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Uncensored CMO
Google Retail MD on the power of search and the secrets to why we watch YouTube - Sophie Neary
00:57:23
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Transcript152 lines
- [00:00]
Sophie Neary
Foreign.
- [00:06]
John Evans
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now, in this edition of the podcast, we're going to be talking about search and talking about it with someone who really knows it because she's been around since the beginning, unbelievably, Google has been around for 25 years and in that time it's transformed how we find information and where we go to look to find things out. And not Only that, but YouTube as a platform has exploded, and not just in terms of where we find information, but also how we get our entertainment. So I'm joined in this episode by Sophie Neary, who knows all about it. She's here to answer all the questions, inspire us and tell us how to get more out of these two incredible platforms. Here it is. Sophie Neary, welcome to the show.
- [00:45]
Sophie Neary
Thanks, John. Delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [00:47]
John Evans
Good to have you. Good to have you. Now we're getting towards Christmas. There's a lot going on, exciting time of year. And you've had quite a career in retail, haven't you? But particularly in digital. So. So how did you get into this world of digital retail and what got you here today?
- [01:02]
Sophie Neary
Well, completely by accident. So I am one of those rare people. I've had 53 trips around the sun and I have spent all of my career working in digital. So I started back in 1994 as a graduate trainee for Reuters, largest news organization in the world. Unknown fact. Also at that time owned the largest private computer network in the world. And when I was a graduate trainee, of course at Reuters, you wanted to work on the news because that's their flagship product. And I got put on this thing called the Internet, Capital T Capital. I felt like a failure. I did not want to work on the Internet, I wanted to work on the news. And that's sort of been the story of my entire career, that sometimes not getting what you want is the most wonderful stroke of luck. No one knew in 1995 what the Internet was going to become. A bit like now we don't really know the future potential of AI except we just know it's going to be exponential and massive. And yeah, that was sort of where it all started. So I sort of started in financial services. Flipped in the early 2000s to consumer and consumer retail. I'm a third generation retailer. I was always destined to work in retail. My granddad was a watchmaker. My dad went Left school at 15 to work in the same shop. So I think retail was just in my blood. I've worked at Tesco, I've worked at asda, I've done lots of different roles. Ended up at Jack Wills wearing my Jack Wills jacket.
- [02:26]
John Evans
Very nice it is too as well, Jack Wills jacket.
- [02:28]
Sophie Neary
Today, again, another. Not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck. Made redundant from Jack Wills. Absolutely heartbroken, devastated. Thought my life was over. It was the first time I'd been on the board of a company. You know, I was like sort of 43, 44. I thought I'd really made it, this was it. Thought I'd never get a job again, certainly not on a board. Had a gap year, which was the best thing I ever did. Did some amazing stuff, had a break, came back, joined the board of Boots, which, whichever way you look at it, is definitely 10x. The role that I had at Jack Wheels. And I've been a client of Google since 2006. My whole career really has been built on exponential success in partnership with Google. I've also used gmail since about 2005. I think we all use Google Maps. So it sort of feels like coming home.
- [03:16]
John Evans
I mean, you are the classic early adopter, aren't you? I mean, if you were in, in 1995, just. I mean that was dial up Internet where you sort of, you had to sort of sit and wait while it made a lot of noise and then it would crash at the last minute and you'd start all over again.
- [03:27]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
- [03:27]
John Evans
You've seen the entire journey in a way, haven't you, for very early days?
- [03:31]
Sophie Neary
Yeah. I mean it's, it's been a journey of incredible privilege and it's also been a journey of, you know, never letting an opportunity go to waste. You know, I think a lot of people say, how come you've been so successful? How come you've done all these amazing. And it's. I think I've sort of been brave enough to say yes to lots of things that other people would think, oh, no, that's a bit too risky. But also, I've never let a setback set me back. I've always let it sort of set me up for success. I remember crying on the phone to my mum and dad, I didn't get the job on the news, I got the job on the Internet. And my dad was like, the what?
- [04:04]
John Evans
The what?
- [04:05]
Sophie Neary
What's the Internet? And he went, oh, Sophie. And I felt so bad. Felt like I let my whole family down.
