Navigating Shopper Promiscuity Challenges in Today's Market with Devora Rogers

Summary

Right About Now with Ryan Alford

Episode: Navigating Shopper Promiscuity Challenges in Today's Market with Devorah Rogers

Release Date: March 18, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Right About Now with Ryan Alford, hosted by Ryan Alford of The Radcast Network, the conversation centers around the evolving landscape of consumer behavior, particularly focusing on the concept of shopper promiscuity. Ryan welcomes Devorah Rogers, the Chief Strategy Officer of Alter Agents, to delve deep into the challenges brands face in retaining consumer loyalty amidst an abundance of choices.

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Understanding Shopper Promiscuity

Devorah introduces the core concept by explaining how consumers today have unprecedented access to a multitude of brands and products, leading to what she terms "shopper promiscuity."

Devorah [07:03]: "The bad news for brands is that consumers have more options than ever before. We call it shopper promiscuity... it's hard to stay loyal."

She likens this phenomenon to being constantly tempted by multiple suitors, making it challenging for brands to maintain consumer loyalty. The shift from traditional brand loyalty is evident, with significant differences observed across generations:

• Boomers: Approximately 60% exhibit brand loyalty.
• Millennials and Gen Z: Loyalty drops to around 17%.

This shift underscores the necessity for brands to adapt their strategies to engage a more fickle consumer base.

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The Decline of Traditional Research Methods

Ryan and Devorah discuss the limitations of traditional research methodologies like focus groups, especially in the current digital age.

Devorah [02:59]: "We've moved to virtual focus groups... but more and more we're moving to something we call mobile ethnographies."

Devorah emphasizes the transition from in-person focus groups to more dynamic methods like mobile ethnographies and self-nographies, which provide richer, real-time insights into consumer behavior without the logistical challenges of traditional setups.

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Navigating the Performance vs. Brand Marketing Dichotomy

The conversation shifts to the tension between performance marketing and brand marketing. Ryan expresses his skepticism about solely relying on performance marketing, arguing that awareness remains a crucial component of successful sales.

Ryan [04:53]: "Performance marketing has shown us that the answer is not just the race to the bottom... brands still have to do the hard work."

Devorah concurs, highlighting that while performance marketing can drive immediate sales through tactics like discounts and promotions, it doesn't build lasting brand presence or loyalty. She advocates for a balanced approach where brands effectively communicate their value propositions and differentiate themselves beyond mere promotions.

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Attribution Challenges in Modern Marketing

Attribution—the process of determining which marketing efforts drive sales—remains a complex issue. Devorah critiques the overreliance on artificial methods like synthetic respondents, emphasizing the irreplaceable value of genuine human insights.

Devorah [23:12]: "Nothing reveals opportunities and challenges in the way that talking to humans does. It just doesn't."

She explains that despite technological advancements, understanding consumer motivations and influences requires direct engagement with real people. This human-centric approach ensures that brands receive actionable and authentic feedback, which is pivotal for effective marketing strategies.

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Effective Marketing Channels in the Age of Promiscuity

The duo explores various marketing channels, identifying podcasts as a burgeoning and effective medium. Devorah highlights the growth and influence of podcasts, noting their ability to engage dedicated listeners who develop strong affinities with hosts.

Devorah [27:51]: "Podcasts are pretty amazing... about 30 to 40% of the population are really listening and really attuned."

Ryan and Devorah also discuss the importance of attention and emotional engagement over mere exposure. Utilizing advanced metrics like heart rate variability, brands can gauge the emotional impact of their campaigns, ensuring deeper connections with consumers.

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Thought Leadership and Adaptability

Devorah shares her pivotal experience working with Google in 2012, where research dispelled skepticism about online purchases.

Devorah [35:18]: "If you’re really on the no budget side, I would say small business owners need to at least be having those conversations."

This case study underscores the importance of thought leadership—proactively sharing insights and data to influence industry perceptions and drive innovation. Devorah advocates for brands to continuously adapt, be humble about predicting the future, and leverage research to stay ahead in a rapidly changing market.

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Emotional Engagement and Consumer Sentiment

The episode concludes with a discussion on the current emotional climate of consumers. Devorah references recent research indicating that a quarter of Americans are experiencing significant distress, emphasizing the need for brands to adopt positive and unifying messages.

Devorah [42:27]: "Maybe host a 5k or a puppy adoption thing... if I was a brand with money to spend, I'd be hosting puppy parties right now."

Ryan agrees, suggesting that brands should focus on uplifting activities and avoid divisive content to foster a more positive relationship with their audience.

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Conclusion

Ryan wraps up the episode by acknowledging Devorah's expertise and the critical takeaways regarding shopper promiscuity and effective marketing strategies. The key message emphasizes the importance of understanding and adapting to evolving consumer behaviors through genuine research, emotional engagement, and thoughtful brand communication.

Ryan [41:28]: "Devorah, you're a smart lady... it's unique, it's attainable to know, but you have to kind of clear your mind."

