← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
What Hasn’t Changed in Marketing (with Matt Kerbel, Head of Brand Strategy at Turo) | Ep. 333
00:48:23
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- [00:01]
Daniel Murray
Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials Podcast. Today's episode is with Matt Kerbal, the guy leading global brand strategy at Turo, AKA the Airbnb for cars. We talked about the stuff a lot of us skip, like why soft skills matter more because we're in the age of AI now. How to run a smart test and learn brand campaign and the underrated fundamentals that still work today in marketing. The this episode is a must. Listen. It was a great conversation with Matt and I'm excited for you all to listen. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up. What is up, Matt? Welcome to the podcast.
- [01:07]
Matt Kerbal
Good morning. Happy Friday. I'm so excited that we finally get to do this.
- [01:11]
Daniel Murray
Dan, could you give a little background of where you are now, what you're doing, so people understand where you're coming from and then we can get into our conversation today.
- [01:22]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coming to you live from the Bay Area, specifically the beautiful Berkeley hills in the East Bay. By day, I lead global brand strategy for Turo, which for any of you who don't know, is the world's largest car sharing marketplace, like Airbnb. But instead of places, we do cars, so we connect you with people who own cars and want to rent them out. And we have well over 300,000 cars in our marketplace around the world. And it's a way better way to rent a car. So aside from that, I'm a Canadian that ended up in California. My most important job is Dad. I have a couple little awesome dudes who are graduating next week from their respective classes. And I love and live and breathe marketing. And I'm so excited to be here with you.
- [02:15]
Daniel Murray
I think the secondary job is cooler than the first job, but no doubt. Yeah, we chatted offline about this, but right now everybody's really sprinting towards this. AI, AI. Everything. I have to learn everything. AI. But one thing that people aren't thinking about and you think about is the human skills that marketers are sleeping on. So could we go into. I know AI is important, but what are skills that aren't being built up right now that is also important?
- [02:47]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah, no, it's. I appreciate you bringing it up. And here's the ironic thing. As AI becomes more and more part of our lives and jobs, the Soft skills, the human element becomes more important, right. Our technical skills become more, I don't want to say automated, but it's a, you know, there's, there's a supercharge to it that comes with AI, where some things that we had to do, you know, by hand and by eye now can be done much faster and more efficiently by AI. And so what does that mean? That means that we have to be really, really effective at, you know, communicating ideas. We have to be really, really effective at communicating with each other. We have to be amazing at motivating people, we have to be amazing at storytelling. Right? All of the foundational tenets of marketing and really just life writ large, that is going to become more important as people are working from anywhere, not necessarily in offices, using technology to do things for them. Like, we still need to be hyper effective and creative and all the things that are never going to change no matter how much technology is thrown at us. And so, you know, a few that I think a lot about and there's a lot of literature on them. One of them is vulnerability. If you look at any literature on vulnerable leadership, you get more out of your team, you get better retention, you get higher productivity. You get all these things because people see that you're being your authentic selves and they're willing to share. And the more you know about each other and you understand one another's lived experiences, the more you can think about how you can get the best work out of each other. And also people feel safe and they generally do the best work when they're safe. So, long story short, I've never been more bullish on soft skills. Of course, understanding the technical aspects of your craft are always going to be super important. And by the way, playing with AI and getting in there and learning and doing the things and really understand how these tools can be complimentary is incredibly important. Like, you don't want to get left behind, but at the same time, I don't think you want to get left behind, quote unquote on the soft skills. The more we can supercharge those, the further you're actually going, you're going to go in your career and the happier I think you're actually going to be in your life. So that's, that's a hot take.
- [05:19]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I want to go a little deeper in that because I think some people might agree with the statement that, okay, soft skills are more important right now because of AI is going to take over everything. But like, how does one go and develop these skills? Like, how If I was like, hey, I want to be better at my soft skills right now. I mean, inherently some people have these skills, but, like, how do you get to a point where you can start developing them alongside of AI so you don't get left behind?
