Eric Dick (4:41)

So you literally came from the streets.

Josh Suggs (4:42)

Came from the streets.

Eric Dick (4:44)

Can you talk about any of your big client wins from those early days? Like what were, what were some of the, I don't know, best results or best content you were able to produce the content you were most psyched about?

Josh Suggs (4:52)

Yeah, I mean, pretty early on I, because of Twitter and because of referrals, I was able to, you know, Breeze was one of my first clients ever and Aaron, I gave him a little bit cheaper rate and he was like, I'll post the videos on Twitter. I went out that summer. I think it was August of 2024 when I did manage street videos for Breeze. FaceTimed Aaron at the Apple Store while I was uploading the footage from the day and I was like, guys, I can't wait to show you guys the videos that next day. Had it edited, ready to go. I gave a 24 hour turnaround time. The video is a banger. It cooked in their ad account. He posted it on Twitter, tagged me, and he drove me like 15 clients from that post.

Eric Dick (5:32)

This is something that we've done at D2C. It's again something we see at Pilothouse that works. Why do you think? Let's get into the mechanics of why street talk man on the man on the street style interviews work. Why do you think they work so well?

Josh Suggs (5:44)

Totally for a bunch of reasons. One, it brings your customer through your entire funnel in 45 seconds, right? From awareness, consideration to conversion. All in that 45 Second street interview video you're now making someone your brand's exact demographic is who you go out and find on the street. We go make them aware about your brand. We make them consider it by trying it, by tasting it, by having them review it. Then we make them convert by giving their real testimonial of why they love your brand. And that will convert way more trust with the viewer watching that video than any paid influencer, paid UGC video or scripted commercial every single time. Then it doesn't look like an ad, right? It looks like a regular, engaging content form that's native to the feed that someone's going to naturally consume. Right. People are on social media to be entertained. They're on social media not to watch commercials so your ads can't look like ads. And that's exactly why street interview ads have been the top performing ads for grooms, for Dr. Squatch, for Factor meals, for goalie carnival snacks, everyday dose David Monopoly board games and dozens and dozens, dozens more.

Eric Dick (6:48)

That's why do they have to be funny? Because most of the time when I see men on the street interviews, they're funny, they're outrageous. Like do they have to be that or can they be straight?

Josh Suggs (6:56)

You still want to follow direct response marketing principles but on the street, right. So what we do is you can send out any, anyone with a microphone to go get reactions that's not going to convert in your ad account. Right. We've done 15,000 on the street videos. We know exactly how can make them drop your cac, increase your roas and make these perform by following direct marketing principles and still doing problem solution formats. For example, let's say you're inside duration liquid id right. We'll go out and I'll say what's your worst hangover story? Tell me their hangover story after 10 seconds. Well what do you do when you're hungover? Oh well I go get a bacon of cheese. You want to bake any cheese? You need electric sea salt, right. You need these premium electrolytes. You need value props. Value props, value props, value props. We actually have it with us. Do you want to give it a try? But live taste test, you're not talking about the pain points of why someone's actually going to buy the brand from their exact demographic. A use case of why they would go out and purchase it. Now as the consumer when I watch that make I get hungover. I need electrolytes. This is, this is a reason I would buy that product. I trust that way more and it's a reason that make me actually want to purchase your product not just watching entertaining video. Right. If I'm Celsius people are buying Celsius for the taste that tastes like orange. Right. A lot of people would go out if I'm a brand and I'm trying to figure out how to go to stream I see this time and time again on sales calls like we can just have someone else ask to try a product that's not like someone buying the product to buy a product for what it does for them. And that's exactly what street talk does and why our streamyards actually perform in ad accounts and super wild.

Eric Dick (8:18)

And it's also like people would almost pay for this just for the ad intelligence site or the intelligence side, like the product. The product feedback cycle, like I imagine it, you know, the things that people say end up finding their ways into other ads and, you know, other UGC ads and things. Because that's really what you're looking for, is people's honest responses, right?

Josh Suggs (8:35)

Exactly. And we give all of our clients the raw content as well, and we encourage all of our clients to use the raw content and use it in their founders as their VSLs or UGC content. A lot of the times these streaming reactions have a higher hook rate than any ad in your entire ad account. So why not? If you have a UGC ad that it's really hard, direct response, it's doing super, super well, why not sub it out with a stream hook into that same direct response ad? And that's what a lot of our clients do. And that's been absolutely crushing for our clients as well.

Eric Dick (9:03)

Cool. Where does this live in an ad account? Like, how does it. You know, we're always talking about creative diversity on the podcast. We're always talking about different avatars. How does, how do, how do these ads fit in an ad account, essentially?