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Key Takeaways

• Shopper Promiscuity: Consumers today are less loyal and have more choices, necessitating adaptive marketing strategies.
• Research Evolution: Transition from traditional focus groups to mobile ethnographies for richer consumer insights.
• Balanced Marketing: Integrate both performance and brand marketing to sustain long-term consumer relationships.
• Attribution Complexity: Genuine human insights remain crucial despite technological advancements in attribution.
• Emerging Channels: Podcasts are a powerful medium for engaging dedicated audiences.
• Thought Leadership: Proactive sharing of research and insights can position brands as industry leaders.
• Emotional Engagement: Brands should focus on positive, unifying activities to connect with consumers emotionally.

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Further Resources

• Alter Agents Substack: Alter Agents Substack
• Devorah’s TEDx Talks: Available online for deeper insights into shopper behavior and marketing strategies.
• Immmersion App: For tracking emotional engagement (Immersion Tuesday).

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For more episodes and resources, visit www.RyanIsRight.com or follow @rightaboutnowshow and @ryanalford on Instagram.

Transcript

[Devorah]

Nothing reveals opportunities and challenges in the way that talking to humans does. It just doesn't. We feel that brands have to put in the work and ultimately get answers from real people dealing with real challenges that either your company can or cannot solve.

[Ryan Alford]

This is Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month, taking the BS out of business for over 6 years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to right about now. We're always talking about what you need to know now in business. Hey, even life sometimes I'll give you some life advice, but yeah, probably more the marketing and business guy. And that's why I like to bring the best, the brightest and some of the smartest people in the industry on the show. And sometimes we venture back into like the things that I always was kind of had my hands in in the agency world. Less today with the podcast network, but definitely, you know, keeping a pulse of what's happening in marketing and research and what brands are thinking about. And ultimately, you know, I gotta go to the source. That's why we got, we've got the research poet, we have the chief strategy officer of Alter Agents. It is Devorah. What's up, Devorah?

[Devorah]

Hey, how's it going, Ryan? Good to be with you.

[Ryan Alford]

Yes. Appreciate you coming on. I, I get to get, I don't always get to get my nerdy marketing hat on, but I, I kind of want to get it on today. You think in the beautiful LA Santa Monica area? Correct?

[Devorah]

Yeah.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah. Yep. What is Alter is Alter Agents. I mean, does it look, feel, act like an ad agency? I know you're not involved maybe in the marketing campaigns, but in many ways is my mind in the right place?

[Devorah]

Yeah, we're a full service research shop, so research shops tend to be a little bit different than ad agencies. Our offices aren't as cool. We got rid of our office during the pandemic, which has been great. We're fully remote and the team loves it and it's given us access to amazing talent all over the U.S. but yeah, we have a little. I came from the ad agency world, so we have a little ad agency in us, you know.

[Ryan Alford]

Okay.

[Devorah]

We give off one day a month just because I feel like that's an ad agency thing.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, exactly. It's also brings me flashbacks of focus groups in New York sitting there talking to people about Test man. And can you hear me now? Which was one of the first campaigns I worked on back in the day for Verizon. If you worked in New York and you didn't work on Verizon at some point, then you just didn't cut your teeth. Right? Uh, but, but do we still. Are focus groups still a thing?

[Devorah]

Uh, I'm going to give you the German answer, which is yn, yes and no. Look, if you enjoy traveling and going, having and going and having shitty food in a back room while people talk about things for days on end, then you might do focus groups and, and some people still do that. Uh, but honestly, we have moved to virtual focus groups because you get better respondents. You know, people just don't want to leave their houses right now. So it's like if we do a focus group in LA, getting people on time in, you know, at 4:00 in the afternoon, traffic's bad, it's just really hard. So we do them. But I would say judiciously. And more and more we're moving to something we call mobile ethnographies. They've also been called self nographies, which is really freaking cool.

[Ryan Alford]

We, the agency research, we always call it with the best names of shit. It's like, it just sounds important, but it is important. And that's why I was so thrilled, you know, when your, your people reached out and it's for our audience, it's important for people to kind of know what the sentiment of today is like, you know, what's motivating shoppers and consumers. How does one learn what's doing those things? What are the techniques today? What should we listen? And sometimes when I have brilliant people like you on the show, it's like almost what you don't do and what you don't listen to sometimes. Because I feel like the inputs can be so confusing now because the channels are. That's the thing that just blows my mind with you doing what you do. I think about what I did 12 years ago. Then the inputs felt complex, but they weren't, you know, now it's just like so many. How do you balance all of it?