- [05:54]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah, I think it's one of the great mysteries for me, you know, two things that I say that go largely uncovered in school growing up is basic financial literacy and soft Skills. Like, two things that are incredibly important to the welfare and success and satisfaction in our lives. This is the exact reason why actually Jeffrey Colon and I started a soft skills sort of coaching program called Everything Else, because it's literally everything else you never learned in school or on the job. Um, and I think that there are increasingly places where you can go to learn about these things online. Whether that is, you know, with a cohort of people like we do live, or whether it's through, you know, various online programs, whether it's the incredibly overwhelming amount of podcasts and books and things that are out there, or, you know, I think underrated and how you and I came to know each other is going LinkedIn and, you know, starting to follow people that really feel inspiring to you, not only because of the work, but also because of how they show up and shooting your shot and trying to speak with those people and get into, you know, not necessarily one, but maybe a few sort of mentor like relationships that don't have to be with people that are 20 years your senior, they can be peers, but people who really are doing something that inspires you, whether it is showing up in an authentic way, whether it's storytelling, whether it's, you know, approaching things and really like innovative and different perspectives and just try to strike up a conversation and learn and be a sponge as much as you can. And a lot of it just comes with kind of doing and trying things. And so I'll give you an example. One thing that I did a couple of years ago at Turo, I've been there for about three years now, and I did an anonymous 360 eval on myself. Like, I sent out a G form, a Google form, to people across the company who I've been working with, as well as some folks outside of the organization, and said, you know, give me the good, bad and the ugly and really help me identify, you know, what are my superpowers as you perceive them and how can I lean into that more, and then what are opportunity areas for me? And I wanted it to all be anonymous. I did not want to know where it came From. Because I didn't want people to feel like they couldn't be as honest with me as possible. Super, super helpful. And I think a lot of people try to constantly be introspective, which I think is incredibly important. Like, think about who you are and how you can grow and be honest with yourselves. But also this exercise of extrospection, of, like, asking other people about yourself and then radically accepting, that can be actually, on one hand, scary, and it is, and sometimes sucky. But on the other hand, it can be incredibly informative and freeing and motivating to figure out how you can become more of sort of who you are, who you want to be, who you're meant to be. All those cliches and be a better leader and be a better team member and be a better partner and friend and all those good things. So I think there's a lot of ways, um, and. And I'd invite people to just do something and not forget about this. Like, it's like working out, working out, working out and then eating like, like crap, right? It's like, don't forget about the other thing, right? Do. Do the technical skills, but, like, don't forget about the soft skills. At least try to do something to work on it.
- [09:35]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I think most marketers actually forget that, because you think you inherently have these skills, but they actually are muscles that you need to work on. And one thing that you said, I think is really important too, is the best mentors are actually people who are in your role that you want to get next, not like 5, 10, 15 years ahead. So if you're like a manager right now, I would, like, look for, like, a senior manager or a director to be a mentor. Not that cmo, because they're. They just went through what you went through a year or two ago, so they can tell you what to do, how to get there, where someone who's a CMO hasn't done that for 10 years, and things have changed. And one thing you've also said is, like, marketing changes so fast. So it's like, when they were a manager, things could be different. AI is now in the picture where, like, five years ago, nobody was talking about it.
