2237 - Why Authenticity Matters More Than Ever in Advertising with FPW Media's Owen Garitty

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1:05With us right now, it's Owen Garrity. Owen, you are the founder and CEO of FPW Media. You're found on the web at fpwmedia.com. Owen, it's great to have you. Thanks, Josh. Thanks. I'm glad to be here. Yes. All right. Well, listen, before we talk about your superpowers and what you do with FPW, in your personal life, any hobbies or movies or music or TV shows that you've been into lately, gaming and just anything like that. What, what are you doing to, uh, to chill or what have you been geeking out on? Absolutely. So one of the things we've got going on right now is we're starting our garden for the season.

1:45I mean, it's a little bit under swing right now. Um, that's something that I started doing with my wife maybe three years ago, uh, just as a way. Yeah, there we go. Just as a way to completely de-stress. I'm terrible at it. I've killed so many plants. I don't have a green thumb at all, but there's something humbling about getting your hands in the dirt and it's a great way to disconnect from the digital world. Oh, completely. So in an effort to re-digitize your moment of Zen, have you been using ChatGPT or AI with your gardening? Definitely not. No, I think the goal is to be as analog as possible when it comes to that pursuit.

2:28It's really not about the outcome. It's the one thing I think that I do in the entire world that really the outcome doesn't matter. If we get a little bit of food, great. We're not trying to live off it by any means. Maybe we get two salads a year. Yeah, but you don't want to kill your stuff. So I was going to suggest is, for me, it's been the ultimate. So I've got, I'm in Orlando here. I've got everything, all the citrus trees and stuff. Like I still have killed stuff. So you're cheating is what you're saying. Oh, totally. Of course, because I don't want to have to keep going to the nursery and buying new stuff.

3:02And like, I would love to have some stuff thrive on its own, you know. So I do take a lot of photos and I say, all right, what does this plant need? And I got to tell you, that has been, that has allowed me to go from, you know, maybe just a handful of things to now I've got the full garden. I've got the full herb garden. I got plants and trees all over this crazy place. But I definitely need some help. Talk to me in a few years and maybe I will have overcome more growing. I now know what to look like if you've got fungus, if you've got pests, if you've got sun damage, you know, the watering's not right, under or over fertilize.

3:45Like I'm starting to pick up on, so you can just like look at something and just automatically know what it needs. I'm not there yet. I think my first step will be move to Florida and then it'll be a lot easier, right? Our growing season is so much shorter than your guys is. So that's what I say when you're cheating. You've got a little bit of a leg up, but that's okay. All right, yeah. Well, hey, let's talk about FPW Media. What does FPW stand for? Fast Pace World. Fast Pace World Media. So give us the overview of exactly what you do. Yeah, absolutely. So we're a three-divisional interconnected creative studio.

4:23So we do everything that a traditional marketing agency does plus, plus, plus, right? So we have a brand division that does everything from SEO to traditional advertising to concepting, creative strategy, graphic design, web design. Then we have a film studio, which is full on production in-house and on location, AR, VR, photo and video. And then we have a merchandise and experience division. So that's everything from a large entryway sign at a building location, all the way to custom trade show fabrication and experience integration, all the way down to like a branded pen, right? And everything in between.

5:07And our whole thing is that we have in-house the vast majority of all those service offerings. So like 95 % of our services are done completely in-house. We have a 25 ,000 square foot facility. And we have about 50 full-time employees at any given time, plus a number of contractors as well. Yeah. Well, how has your world been changing over the past year? Oh, man, a lot. I think that as technology continues to advance, we're seeing the need to integrate into various different systems that before maybe our data didn't touch. And so that's, I think, the number one biggest change is that the amount of places we need to push and pull data from is sort of like ever expanding, right?

5:52Because companies and clients are getting really smart about how they want to use their data. And so that's something that's been really impactful for us. Yeah. Well, and again, I would imagine, you know, AI has also kind of touched on your world. Obviously, you have access to better tools, but so does the rest of the world. So, Owen, what have you been doing as a creative industry to stay ahead of, you know, maybe better tools that have been accessible to potential clients? Yeah, so we were definitely an early adopter. AI is not necessarily a new thing for us. We've been working with it for quite some time.

6:31Part of our service offerings is training custom models that sit on the backbone of one of the large language models for clients with their own data. And so that's something that we've been really putting a lot of emphasis on here is getting our clients skilled up as far as using ChatGPT is one thing, but using an AI model that knows everything about your own data is a totally different thing, right? And you're going to have a much better outcome if you're using it as a really precision tool rather than just this thing that's like an ask and answer machine, right? Yeah. All right. Well, what trends have been going on in your world regarding branding, regarding creating these experiences?

7:20What is more in favor today? Yeah, I don't know about necessarily in favor, but really the thing that I am interested to talk about right now on that regard is that we have an authenticity issue, right? As these tools become more and more ubiquitous, I think what we're seeing is that advertising is starting to stray away from its core value proposition, which is it has to connect emotionally. You have to touch somebody in some way. And what we're seeing is that even if you overcome the uncanny valley with an image or video, the new Google AI is incredible. But then you're not even showing your real product.

7:57You're not showing a real person using that. and I think that people haven't quite figured out like what is that actually going to mean? If all you start to see on social media, I saw an interesting report that in the influencer space, they think that in the next couple of years, there's going to be more digital influencers than there are actual real influencers, right? Totally synthetic people. Oh, completely. Doing totally fake things. And so at a certain point, well then that entire thing loses its value, right? Because if you no longer can tell the difference between what is real and fake, why would you believe anything that you see?