[Devorah]

Yeah, no, I mean, I, I feel like that I, I have that same feeling that you have when I look at my clients who handle, let's say, cpg, brand marketing in a space where you've got to compete on Amazon, you've got to figure out TikTok, you've got. I mean, like, to me that's now brain science and so literally do brain science to understand because the amount of channels that people can be in, the importance of being offline online, you know, a mix of both, you know, dealing with private label like it is rough. And so it's our job to help clients focus on what's really going to matter for them, you know, when they bring something new to market or when they're trying to compete with their, you know, competitors.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah. And that's the thing that's interesting. I really want to dig under. I've watched this, these worlds with. I came up in the, what I feel like was a great mecca of brand marketing. You know, like the importance of that, of building brand over time and the resonance of that and reaching frequency and all of these things. And then, you know, kind of in my in between land, the last 10 years of owning an agency, but kind of being on our own planet, you know, and doing podcasting and all that, performance marketing, the savior of all things came in. Right. Which I rolled my eyes a little bit. Drove me crazy. I'm like, you know, you can't drive a sale until someone's aware of you. And last time I checked, you have to play that game too. But what's been your perspective the last 10 years? I want to turn to more specifically some of the nuances that you work in, but I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit as a, as someone that's in it with the consumer, the performance versus brand thing. And the last 10 years of, hey, let's just scoop up all of the bottom of the funnel, but don't do it. Have we just completely lost our mind that we still have to build somewhere along the way the awareness and the consideration?

[Devorah]

Yeah, I agree. I'll start with the bad news for brands. The bad news for brands is that consumers have more options than ever before. We call it shopper promiscuity. Think about it. Like, if, you know, I'm married, I don't know about you, but, you know, if I had like four amazing suitors outside every single day, standing outside my house, being like, you know what though? Like, I'm pretty great. Like, I'm an amazing chef. Like, I'm really, you know, I'm really good in bed, like, like, it'd be hard to stay loyal. Let's just be honest. Right? And that's what brands are facing. There are. Consumers have so many choices. They could go anywhere. They could at any time of day. And so that access that the choice that they have creates this promiscuity. And so the difficult news is that brands continue to be brands. And what brands often do as brands, both in marketing and in research, is they do something we call brand narcissism. And a lot of research is built on this idea that if you just track people's relationship to your brand, then you'll know enough, and then you'll know what to do. It's called brand tracking, and it underpins all of research and marketing, and many people hate it, including the people that use it, because, you know, things don't shift that much. It's hard to really make sense out of. It doesn't. And again, it's narcissistic. It's like, I mean, imagine, Ryan, if you and I went out, just say, for like, a little friend hanging.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah.

[Devorah]

And the whole time I was like, hey, Ryan, what do you think? What do you think about my hair? What do you think about my cashmere sweater? What do you think about my friends? Did you look at my friends? Do you think that they're. Am I more innovative than my friend? You'd be like, get out of here. You wouldn't want to talk to me. And that's what brands do with their precious research. So we have really drawn a line in the sand. Our CEO Rebecca Brooks wrote in our book Shopper Promiscuity. Sorry, we didn't end up getting to name it that because we had a British editor and they didn't want the word crumbs. I know. It's too bad it ended up being influencing shopper behavior. The original name was Shopper Promiscuity. I know the Brits. Sorry. She was like, oh, let's not. We can't. But in a chapter in that book, she wrote what I call her Jerry Maguire letter, basically to the research and marketing industry saying, we're missing the boat here. Like, brain tracking isn't delivering the answers that you want. And to add to that insult to injury. And then I'll tell you the good part. The challenge is that when we survey shoppers by generation, brand loyalty basically stair steps down. So if you're, you know, a boomer, then, you know, you're pretty likely to keep buying. You know, let's say 60% of boomers are going to keep buying products that they've been buying. By the time you get to, you know, millennials and Gen z, it's like 17% of them express that same brand loyalty. So that's the bad news.

[Ryan Alford]

Yikes.

[Devorah]

But I would agree with you that performance marketing has shown us that the answer is not just the race to the bottom. Yeah, you can get people to buy things. If you, you know, do enough coupons and promotions and whatever way the.

[Ryan Alford]

Buy one, get one free.

[Devorah]

Yeah, yeah, you can. But you may not have a lasting voice or presence in the space. That ultimately means that brands still do have to do the hard work. What's interesting though, I think, and I think where the opportunity for brands is, is that brands have this idea that it's either all or nothing. I'm gonna put my brand out there, show you my brand logo again and again and again and again. I'm gonna have my, you know, billboards up that you won't even know what my website is or what I'm selling. I get so mad at those.

[Ryan Alford]

I love those. They think they're like fooling somebody. Like, like they think they could do something. Like, because we're just so wrecked, it's just so distinguished, you know, that it will. People will get there.

[Devorah]

I get mad. My husband has to listen to me for 20 minutes being like, who did that? He's like, okay, calm down.

[Ryan Alford]

The ivory tower of the creative department, right?

[Devorah]

Or they say, okay, so either we're going to go the all in. It's just our brand name, brand recognition, build brand, or we're going to go all the way to the bottom and give you all these little details. But actually the center space is where we really see the opportunity for brands. Tell them about your products and what they do and why they're better and why people should believe in you as a brand. So essentially what we've seen is consumers and shoppers becoming really, really smart. And every piece of research that we've done over the last decade shows that people consume more information than ever before about everything, but also all of their purchases.

[Ryan Alford]

So more sources than ever before, more knowledge than ever before. And I'm going to put, I think, implied words in your mouth. They know they're being marketed to 100%.

