4 Reasons Human Connection is THE Marketing Strategy with Haley Janicek

0:00A lot of brands still measure events by new pipeline and completely miss the reason events might already be paying for themselves. Welcome back to another Flashback Friday where we bring back an episode that is just as sharp the second time around. This week, my good friend Tamara is back in the host seat sitting down with Haley from Kit to dig in everything offline marketing, events, experiences, and why in-person connection is making such a strong comeback in an increasingly online world. They get into the real difference between what online and offline can do for a brand, how Kit designs experiences around connection instead of product pitches, and why client retention might be the most underrated reason to show up at an event at all.

0:49If you're thinking about experiential marketing, community, or just want a fresh lens on event ROI, this one you need to listen to. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray. And join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. Hayley, welcome to the show. Hey, hey, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I am really excited for this episode. This is one of the ones I was really anticipating recording. I was just at an event that you hosted not so long ago.

1:39So I'm really excited to dig into all things events today. And so I want to start us off just by talking about online and offline, because I think nowadays almost all of marketing happens online, but we're seeing a really strong pull back to offline. Why do you think we're seeing that pull? And like, what do you think that says about what people are craving right now? Yeah. You know, it's funny. It's like, I think what's, it's different today than it was like right after we'll say, you know, the COVID, are we allowed to say that? now, you know, like following COVID, it was one of those things where it was like everybody was craving, right?

2:18The Surgeon General came out and said, you know, we're in a loneliness epidemic. And it was just like, everybody wanted human connection again. And now I think with, you know, the use of AI, everybody's thinking like, what actually is human? And the reality is, is that I think there's always going to be waves around like what's causing people to want to be in person, but it's actually the most natural way that humans connect is being in person. And I think that we're always just going to crave it no matter what. I think that's really fair. And when I was down at Craft & Commerce, I was actually there a few days early participating in Jay Klaus's The Lab offline, which was awesome.

2:57And Jay actually started that event with a slide where he put up, this is what I think online events or online connections really great at. This is what I think offline events and offline connections really great at. And it was kind of, you know, a pausing moment for me where I was like, even in my own community, I was thinking about, yeah, you know, that makes a lot of sense. But I know you've thought a lot about this. So like in your perspective, are there certain types of either learning or interaction or experiences that just suit offline rather than online and vice versa? Yeah. I mean, I think I'm curious what Jay said, you know, what he actually, what the slide said.

3:33So you'll have to tell me about that afterwards. But here's the thing. I think online is meant for scale and repeated touch points. And I think that offline is meant for deeper connections. And so offline, I just don't think that you can have, there's so much nuance to being in person, right? There's body language and true excitement. When you get to hug a friend that you met online for the first time in person, how much more deep does your relationship become over time, right? It's usually like that tipping point from taking a friendship or a work relationship to a much deeper level usually happens once you guys have met in person.

4:14And so I think online is really good for scale and really good for repeated touch points. And I think offline is really good for like really increasing that deeper relationship that's necessary to take something to the next level. I love that. I always say one of my favorite things in the world is like making an online friend an offline friend. And my partner does not work in the online space at all. And he always thinks it's just absolutely bizarre that even have online friends that are like real friends. Right. But it's true. It's like, oh my God, I have seen you and talked to you so many times on LinkedIn or at these events and just the hug, like it really does create that extra level of bond.

4:52So at Jay's event, so what he did have was very similar to what you're saying. Also, though, he talked a lot about teaching style and how online is really great for like, let's say like one to many kind of teaching. So, hey, I'm going to teach you this course. I'm going to walk you through a framework versus the in-person being much better for discussion of those topics. So I think you're getting at that with the breadth versus depth piece. So at Jay's event, we didn't have any like keynotes. We didn't have any presentations. conversations, it was all small group discussions or like individual work where we then worked with each other at our table to really go deeper into help me interrogate how I'm thinking about my business or help me, you know, brainstorm other ways I could grow, whatever it might be.

