Scratch Special: How Baby Eric & Baby Jenna Survived Cannes 2025

14:15Baby Eric:it's kind of moved away from like there was a couple years there where yeah it was about like ai for like creative and like performance like for those like kinds of things which it still is a little bit um but i was surprised at again like how much of like the rhetoric was aimed at like yeah removing like decision points like for these types of things to automate like all these like types of things um you know and that like yeah i think this is going to decimate a section of the market like for sure but the section of the market for whom like decisioning is not a you know like a differentiator for these like kinds of things um yeah i think that was like the big one for me yeah like that is trying to put yourself out of a job like that is actually irrational like behavior right of like yeah anyways anyways yeah yeah and i think the the

15:04Baby Jenna:other part of that equation it's not just about the technology but it's also about like where you can find great humans but also the cost arbitrage to compete in a market where more and more of these businesses are going to be tech enabled if not tech only and so that was the offshoring conversation and i you know i feel really good about where we are um because i had a lot of conversations with people doing latin america and doing eastern europe and of course india southeast asia we obviously made a bet on cape town and i still remember that conversation where We said, fuck it, let's do it. Lions in the office was the project code name for that.

15:37Baby Jenna:Lions in the office. We got Lions in the office now. But I think that we're kind of ahead now. I mean, ahead at the scale that we're at, of course. We're not the first people to identify Cape Town as kind of an exceptional talent market. Similar time zone, a lot of similarities in culture, really diverse talent set. It's not just data and engineering. There's a lot of creative out there, strategy out there as well. So we are very, have been very invested in building down there and will be even more invested now. And I could actually, I could see that being our biggest office as we grow.

16:12Baby Eric:I could spend several weeks a year down there and not be mad about it. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah.

16:18Baby Jenna:So the next one, everything that we've talked about is certainly, you know, the hold codes, technology, AI, offshoring, everything is leading to there's a lot of talent that is in the market now and is going to be in the market now. And I am definitely seeing and hearing this kind of anecdotally, multiple conversations a week with great people that are looking for roles out there, not finding them, hearing from people that are leaving or getting laid off, that kind of big agencies and so again you know i wish that we could hire more people we've got we have like seven open role eight open roles right now so like hiring is actually our biggest constraint so if anybody's looking definitely hit us up um but it just feels like a great market to be in when you're a quote-unquote buyer of talent right now like we are yeah yeah baby doesn't have that much

17:12Baby Eric:Exceptional talent. Yeah, many other things to say about that. Yeah.

17:15Baby Jenna:All right. So something that we had talked about, you had brought up, actually, because we were looking at, you know, we just completed an acquisition, which I don't think is going to be announced by the time this podcast goes out. So I'm not going to spill the beans on that one. So after that one kind of got over the line, we regrouped and said, hey, what are we looking for in kind of the next wave of always on conversations that we're having around acquisition? What are the capabilities that we really want to bring in where we think there is or will be increasing demand from our clients? And you brought up, hey, I want to buy an experiential agency because with everything going increasingly towards AI and digital and increasingly commoditized, aka shitty content experiences being produced, there's going to be increased value and preference placed on human connections, in-person experiences, etc.

18:06Baby Jenna:etc. And that was, I did not have any conversations about that in CAN, but with your thoughts in the back of my mind, I was like, man, everybody is so focused on like the checkers move, the one step ahead. How do we AI everything? But actually where things are going to go, if you play it out like a chess game, three-dimensional, four-dimensional chess, there's definitely value in looking at those kind of offline experiential offerings.

18:34Baby Eric:This is what I'm freaking saying. I mean, we're sitting here talking about Cannes, which is an experiential fucking thing, the amount of content that you fuck. People love our fucking dinners. I went to Glastonbury. I am legally obligated to tell everybody this week that I did go to Glastonbury. I hadn't heard about that. Had I not told you that I went to Glastonbury this year, I went to Glastonbury this year. I heard for the third time that I go to Glastonbury. and it's like isn't it it's kind of consistently rated as like the number one most valuable british brand right like it's the obvious example right now but it's an experiential fucking thing people people like that gen z like hate their fucking phones they all wish that they were born in in worlds like without like social media and the internet like you know for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction eventually experiential and then we can hopefully also Eric get tickets to cool things like the British GP or like other stuff that we want to do ideally

19:29Baby Jenna:in France that's all you I don't like I don't like I don't like human experiences you hold you hold