[Devorah]

And they're okay with it too. Like, that's the thing too, is that brands don't have to pretend like they're not. We've actually seen an increase in people accepting advertisement as a useful source of information. They get the exchange.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, but do better.

[Devorah]

Tell me more.

[Ryan Alford]

I have one of the few people I would call mentor, Christopher Lockhead in marketing. I don't know if you know Chris. He's a category. Pirates is his brand. He doesn't, he doesn't believe in brands. He just believes in category creation to where you carve out exactly what you are. You market the problem and you become the solution. I think that's a little bit of what you're saying with telling people about what you are. I take. I know. I agree with about 75% of him. I choose to believe that brand isn't dead.

[Devorah]

Yeah, I would agree with you. You know, at the end of the day, people are the way our brains work. Right. So we, we. We do neuroscience. Right. And I don't know if you know this, but turns out half the reason we like our spouses is because we see their face every day.

[Ryan Alford]

Familiarity, it's.

[Devorah]

It's a, It's a brain thing. So the next time you get in a fight with your spouse, just be like, am I with you just because I see you every day?

[Ryan Alford]

Or.

[Devorah]

And that's the same for, like, so for brands. Right, so brands. You wouldn't want to give that up.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah.

[Devorah]

You know, yeah, it's. It's a name. It's a. It's a logo your brain recognizes. It's a logo or a service that you associate with something good. So if that goes away, it. I do think it makes it harder for consumers. They'd have to do more work. It's not to say you couldn't. And I do think category matters a lot. And if everybody could do what. What he's suggesting can be done, cool. But I don't know that everybody has that benefit.

[Ryan Alford]

I know that's. That's always my argument to him, like, not everybody's going to be the category king. You know, like, even if they want to, they don't have. There's a lot of money. And I think, you know Christopher's line. Well, you know, because he gets to work with the companies that he chooses to. To help them carve out the category when they've decided they want to do that. But there's a lot of money to be made as the, you know, second person, second best in the category. And no, I look as somebody that's very competitive, that doesn't like to play for second in much of anything. But at the same time, I do like to be successful. And there's not all. It's first isn't always the goal.

[Devorah]

Second, I'll play for second.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah.

[Devorah]

Honestly, like, I'm pretty competitive, pretty good at second.

[Ryan Alford]

Right.

[Devorah]

Or even like 5%, like you. Yeah, being top 5% pays the bills.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah. So. Exactly. But the brand thing is interesting, the familiarity. And I just always think. And you talk about, in a lot of your studies and like a lot of the writings I've read from you, it's just like that and the promiscuity is like the biggest thing is like, does it matter at single moment of truth? You know, if that performance bug comes in and I'm going to the, you know, I'm keeping it simple here, like the store. But whether it's a luxury thing or not, luxury is a whole nother category. I mean a whole nother thing. But you go in and I buy arm and hammer toothpaste. But if there is a half price deal on Colgate, and that's a flavor thing. So I'm probably going down a whole nother road. But I think you know where I'm headed with this. It's like, am I cheating? You know, like.

[Devorah]

Well, I mean, think about all the places in our lives where we make left turns. Yeah, you know? Yeah, it depends, right? It depends. Mustard is a category that I like talking about.

[Ryan Alford]

Ah, yes, that's a good one.

[Devorah]

And the reason I like talking about mustard is that there are people that don't care at all. They're like, I just give me the gravy pawn or give me the cheapest that I don't care. Is it yellow mustard? Fine. Right. My father in law's like, that doesn't care care. You know, maybe if there's like a flavor he might splurge, but otherwise it's just like yellow mustard is sufficient. And then there are mustard aficionados like you know, mustard sommeliers and, and they're going to know every little thing. They're going to do little tastings. Right. So there are in every category mustard aficionados. You, you may not be an aficionado in one category in your life, but randomly in another you might be. And even among people who consistently choose value over, I'm somebody that chooses like, I'm like, oh, is there a more expensive price that I can pay? I'll do that. You know, great. It's great.

[Ryan Alford]

But Devorah, you are that person, right?

[Devorah]

Do you want to charge me more?

[Ryan Alford]

Do you want to charge me more, please?

[Devorah]

Yeah, please do. But there are people that are the opposite who are. And it doesn't matter if they're wealthy or not. Right. That they're going to consistently choose the value option. Yeah, we tend to leave out a lot of the people that are choosing the value option in our research because they tend to not be very interesting. But I guarantee you, whoever they are, one thing in their life most likely, unless they're just like a total weirdo, they have something that they really want to be higher quality, premium. And for that they're willing to do the research, they're willing to do the looking, and they might be harder or easier to move. So that's the other thing is that this promiscuity means that there are a whole group of people who are just promiscuous and they might be amazing to initially grow your brand because like, let's say they become obsessed with, I don't know, let's say, like I feel like there was, you know, like an underwear, a direct to consumer underwear brand, right. Like me undies or whatever.