- [10:31]
Matt Kerbal
There's data on that. I mean, there's data on it. You know, it's famously said that, like, Einstein was a terrible teacher when he was a professor because he couldn't relate to anybody and nobody could relate to him. And, you know, I've had situations where, like, I've learned a lot from some folks who are, you know, Generations ahead. And, and I think that there's really important, like timeless wisdom that can be passed down. But I really do think that like when you have a, you know, Gen Xer boomer trying to relate to and, and advise and coach and mentor a Gen Z, for example, like, it's just completely different worlds. And that could be really tricky, you know, if we're, if we're being honest. And another thing I would say you talked about, you know, skills that you can develop. I think something that people really underestimate as well are a couple. One is, and they're related. One is strategies to overcome fear. And really working on that, whether that's anything, right? Whether it's public speaking or, you know, there's a million things that we all, you know, have, have sort of self doubt about. The other is actually working on your confidence. And again, I nerd out on this stuff. There's a lot of literature that actually connects confidence to the perception of competence, you know, and so you may have incredible data and this awesome narrative that you've put together, but then it really depends on how you deliver it, right? And ultimately that delivery, that confident delivery can break through so much more if you're just, you know, kind of in on yourself and you don't feel confident because of who's in the room or the quantity of people or, you know, this is your first time doing something like this. And so how can you practice confidence in safe spaces, right? Can you find people that you can practice in front of who you know and love and they'll give you honest feedback? You know, can you, you know, start to write out your thoughts and really think through the narrative before you go into the room? What are things that you can do to feel more confident in your own skin? And part of it, Dan, to your point too, is to talk to people who've, who've been in that role and where you want to go and help you understand what does it take? What did they have to overcome, you know, how did they navigate what you're trying to navigate? I think it couldn't be more critical. And I would also encourage us to coach each other. There's some really awesome data from intelligence agencies like the CIA, where the highest performing teams are the ones that are constantly coaching each other. And there's another thing that I love. Again, I'm sorry to throw all this really fun data, but as an oldest sibling, oldest siblings tend to. Eldest children tend to perform best in school and ultimately go on to be generally more successful. I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back for being born first. But the reason why an oldest child who has siblings does better than an only child and you may say, oh, the only child's probably gonna do best, they're going to have like all the attention of their parents. It's because of the coaching effect. It's because the oldest child is coaching, you know, his, his or her siblings and that allows them to feel more confident in their own skin over time and then becoming adults to actually, you know, do the same and to be coachable for others as well. So it's this like really, really fascinating kind of psychological and sociological stuff that we don't really think about a lot of the time. And I now see it with my kids. You know, I have two sons who are 8 and 5 and they're doing this all the time. And I, I just like well up with pride when I see the 8 year old trying to teach the fire old to do something that when he was 5 and didn't have somebody to teach him, it was like a very different ballgame. So just a lot of really things that we don't normally think about that I am very, I feel strongly that we should.
- [14:35]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. And one of the things I wanted to tap into is, I mean you've said there's like two constants in marketing and we've talked about change is one of them. And then like time is fundamental. So what do you think is some of those like skills or fundamentals that helped you survive, like every marketing trend that's been coming?
- [14:55]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah, you know, I mean my journey is kind of wild. Like I've been in companies of very different stages and maturities and subject matters. You know, whether I've been in gaming or whether I've worked, you know, for an electric vehicle company or I've been in marketplaces like Turo and Lyft or CPG at General Mills. I always say to people like, the reason why I'm able to be a bit of a chameleon is because the tenets of marketing don't change, like no matter where we are in time. I think the most important thing is to start with the fundamentals, which is like understanding the prospective customer and really, really try to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand their pain points, their frustrations, their needs, their dreams, their wants, their desires, all those kinds of things and understand what those kind of, what I would say human and cultural truths are. And then think about the brand and think about the company and think about the truths, the amazing things that the company does uniquely that are very hard, if not impossible for rivals to replicate and then connect the dots. And you're only going to do that if you come from a place of research and empathy. And I learned that as a CPG marketer, General mills these like training grounds where they really think, you know, insight first. But I, I really, really do believe it. And as I've gone to smaller companies, I like to say I, I kind of come in and, and put sort of structure around chaos because I come with this sort of, you know, framework mindset of, of thinking about research and insights being the foundation of everything. And you know, we talked about AI to start the conversation again, shiny objects. Like I, I feel like so many people are obsessed with AI right now, but they're actually not getting to know those who will grow up with it and use it. And that being Gen Z. Like I don't know a lot of marketers who really, really, really deeply understand Gen Z. And by the way, Gen Z, like the eldest Gen zers are like 27 now. They're working, they're not like kids. And by 2030 they're going to have, I believe it's 12 trillion with a T dollar in buying power. Right. Like that is in five years, that is now in four and a half years. So the fact that like we deeply seek to understand the tool so that we don't get, you know, we don't fall behind or, or whatever you want to say, but we don't actually understand the audience in which we're trying to influence with said tool is I think a fundamental flaw of our craft and people who work in marketing. And I just want to really, really deeply encourage everybody to remember the fundamentals like have a consistent brand, deeply know your customer. Creativity, when done amazingly, can be a force multiplier. Like these are things that are just fundamentally not going to change and you have to nail them. And then we have all of these tools and channels and places and spaces on the Internet and beyond, you know, in real life as well, which is kind of quote unquote coming back to reach those people. Right? But, but that should only come after we're like, what is our message? Who are we for? What is the problem we're trying to solve? What is our promise to them? And then it's like, don't just be on TV because wisdom says you should be on tv. Like be on TV if it makes sense for your audience to reach them in a way that is going to be, you know, potentially deeply effective and efficient. But Maybe it's Reddit, maybe it's discord, maybe it's through podcast ads, maybe it's through long form content. Like it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, if you have a great message that really is going to resonate with the audience, it will break through if you execute it really well, no matter where you are executing it. I fundamentally believe that.