19:35Baby Eric:down that side of the fort you went to Olivia Rodrigo you went to Olivia that's for my daughters we both saw Olivia Rod yeah but you still went I like hanging out with them it's the other 64 ,997 people that were there you just have to pretend that they're not there you just have to pretend through because i also hate it but i just like jedi mind trick myself and i'm like i'm having a good time i'm having can i say i didn't put this in the post obviously but everybody i talk to at can't talks about how much they hate can yes there's something to that why do we keep i mean

20:09Baby Jenna:i know why everybody everybody's there there has there's got to be there's got to be something it's second type fun it's fun after the fact also again i just i people exercise significantly

20:22Baby Eric:more control, I feel like, over their enjoyment of experiences than they realize. You can just choose to just say that you're going to have a good time at Cannes and just go have a good time. There is no spoon. You do not have to like, yes, it is hot. It is terrible. You can say, you know what? I'm just going to focus on the actually fun parts of this, which is I got to hang out with the... If you don't have 15 colleagues in the whole world that go to Cannes that you can see and like have a good time with actually you fucking suck like if you can't find a way i can to like go have a nice time with those people you're actually the one who sucks

20:59Baby Jenna:in my opinion i don't know yeah i can't wait to afford people you like airbnbs with actual air conditioning or maybe even hotel rooms at one point oh don't say that don't say that

21:11Baby Eric:no we should have got that boat we should have got that boat dude yeah let's get the boat next All right.

21:18Baby Jenna:Next up, influencers. Still very hot right now. Obviously, a lot of acquisitions over the last 12 months in the influencer space. A lot of people still talking about it still seem to be getting a lot of attention. You know, we obviously came very close to acquiring a small influencer offering, which I think would have been an interesting integration. Still something that's kind of on the list, maybe not at the top of the list for us right now. but the thing that I was thinking about with all this is like the you know the rise of AI influencers is coming and I'd put that with the same caveats as everything else that I said whereas content gets easier to create and distribute and also as the quality of that content probably goes down as more people have access to these tools it is going to be the authentic the human influencers or content that becomes more valuable but man if I was sitting on top of an influencer agency right now I think now would probably be the time to exit unless you have like a really good sense of how you're going to adapt and take advantage of the rise of ai within the influencer space this is like one of those things honestly like is i know i know that i

22:22Baby Eric:yeah like make these jokes about like oh it's the downfall of civilization like doomer like kind of stuff this is one of those ones that is like yeah the ai influencer thing is like makes you go cross eyed if you think about it too long of how severely socially impactful like that's going to be like there's going to have to be laws about this. Like there's going to like fucking have to be. Russia's fucking Russia. By the way, the Donald Trump presidency is is the result of the fact that like the United States lost a decades long cyber and disinformation war that they were not aware that they were fucking engaged in.

22:55Baby Eric:And this is going to get so much worse. I don't know. Anyways, that is absolutely not relevant. We could totally cut that because that's a pretty wild political opinion for this. But it's that's fucking mind boggling to think about like how that's going to be because absolutely that's going to take some massive massive portion of influencer dollars is those fucking things like was it um p was it png or unilever that came out in there this like said i'm going to spend 50 of my media budget on influencers that's 500 million dollars guaranteed some like not insignificant portion of that yeah is going to go to ai like influencers um i have nothing to say on that other than like oh yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna watch watch and see what happens with interest i like it's i think it's impossible to predict what's going to happen

23:43Baby Jenna:there like that's uh wild wild next up your favorite topic b2b marketing so my takeaway is number 10 b2b is going to i would say continue to have its moment they had their first b2b Lion, which apparently is like they give some awards away at this conference. I don't know. I've never really heard about it. We also, of course, have a dear friend who is the incoming chair of the ANA. And I think maybe not the first time, but the first recent time that they've had a chair of the ANA that was a B2B CMO. And there were just a lot more conversations and kind of acceptance of B2B being at kind of like the big girl, big boy table for marketing.

24:27Baby Jenna:And then also So particularly, you know, the work that we do in fintech and with kind of venture capital funded tech startups, a lot of those have pivoted to B2B as the easy money has dried up in the last couple of years. So B2B marketing hot right now. Excited about it. I hate it.

24:46Baby Eric:Also, this is why I want us to go buy a super fancy nerd agency, because I want to have like pet quant people that I can go to and be like, I want you. I want to see an association of like the economic decline of like the purchasing power of consumers in the United States and the rising dominance of B2B marketing as like corporations are the only ones with any money. I really want to see what that is to get a sense of what B2B budgets are supposed to look like in the next 10 years to decide, am I going to have to deal with this? Or is AI going to be such a death knell for so many SaaS companies that actually then B2B like goes down?

25:24down.