[Ryan Alford]

Yep.

[Devorah]

And people become obsessed early on and they're, they're like the look, they're the explorers, they're the ones finding new things, they're evangelizing, and they are the ones that you can lose very easily. So you kind of have to know at every stage of building your business and because the idea that you could just have loyal people that will stay with you and that's everyone is just no longer true. So you have to sort of plan for, okay, I'm going to have these people that are going to come in, they might help me build my brand early on, but then they're going to defect because that's what they do. And then I've got to get the other people, you know, to, to, to fill up the back, right, so that we don't, you know, completely lose when the explorers and promiscuous folks go away.

[Ryan Alford]

You have a lot of job security because you know why? You know what I just heard Devorah is. And it's very true. The it depends word is it. It's so unique to every different brand and every different category. And I know this instinctively, but I almost forget it too, because I think we all like to paint with broad brushes and make statements like TV is dead or Facebook is dead. You know, I've been hearing Facebook's been.

[Devorah]

I've written those trends, I've written those trends reports, by the way.

[Ryan Alford]

But the answer, the truth is. But it depends because depending on your product and depending on the categories of consumers that buy that product, they can be very promiscuous in one, but brand loyal in another.

[Devorah]

Listen, years ago I did a call with someone who was very senior at the milk board, okay? The call went very poorly. She had seen the work that we did with Google, the zero moment of truth work. And she's like, I want that, but I don't believe that People are doing a lot of different searching and researching and sources, using a lot of different sources for milk. Milk is an everyday household item. Nobody And I tried to convince her on the call. I was like, listen, I know you think that and for a lot of people it is, but Even if for 15, 20% of people it starts to shift, what's that going to look like? She didn't believe me. The call went for I didn't win. The didn't win. Never heard from her again. It was like really a bad call. Look at where we are now. Go into the milk aisle and tell me that that wasn't completely disrupted. There is pea milk.

[Ryan Alford]

Yes.

[Devorah]

There is goat milk. My doctor, my child's doctor told me to get camel milk at one point for my God. Okay, yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Alford]

So a lot of inputs.

[Devorah]

We're in a different world. And, and, and anyone who thinks that a category is never going to shift or, or be disrupted is, is in for some surprises. And once it does, you either are ready or you, you lose your share.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah. And that's why you got to get underneath it. Like to know within your own product and your own category, what the mindset, what are the media, what are the mind thought process, what are the problems that you're solving or not solving. And it's hard, it's frustrating because we want, and we've been chasing especially which is where I want to go next or is attribution ultimately. That's right. You know, like the old Pepsi saying, or I forget who says it. You know, I know that 50% of my marketing works great. I just don't know what 50%. And we've been chasing that attribution game but there. And how do you, where do you fall on that? Like, because again, you know, I get, you know, the hand raisers on Google. SEO is important. They're searching for you and it gets a lot of credit. But did my friend down the street, oh, good old fashioned word of mouth, put it in my brain and so who gets credit and how do I know what to do more of?

[Devorah]

Yeah, well, you know, there were folks who built, you know, these tech stacks and they said we'll just, we'll be able to answer it all and we'll know everything. You know, it didn't really play out that way. And certainly now some of the changes that have occurred in tech and you know, some of the questions calling into, you know, question, you know, whether cookies are tracking and all that, you know, privacy, all kinds of different things I think has shown us that there isn't an easy fix for attribution. There's no special key that just unlocks it permanently. You have to do the work. And you have to do the work. Among humans now, working in research, we have. I don't want to call them colleagues, but we have people who are trying to use synthetic respondents, which, by the way, that means not a real human, in case anybody didn't know.

[Ryan Alford]

Artificial, artificial.

[Devorah]

Not real, fake, to essentially answer research surveys. And, you know, I look at that and I go, why? Why would you do that? You could use big data to do that. You could use any number of things. Nothing, nothing reveals opportunities and challenges in the way that talking to humans does. It just doesn't. And so I think that attribution is worthwhile, and certainly if you're doing a lot of media spend, you've got to do it. But we feel that brands have to put in the work and ultimately get answers from real people dealing with real challenges that either your company can or cannot solve.

[Ryan Alford]

Small brands, you know, I know that the techniques and online have probably brought the scale. I mean, I just remember what it cost. You know, I've been in a focus group in 12 years. But like, it was. It's expensive, you know, like research and stuff. So. But how to. I mean, I guess the online equations probably made it more attainable, but it has. Yeah.