Josh Suggs (9:15)

Yeah. So in your ad account, right, you need pillars, right? So you need podcast ads, you need founders ads, you need unboxing, you need UGC content, and you need authenticity now more than ever, you need authenticity. Consumers hate AI slop. They don't trust AI slop. And brands are. They're finally starting to come around to it now they're realizing we can use AI to make funny cartoon ads that are blatantly AI Consumers don't want to feel tricked. They want to feel bamboozled. So for the brands that are out there faking their stream reviews, that's going to destroy your customers trust. Don't. Don't try to fake them by doing a fake stream review. That's going to take you 10 hours to prompt it. No, do AI ads. That's gonna be a pillar in every single Brand's ad account. 100%. But guess what else is gonna be a pill in your ad account? Authenticity. And that's exactly what we're selling. Your customer's raw, authentic human emotion reaction to your brand. And then nothing else is gonna build trust like a street interview ad.

Eric Dick (10:09)

All right, so say we're talking about my side hustle building a. An electrolytes brand. We're at scale already. Let's say, what does the process look like? I come to you guys, I'm like, all right, like, what do you need from us to make sure that you can go out there and crush some interviews.

Josh Suggs (10:22)

You're going to give us a very comprehensive onboarding material that's going to be your top performing ads, your value props. What makes you guys different? Who's your customer? What are their pain points? Why are they buying? You're going to give us all that material. From there you're going to hop on an onboarding call. We're going to discuss vision right for factor right. We'd be walking around with microwaves for prize picks we had people at the super bowl and doing a whole activation that's where he says exactly what we want to do together. From there our trade strategists are going to brief a five page debrief out like a dozen different streaming concepts targeting your brand and exactly what's going to be able not to stop in the street and have fun with your brand but also convert in your ad account. Every month we go out and we film and stream the ads in every single major city in America. Edit it and get it for the brand run paid media.

Eric Dick (11:05)

You said this earlier these are quite often the top winners in the accounts.

Josh Suggs (11:09)

We've got brands from 40k a month to 750,000amonth and spend I mean we're prized picks top ad for almost five months now I was up against 8,000 creatives and our streamyards been their top ad and prize picks entire creative portfolio.

Eric Dick (11:22)

So I, I even just back to your to your origin story like you're 20 you 23 or 24.

Josh Suggs (11:27)

I just turned 23. I mean even cloudy cloudy was scaled heavily during COVID I'm sure you OG this even before tabs their account average was a 1.3 ROAS. Our stream views last month 2.8 ROAS wild.

Eric Dick (11:39)

So the scaling of the business has just come from the result. Like you you see these results you see how it's working.

Josh Suggs (11:45)

I turned on ads four weeks ago. We scaled to a four and a half million dollar run rate from referrals and retention.

Eric Dick (11:50)

That's yeah that's just like operators talking probably right?

Josh Suggs (11:54)

That's just when we got shouted out. My first million I was on the COVID of the Wall Street Journal on the operators marketing podcast with Cody and Cody from Jones Road and Hexclass founder they talk about us all the time. I mean it's just from word of mouth referrals and us being enterprise clients. You know top performing ads and ad account they share with their friends.

Eric Dick (12:11)

What do you think stops because I think a lot of brands know this is a good idea. And they, and they, they're going to sign up with you guys, but what stops them from doing it themselves?

Josh Suggs (12:19)

Yeah, I mean, I can go out there and try to figure out how to, you know, cook you a hamburger or you have Gordon Ramsay cook you a hamburger. Right. Like, it's hard to do. We have all the data. We know how to make these streamy ads. Not just you can't go to stomp the street, but actually performing your ad account. 15,000 of these ads. Do you want to go have some random person walk around microphone and try to get people to make, you know, talk about your brand? Or he wants to actually go out there and make you an ad that's going to convert. You want to pay us anywhere from 7,500 bucks all the way up to $20,000, depending on who you are and the scope of work. But do you want to pass, you know, half of what you pay a salaried worker to figure out how to go and do this or. Right. Do you want to go try to figure out for six months how to make this work for yourself?

Eric Dick (13:00)

Are there any categories of brand that this doesn't work for?

Josh Suggs (13:03)

It's harder to do it for, you know, brick and mortar stores. It's harder to do this for, you know, like insurance companies, software that's like a little bit less mass market. And we've had success. I mean, settlement, settlement. We took from 40,000, 45,000amonth to spend to 550,000amonth in spend in less than nine months. That's from streams and podcast ads.

Eric Dick (13:25)

It just makes sense that you're all, we're all. You're always looking for ways to grow your awareness, and people instantly recognize things as either AI or ads very quickly. This has this native ad format that, yeah, that idea that you can kind of access the full funnel in a well done interview here is pretty attractive.

Josh Suggs (13:42)

When we scaled from referrals, the questions were, why wouldn't a brand do this? Why wouldn't a brand? It makes absolutely no sense. Right. Because at the end of the day too, I was on the brand side before this. I got pitched by vendors left, right and center at Tabs, I'm sure as, you know, as a vendor, you want to work with the tabs, you want to work with the grooms, you want to work with the doctor watch to add the logos to your website. So at Tabs, every single vendor wanted to work with Tabs. Right. So I was on the reverse. I understand every vendor, you know, is trying to we're the best, we're the best for the best. At the end of the day, I'm not here to sell you media buying. I'm not here to sell you stuff that doesn't work. I'm here to take your product and go have your exact demographic react well to it, edit it and give it to you. Who doesn't want that?

