← Marketing Beyond with Alan B. Hart
Marketing Beyond with Alan B. Hart
442: Navigating E-Commerce Evolution and Shifting Consumer Trends with Chris Carl, the U.S. Head of Marketing at AliExpress
00:32:24
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:32]
Chris Carle
New year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions. A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront.
- [00:51]
Ryan Reynolds
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Chris Carle
For all of us, it's about predicting.
- [01:08]
Ryan Reynolds
Where the consumer is going and getting.
- [01:10]
Chris Carle
Half of it right. One of the things we want to do is create ads that don't suck. Embracing change creates great possibility.
- [01:22]
Alan Hart
I'm Alan Hart and this is Marketing Today. On the show today, I've got Chris Carle. He's the first US Head of marketing for Aliexpress. And Chris focuses on making online shopping more engaging and affordable. And Since May of 2023, Chris has increased order volume by 60%, increased brand share of voice by 75%, expanded headcount by 400% and boosted social media following by 500% and doubled brand awareness. I mean, it's quite a mouthful. And on the show today, we'll talk a little bit about what AliExpress is, how it fits into the Alibaba enterprises. We'll talk about the advertising campaigns and partnerships that they're formed specifically around UEFA and David Beckham. In their latest campaign, we'll talk about consumer behavior and the future of E commerce and where they're trying to capitalize on trends. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Chris.
- [02:21]
Chris Carle
Carl.
- [02:27]
Alan Hart
Well, Chris, welcome to the show.
- [02:29]
Chris Carle
Thank you, Alan. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
- [02:31]
Alan Hart
Yeah, I know we're going to talk a lot about Aliexpress and the business and what you guys are up to. But before we get there, I hear You've had a brush with fame. Maybe a little less than either our 15 minutes or 15 seconds. I can never remember the saying. And I would love to hear a little bit more about this.
- [02:49]
Chris Carle
Yeah, it was actually more like two or three seconds if you really, if you really want the exact number. But yeah. I lived in New York for almost 10 years and I guess in an alternate life, I always wanted to be an actor. And you know how when you walk around New York, you inevitably stumble onto the movie set or a series being shot. And that really always fascinated me and I kind of put it on my bucket list that I really wanted to be an extra on a series or on a movie. Surprisingly easy to do that. So I signed up with Amazon's marvelous Ms. Maisel and I think you might have seen that in the past.
- [03:24]
Alan Hart
Oh yeah, that's one of my favorite shows or series, I should say. So. Yes.
- [03:29]
Chris Carle
Well, you'll want to look at season three, episode six, among other things. But yeah, so appeared as an extra on Marvelous Ms. Maisel and what was supposed to be kind of a one time thing turned into a multi month endeavor. They actually called me back for some other episodes. I eventually also did two episodes for the Deuce on HBO with James Franco. So that's such a quintessential New York experience. And it's surprisingly easy to do that if anybody wants to check it out. And yeah, fun fact.
- [04:02]
Alan Hart
I love that. I love that. Especially since I know Marvelous Mrs. Maisel too. I'm going to have to go back and watch, see if I can find you three seconds. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, that is very New York. Well, Chris, you're now the US head of marketing at AliExpress. How did you get your start in your career post your brush with fame?
- [04:25]
Chris Carle
Yeah, I guess advertising and marketing have always been a huge part of my life, kind of in my family's DNA. On my mother's side, pretty much everybody was in marketing or advertising at some point. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandfather actually worked on Madison Avenue for J. Walter Thompson as a creative director in the 50s and 60s. So he really lived those, those best Mad Men days. And that really romanticized the whole advertising and marketing space for me from a very early age on. And so when I did my first internship, that was in the marketing department of Calvin Klein fragrances in New York. That's when I really started to understand, wow, the powerful storytelling aspect of marketing is what really fascinates me.
- [05:07]
Alan Hart
Right.