[Devorah]

Yeah. So couple thoughts on that. So my mentor, you mentioned yours. My mentor was a guy named John Ross who had been the CMO at Home Depot, and he oversaw Home Depot's growth, you know, the biggest growth, you know, of its development. Right. And I learned a lot from him around how I think about research and retail and shopping. We wrote a book together called Fire in the Zoo, which is all about the difficulty of selling at retail and. And all that kind of stuff. And, you know, he used to do. So they had, you know, every. Imagine, you know, they had Deloitte. They had all. Every consultant in the world was working for Home Depot at the time. Every single one. They had any amount of data or research they wanted. And guess what? As the cmo, he felt like he still didn't know why people were making choices. And so he would go down and, you know, put on an apron, stand in the pain aisle, and he would ask people a series of very, very simple questions. What made you decide to come in today? Where'd you go for information? What of that information was most influential? What of that information specifically? Was it price? Was it what we told you about the product? Had you ultimately decided that you wanted to come in and make a purchase? And he would go do those conversations and, you know, small business owners can do that. You don't need a research agency to do that. So if you're really on the no budget side, I would say small business owners need to at least be having those conversations. They won't be at scale, and you got to be aware of that.

[Ryan Alford]

Did you tell him to take it with a grain of salt what he learned in those conversations, or do you think they were meaningful?

[Devorah]

We turned it into a quantitative methodology.

[Ryan Alford]

Okay. Yeah.

[Devorah]

And today clients do that methodology at scale when they're trying to figure out where is everyone going for information. Where should I be? I don't have billions of dollars. I have to choose between TikTok and Google or podcasts and Google Search. What should I do? And then now you can do these self. No graphies. We use a company called dscout, which I'll give them a shout out. I think they've built something really cool. There's another one called Recollective. And for a relatively small sum, 20, $30,000, you can send out real people into the real world and find out how they're responding to your product or your service or stores. And you know, okay, 30 people, that's not the same as a thousand. But you know what, if you work in research, the truth is after about 12 or 18, you start hearing a lot of the same things.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, I remember that is random question. You're doing a lot of research, different clients, different things. And I'm sitting here saying, we can't paint with a broad brush, but I'm going to ask you a broad brush question. What's a medium or a tactic or something that might surprise people listening that is popping up over and over again in the influence or magnitude that it has? Is there something just marketing? You know, maybe. Maybe it's a channel. And I mean, so what might it be?

[Devorah]

I mean, honestly, podcasts are pretty amazing. We've been tracking podcasts for 15 years. And for. For a long time, it was like they were down there with the dust bunnies. You know, nobody used them. They weren't driving influencers. And now we see that they are, you know, widely used. I would say about, by about 30 to 40% of the population. So there's people that don't use them, fine. But, you know, there's a decent audience that is really listening and really attuned, and they really love the hosts. And so that can be a very powerful channel for brands. And a lot of brands have worried that podcasts are not brand safe because you can't control every thing that happens. But consumers tell us that they do not penalize brands. If something. I mean, it's different if it's like a bigoted show, but if it's just like bad language, consumers don't care.

[Ryan Alford]

It hasn't hurt our numbers. And I have a potty mouth.

[Devorah]

Yeah, especially on Fridays.

[Ryan Alford]

Oh, talking with Devorah. She is the research poet. Dvorah, back to this attribution game. Who does get the credit? I mean, like, how do we answer that? What, 50% is working or not working?

[Devorah]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's some really great speaking about podcasts, right? There's a lot of podcasters that use codes and that kind of thing that gives you an opportunity to know what's working. We're seeing creators do that. Creators are certainly having a moment. I'm a little bit worried about creators with the growth of AI because I worry that it could kind of turn things into slop. And that's not going to be good for consumers or brands. But that's an aside. I think you have to live with some level of uncertainty. You're never going to know everything. You just never will. But you can find out a lot. Let's say you're, you know, throwing money at TV and radio and podcasts and 10 other things. We do a study where we then ask people, what sources did you use before making a purchase? And we only talk to people who actually made the purchase. So these aren't intenders, these aren't random consumers. They actually bought the thing that our brand is selling. And if we see that TV is just really low, not a lot of people are using it, but it's really influential. We take note or like one another one that we see a lot like people kind of make fun of catalogs. Do you know, catalogs are like, actually not so bad. Not a lot of people use them, but the people that do, they buy shit really influential. So we're looking at things through the lens of how many people are using it. And we can find that out through research and how influential is it? And we can find that out through research. And then like, we can hook that together with other attribution models to say, you know what, let's plus up the catalogs or the TV isn't showing up in some of our other stuff. But let's plus it up because consumers, a thousand of them, 80% are saying it worked.

[Ryan Alford]

And that's what it's just applying the percentage and the scale, like, right? So then it's like, okay, we know that this has impact at some level, which research that you could help them with would tell. And some portion of that makes up, I don't know, 100% of the impact, you know, or 90%. There's probably always that ambiguous 10% that we don't know. Cousin Eddie that told them about it or influenced them in the Cousin Eddie.

[Devorah]

You know, people like to write that off. Cousin Eddie matters. If Cousin Eddie bought from you and demonstrated any aspect of being an evangelist or somebody who's really excited about the project, give cousin Eddie some codes. Do you know, give him some ways to get other people on board. Cousin Eddie is great. We'll take him.

[Ryan Alford]

What's the biggest problem you've solved? Like, and like, when you think about it, every client's your baby. I know. So we don't have to call, but, you know, let's divorce is a big deal. I'm telling the audience this. And so she's worked with a lot of big brands. She's smart as hell. I want her to, to brag a little bit, but also to, you know, the types of problems that you've solved and the scale and maybe what your research drove as a change.