- [04:13]
John Evans
I'd love to ask you about your Jack Wills time because interestingly, one of the most common bits of feedback I get whenever a guest comes on is Usually when they talk about those difficult times in their career because there are so many people at the moment actually that are redundant, out of work or having to freelance because it's a tough job market at the moment. How did it feel to sort of suddenly lose that role? And how do you approach then finding the Boots Roll in that time?
- [04:38]
Sophie Neary
I was genuinely heartbroken. And I think one of the lessons that I took from that and that I would definitely sort of share with everyone else is I had definitely really tied my identity to my job. I mean, I think it's really important that we love what we do. I'm very fortunate. I love what I do. I genuinely feel I have the best job in the world right now. But I was definitely. The fact that I was the chief customer officer at Jack Wills was very. Was too closely tied to Sophie Neary, the human being. And I think I'd done that classic mistake of living for work rather than working to live. And I think that was my big lesson from that point, which is why I sort of took time out and had this gap year. I went hiking in the Himalayas, I went kite surfing in Tarifa. I had all of these adventures and I came back smarter, cleverer, and really, really intentional about what I didn't want to do. And sometimes knowing what you don't want to do really, really helps you then determine what you would sort of say, say yes to. I mean, it was. It was. It was awful. It is awful being made redundant. And you can say to yourself, and I've had to make lots of people redundant in my career. It's the worst thing about being a manager. And I think anyone who wakes up in the morning and goes, oh, I make some redundant today, it's kind of lost their soul as a human being. And the truth is, it is. It's always a business decision. It's never a personal decision. But when it's happening to you, of course it feels personal. But the thing is around that I think sometimes the universe just has order. And it was a sign for me to say, you've tied yourself too closely to your job title, to your role. You need to reevaluate your life. And I did that. And then this most amazing job at Boots came along. And it was the most incredible time at Boots because Boots was really behind the curve on online. It was growing. I think the online market when I joined was about plus 11. I think boots.com was growing, like plus 7. I mean, no disrespect to my former colleagues, but it has to be Pretty bad to be growing behind the growth of the Internet at that time. And so I joined about the same time, just before Seb actually, and he did an amazing job with me of sort of just giving myself enough rope to not quite hang myself, but at the same time was like, just do what you need to do. And it was just magical. And it was just the most amazing time that we took. We used to go and visit brands, you know, the large CPGs, the luxury beauty brands, and they'd say, we don't want to launch new products with you because you're so bad at digital and we need you to be digital first. And within 18 months, obviously with my colleagues and amazing team there. When we launched Fenty, which is Rihanna's beauty brand, we sold more Fenty in boots and on boots.com than they did when they launched Fenty in the United States of America.
- [07:24]
John Evans
That's insane. Wow. And what was that? What was the secret to that success? What did you do to make that a reality? But was that more online versus in store? So that was all dot com sales?
- [07:35]
Sophie Neary
Yes, I think it was. I think it only went live in either six or seven, what we would call like flagship beauty stores. And, well, I mean, it was just, it was really good marketing. We had, you know, sign up for the waiting list. I can't remember maybe 180,000, 200,000 people signed up for the waiting list. We had all of the kind of fomo, we had the teasers. It was a great combination of leveraging social media, leveraging digital. We had transformed our relationship with Google at that point in time. And I think the nice sound bite from it is at the time Google had about 2,500 stores. A Fenty product got delivered. 90% of all Google online orders are click and collected in store because 90% of the UK live within 10 minutes of a booth or something crazy like that.
- [08:21]
John Evans
That's surprising me. So 90% of people order it and then go and pick it up themselves as opposed to get it delivered to their home.
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Sophie Neary
Because pre covered, you walk past a boot shop on the way to work, right. Or on the way to pick up the kids from school. And yeah, so a Fenty product was, was picked up or clicked and collected from every single boot store within about 10 days.
- [08:39]
John Evans
And presumably a success like that would mean other brands will be looking at that success and going, we want a part of that. So you became a launch, presumably a.
- [08:46]
Sophie Neary
Launch platform, a rising tide, floats or boats. After that, I think they got Mac on board and before that Mac had always said we don't want to be ranged in boots and. But it was, it was amazing. And it just shows that you focus on the right levers in retail and you can really, really move the dial really, really quickly. Retail is detail, retail is really, really hard. The future of retail in the uk, I so passionately believe, is Omnichannel. You know, we've got amazing pure play businesses, but obviously some of them are having quite a hard time right now, as we've seen, you know, boohoo or asos. But you look at a next, you look at Marks and Spencer's Omni as.