- [05:07]
Chris Carle
You go out and you buy a 60, $70 bottle of fragrance that probably only costs like one or two dollars to make. And really that delta is all storytelling and marketing. And the same goes for the spirits industry and to a large degree the fashion industry. And that's what really fascinated me. And so when I graduated university, I joined BBDO in Germany, where I'm from originally. And starting a career at an agency really is incredibly eye opening. It's a huge learning curve. You get to work across so many accounts in an ideal world. So I, you know, I developed pricing strategies for a Swedish shipping company. I helped a European restaurant chain enter the Swiss market. I helped a European fashion brand develop their e commerce strategy and retail operations. So that really set me up for success. And for my next chapter. I was asked to open the US office for a influencer marketing agency that was based out of Hamburg, Germany. So I moved to New York. This is 2014, 2015. Influencer marketing was really just starting out and it was highly disruptive. It's kind of like AI now, obviously to a lesser degree, but very impactful on the world of marketing. So everybody was trying to figure out, what do we do with influencer marketing, how do we monetize that, how do we use it? And our agency was just really good at productizing it, at integrating it into the marketing mix. And so we, we really built this company into one of the leading agencies in the world. They're still around. They're called Pulse Advertising. So I led that US division for about four years. Worked mainly for fashion clients, spirit clients, beauty clients. It was a really, really fun ride before I then decided to take all that marketing knowledge and put it into my own brand. So I started a men's grooming brand heavily focused around influencer marketing. Of course we sold D2C but also through retail. So we were in over 100 stores in North America. And running your own business is a huge challenge, but also very, very rewarding at times. And so that was just a great experience. And then when I, when I was presented with the opportunity to become AliExpress's first head of marketing in the U.S. i seized that opportunity because it was essentially taking what I had learned previously to a much bigger stage. And basically now my team and I are responsible for shaping business strategy for AliExpress here in the U.S. leading marketing efforts. And over the past one and a half years, we've really made a tremendous impact. We've helped grow order volume by 60%, we've increased our US brand awareness by over 300%. We've increased our media share of voice dramatically. So it's been a very, very rewarding chapter so far.
- [07:45]
Alan Hart
Wow. I mean those are some amazing stats you're putting up. But first I have to say for somebody that's from Germany, you do not sound like a German.
- [07:55]
Chris Carle
So I hope that's a good thing.
- [07:57]
Alan Hart
Well, I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just like, it's unusual. You've got like the perfect actor accent, I guess, building on your brush with fame earlier. I don't think people would know, but I'm sure your German is impeccable. So I will not, will not ask you to because I will not be able to interpret anything. But I just had to make that comment because it did, it did jolt me at first. But going from agency to your point and all of the experiences you've built there, both in Germany and in the US with influencer marketing and then launching your own brand and now Alibaba, I mean those are some big swings, if you will. Any thoughts as like as you took the helm at AliExpress, things you could leverage from those prior experiences?
- [08:43]
Chris Carle
I think most importantly the, the entrepreneurial spirit and drive were probably being a little bit fearless and just trying things out is really important. Overcoming ambiguity, those things I think are really important to understand and know how to deal with. As I mentioned, this role was brand new for the US and so we started basically from scratch was a startup mentality within a gigantic company. I'm not sure if you're your listeners, everybody obviously has heard of Alibaba, but I think it's really interesting to look at the, at the history of the company and, and how impactful and impressive this company really is and the, the scale of it. So back in 99, Alibaba Group was founded by Jack Ma, who probably most people know, but it was a, it was an era of tremendous growth right in, in China. The manufacturing space was exploding and exporting goods all over the world. And so the genesis of, of the company was how do we connect buyers from around the world directly with Chinese manufacturers, cutting out all the middlemen, really offering very, very low prices and access to everything conceivable under the sun that you can buy. And so that was the genesis of Alibaba.com, which launched in 99 as a business to business marketplace, quickly gained a lot of traction, got a lot of international attention. Yahoo invested, SoftBank invested. And so Alibaba really grew into this tremendous company that expanded into logistics, into financial services, cloud computing. We've also been investing heavily in AI over the past couple of years. We actually just announced a partnership with Nvidia for autonomous driving this past weekend. And so in 2014 when Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange, it was actually the biggest IPO in New York Stock Exchange's history. Raised $25 billion. And so really today Alibaba is this larger than life company, one of the biggest e commerce players in the world, one of the biggest technology companies in the world. We employ almost a quarter of a million employees. And I think a lot of people don't really realize that this is such a relevant company in today's world. And the way AliExpress fits into that in 2010, in the wake of the financial crisis, that's when AliExpress started because we were seeing that many customers experiencing financial hardship were actually shopping in bulk on Alibaba.com, but it wasn't really initially meant for the end consumer. It was meant for buyers for brands around the world. And so based on these requests from the customers, hey, we want to buy individual items. That was when the whole idea of AliExpress came about. Connecting the end consumer with these manufacturers would be something really powerful. So that idea was really pioneering, really one of the pioneers to scale cross border commerce. And that has resulted in us today having over 300 million customers in over 100 countries. We offer hundreds of millions of products across really all possibly imaginable categories. Fashion, tech, home beauty. And we've always focused on choice and price as our main driver. We can offer pretty much anything under the sun at highly competitive rates because we cut out all these individuals, layers and intermediaries. So that's kind of just I'll express in Alibaba in a nutshell.
- [11:57]
Alan Hart
No, I appreciate that. And I mean because my first experience I guess, or hearing about Alibaba and Jack Ma and the enterprise that he's, he's built over many years was many, many years ago. I was working with a Chinese entrepreneur in the US about it was bridging education, so bringing students from China to the US to study graduate studies and undergraduate studies. And he kept talking about Jack Ma and I finally looked him up. This was many years ago and at that time it was super impressive. But the organization and the, the ecosystem of companies has just only gotten bigger. And to your point, I don't think people fully understand the breadth or, or scope of what's been created. So thank you for that and thank you also for explaining a little bit more about AliExpress. So you got, you're leading U.S. marketing for AliExpress. Where are you guys going in the U.S. what's your aspirations? What are you driving towards?
- [12:50]
Chris Carle
Yeah, I mean, naturally, as a marketing team, our main goal is to drive brand awareness, to build trust here in the US to just get this message of your dollar goes further at AliExpress to our consumers. And yeah, I mean, as you know, the US e commerce space is incredibly competitive. It's the biggest in the world. $1 trillion, over $1 trillion being spent every year on E commerce. Obviously, you have to do a good job here if you want to convince the American consumer that you're the right place to shop at. And so we do that in two ways. Externally, as the marketing team, we of course focus on developing a really robust, integrated marketing approach. How do we leverage sports? How do we leverage popular culture to really execute storytelling driven campaigns that really resonate with our audience? How do we convey to our audience that we have the best value proposition out there where there are so many choices where consumers can shop? Right. So that's externally our main job. How do we figure that out? How do we speak to our customers? And internally, on a business level, we're also working around the clock to make improvements to our business. So we've recently relaunched our app experience. So that has gotten much better. It's redesigned. Browsing our hundreds of millions of products is now easier than ever. But it also means how do we improve shipping times? We've dramatically reduced our shipping time, so now most items arrive in less than 10 days. We do price matching now. Right? So if you, if you buy something and it gets further discounted, we give you the difference if it's within 30 days of purchase. We now offer free returns on millions of items. We offer refund guarantees. And I think what's most importantly, we are really working on increasing our live customer service. So now actually we. More than half of all interactions with customer service are with localized agents. And that's a big deal for our customers because, you know, they have a lot of questions they want to ask about our products. And if we can answer that in real time with real humans, that is something that really makes a difference. And so these are the things that we're focusing on as the US Marketing team right now.
- [14:59]
Alan Hart
I love it. I love it.
- [15:03]
Ryan Reynolds
Did you know one in two women wear the wrong foundation? Matching foundation is hard, but il maquillage makes it easy. Take the power match quiz to find a perfect match in seconds, customized to your unique skin tone, undertone and coverage needs with 600,000 five star reviews. Woke up like this is our best selling foundation for a reason. Available in 50 shades of weightless natural coverage. And with Try before youe Buy. You can try your full size at home for 14 days. Just pay shipping. Take the quiz@ilmaquillage.com Quiz that's IL M A K I A G E.com Quiz.