8:29And I think we're already starting to see that, where I think that people are going to start striving for a certain level of emotional connection in advertising again. Because at the end of the day, the brands that just are pumping out this content, while it can be effective in the short run, I think there's going to be a boomerang effect. Well, tell me more about that. And what is the risk of an ad campaign or branding or whatever social media content that, you know, it feels synthetic? Yeah, I think the risk is authenticity, right? I think over the last, you know, maybe four or five years, what we've seen is that there's a huge amount of risk to brands of being inauthentic to their core audience, whether that be that they're on the wrong side of a social issue, or they do something that is deemed as really highly offensive to their core demographic.

9:18And so if you take that a step further, if you take, you know, really disconnect from the authenticity, if you stop showing people who actually are your customers, if you stop hearing the voices of the actual customers, you lose even more authenticity. And I think at a certain point, why would I buy that brand if I'm a customer versus the brand over here that's actually speaking to me, that's showing my neighbor, you know, the proverbial, my neighbor or my peer using or the product or service. And to be clear, I'm not anti-AI in any means. I love it, actually. It's an incredible tool in so many ways.

10:00But I think that the real risk for brands today is, especially when it comes to storytelling and ongoing content and an experience for a brand, it still has to be authentic. It doesn't mean you can't use AI in different parts of it, but it has to be authentic. Yeah. And, you know, boy, and there is, there quite is a cautionary tale to be told. And I think we've all had that experience where maybe we did feel like we had a personal experience with a brand or an individual, you know, in sales, for example, you know, let's say that you have a really great conversation with someone and then they just start sending you like this automated stuff.

10:41It's like, whoa, wait a minute. I thought we had something special here. And now you're just kind of relegating me to, you know, an imposter version of you. I know as, you know, someone that might be a little bit more empathic. I know I've felt that before. And I feel like feel a little ripped off. Like, I just like, that's not connection. And I, it actually is, it's a big net negative. absolutely and i think that in a world where we are seeing you know thousands of ads a day what's going to stop somebody scrolling right yes it's something that's provocative that can work but it's also something that connects and so you know just getting somebody to stop is one thing but then are they actually going to take a further evolving journey with your brand only if it's authentic and only if, to your point, it's emotionally impactful, right?

11:33You have to connect with that individual on an individualized emotional basis, or else they're not going to continue that journey with you as a brand. Are you, so I see that you do photography, video, films, that sort of thing. What does that, when you say you do that work with FPW, like what would be some examples of a video based work that, that FPW does? Yeah. So we do everything from like a traditional 32nd TV commercial. That's being just, you know, on primetime broadcast all the way to a branded corporate documentary. Right. So some think, think half an hour or an hour long piece and everything in between.

12:17We do social content. We do it the full spectrum. And again, we use AI in many parts of those processes. So no way am I trying to say we're not into that as a tool. It's just we want to make sure that when we're planning those out and how we work with clients is that we're focused on the story. Why are we telling this, right? We know we need a commercial, but okay, what are we saying, right? Let's not just talk about product and price. Let's talk about what are we solving for the customer? What's the pain point? And why are we the person to solve that for them? You know, or beyond that, right?

12:57That's just at a very base level. You operate in a 19 ,000 square foot facility. Tell me what you got there. Yeah, so we're actually up to about 24, 5. So since I think since that statistic sheet, we've at least a little bit more space. But so when you walk in, you know, you see really like unfinished industrial space. We've always wanted to be different in the sense of a lot of agencies want this really flashy downtown address and very sleek offices. And we kind of take this opposite approaches. We're very industrial. It's warehouse space, some office, but it's it's creation space. Right. We want our clients to see that we're putting their money back into the company in the form of equipment and people.

13:42And so that's when you see when you walk in, right? You see a lot of really, really talented individuals doing really cool stuff and see a lot of really expensive equipment producing stuff, right? So we have our own embroidery machines. We have a huge, you know, psych wall that you can fit a semi truck inside of, right? We have the space to wrap a tanker truck, for instance, with branded vehicles or branded graphics for the vehicle, I should say. And we have the space to do full trade show setups where we can actually model what does it look like? What's the interaction? What are the sight lines?

14:15So it's all about having that really flexible, creative space for us. Yeah. And where do your clients typically come from? You've worked with companies like SoFi, Army National Guard, Amazon, a bunch of other big brands, and it looks like a bunch of SMBs as well. From a business development standpoint, what do you do? Yeah, so we're lucky enough that we're a marketing company that hasn't marketed much in the majority of our history. So I would say about 90 % of our client relationships come from referrals. We tend to work with clients for, you know, multiple years. and as far as our growth trajectory, we've just worked to staff to keep up with those referrals and make sure that each new client that's onboarded is getting that absolute top tier level of customer service.

15:04Yeah. Your website, fpwmedia.com. To our friend that's been listening to our conversation, what would be, I don't know if you have any resources that you'd like to share or certainly if someone is at that level where they may be interested in having a conversation, What are the next steps? Yeah, so people can always reach us at our website, like you said, fbwmedia.com. We have some great articles, some in-depth, some white papers on some of the stuff we've talked about. People can also reach me at my website, owengarrity.com, and even schedule a meeting if you want to talk through either platform.

15:39Also following us on social. I'm on all the major platforms at Owen Garrity, as well as the brand, fbwmedia, is on all the major platforms as well. Owen Garrity, founder and CEO at fpwmedia.com, the website fpmedia.com. Thank you so much for joining us, Owen.

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