- [18:45]
Daniel Murray
One thing, I mean, I want to dive into one part of this because, I mean, you've been at like different industries, different roles. One of the fundamentals you said is like, you got to deeply understand your audience, the people. But what is, like when you get into these new roles, like, what is your framework to like, start, start understanding the customer, start understanding the prospect. Like, what is that person behind buying? Like, what is that framework you use?
- [19:13]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah, I mean, I go into like full blown ninja mode, which is I want to talk to customer support and understand what people are complaining about. I want to go on the Internet and dive into the deepest, darkest parts of Reddit, you know, and, and understand these things. You know, do we have social listening? Do we have past research? Do we have budget, future research? Right? Like, who are our partners in doing this? You know, what do we already know? And again, this varies based on the size of the company, right? The resources at your disposal, you know, but diving into reviews, like, there's so many things that you can learn and then the secret weapon, don't tell anybody, is talk to humans. Like, go and talk to them. Get on the phone, write them. I saw a post Yesterday from the CEO of 1-800-got- junk. And he said that he is switching from square to plaid. And Jack Dorsey, who, you know, famously founded Twitter and also Square reached out to him and the guy was like, whoa, Jack Dorsey is reaching out to me? Like, okay, that's awesome. I wonder if he's going to try to win back my business. And apparently Jack was just like, look, like we'd love for you to come back, but I actually just want to understand why you're switching and just listen. And I thought that that was fantastic. And I think that, you know, that earns a fan of Jack for life from that, you know, that, that leader. And maybe they will go back. But at the end of the day, there's so much that can be learned by just asking questions and listening. And also, you know, if, you know, principles, communication. Body language is obviously the biggest indicator of how people actually feel about something. And so being able to talk to them, see how they express their body language, hear the intonation of their voice and actually speak to humans could not be more important. So I think that there's a million ways to do it when you get into a new company. And I just strongly encourage people to get started because it will lead to aha moments or the way somebody says something that you've been stewing on and it just becomes this light bulb of like, oh my goodness, like that is, that's like, yes, like what you just said is what this brand needs to be about or what the, what this moment for this brand needs to be about. And then you start to go into, you know, mad scientist mode and figure out all the ways in which you can bring that to life with your crew. So, yeah, I think it's so important. And then, you know, look like to the extent that you can leverage tools like AI to supercharge research, there's so many efficient, less expensive, faster ways to do research than ever. And so you don't even need a lot of resources. And by the way, I think that some traditional methods of research are super outdated. Like if you go into a normal room focus group, like, there's going to be people that are influencing, you know, others, right, by being bigger or, or having a stronger perspective and then other people don't want to speak up. And there's a lot of tools these days that help avoid that sort of, you know, biased group think or, you know, what they call the hippo, which is the highest paid person in the room or whatever. So I, yeah, I just encourage people to come from a place of like, research and understanding before they try to sprint and say, how can I growth hack the algo?