- [15:33]
Chris Carle
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be. To be.
- [16:05]
Alan Hart
Well, you said it right that the market, e commerce market is exceptionally competitive. As someone in E commerce like, what do you see as the state of U.S. consumers today?
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Chris Carle
Yeah, the U.S. consumer. First of all, the U.S. consumer is literally the backbone of our economy. Especially here in the US Consumer spending drives pretty much everything. GDP heavily relies on our consumer spending. And so if you look at what consumers have been through the last couple of years, it's been a real rollercoaster ride ever since 2020. If we look at inflation, actually 65% of consumers this year are saying that they're experiencing financial hardship because of rising prices. And I don't know if you saw but this morning the consumer confidence index came out and it's dropped the most in the last three years today. So that's leading to different spending behaviors. Right. People are starting to cancel their gym memberships. They're maybe looking at a different mobile provider. Maybe they're just choosing different brands. And that leads to overall just a more value shopping minded shopping behavior. So we actually see a lot of people ditch brand loyalty and just switch brands to save. In fact, 90% of people or consumers in the US say that they will continue to switch brands to save money. And that is very apparent in a recent Salesforce study that came out that says that this holiday season, one in five consumers are actually going to shop with a Chinese shopping app that includes of course AliExpress. So that's a huge shift of consumer spending going to different channels, going to different brands and retailers that maybe weren't around a couple of years ago. And that of course is a big deal for us as well. This Is true across the board. Right. So you look at Gen Z spending behavior, I think 1 in 2 Gen Z shoppers say that they shop at discount stores and only 9% of them shop at luxury retailers. And we've been observing on social media since the beginning of the year there's this trend that's called loud budgeting where people shamelessly talk about how they love to save money and how that's actually something cool and celebrated and shouldn't be frowned upon. Right. So these are all things that are happening because of what the consumer has been through. And if you look at the other end of the spectrum, boomers, for instance, 80% of them say that price is a huge factor in their purchase decision on a daily basis. That's more than any other generation. So it's really affecting people across the board and. Yeah, and that's, that's having a big impact on where people shop.
- [18:36]
Alan Hart
Yeah. Oh, I mean as some of the, these macro trends that you're talking about, I mean, obviously precipitates your value proposition, choice and choice and price that you highlighted before, like is that where you're going to double down? You're like, this is the opportunity we see now for us and within the E commerce space that for sure, that.
- [18:59]
Chris Carle
Is by far our most compelling value proposition is you'll be hard pressed to find more variety of products anywhere else and the prices are truly unbeatable. And I think with our customer service improvements we're going to be really resonating well with the US audience. But there are of course other trends that we're, that we're looking into as well. Right. If you think about augmented reality or interactive shopping elements, those are really, really huge. Especially if you're a digital only platform. How do you make the shopping experience a little bit more tactical? How do you, how do you make people feel more and visualize the products they're about to buy? I talked about our revamped app earlier. The camera function in our app, for example, is something we've been working on a lot. You can in the AliExpress app, snap a photo of anything in your environment and it'll, it'll find a seller or manufacturer on our platform that makes that exact product or something very, very similar. So that's super cool. It basically makes life shoppable. Right. You just walk around and you snap a photo. We think a lot about retailtainment. If you think about how retail has evolved, you know, you used to go out on a Sunday, go through the store, main street, shop, discover that whole Feeling of discovery and treasure hunting, that's kind of disappeared a little bit with E commerce. And so we really want to focus on bringing that back, making shopping fun again. And that's truly what you can do on AliExpress, right? You can find your everyday essentials, but you can also discover products that you never thought you needed or existed. And that's a really fun thing. And on the side of retail, tame. And also, live streaming is a big deal, right? 53% of global shoppers say they've used live streaming in the past to shop, especially a big deal in Asian countries where live streaming is kind of a staple. And it kind of merges entertainment with shopping. And we believe it'll come more and more to other countries as well. But then also thinking about how can we gamify the shopping experience. Integrating in app games challenges, making shopping just a little more fun, I think is something that, that we really are focusing on. And then, I mean, I don't want to bore you with AI, but you know, AI is of course changing everything, both consumer facing and on the back end. We can, we can improve what customers see. The search algorithms are getting so much better. But also logistics, you know, how does AI impact our logistics chain? How can we increase shipping speeds and accuracy? How can we bundle products? Those are all things that we're working on tirelessly. And so, yeah, there are a bunch of trends, but you're right, to your point, choice and price, that's our key differentiator.