5:36Yeah. I think the other thing that online versus offline are like one really important distinction is a level of vulnerability. I think it's really hard to be vulnerable when you're online or like in that online environment. And you're thinking of one-to-many from a scaled perspective. Whereas if you're sitting around and we do this at a mastermind that we host at Craft & Commerce as well, right? If you're sitting around a table with eight people, it's so much easier for you to be vulnerable. There's not really an opportunity for that in as many online sort of one-to-many. When I think about that, there's not as many opportunities for that.

6:12And I think the vulnerability of people being able to say, like, this is actually a big fear that I have in my business or a struggle that I'm really working through, there's not nearly as much time to do that. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think those repeated offline touch points also create more depth of that vulnerability as well, right? And I want to talk a little bit today about the integration back of that because I noticed even myself having been offline, meeting with some people from the lab, now being back online, I feel more connected to them and there's an integration piece there.

6:43One thing I'm curious about, like I have never, I mean, I host online events, I guess, through my community, but I've never hosted events or offline experiences to the scale that you have. I'm curious about how you think about like designing them and even deciding whether an experience, I talk about experience a bit broader than event, because I think it is more than an event. An experience should be offline or online or connected. Like, do you start kind of like a product marketer would like, let's define the customer problem or outcome we're solving for. And then you kind of back into, well, what does this look like?

7:13What does programming look like? So tell me just a little bit more about your process and how we should be thinking about it. Yeah. I think the thing that I'm looking for is like, what's the experience that I'm looking for the attendee to have? And then how am I going to accomplish giving them that experience? And often that the answer to that might actually be online. Like I can actually achieve that experience by doing something online or the answer might actually be, okay, this is actually going or needs to be an in-person sort of experience. And so with like craft and commerce, for example, you know, there's, we do large scale and small scale events pretty consistently and, or we show up in person to another event, right?

7:54And that's a totally different experience that I'm trying to create. But with craft and commerce, I'm trying to create an opportunity for other people to connect. My goal is to serve the attendees and I obsess over their experience. Like everything from like, they walk in, they see sponsors, you know, like there's food, there's cocktails, like every, like, what are the chairs like? Which, you know, we were, we're going to change that for Craft and Commerce next year, in case you're listening, you know, the chairs weren't so comfortable, but like we obsess over the actual experience of the attendee as they walk in.

8:26But to answer your question specifically, I'm looking for like, what, what do I want the outcome to look like? and then I back into what experience is going to help create that outcome. Okay. I think that makes a lot of sense. Like I can attest having been there. I definitely noticed those little details. Like I remember even at the welcome party, the fact that like the DJ was a creator resonated so deeply. Cause I was like, wow, it's like so often these companies and like, I've worked in the space as well before being a creator. It's like, you know, we say we support creators, but like, do we actually support creators in every little decision we made?

9:00And I felt like that kind of showed up. A little detail that you might not have thought of that I noticed, you know? Yeah. Here's, here's like a really stupid or simple example of this, but it's like, okay, I always say, Hey, look, what I'm creating for or optimizing for is human experience and human connection, right? Those hallway sort of conversations. And for our opening party, we used to have this like overly kind of, we'll say just like programmed opening party. And because I think that's what a lot of conferences did. So you're thinking like, we want to do that, or we'd have really loud music, you know?

9:36And I remember it was like two or three years ago, I was just like, turn down the music, turn down the music, turn down the music, because all people were wanted to do right when they got there was talk to their friends. And so rather than optimizing for this over-programmed opening and closing party, to be honest, you know, I wanted to optimize for human connection and opportunity. So we had more couches and we had more seating areas and we had the music was a little bit lower and the DJ played for not nearly as long because I don't think people want to necessarily party. They want to connect with their people.