- [22:59]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I mean, what you just said about, I mean, doing what you said, like talking to customers, going the deep depth of the Internet. What AI is just doing for you now is like you could take those 30 conversations, download all those threads of Reddit people are talking about, and then put it into AI and help it analyze the data that you're still doing research. But the AI can help you get to a point of what are the common words these people are using, what phrases stick out, what are some common pain points. You just use it to like supercharge being more human, not the other way around. Like, that's what I would do is like when people come into, like send me emails or reply to things or even on these podcasts, I take the podcast and say, like, what are the common things that these marketing leaders are saying? Like, what are the pain points? And I put it in AI instead of. And I'M also have my bias and my learnings that I think are common too. But I want to compare it and contrast against. And I couldn't do that before. Before it would have taken me hours and hours to come through transcripts and. Yeah, so now that's why what makes AI great is like it could take what you're doing already as a human and just 10x what you're doing as a marketer.
- [24:19]
Matt Kerbal
Focus on the things that really matter. And that's the, that's the, you know, at least at this point, the best way to use it. Right. I joke that we're like in the Facebook wall days of AI. It's just so, so, so early. I don't even think we have any idea kind of what's coming and where this is going to go. Truthfully mean that, but I totally agree. Like, that's such an incredible usage that would have taken hours. And by the way, human error, fatigue, things like that may have come into place as you were doing those activities. So to the extent that we can use it as a complementary tool as opposed to being fearful and really embrace it but not be replaced by it is I think a really great mindset. And I love that you're doing that. I think that's really awesome.
- [25:09]
Daniel Murray
Now that we've established that you understand audiences and you know how to do it, I want to go into a latest campaign you dropped and like track. Track back how you like, thought about it. So like the, the Turo latest campaign that dropped the, the new TV spot. Like, could you walk us through like, the strategy behind it and what you were trying to nail? And then also, like, you can go through like some of the fundamentals that you thought about in the strategy to. To crush the campaign.
- [25:40]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah, totally. Yeah. So for those who aren't aware of. Sure, probably most people aren't aware. We launched a campaign last year called Skip the Rental Counter. Pretty obvious what we're trying to do. And it again came from a place of research and understanding. And the thing that just kept coming up over and over again in terms of not only the incidence of mentions, it kept coming up over and over again, but the magnitude of it, the sheer anger that comes with the traditional car rental experience at the rental car counter, specifically at the airport, but in general is just so awful. I wrote on LinkedIn a couple of days ago, like, it just feels like the DMV of the airport, except that you may not drive off in the car that you intended to, which is just like a hilarious premise. And so look we have so many things at Turo that are going for us, right? You know, you actually get the car that you wanted to rent, the exact one. You have a direct line to an amazing host, the person that owns the car, and, you know, they're vested in you having great experience because there's a review system in place, and that's obviously how they get more business. You know, you can get the car delivered to you. All these different things that make Turo special, not the least of which is all the incredible cars that we have on the platform. And what we wanted to do is really just bring that to life, show that you can rent just about any car, just about anywhere through our platform, which is different than the experience from traditional rental car. But it started with research, and it actually started last year with a single market test. The reason why we did a single market test, we chose Philadelphia. And I can get into why, but the executive leadership team and the board were very curious to understand, like, what is the ROI of brand marketing? Is there a way that we can prove it? And so very kind of high level, we worked with data science and said, okay, we're going to choose a market. We ended up choosing Philly. Long story short, very dense market and yet cheaper inventory than places like New York or Chicago or Boston. We created kind of a version of Philly, what we call a counterfactual. So a version of Philly, as if things just hummed along as they were, as if we didn't actually do any marketing in Philly. So we sort of, like, trended it out in the event that sort of we. We weren't going to go in and do any marketing there. So, like, what would Philly look like if we did nothing? And then, of course, we. We blitzed the market. And so we had, you know, an incredible amount of out of home around the city