[Devorah]

Yeah. Oh, gosh, it is. It's like choosing among my children or my favorite poems. It's really tough, Ryan. But the one that's been most enduring and I think for me is, is a really good B2B case study that, that brands can continue to. To learn from is about. In 2012, Google came to us. I was working at the time at the IPG Media Lab, and Google was having trouble convincing brands that people would buy things online. It's hard to believe. That was like 13 years ago. Thirteen years ago, clients did not believe people would buy things online. Okay, so let's just how quickly things have moved. And you know, Google, who's, you know, however many trillion dollar company right now, you know, I don't think that most of their sales guys are making decks anymore, slide decks that they have to like, you know, get themselves a meeting with the client. Like, people are like, yeah, generally Google delivers results. But at that time, the sales guys had to go in, they had to look sharp, they had to have nice shoes, and they had to go in in person and they had to say, you know, we have this offering called search, and we're starting to see that people are interested in buying things online and they're doing research even if they don't buy it online. Attribution, they appear to be looking and we think that they are then buying it later elsewhere. And clients are like, nah, what are you talking about nobody's going to buy laundry detergent online, they're just not going to do it? Well, our research proved that they were. And it became a study that was called Zmod and it went global. People started for a while, were hiring directors of Zmod, and they turned it into a case study, a major thought leadership initiative. And what that taught me is, first of all, never be too certain about what the future looks like. Because if, if, you know, 12 years ago, people were like, nobody's going to buy laundry detergent online. Look where we are. I mean, I haven't bought laundry detergent in a store, in a store myself, pick it up off the shelf. Why would I do that?

[Ryan Alford]

It's heavy, it's pain in the ass.

[Devorah]

Why would I go in there?

[Ryan Alford]

Right?

[Devorah]

So it taught me to be humble, what the future holds. And also that if you, whether you're a big company or a midsize company, you've got to do the work to show up with the thought leadership. The data that says, here's what we're seeing. Will you take, will you take a risk on me? And then if it works, turn it into a massive thought leadership thing that you take around and give out. I speak a lot about thought leadership and I, I think that brands are wise to do the research and then where they can figure out how to tell that story publicly in a way that makes them look great.

[Ryan Alford]

How much of the zero moment of truth, that's what we're talking about with Zmont. And go Google that if you haven't. It's a big. One of the most widely read research studies of all time. How much of that still is in play?

[Devorah]

A lot.

[Ryan Alford]

Feels like it a lot.

[Devorah]

Because, well, so we've been doing it for 12, 13 years and we have norms and stuff, right? So we have watched the fortunes rise and fall of various media types. You know, like we saw where radio was increasing and then falling and going over to streaming and then, you know, newspaper, you know, that have watched that decline, have watched podcasting growing. And we have about 50 sources that we've been tracking since that time, whether they're increasing, decreasing, you know, growing in influence, that kind of thing. And what has happened is just that consumers are using more information than ever before. There are categories where they might use less, fine. But on the whole, if they're going to go buy an expensive workout machine or plan a trip to Italy, they're gonna, they're gonna spend a lot of time. Because now here's the thing is that now, searching and being online as you research is like a form of entertainment. You know, it's like, it's just an activity. You could listen to a podcast, you could read a book, or you could like plan your next purchase that you get excited about. And depending how research oriented you are or neurotic you might do. You might, you might read hundreds of minutes of things. Did I answer your question?

[Ryan Alford]

You did. You did. And it made me think, you know, when you're saying that I tell people all the time that TVs now the radio because I don't know that people aren't watching it, but their head's down on their phone, so they're hearing ambient the messages that are there. So it has an impact.

[Devorah]

Well, and to that point, a lot of, you know, we talked about attribution. Attention is another one that has been a real topic of interest. Right. So everyone said, okay, fine, fine, fine. We don't know all the attributes, attribution answers, but we're going to figure out attention. We're going to see where they're looking. And so they did a whole bunch of stuff with eye tracking. And are they looking whatever. Well, it turns out that you can be attending something without looking at it. You can be attending something and looking at it, and your brain can still be thinking about something else entirely. And that does brands no good.

[Ryan Alford]

No.

[Devorah]

And so what we want to look at is how emotionally engaged are folks. And so we do that through using Scosche devices or essentially like Apple watches, sport watches, and we can tell somebody's variable heart rate variability. That tells us their oxytocin is spiking in their body and sending them signals that makes them more likely to do something in the future. And I think that's incredibly powerful.

[Ryan Alford]

That is powerful. I was just thinking we're doing a little segment on sports or trading cards because they're so huge in our news segment. And I've been opening like packs on the episode. I think about what? Well, what's going through my head. It's like legal gambling. You know, you're looking, opening.

[Devorah]

I bet, I bet your immersion, that's the, that's the measure. I bet it's through the roof. It's usually on a scale of 0 to 100. And anything over 50 starts to get our attention. Yeah, you're probably, I mean, because money's on the line, your emotions are on the line. I would love you can download the app. It's called Immersion Tuesday. And they have another consumer one too. And you could just, just track and.