- [09:26]
John Evans
The future and we're recording this coming up in the run up to Christmas and the golden quarters they call it as well in retail. How important is this kind of final few months or few weeks of the year to most retailers?
- [09:37]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, well, one of the things I love about search is of course it is the barometer of the people, right? People will tell you what they think you might want to hear, but they search for what they really want to find and what they really want to find out about. And I think what's very interesting for me, and obviously I've only been at Google for 11 months, I joined in January and we're now filming this at the beginning of November, is what's different, that's what's interesting for me as a retailer or a brand, what do I want to know? What's different? This year the two very distinct things have happened. Comparison queries are up 15% year on year. Now, that's often a very, very big base, right? You think 2 billion people use Google search every single day. They are searching billions and billions and billions of times. And fun fact, 18 to 24 year olds who are signed into Google use Google search more than any other age demographic, AKA Gen Z. You search more than any other demographic, which most people would not believe right now would necessarily be true. But Comparison queries up 15% year on year. What does that mean? It means the cost of living crisis still really has teeth. We know that obviously from the budget. We know that people are worried that how far the pound in their pocket is going to go. So what does that mean for you as a brand or a retailer? It means how you display your value is more important than ever. That classic quote, how you display the price is more important than the price that has never been more important than ever before. And then hand in hand with that, which is definitely something that I really hammer home when I go and talk to retailers and brands, is We've seen an exponential double digit rise in what we call generic queries. So that's like black mascara rather than a branded mascara. And again, that means that people are willing to shift their brand loyalty because the pound in their pocket needs to go a little bit further than it's ever had to go before. And so what that means is if you're a CPG or a brand, there is a risk that you are going to lose consumers into, you know, non brand, own label, private label. So it's a great opportunity for some of the grocers, it's a great opportunity for own brand products. It's a, it's a flag of a warning to those brands who have a really, really strong brand identity.
- [11:48]
John Evans
Yeah, yeah.
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Sophie Neary
But you know, fortunately they have YouTube to build their brand on, so they'll be okay.
- [11:53]
John Evans
Yes, exactly. You can do both, which is amazing. How is, how has search evolved over the, over the time? Because I mean, if I go back to when I think Google launched, we're all fascinated by this blank white page and just one bar that you just typed in your question to and now it appears in a myriad of voice. And you know, even you can even search, can't you, based on a, based on an image.
- [12:15]
Sophie Neary
You know, Google search is my, is my favorite product. So Google has nine different products or platforms that 2 billion people use every day. So whether that's Google maps, Google Translate, 150 billion words every single day I translated. And the thing that I love about that is particularly given the where the world is right now, I think in my 53 years, it feels more splintered, more fractured, a bit more frightening than it's ever felt before. Right. But the three most translated words on Google Translate are hello, how are you? And I love you.
- [12:47]
John Evans
Oh, isn't that good? Yeah, that's the kind of news we need, isn't it?
- [12:51]
Sophie Neary
Isn't it? I know love always wins and I think we need to. When I have a bad day, I try and remember that and it makes me feel that fundamentally humanity is really good.
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John Evans
That is really good. The first time I used Google Translate was in Japan in 2017. I think it only just come out. I'd have to check, but it was very, very novel. And of course in Japan, not many people speak English and you're in a restaurant and you literally got no idea. And just hovering my phone and suddenly this Japanese turned into English. It's just like a miracle. I mean it's just stunning.
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Sophie Neary
It is incredible.
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John Evans
The interface is so simple, isn't it? As well, which I think is. Well, it's very much a Google philosophy that isn't it, going back to the original search, is make it simple for the user and minimize bells and whistles and.