10:09And so we would find that people might leave, you know, that let's say the closing party because the music started way too early and it was too loud. And, you know, they didn't get that final sign off with the people that they had just built all these relationships with. And they were just standing outside at the venue talking because it was too loud inside. And so I think that's, you know, an example of like, and me overly thinking about the experience that I'm trying to create for the attendee. No, I love that. I think it's one of those things of like, you always want to leave them wanting more as well.

10:39Right. So it's like, how do you have them leave the opening party and be like, Oh, I wish this would last longer. I can't wait to come back in the morning and kind of continue. How do you think about creating connection online? Or is that something you ever do think about? If it's a connection-based outcome that you're looking for, is it always the default goes to offline or how do you balance that? No, I mean, I think of online, like again, one to scale, right? Like we're thinking one to many. And so we do online events all of the time. And Shiv, who's my co-emcee at Craft & Commerce, he's our creator educator internally.

11:11And we've run a ton of online sort of educational things, whether it's webinars with partners or whether it's things like we're actually, for a long time, we ran a series where we were trying to build relationships with people that didn't have an opportunity to connect offline in order to help promote and encourage creator network connections. And so we are creating these like rapid, like hot seats where people could get connected and they could, you know, meet people from different, like complimentary industries. So that way they could create connections inside of the creator network. And so I think when I think about online versus offline.

11:47I mean, there's just so much nuance to it necessarily. And I think the experience for online is more centered around like very specific and intentional teaching for the most part. And then again, connection is more something that I think about offline. It was really hard to create. And that was just a lesson that we learned, but it was really hard to create that connection in that environment when we were trying to like really build out the creator network, because it's really hard to scale offline, much easier to scale online. Yeah. And I do think depending on how it's done, online connection can feel forced sometimes, you know, a hundred percent, a hundred percent, nothing more awkward than having to like think of an answer to an icebreaker in the moment.

12:32And yeah, it's uncomfortable. Before we dig into a few of the other initiatives you've worked on, cause I have some questions about those. Just curious about how do you think about designing moments that kind of will stick around with attendees of your events, whether it's an online event or offline event? Like I find so many conferences or meetups or dinners we go to, it's like by the next day you've kind of forgot about it. You had fun in the moment, then you moved on. But like there are some that I will literally talk about weeks, months, maybe even a year later. What's the secret sauce to that?

13:08Ooh, okay. So we had this moment that I really loved in a mastermind that we hosted beforehand with Craft and Commerce with our partners at Ultra Speaking. So Tristan and Michael from Ultra Speaking, who are some of our, Tristan Montebello was one of our keynotes and they did workshops as well. And they led a session in the mastermind and they actually created this experience, right, where we were playing some live games. They did this in their workshop as well. Did you participate in that workshop by chance? I did not. There's so many good ones to go to. There are so many good ones to go to. And the thing about it is, is that we had a couple of creators come up.

13:47Actually, my favorite moment was Tim Grawl. So they're describing this exercise that they're going to have somebody do. And I'm standing off to the side and I see Tim Grawl, who's one of my favorite humans. And he just has this giant smile on his face, like super big smile on his face. And they called for a volunteer. And I said, I'm volunteering someone. And I was like, volunteering Tim Grawl because the smile was just, I was loving it. And he was like, what? And it was a pretty, you know, he's in front of 60 of the biggest creators that are in the room or 60 or 70 of the biggest creators that are in the room.

14:21And he went through this actual exercise. And then we had Thomas Frank, who's a large YouTuber. And then he got up and he did this other exercise where, and I'm blanking on what it was called, maybe the roller coaster or something. oh, conductor. And they had to increase, you know, and increase their volume based on a number is as far as when they're public speaking and the actual practice of doing something and then live coaching them through this practice, which is something that's ultimately going to help them become more comfortable with public speaking and engaging their tone and, you know, and whatnot.

14:57That was one of those, I can't put my finger on it exactly, but if I had to say the number of people that came up to me to talk about the experience they had with ultra speaking north of 50, um, north of 50 people came up to me just to say, they're like, Tristan is like the human form of Xanax. And like all, you know, like I loved that quote. I thought it was amazing, but it was because what they, they actually taught while they, they brought somebody up and they were teaching and people were experiencing, they weren't just saying, this is what you should do. And I think that was something that really connected with people.