and train stations and subways and at the airport and in downtown corridors and all these. All these places. We were pretty unignorable. We partner with a lot of amazing creators from around the Philadelphia area. We partner with, you know, legends from Philly like DJ Jazzy Jeff and Tyrese Maxey and, you know, the homegrown band Mount Joy to do really fun PR stunts. And what we saw was that it did really, really well. We also did, by the way, events as well. We showed up at four different events because we wanted to have a really good balance of being in people's feeds, but also being on the ground and showing up for the community. And each of the events were very, very different subject matter for one another. So that way it would be highly incremental. And at first what we saw was the upper funnel metrics change. So strong awareness, consideration of Turo and booking intent and things like that went up. But it wasn't until three to six months later that we really saw the conversion pull through and people starting to book and people starting to use. And Philadelphia actually became and still is our fastest growing US market from a place where it was actually below average. So incredibly successful. And we had to work really, really closely with executive leadership to say, look, we are a lower frequency, trigger based, higher dollaring business, right? People. People take a beat to figure out where they're going to rent from. This isn't like a, you know, new T shirt or like a beer where people will just impulse buy, right? So, you know, we knew that it would take a minute. Like we launch this in the summer and come holiday time it was like bonkers. And it's continued through to this year because now the flywheel effect has taken over from all that really important activity that we did in Philly throughout the end of 2024. Now people know Turo really, really well in those markets. And so we've continued that in a few different markets and we've balanced that with now a national campaign, a national extrapolation of that. And we're about to go on tv, on broadcast, on streaming, even on different airlines. We have partnerships with United and Southwest where we're going to bring that to life. And you can see it on YouTube right now before we kind of launch nationally. But it's a really great campaign where it's like very, very drab and dark and dreary and black and white for people who are waiting in line. There's like a baby crying, there's a phone ringing, people look exasperated at the counter. Everybody can relate. Like, we've all been there, we've all had these horrible experiences. And by the way, like, regardless of who you rent from there pretty homogeneous. And then there's this sort of like technicolor experience of this family that just kind of bursts through the crowd and goes to their beautiful car. And it was all done through an app, because as I say, it's 2025 and not 1995 and they go and get on with life and have an awesome time. And I think that really speaks to what we have in our midst. And I think it's just a category that it's long overdue for disruption. Last thing I'll say is if you look at the players in our category, the youngest of our major competitors started in 1958 and the eldest started in the 1910s. One from 1912, the other from 1918. So Turo has been around for about 15 years now, but we're still sort of the new kid on the block. And we're really, really excited about this campaign. But again, started from a place of research, testing, you know, really, really great cross functional work. But also, as I spoke about earlier, really, really important communication, you know, bringing people along the journey. We did a lot of creative testing along the way, using the platform zappy to put things, whether it was messaging or whether it was storyboards, et cetera, in front of consumers before we went live that we would be like, okay, does this actually resonate like, you know, does this make you want to potentially, you know, rent from us much more so than you know before you saw this. And the answer over and over was a resounding yes. And we knew we were headed in a really powerful direction. So I can't wait to see what the summer holds for us and then how we continue to springboard from there and do bigger, better, more awesome things as a crew.
- [33:16]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. I mean, now if I broke that down to the fundamentals so people could go to the fundamentals. There's market research involved, there's storytelling, like you have to have a good story. There's testing, which is fundamental in marketing. Yeah. There's the teamwork with the communication with all those teams on the ground. I also think that it relatively to what you could have done, you took a smaller bet and picking one city instead of saying, I'm gonna try 18 cities, which you could have done. Most marketers, when they run any even Facebook ads, you can pick a market to see if there's an uptick to see if that ad's actually working, if you have a baseline. So there's things that are fundamentally that if you think about it as a marketer, those things are not going to change. If you market research, like storytelling, testing, the psychology stuff, the pain point stuff that you did with the feelings.