- [13:30]
Sophie Neary
Definitely. And Google Translate was originally developed for the United nations and then it became a consumer product and it had two languages. And I think earlier this year we added an extra thousand lots of different African dialects. And when you think about the democratization of opportunity, that's what I think is just amazing about both AI, but also tools like Google Translate. But anyway, back to Google Search. You're quite right. I think Google Search was not the first search engine. Right. They weren't the fast of the market. The reason Google Search, I believe is so amazing is because it's the best product. And what's very interesting, so search was 25 years old last year, so it's now 26 as of this September is actually. Search was never meant to be words constrained in a box, but that's all the technology allowed us to do for so long. So you and I grew up learning to sort of say to Google, I want a pink notepad, I want a black mug. What's the weather going to do today? How do I get to find a tube station? Whereas that's not really how people and human beings search. It's like I'm going to a wedding in Miami. It's going to be hot and humid. You know, what should I wear? And then you think about hairspray or, you know, a dress that breathes that's not going to show if you're perspiring or, you know, what shoes do you need? All that sort of stuff. But we've sort of had to educate ourselves how to, how to search because we were limited by the technology. But what's amazing this year and every year we make thousands of updates to search. And you're quite right, you know, we can hum to search, take pictures, but this year has been the biggest fundamental change in search since it started. And now it's way more than words in a box. And I think for me, and again for advertisers, where it's so exciting is that people are now beginning to search what they see. And the exponential growth in that is just so exciting because when I first joined Google, so back in January, I think the stats that we had were 12 billion searches using Google Lens, which is literally, I hold my phone up to you, I take a picture of your shirt and Google finds the shirt for me. I don't know how it does it. It's just so clever. But it does. And so There were about 12. There were at that time, 12 billion visual searches every month using Google. And that had grown fourfold over the previous two years. In our latest earnings report, Sundar has now released the update to that. We now see 20 billion search what you see lens searches every single month. Wow. And also, unsurprisingly, I think because they are digital natives rather than digital immigrants, it really skews to, like, the younger age groups that do that. I mean, my godson's 26. He doesn't type a single thing into his phone, he just speaks into it for everything.
- [16:14]
John Evans
My daughter's the same. They send each other voice notes all the time. The time, yeah. And they're just walking around listening to little clips of their friends chatting about whatever they're chatting about. So they're not even typing, they're just kind of almost using it as a Dictaphone.
- [16:25]
Sophie Neary
Well, exactly. And I remember after school, my mum sending me to Huddersfield Tech College to learn to touch type, which I have to say, to be fair, was one of the most amazing things she ever did, because I can type about as fast as I speak, which is about 100 miles an hour. But, I mean, that for me is amazing. But, like, my godson can't type. It drives me insane. And they won't need to. You know what? That's great.
- [16:48]
John Evans
Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing I randomly. In 2013, I launched the world's first augmented reality soft drink. So I was partnering with a company called Blipper. They were the pioneers of augmented reality. Yeah, yeah. And it's amazing because you could put your phone over, in this case, it was a bottle of juice, and you'd see, like, the pack explode in front of you, or you could play a game or you could interact with, you know, with the brand. That sort of thing is amazing. But the only limitation, I think, was you had to use a separate app, you had to integrate. I remember that, which is absolutely stunning. And I always thought they were trailblazing technology, really, for other people. And I think because you've embedded it into the Google platform, basically it's just a click. I mean, we were trying earlier, it's just a click of a button and you're straight through to, you can buy what Sophie's wearing.
- [17:30]
Sophie Neary
And what we're seeing again, which I think is really exciting, whether you're a retailer or a brand, is one in four of all Google Lens searches as someone looking to buy something. So we know that people discover and browse and research, etc. Etc. And for me, when you think about what does that mean for you as a brand? It means you have the opportunity to use AI to, you know, experiment and come up with, you know, a gazillion different ways to communicate your brand to a gazillion different people. We know that people buy from people who look like themselves. And now you're just not going to be stuck to three or four assets. You can have 30,000 assets to talk and resonate and connect on a kind of mass personalized way.
- [18:11]
John Evans
Yeah.
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Sophie Neary
And I just think that. And we're just only learning about so.
- [18:14]
John Evans
From a supply point of view. So let's, let's say I'm John Wills and I've got my competitor to Jack Wills and I've just launched my new kind of tartan top or whatever. How would I take advantage of the insight that all that search has given me? Because presumably you must know what people are looking for, what's fashionable, the kind of jacket that's trending this month. How would I tap into that?