25:25Baby Eric:I desperately want to know how this goes because I want to stop caring about this. I don't want to I don't want to care about B2B marketing anymore. It's not interesting to me to make companies sell stuff to other companies. It's just not interesting to me. I don't know. Like I said, like it is going to be, you know, really interesting to see what happens because again, so much of that is now going to be like so like, you know, automated like lead flows. People have I think that the general floor of the quality of B2B performance, like media marketing has stepped up really significantly in the past couple years.

25:56Baby Eric:So again, I think those dollars are going to stop being so easy to get because there's more competent people doing it now.

26:03Baby Jenna:But, oh, I'd be so thrilled if it went away. I'd be thrilled. This does not apply to any potential clients. We love our B2B clients. We love our B2B clients. And if you are a B2B CMO looking to understand how to apply the Challenger marketing playbook to your business, we would love to hear from you. No, I will say to your point of like the bar is raising, it definitely is as B2B becomes more of a marketing oriented, you can't even call it an industry, you can't even call it a category. But in general, if you think about B2C companies have historically been more marketing led and B2B companies because the transaction is based on a sale, they're less marketing led.

26:45Baby Jenna:That balance is changing. Also, because of that, as B2B becomes more appealing, more talent is going in that direction. Also, technology lowering the barriers to entry for B2B companies means that they have to compete more on brand and marketing. It can't just be about product and distribution. So all of that going in means that the bar is definitely being raised in B2B. Now, I was a B2B CMO. I am more passionate, let's say, about B2B marketing than you are. I'm actually into it. I like B2B marketing. There was a moment. But of course you do. Let this happen. There was a moment where it was like, hey, for Rival, should we, should we, you know, they always say like, you want to be more relevant to less people.

27:25Baby Jenna:You want to focus. You want to specialize. Should Rival have been a B2B agency? That was, that was on the table for a hot minute. That's where I probably would have gone. I'm very happy with where we netted out. But all that to say, I still think even with the bar raising, God, there's so much opportunity for B2B marketing right now.

27:42Baby Eric:Yeah, listen, I take my best self to work. I take my best self to climb. Everybody gets my full effort and attention. Of course, of course. And like I will say like it has been a positive change in my life where I can like now recommend CTV on a B2B media plan and like not be like like fish hooked for it. You know what I mean? of like, what do you mean? We want 90 % of our budget in PPC. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, man. That's just not how any of this works. So that has been a positive improvement in my life. So I suppose I should thank you for your small contribution to that modest improvement in my day-to-day existence.

28:20Baby Eric:But yeah, yeah.

28:23Baby Jenna:All right, last bonus number 11, takeaway. Just because it might not be relevant to everybody, But obviously, we've done some work in the Middle East. My last role at 11FS, that was our biggest market. Spent a good amount of time down there. Seems like things are changing. The money tap in Saudi is slowing down. Volatility in oil prices, obviously a lot going on in the region. Just leave it there. Interest rates. And then, of course, over the last five years, MBS, Vision 2030, kind of gotten a little bit out ahead of their skis on that. And to be honest, really taken for a ride by Western companies and consultancies and agencies just flying people in and taking money out.

28:58Baby Jenna:So the money tap has slowed down.

29:01Baby Eric:Excuse me. There's still a lot of opportunity.

29:04Baby Jenna:You'll get your chance. You'll get your chance, baby Jenna. Still a lot of opportunity in the region, but kind of the risk reward profile, let's say, is changing. The last thing I will say is at some point, Rival will have an office in Dubai. You will be there. We will be there. But we are, not that we were very focused on the Middle East, but we are even less so now. We'll always react to opportunities as they come up. There's still some conversations that we're having. We've done some work there, but we're very focused on US, UK, and Europe, given some of these conversations that we had about what's going on in Saudi.

29:40Baby Jenna:Floor's yours. I'm sorry.

29:43Baby Eric:In that story, were the big bad Western companies taking advantage of the guy of MBS who has spent some time in embassies? Was that really what that was? Oh, no, poor Victor. No, that's fine. No, that's perfectly fine. I just wanted to make sure that I had the protagonist and the villain correct in that version of the narrative. That's totally fine.

30:14Baby Eric:Surely the money tab is going to be turned off everywhere soon, right? I totally appreciate that the world right now is divorced from its senses. The world right now is short on data, long on vibes, which is why I myself now am short on data, long on vibes.

30:29Baby Jenna:Gotta put that on a t-shirt.

30:30Baby Eric:Short on data, long on vibes. This is me in my 30s now. I'm more confident in things. I'm like, yeah, all right.