- [21:29]
Alan Hart
That's awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit about your recent campaign. You had a famous soccer player, David Beckham, in the campaign. Tell us a little about the campaign and how that came about.
- [21:41]
Chris Carle
Yeah, David Beckham. Yeah, that was during our summer campaign. Probably one of the most fun campaigns I've worked on to date. So there were really two main pillars to that campaign. One was our really top level sponsorship of the UEFA Soccer Cup. So we were one of the top sponsors of that whole tournament. That was a huge deal for us. And I mentioned earlier, right. That we're trying to leverage sports as a great way to interact with our audience. It's something that so many people are passionate about and we know that we have to get in front of our audience in a contextually relevant way. And so sports is one way to do that. And we wanted to marry that with a messenger who makes sense for that sport. And David Beckham is of course the embodiment of soccer, but also the embodiment of stardom. Right. He's of course famous in the UK and across Europe, but as a co owner of Inter Miami, playing for LA Galaxy, and just that Netflix documentary that came out last year here in the US about him and Victoria just has made him also a staple here in the us and so leveraging him as our key messenger was just a natural choice and it was phenomenal to work with him. And so, yeah, we ran a fully integrated campaign globally, but specifically for the US across traditional, non traditional channels, ran linear TV ads, digital ads, of course, and just really leveraged the power of soccer. I think in the US we experience a growth like almost no other major soccer market. Actually, if you look at the stats, the US is the youngest market from a viewership perspective. I think 50 plus percent are under 35. So that's a huge opportunity for us. Leveraging soccer and the excitement around it with young audiences is really great. And then that paired with David Beckham, just led to a really, really strong campaign. So. Oh, and to the earlier aspect of entertaining people while they shop, we actually added a really, really fun feature during the cup where we added a shake and win feature. So every time a goal was scored, you could go open the AliExpress app and you could shake your phone for a chance to win millions of prizes. That could be cash prizes, iPhones, PlayStations. So that really drove tremendous amounts of downloads and people just got really excited because they had a certain amount of time to shake their phone after a goal was for it. So that got people excited about the game, they got people excited about shopping, and that really just merged those two worlds in no other way possible. So that was great. So after the campaign, we did a study, a consumer study with YouGov, and we ranked in the top three spots with Coca Cola and Adidas as what people associate with the Eurocup. What brand? So that was really great. We actually increased our brand awareness by almost 30% during that timeframe. And if you look at the 18 to 34 demo that we were really gearing towards, that was a 50% increase. And so, yeah, it was just really great to capture that excitement around the soccer cup. And using David Beckham as our spokesperson was just a perfect combination.
- [24:39]
Alan Hart
I love it. I love it. Well, where do you go next? I mean, after that success, now you got to make the next one.
