals opportunities and challenges in the way that talking to humans does. It just doesn't. Attribution is worthwhile, and certainly if you're doing a lot of media spend, you've got to do it. But we feel that brands have to put in the work and ultimately get answers from real people dealing with real challenges that either your company can or cannot solve.

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19:46I know that the techniques in online have probably brought the scale. I mean, I just remember what it costs. I guess the online equations probably made it more attainable. My mentor was a guy named John Ross, who had been the CMO at Home Depot. And he oversaw Home Depot's growth, the biggest growth of its development. I learned a lot from him around how I think about research and retail and shopping. We wrote a book together called Fire in the Zoo, which is all about the difficulty of selling at retail and all that kind of stuff. So they had every, imagine they had Deloitte, they had all, every consultant in the world was working for Home Depot at the time.

20:22Every single one. They had any amount of data or research they wanted. And guess what? As the CMO, he felt like he still didn't know why people were making choices. And so he would go down and put on an apron, stand in the paint aisle, and he would ask people a series of very, very simple questions. what made you decide to come in today? Where'd you go for information? What of that information was most influential? What of that information specifically was it price? Was it what we told you about the product? Had you ultimately decided that you wanted to come in and make a purchase? And he would go do those conversations.

20:52And, you know, small business owners can do that. You don't need a research agency to do that. If you're really on the no budget side, I would say small business owners need to at least be having those conversations. They won't be at scale. And you got to be aware of that. Did you tell him to take it with a grain of salt, what he learned in those conversations, or do you think they were meaningful? We turned it into a quantitative methodology. And today clients do that methodology at scale when they're trying to figure out where is everyone going for information? Where should I be? I don't have billions of dollars.

21:20I have to choose between TikTok and Google or podcasts and Google search. What should I do? And then now you can do these self-nographies. We use a company called D-Scout, which I'll give them a shout out. I think they've built something really cool. There's another one called Recollective. And, you know, for a relatively small sum,$20 ,000,$30 ,000, you can send out real people into the real world and find out how they're responding to your product or service or stores. 30 people, that's not the same as a thousand. But you know what? If you work in research, the truth is after about 12 or 18, you start hearing a lot of the same things.

21:55You're doing a lot of research, different clients, different things. And I'm sitting here saying we can't paint with a broad brush, but I'm going to ask you a broad brush question. What's a medium or a tactic or something that might surprise people listening that is popping up over and over again in the influence or magnitude that it has? What might it be? Honestly, podcasts are pretty amazing. We've been tracking podcasts for 15 years. And for a long time, they were down there with the dust bunnies. Nobody used them. They weren't driving influence, I would say, by about 30 % to 40 % of the population.

22:30So there's people that don't use them. Fine. But there's a decent audience that is really listening and really attuned, and they really love the hosts. And so that can be a very powerful channel for brands. And a lot of brands have worried that podcasts are not brand safe because you can't control everything that happens. It's different if it's like a bigoted show. But if it's just like bad language, consumers don't care. It hasn't hurt our numbers and I have a potty mouth. Yeah, same, especially on Fridays. Talking with Devorah. She is the research poet. Back to this attribution game. Who does get the credit?

23:04How do we answer that what 50 % is working or not working? There's a lot of podcasters that use codes and that kind of thing. that gives you an opportunity to know what's working. We're seeing creators do that. Creators are certainly having a moment. I'm a little bit worried about creators with the growth of AI, because I worry that it could kind of turn things into slop. That's not going to be good for consumers or brands, but that's an aside. You have to live with some level of uncertainty. You're never going to know everything. You just never will. But you can find out a lot. Let's say you're throwing money at TV and radio and podcasts and 10 other things.