30:40Baby Eric:It's not good anywhere, right? It's not good anywhere for these types of things. I feel like, yeah, we're still kind of in this bated breath before the plunge kind of deal. But yeah, I guess like it was previously, like I said, that the Middle East had been kind of immune to those things. But it certainly wasn't going to be forever. I don't think that even they expected that to be the case themselves. And otherwise seem to have done a pretty good job building a significantly more diversified economy down there. So good for them, despite people taking advantage of poor, naive, helpless MBS.

31:17Baby Jenna:Somebody's got to stand up for the little guy.

31:18Baby Eric:right that's that's fair that's fair yeah honestly i think baby podcasts i mean it's

31:25Baby Jenna:differentiated right like i bet that sponsor has never been pitched a baby podcast

31:30Baby Eric:got something here oh press x to talkability relevance differentiation pitched a baby podcast there are no there are no original ideas in the world i guarantee you that there already is one of these anyways all right baby jay last words baby doesn't have the same ring to it baby j baby j there's something experiential as the digital world becomes more frictionless people will seek out friction in their real lives experiential i don't know yeah that's what that's That's what I get. That's what I get.

32:06Baby Jenna:All right. I would say that mine is.

32:10Baby Eric:Oh, yeah. OK. Do yours and then I'll I'll I'll have a think. Let me think about it. Yeah.

32:15Baby Jenna:I think that mine is.

32:21Baby Jenna:Opportunity is proportional to change. Right. That's always the case. I think the pace of change is only going to speed up. We're at a bit of an inflection point in the industry with everything that's happening. We obviously have our thoughts on the AI hype cycle and where we are within that. We're going to be doing our AI marathon event in September. And, you know, as Gary used to say, it's not about predicting the future. It's about reacting to where things are right now. And I think that speed and being able to move quickly when you identify where things are and maybe the direction of travel, not trying to end up exactly where you think they're going to go, but just going in the right direction with things like AI on delivery, with things like offshoring, everything that we talked about today.

33:00Baby Jenna:I feel like that is the biggest advantage that we have right now with where we are as a 40 person company in this industry and the biggest disadvantage that these big holding companies have. So I think not trying to predict the future, but just trying to adapt faster and smarter and just speed.

33:22Baby Eric:uh okay yeah i got no i've got a real serious one i'm actually yes i'm a serious person who with serious thoughts and i was a racist you look like a baby right now i i uh i i'll drop the guy the one uh one of the the ad influencers that i follow he's like that he like eugene brand strategy or something very and all i think you know that guy yeah that guy yeah love that guy he does he does awesome awesome stuff he's such a stereotype of every brand strategist though totally fine he's great at it if you're going to be a stereotype be be an exceptional yeah be the best right and he is honestly he's the best he's really really good um and yeah the last one that he did like i say was about like his experience at can and he talked about how like can is a simulacra right and which is divorced from reality and he commented on how like it was absolutely insane to hear like how everybody was saying the same things at every panel and that it was significantly more interesting the things that weren't being said and that were sort of the undertones or like the conversations that had happened in in hallways and you know the big takeaways he had are like that listen like the the the the divorced reality that marketing has from the actual like real state of the world right and like you know not being able to truly say some of the underlying causes of some of the problems that we're all facing is like like fucking mind bending which it is which is always my predominant experience of can and i think honestly probably is why a lot of people said that they really hate it is because it's very difficult to square those suits those two experiences and feelings right of like i'm going to choose to have a good time but like this is absolutely on some level fucking wild like difficult to to square and understand like really and engage with in a serious way um and that yeah in like like in a world like that, because it's not always like this.

35:11Baby Eric:Like there are absolutely time periods that are significantly less dissonant than the one that we live in and are significantly more consonant. But I think kind of to your point, Eric, of like, okay, like that means that there's money to be made, significant opportunity in like recognizing the world as it really is, like actually what is really happening now and like how is this different from what people are like talking about and like trying to understand that, describe it and like make a bet on it. And that even if a lot of other people are saying one thing, it doesn't necessarily make it true.

35:45Baby Eric:It doesn't even mean that they think that. It doesn't even mean that they truly understand or really defend like that position like in actuality. And that, yeah, reality charges interest. So, you know.

35:56Baby Jenna:I think that we have emptied our diapers of media insights, and hopefully this has helped you burp your CMO. So we are going to sign off for the first and probably the last edition of Rattles and ROI. And now it's time for a nap.

36:27Baby Jenna:WeAreRival.com. If you want to connect with me, email me at eric at WeAreRival.com or find me on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, share with anyone you think might enjoy it, and leave us a review. Thanks for listening and see you next week.