- [24:47]
Chris Carle
Yeah, that's how it goes, right? So, I mean, like any other retailer, we're of course preparing for the holiday season, but for us, there's actually an additional layer to the holiday season, which is super exciting. Double 11 singles day. Not sure if you've heard about that, that holiday. But November 11th is a huge deal. It's probably our biggest sale of the year. And it originated in China as bachelor day, so 1993, like a couple of students in Nanjing. And they thought, you know what? We need a holiday that celebrates singles. Every other holiday is about celebrating couples, celebrating family. Being single is also great. So let's celebrate that. So that kind of turned into a cultural phenomenon. But then in 2009, Alibaba actually took that, what was a cultural holiday, and kind of turned it into the biggest shopping holiday in the world. And that's what it is. It's the biggest shopping holiday in the world. It's bigger than Cyber Monday. It's bigger than Black Friday in terms of volume. So it's a huge deal. And it's becoming more and more popular here in the US as well. And that's, you know, that day is really all about splurging on yourself, putting yourself first, self love, treating yourself. And it kind of perfectly adds up with. There was a recent Gallup survey that when looking at last year's purchase behavior, two thirds of all consumers said on Black Friday and Cyber Monday they were going to splurge on themselves. And so this time, we're 11. 11 is earlier than Black Friday, Cyber Monday, especially this year. So it's the perfect opportunity to splurge on yourself. And that's what this, this campaign, this month is going to be all about. November is going to be full of amazing discounts and a couple of really cool surprises that our customers are going to learn about in the coming weeks. So very exciting.
- [26:31]
Alan Hart
Yeah, it's super exciting. And I'm guilty as charged of splurging on myself in Cyber Monday. So now I have a day that I can do that with gusto. So thank you for that.
- [26:43]
Chris Carle
Great. We're looking forward to seeing you there.
- [26:45]
Alan Hart
Awesome. Well, this is, I mean, super exciting. I mean, and the results that you guys are getting and the team is getting for the sponsorship, the campaign, I can only imagine what we're going to see going forward. So I'll be paying attention, as I'm sure many listeners will be as well. One of the things we love to do on the show, though, is to get to know you a little bit better and kind of ask you a series of questions that we ask most people that come on. My favorite question to ask people is the first one, which is what experience of your past defines or makes up who you are today.
- [27:19]
Chris Carle
Yeah, that's a good one, Alan. So before I did this Calvin Klein internship, I actually worked a couple of odd jobs in retail, and I think retail is probably one of the best learning lessons anybody can get, regardless of what area or field you want to go into, because it just really puts you out there. It really makes you go out of your comfort zone pretty much every second that you're on the floor. You have to talk to people, but more importantly, you have to listen to people. You have to understand what they're looking for, what they want. It's really like being on that front line that teaches you a lot about what people want. And, you know, you learn a lot about the product, the service of that specific brand. I think it's just a really good life lesson to work in retail. And that I think has helped me a lot throughout my career. So I really understand when major brands that have retail or retail branches that they force even their executives to work a little bit on the floor. There's something to it. It's really powerful.
- [28:15]
Alan Hart
Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. It's like the intersection of what you just described. Product, sales, service, everything, all at once, right in the moment. What advice would you give your younger self if you were starting this journey all over again?
- [28:31]
Chris Carle
So much. Right. But I think it's really hard to overstate the importance of networking. Regardless of what stage in your career you are, just always grab that coffee with your colleague, your boss, your boss's boss, maybe somebody in a different department even, right. To just a make those connections, but also learn from them. And that's so valuable down the road too. So if I had to tell myself something, it would be do that more and even earlier.
- [28:59]
Alan Hart
Yeah, yeah. I didn't start that practice until graduate school, and man, you know, the years I missed. I totally agree. And as we get busier, you know, as you get more responsibilities like yourself, it gets harder to find or make the time, but totally agree. You got to make the time. So what topic do you believe either marketers should be learning more about, or maybe it's just something you're trying to learn more about yourself?
- [29:26]
Chris Carle
I think that's such a big question. There's so much you can always learn. And yeah, I think on the marketer's side, I think it's just so important to always be up to date on what's happening on technological level. What tools are available to us as marketers? There's constantly something new. Platforms are changing their algorithms. Meta is launching a new feature for marketers. Obviously there's AI again, so just staying abreast with all the, with all the improvements and all the tools that are available to us as marketers, I think is really important because we have to know what we're working with. And so I think the best way to do that is to just read a lot of newsletters, listen to podcasts, listen to marketing today. Of course. So, yeah, I think always staying up to date on, on the developments in the marketing space or anything that impacts marketing is super key.