15:34Yeah, I try to do that in more of the events I'm doing as well. And Justin Moore actually did that in his workshop, where Justin Moore's workshop was like how to pitch a sponsorship. And it was stressful in the moment because it was like, who wants to come up? And we had this like calculator, like thing that would just create a brand that you needed to pitch for. He was playing those sponsor games. Exactly. The sponsor games. Yes. So, um, but like that has stuck around in my mind and there was a few other workshops I went to that haven't stuck around is, and not to say they weren't great, but there weren't those sticky moments.

16:06It's, it's really like the actual, I mean, what I want for the workshops, right. Is that somebody walks away because at the end of the day, you go to these events and you are, you are flooded with information. Now, what I know is there's a lot of practical things that you learn at an event. The number of notes that I have from events that I've been to where I've never actually implemented some of the things I wanted to implement. So the goal with the workshops, right, are ultimately to actually get something done in some capacity. And maybe that's practicing a thing like the way that Justin Moore facilitated it.

16:37Or maybe it's sitting down silently and building a chat GPT or a custom GPT with, you know, with Jordan, you know, from System Saved Me. And so the actual act of doing something, when you walk away, you're like, I don't have to implement this next week because I've already implemented it then. And I don't know if that answers your question, like what's super memorable about it, but it is something that like you can immediately take away and apply to your, you know, in the weeks following. I mean, I think how I'm interpreting it and even how I'm processing it as we're speaking is it, it is more than just listening, right?

17:11Like all of the things we've just talked about have been engaging and tangible in some way. And so that is what I'm taking away from this is like create some sort of collaborative experience as part of that event, even if there is a teaching component to the event. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I'd love to shift gears just slightly because another project that you also work on and have worked on for a while is Kit Studios, which, you know, you know, maybe people are going to be like, why are we talking about that when we're talking about events? But what brought it to mind for me was I think it's a very important in real life experience that is a continuation of your product and your brand.

17:49And so I would love to just hear more about maybe for the folks who have no idea what we're talking about, what is Kit Studios? And then, you know, what sparked the idea for this? Yes. Okay. So Kit Studios is essentially a free, fully capable recording video recording podcast studio that we make accessible to all of our clients. If you're a paying customer, you have access to kit studios. And so we have a Boise location, which is kind of our HQ, you know, because Nathan, I'm myself, I also live in Boise. And Nathan, we have his home recording studio there. And that's where we launched. And so we have five recording studios, all for different kind of use cases.

18:27We have a dual person studio, a group studio, and then we have two solo recording studios that are really good for folks that are making a course, or maybe they're recording a podcast like this. So they're dialing in remotely and they all have teleprompters and the best mics and the best cameras. And it is designed to where you can literally just plug in your computer and hit a single button and you are recording and live. And so that's essentially Kit Studios. We're opening up another one in New York, hopefully in the latter half of the year. and the starting point of it was, you know, in 2018, I remember sitting, we were at our team retreat, we were in Oceanside, California and Nathan gets up and he always does this company address at our team retreats as a remote company.

19:14We do them twice a year and, you know, it comes on a slide deck, you know, it's like creator community space or something. And he wanted like a coffee shop, you know, where creators could all come together and do lots of different things. and over the years that just, I wouldn't say it evolved, but it just kind of dissipated with other things that we were doing. And there wasn't really a clear vision for it before. It was, he knew that being in community with creators was wildly important. And, you know, that's, Craft and Commerce is an example of that, is that had launched the year prior. And he just wanted a space where creators could spend more time together more often.