- [34:25]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah. The other thing I would say is that we did a lot of really important tracking of the data, both internally and first party data. But also we have a brand health tracking partner. We use tracksuit. They're awesome. And I just think that there's a myth out there that brand cannot be measured. There's too many marketers, brand marketers that are being like, trust me, I'm a doctor, just trust me, this is going to go fine. This is Going to be awesome for us. I think that, look, you have to speak the language of the people that you're trying to influence. You have to think. You know, Dale Carnegie famously talks about, like, the most important thing you can do is think about the other person, not about your own self interests. Right. And if you're talking to your CEO, if you're talking to your cfo, you know, you need to be able to, to think about what's important to them and also communicate effectively the time horizons with which you expect to see these things pay back. And you know, if they would have been looking at like an immediate sea ad rent car sort of situation, then this would have been perceived as a failure. But we saw the leading indicators. We were like, the tea leaves are telling us that this thing is gonna, is gonna really pull through. And, and they said, okay, like we're with you. Which was awesome. And it's now allowed us to scale this to tv. And the mandate for us moving forward is that we've now essentially convinced the powers that be that we're going to invest more in brand in the years to come. And I always say offense was championships. And I just really appreciate our leadership group's belief in what we're doing. And, and I really do believe that it's going to pay off and that more and more people are going to talk about us when we're not in the room really positively. And that flywheel will go well beyond Philadelphia to the rest of the US and then the other countries that we're in, which today are Canada, the uk, France and Australia. And we're excited to expand, you know, down the road as well.
- [36:45]
Daniel Murray
Yeah. And I think like, what you did, small, I guess small test is the best way to like, show like brand, like a market that didn't have any brand awareness versus, like, you probably have markets that are using Turo. If you did it in the market that using Turo, you might have seen like maybe a little uptick which would have shown, but you're doing like relatively like low performing market. But I want to do like something like a bonus thing because I know you're, you're a fan. So if you were like, I know you love Peloton, so what would you do if you were handed the keys to Peloton's brand right now?
- [37:22]
Matt Kerbal
I do. You can see it behind me. I did peloton yoga this morning. I was on the bike yesterday. Honestly, I think that they've done so much good for so many people and I think they've done Some great things. But obviously, the brand has taken a hit. The business has taken a hit in a few years. There's a couple things that, like, if you're. If you're from Peloton, you're listening. Here's like, you know, free. Free advice. One thing I feel like is missing, and I talked about it earlier, is it's kind of crazy to me that they don't have, like, a. Like a dietary component to their platform. Like, it's. It feels like they could totally have their own food network, you know, on Peloton. And, you know, whether that's like. I mean, they have such big personalities who teach, you know, these. These classes, who. Who, you know, lead these classes. And I feel like. I don't even want to say, like, food is having a moment. That's such, like, a ridiculous thing to say. But, like, I. I feel like there's people who really take seriously their. Their desire to become healthier, but also want to eat things that don't suck. And I just think that there's, like, such a massive opportunity for there to be a complementary business. Like, I understand, like, let's create a rower and, like, a. And like, a treadmill. But, like, you know, like, everybody eats last time I checked. Right. And so I feel like there's a lot of value there to, like, complement what you're doing, where, like, you use, you know, the bike or the app or whatever in the morning to work out, and then later you're, like, back on the app and you're figuring out what your. What your meal is going to be to create a holistic program. So that's. That's one that I think could be. Could be awesome, and I think could be quite believable given, like, the ethos of the brand. And, like, you could have a community of people sharing recipes because it's such a massive community across the globe. Like, that's one that I would think about. The other one is actually, like, I just. I appreciate that at the advertising level, they show their community, but I feel like there's so many. There's got to be so many, like, characters and stories across the community. And one thing that I always say to my wife is, like, the highest I can get, I would say in any given class is, like, maybe the top quarter, usually the top third of the leaderboard. And I'm pushing, man. Like, you know, I'm going for it, and I'm like, who are these people at the top? Like, how is this possible? Are you just, like, cranking up your dial and just going, like, as slow as you can, like, get into these crazy numbers. I just want there to be a camera that looks at these people. Who are you? What are you doing? How is this even humanly possible? I would honestly, I told her. I'm like, I would literally watch a series of the best of the best in these various apps, like Peloton, where people are just dominating, and I can just use my imagination right now. And that's hilarious. But I think it would actually be awesome to just go one level deeper in terms of transparency, currency, and just embrace the fact that we are, like, sweaty messes who are going for it all together. And they've done that a little bit through advertising, but it feels too polished. Like, I think there's a level of polish that Peloton could take away and really show that they are truly the fitness partner for the global community. So those are a couple things that I think about, I guess, when I'm, like, working out or not working out or going for walks or thinking about things. So there you go. Peloton, for what it's worth, from Matt Kerbal to you.