- [30:17]
Alan Hart
Yeah, thanks for that shout out. I appreciate that.
- [30:19]
Chris Carle
Oh, yeah.
- [30:20]
Alan Hart
So are there any trends or subcultures that you're following you think other people should take notice of?
- [30:26]
Chris Carle
I don't know if other people need to do that, but I, I'm really passionate about cars. I'm like fully immersed in the car culture and especially here in la, it's like a great place to be if you like cars and to kind of tie it back to marketing, I think it's, it's a really great example of how passion driven communities can be such a good place for brands to, to build relevance. So I go to these coffee cars and coffee meetups or rallies through the mountains here and there's always some sort of sponsor, whether it's Red Bull or Pirelli or some coffee brand, some D2C coffee brand. It's so, so powerful when they get in front of a passionate and interested audience in the right context that, yeah, I always find that very fascinating. So that's a great lesson for I think every brand.
- [31:07]
Alan Hart
Yeah.
- [31:08]
Chris Carle
But yeah, that's what I'm passionate about.
- [31:09]
Alan Hart
Yeah. Well, and for those that have never been to la, I think your note about car culture, that's, that's a totally LA thing. I know there are, you know, like antique car folks all across the country, but I almost feel like it's better to have a car than a house. In la, you almost spend more time.
- [31:29]
Chris Carle
In your car than in your house.
- [31:31]
Alan Hart
Exactly. I was gonna say what you can at least get from one place to another if you have a car. But yeah, it's, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy. And everyone loves their cars. Most people I've talked to from LA love their cars. Last question for you. What do you think is the largest opportunity or threat facing marketers today?
- [31:48]
Chris Carle
Probably I can answer that in one response. I think it's the paradox of choice, honestly, there's so much choice, actually, to my earlier question with what marketers always need to be learning and informed about is also one of the challenges because there is just so much available to us. There's so much Data. There's so many platforms we can use, so many tools, so many strategies. Right. It's really hard to what do you use, what don't you use, what do you focus on? And so I think that can often lead to analysis paralysis, especially within bigger organizations. It's not quite clear what the right path is because of all these choices. And so I think staying really true to how do we get our message across? Start with the customer, where are they and how do we interact with them in the best possible way can kind of get through that. But really the abundance of choice is a tough one. And I mean, consumers also have the abundance of choice. Right. They have more options than ever before. So how do we cut through the noise and make AliExpress or our brand stand out?
- [32:50]
Alan Hart
Yeah, no, it's easy to dilute your.
- [32:53]
Chris Carle
Focus, I think because everybody's kind of trying to play everything all at once and that definitely doesn't always work out. So I think that's the biggest, that's the biggest challenge.
- [33:03]
Alan Hart
No, that's a great point. And I think some of the things, I mean one marketers, we just need focus and figure out what works and what's not working. So not that that's easy, but just I think that would help us. I think the, one of the features you talked about that you guys have built is the whole camera app of being able to take a picture of something in the real, in the wild, so to speak, and help narrow down where to find it within your, your ecosystem of partners and suppliers, etc. On AliExpress. That's, that's a great way to help overcome that paradox of choice and make it fun like you talked about.
- [33:42]
Chris Carle
So yeah, it is really fun. I do it all the time.
- [33:45]
Alan Hart
Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on, sharing quite a bit about Alibaba, AliExpress and what you guys are up to. And we'll be watching.
- [33:53]
Chris Carle
Thank you so much, John. It was really fun.
- [33:55]
Alan Hart
Hi, it's Alan again. Marketing Today was created and produced by me with post production support from Sam Robertson. If you're new to Marketing Today, please feel free to write us a review on itunes or your favorite listening platform. Don't forget to subscribe on marketingtodaypodcast.com Tell your friends and colleagues about the show. I love hearing from listeners. You can contact me@marketingtodaypodcast.com there. You'll also find complete show notes, notes and links to what was discussed in the episode today and you can search our archives. I'm Alan Hart and this is marketing today.
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