[Ryan Alford]

See, that would be.

[Devorah]

What's the number that your brain. What's your brain on. On sports cards?

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah. And my kids, I've gotten into it, back into it, because my four boys, and they're all into it. So I'm teaching them business through this lens. You know, they didn't care about anything I did. So I'm gonna. I'm creating. Helping them create a business out of it.

[Devorah]

I love it. My daughter sometimes does that for me. She'll put on like a fake little focus group. And she's only 10, but she's been. And she knows and she always serves snacks. So that's. I'm like, okay.

[Ryan Alford]

She knows what she's doing. Last thing before I let you go, Devorah. I mean, all this has me kind of in this mind of the. The per. Is the purchase funnel data. I mean, we have the purchase funnel and the virtual cycle. Like whatever you want to call it, it's still there, right? I mean, you still have to get awareness and then intent and consideration and like in some way, shape or fashion, even if it's always moving.

[Devorah]

I'm very ornery about the purchase cycle, I gotta tell you. And the reason I'm ornery is because, yeah, it still exists. You still have to get from A to B to C to D. Yeah. But it doesn't happen in this neat, tidy little order. So when we do path to purchase studies and we do quite a number of them, I have to. I try to break it to clients. I'm like, I'm not going to give you your nice little neat little thing. And oftentimes they're like, but I want the. I want the. I want the graphic that shows the one thing to the next. So, you know, sometimes I give in and I'll give them their little path to purchase purchase funnel. But what you have to know is that whole huge other things, galaxies of things are happening outside of that. And so the way that we like to kind of envision it is almost like as if there's a room full of balloons. And that is everyone's sort of attention and engagement. And some of those balloons rise and fall. Some of them are bigger, some of them. And that's kind of how I like to think about it rather than like a neat little tidy thing. Because our research shows that less than 5%, and it's actually less than 1% ever do things in the same order in the same way. It's just. There's too many things. It's. There's trillions of combinations I like, think.

[Ryan Alford]

I like that crystallized something for me. Thinking about the empower, the influence. You know, like a certain stage or certain tactic might be considered a consideration tactic, but its influence might be greater depending on the person. I think that's what. Am I hearing that right?

[Devorah]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ryan Alford]

Devorah, you're a smart lady.

[Devorah]

Thank you.

[Ryan Alford]

You. Thank you.

[Devorah]

It's been fun to be with you.

[Ryan Alford]

Hey, it's fun. Fire in the zoo influencing shopper decisions. And her TEDx's are blowing up. You got to go check them out. She's smart. She's teaching brands what they need to do and more importantly, what not to do. But it's a. It's complex. At the end of the day, that's what I think we need to take away. But it's unique, it's attainable to know, but you have to kind of clear your mind. Like, I have to do this myself. You know, I consider myself, you know, a bastion of willingness to change, but it's just. There's a lot of complexity, a lot of different influence, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. And I feel like that's what you criticize today. I don't know, either with your brilliance or just at least crystallizing it in my head. So I really appreciate it.

[Devorah]

Devorah, thanks so much. Ryan. Great to be here.

[Ryan Alford]

Where can everybody keep up with you, what you're doing, books, etc.

[Devorah]

Yeah, we've got a substack Alter agents. You can find us on substack. That's kind of where we're writing right now. We shared a little bit about what it was like because we're here in Los Angeles after the fires and we're not super consistent, but there's a fair bit on there. And actually there's some really great research we did in August and then repeated after the inauguration on consumer sentiment. And so I'll just leave you with a quarter of Americans are like insanely depressed and down in the dumps right now, and so not a super happy topic, but I think very interesting to look at in terms of sentiment right now. And it did not change. It just flipped a little bit. Conservatives are a little happier now and liberals are a little less happy, but essentially the same number of people are pretty darn sad.

[Ryan Alford]

That's not positive, but we need to be aware of it. You know, you can't put your head in the sand. And I think brands and companies can go a long way by avoiding the divisiveness and maybe just being a little more positive.

[Devorah]

Yeah. I mean, and we actually give some recommendations for that. It's like, yeah, maybe do, you know, visuals and maybe partner with, you know, brand with publications that are a little more positive. Maybe host a 5k or a puppy adoption thing. I don't know.

[Ryan Alford]

Yeah, well, people do love dogs and their animals or their whatever they are.

[Devorah]

If I was a brand of money to spend, I'd be hosting puppy parties right now.

[Ryan Alford]

Ah, I like it. Okay. All right. Puppy parties it is. Puppy parties for the win. Devorah, thank you so much for coming on.

[Devorah]

Thanks so much. Take care.

[Ryan Alford]

Hey, guys. You know, to find us ryanisright.com you'll find highlight clips, all of the episodes and our YouTube links. And of course, where to find our guests, her amazing books and information on everything that they're up to. We appreciate you for making us number one. We'll see you next time on right about now.

This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.