- [41:18]
Daniel Murray
Have you. Have you seen the Tour de France show of, like, the. Like, them writing, like, the. The first season and second season of, like, what the preparation of and the teamwork that goes into.
- [41:30]
Matt Kerbal
No, but I mean, and I love that, and I actually.
- [41:33]
Daniel Murray
It's the best.
- [41:35]
Matt Kerbal
One of my former bosses, he's awesome, and he was fortunate to have a sabbatical at one point, and he went, He's a beast. He rode the Tour de France route by himself over many days. So, yeah, I feel like, again, it's one of those people where I'm like, I don't see this with you day to day, but I kind of want to see the prep that goes into you doing that. So now I need to watch the show.
- [42:05]
Daniel Murray
Last question I have for you, and I ask everybody on this podcast, is, what is a marketing hill you would die on?
- [42:12]
Matt Kerbal
Oh, man. Brand is the way it's been proven basically forever. And brand is owned by everybody at the company. It is essentially a synonym for reputation. So I think to the extent that you can rally an entire company around a brand in a really, really cogent and convincing and inspiring and powerful way, you give yourself a monumentally higher prospect of success. I fundamentally believe that, and I don't think it's as easy as it sounds. And the other thing I would say, as I talked about earlier, is brand is measurable. If you don't think the brand is measurable then try harder.
- [43:00]
Daniel Murray
I mean, that's the only way you're going to survive anyway. If Brand is not measurable, you're just not going to stay relevant as a marketer. Because honestly, that's how you crime in your career is results driven.
- [43:14]
Matt Kerbal
That's right. If you can't prove why the thing happened and Brand is just out there as this ethereal, mystic thing, even if it seems like everything's going well, we've seen people get fired before, even when things are seemingly going well because internally something's off, they're not connecting the dots for the people that they need to be connecting the dots for. So I think it's really, really important and so really, really think about Brand. What else have we talked about? Soft skills, don't forget about those. Right. Don't forget about the fundamentals and make sure your brand is measurable.
- [43:59]
Daniel Murray
Lastly, where could people find what you're doing and find you?
- [44:04]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah, probably by far the place that I'm most active is on LinkedIn. So just look up Matt Kerbal and always happy to hear from people, to connect, to chat. I love LinkedIn. It's a 24 7, never ending networking party and I learned so much. So I'd love to learn so much from you guys as well because it really makes what we do so much more meaningful.
- [44:32]
Daniel Murray
Well, thank you so much for coming on. I love the ideas of Peloton, your campaign. We covered a lot in this conversation. We went different directions, but I think it's helpful to understand why fundamentals and I honestly think like, Brand is a fundamental thing that people like you just said, it's like synonymous with reputation. Like if you don't have a good reputation as a company, you're gonna lose like no matter how many force placements you're trying to do, to try one revenue, which is what paid is just like a guaranteed distribution, but doesn't help brand if you're not having a brand thought behind it.
- [45:16]
Matt Kerbal
Yeah. And the last thing I'll say is like, don't overthink it. Like, what do we know? We know that like people want to be happy, people want to be entertained, people want to be informed, people want to learn about things that have value to them in, you know, their lives. Right. And they want currency, they want to be able to tell other people about awesome things and do those things that I just said for others. So overthink it. Like figure out what your way to present these things are and just try something is better than nothing, right? As they say, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
- [45:57]
Daniel Murray
Well, thank you so much and I really enjoyed this conversation.
- [46:01]
Matt Kerbal
Thanks Daniel, I appreciate it and likewise and keep doing what you're doing.
- [46:06]
Daniel Murray
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community. It.