19:56And last, it was two years ago now we were in Mexico and we had been looking at real estate and Nathan says, you know, I was like, all right, Nathan, like, are we going to do this? You know? And he goes, I mean, gosh, I really want to do it, but who's going to do it? And I was like, screw it. I'm going to do it, Nathan. I'm going to do it. Not my job necessarily, but I knew how important it was to the business, like from a branding perspective. I mean, there's so many great elements from a branding perspective, you know, and we can talk about those later. But ultimately, I think as a business, one of my favorite things that we do at Kit is serve our customers and serve even people that aren't or creators that aren't our customers is teaching everything that we know.

20:43And creating these studios allowed creators. There's this moment when we launched Chicago, where there was this woman and she was sitting and she sat in this chair. And I was like, this is my favorite camera angle. I want you to sit here and then I want you to look up on that screen and see how you look. Right. And she like it was the first time for her and her creator business where she was proud of the way that she was showing up. And we made it so easy and accessible because camera equipment is expensive. Microphones are expensive. Recording equipment is expensive. the SD cards that you're recording onto are expensive.

21:24And, um, you know, for the first time she just, she showed up and she looked the way that she wanted to look. And, uh, and I think that in that moment was the moment where I realized like how incredibly powerful and impactful, um, it was what we were building. So I don't know, that was a long story long, but there you go. No, I love it. And, um, I think I first heard about Kid Studios on like Nathan's podcast. I was listening and you were guys talking about it. And as a product marketer, I was kind of breaking down like, oh, that's interesting. Why do I think they did this? What are the benefits?

21:56And one of them is obviously differentiation as well, right? Like, you know, if people are comparing platform to platform, they may be looking for these little benefits of, well, I do have a big course I want to record. I could go in person to do that. I mean, you know, what's crazy is that we've had the number of people that we have had fly from across the country to record in Boise for their course. So they'll fly from New York to Boise. They will stay in Boise in a hotel for several days. They will record for, you know, two to three days straight because the cost is still less expensive than finding a studio in their own city.

22:34It also gives them, you know, the ability to like type or focus on a project and there's all those other benefits. But the fact that we made it so accessible and so easy and the cost is still, I mean, it's a huge cost for a lot of creators, right? You might be paying $5 ,000 to$10 ,000 just to produce a single course. And that is a huge differentiator when people are making decisions from one platform to another platform. And we'll say, especially with the speed of development at feature parity, and I'm not saying that we have feature parity with all of our competitors. But if someone's making a choice and a decision, they're like, hey, I live in New York City, I'm choosing between these two.

23:13And there's a kit studios that's right around the corner that I get access to for free if I choose kit. I mean, that's a reason in itself. Right. Totally. I think so, too. I currently live in Canada. I'm in Vancouver, but I'm moving to London. And so may I suggest that your next kit studios be in London? I am. I love that you're moving to London, I, we go there fairly often. I'm going to be back in September and, uh, but no, actually I am constantly pushing for London. Uh, we have a huge creator cohort or like, you know, customer base there. And I'm like, Oh, London. I, so I do all, I always do user research when I'm there.

23:49I'm like, Hey, what studios do you go to? And, uh, what would you like something like this? And amazing. Well, we'll have to connect after about London. And, uh, that sounds awesome. Um, Okay. One thing I have wondered around Kit Studios is how you're evaluating like the success of it, because I imagine you could go in a couple different directions here. Like, oh, this doesn't need to be profitable at all, or this is just a big brand play or a differentiator. So just walk me through how you and the team think about evaluating the impact of Kit Studios. Yeah. So we do measure pretty much everything.

24:23We measure the number of people that are coming in. We measure all of their feedback that they're coming in. We measure the guests that are coming in that aren't and aren't are and aren't customers. It's a little bit tough because right now in Boise, there's not a massive creator community in Boise, you know, the same way that there are in, let's say, Chicago, New York or L.A. or Austin. And Chicago is still in a soft launch. And that's because the building itself isn't completely completed. And so we were just waiting on things like the elevator to be done, you know, and stuff like that. But no, we track and pretty much measure everything.