Eric Dick (14:25)

For those listening interested, what does your model look like so they could like. And then for what size of brand is this applicable?

Josh Suggs (14:31)

I mean so we packages from 5,000amonth all the way up to 25,000amonth, right? So we work with brands that are spending 50 to 100k a month on Meta and we work with brands spending 10 to 20 million a month on Meta. So really just, you know, we ranges in all scopes. But if, if a brand has, you know, UGC content is working, has product market fit and is looking to scale with creative, that's, that's usually, you know, when we kick off we get brands that come to us all the time that haven't even launched yet and that doesn't really make sense. You should have some traction already.

Eric Dick (15:03)

Street talk.com Any other key aspects that you'd want to highlight?

Josh Suggs (15:07)

Also this like the infrastructure and the complexity to it, right. Like a lot of people like, oh, it's just go down to a street review. I would have my entire bedroom filled with consumer brands. I lived in a TikTok shop. Then we got a storage locker. So 10 minutes from Washington Square park there's a storage locker with 250 consumer brands that you see all over your feed all day long. Then my production manager goes to that storage locker. He then puts everything on a trolley, wheels that trolley to Washington Square park. Then we have 25 different hosts come to Washington park, meet them and they get trained every single week. Every week we have street talkers calls and we train them and then we're basically making it so that this becoming a street interviewer is going to be a mainstream job in the gig economy. Right? The 9 to 5 is over. Corporate America is dead. But being a content creator is the biggest thing in the world. And now you don't need to be a have a Jake Paul level following to make money on social media. You can be you, you can me, you can be my cousin, you can be whoever. It can be my dog walker and make money on social media, right? So going out and being a street talker is going to be a global jump. The same way you're an Uber driver, the same way you work at a fast food restaurant the same way you go do anything. If you want to make four to $10,000 a month, you can sign up. And you're not going to be a street talker in Brazil, in Europe, in China and in every major city, every college campus, everywhere. I mean we're going to be a global powerhouse because every single brand in the world needs content and every single brand is a media company. So we're going to supply them with that media.

Eric Dick (16:36)

Yeah, I think you answered the question too about what, you know, what stops brands from doing themselves. It's that scalability. I think you make a really good point. Just I think it was 8 hours ago block mentioned, you know, Jack Dorsey talked about laying off 25, 30% of his entire staff because of AI. Like humans are going to need to find new ways to make money and to be useful and like, and leaning into something just like human conversations, even if they're, you know, about products. I could definitely see a big place for it, 100%.

Josh Suggs (17:04)

And reaction. Content is the backbone of social media. Right. So I mean that's how social media started was reactions. So this is going to be the content format that's going to drive engagement trust for years and years and years to come. Red carpet people get interviewed. The late night show interviews are what consumers around the world watch. We're interviewing people now about brands and the ads are absolutely crushing.

Eric Dick (17:27)

Any insights around platform? We've mentioned Meta. You mentioned TikTok a little bit. Any about rising platforms or the platforms that like. Does this work on reels as well and Facebook and all that?

Josh Suggs (17:37)

Yeah, I mean so these are mostly used for brand scaling on Meta. They need creative diversity. Andromeda's, you know, up their ad account. They need creative diversity now more than ever. Knobs Toothpaste is one of the fast growing toothpaste brands in the country right now that he's launched in 100 targets nationwide. We've been their top ad on TikTok for 15 months for over a year now. They've been a client for. So they do work on other channels. YouTube Clover, I'm not sure you know the fintech company Clover. There's they're running ads still to this day that I made for them over a year and a half ago on YouTube. We shoot everything horizontally so that way we could edit it for short from video as well as run as YouTube. Those run on TV. We have brands run our stuff on TV ads for sure.

Eric Dick (18:16)

All right, DTC people go to StreetTalk.com great domain by the way, that's a good one to lock up.

Josh Suggs (18:22)

Thank you. I'm really excited. And if you're a brand founder, shoot me a DM on Twitter. We're actually starting the street talk show where I'm going to be interviewing on a walk brand founders. So come and walk and talk with me. We're going to walk to Washington Square park, and then we're going to do streaming with your brand and have you be the host. Because again, Undercover Boss, I do walk

Eric Dick (18:40)

and talks every day. I take meetings. Walking, walk and talk is such a good thing to brand around. I think. I think you got something there.

Josh Suggs (18:45)

He's coming and do it.

Eric Dick (18:47)

Okay, I'm in. Josh, thanks for coming on the DTC podcast today, man. This was awesome. Lots of good info for everyone. Go check out streettalk.com Hell, yeah.

Josh Suggs (18:54)

Eric, thank you so much.

Eric Dick (19:02)

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now @directtoconsumeralloneword.co. i'm Eric Dick, and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.