- [18:31]
Sophie Neary
Great question. And this is really where such, where such and YouTube in a way have changed. So it used to be, particularly on YouTube, for example, you'd say, I want to show my product to. Well, for Jack Wills, it would be like 18 to 24 year olds who were interested in buying clothing and you just don't do that anymore. Now you just tell the AI, sell my product profitably to anyone who'll buy it. Because who are we to say that I'm 53 and I still wear this jacket? This jacket was never designed for a 53 year old. Right. It probably wasn't designed for a 43 year old when I bought it either, but I love it. And everyone always says, what a beautiful jacket. And we, we want to be able to sell our products to everyone who wants to buy them. Right. We don't want to somehow limit our market in terms of who we're showing and communicating about our products to and in such. Where that is, is what AI can do is make the connection between someone saying tartan wool jacket and knowing that they want to buy a tartan wool jacket versus someone maybe looking for a sewing pattern because they want to try and sew it for themselves or they were just interested in learning about black watch tartan. And that is something that human beings, you and I, in our conscious minds, we can never ever, ever stitch those things together. But what Google Search and the AI does when you have a product that you want to sell to someone is it helps you find the needle in the haystack when you perhaps thought you were looking for a paperclip. So that is really where AI has changed everything, is that instead of doing something really narrow and saying, I only want to bid on John Will's tartan jacket, you just put it into the system, and the system will find the people.
- [20:17]
John Evans
That's amazing.
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Sophie Neary
And Google will find the people who are searching it, because we have 2 billion people searching billions of times every day. And what is amazing is that 15% of those searches every single day are new. And that stat has stood true for over 10 years now.
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John Evans
That slightly blew my mind when you told me that, because that. Because you'd imagine 25 years in, there's nothing new under the sun. We've asked every question that's possible to ask. But for 15% of searches to be unique must mean we're asking new questions or we're asking them in different ways, or we're searching for more things in more detail. What's driving that? Or what does drive that 15%? Is it fashion novelty?
- [20:52]
Sophie Neary
Honestly, the truthful answer is I think the one thing that we've learned at Google is that human curiosity is infinite. And that is the beauty of search. And that actually is why search still remains Google's biggest ever moonshot. And if you think about everything that we're doing with, with DeepMind and AI and Nobel prizes and things like that, but search is still, like the greatest unresolved problem that Google has. And I think that's absolutely incredible. And in part, it's because the technology enables us to search in different ways, more like we would in real life. But in part, I mean, you think about, I don't know, in 2005, did the iPhone even exist? I mean, like, there's just new stuff all the time that people want to know and learn about. And that's truly the reason why. It's because curiosity is boundless.
- [21:42]
John Evans
I mean, the thing that slightly blows my mind with all this is like, you must have an insight into the human psyche that you don't get anywhere else. Because we probably say things to search or, you know, search for things that we would never even tell our best friends, you know, or embarrassed to talk about or. Yeah, you must capture so much insight into what people are worried about, you know, what happens before, you know, major life events or how people, you know, all that kind of thing. You must have incredible amount. How do you mine all that insight that you have? Yeah, from people's searches?
- [22:10]
Sophie Neary
Well, first of all, we Respect the user, obviously, and we respect, we respect privacy. We do have Google Trends, which I actually think is a massively underutilized.
- [22:19]
John Evans
And this is free as well, isn't it?
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Sophie Neary
This is free.
- [22:20]
John Evans
People don't realize this.
- [22:21]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, anyone can use it. And in Google Trends you can either see sort of what are the top trending searches. So it was to tell you. And you can break it down by, you can break it down by country and then it will break it down by a map of the UK for example, and show you different, different regions. So if something happens in a local town or whatever, then you know, you can sort of see where, where the search is blowing up. That's really interesting for retailers during hay fever season. Right, because you don't just have hay fever all over the uk. You might have hay fever in Manchester or in Nottingham or somewhere on the south coast. And then, you know, if you're a grocer or your boots or your super drug, you want to make sure that you're putting your hay fever tablets at the front of the shop or on your homepage. Right. So there's trends that are interesting like that. But, but you're right. I mean it's like the sort of, the true barometer of the people is Google Trends and Google Search tying this back in terms of relevance for people who are listening in terms of what does this mean for a brand or as an advertiser. There's an advanced version of Google Trends which I would imagine most people listening to this podcast will have because they have a Google merchant account, et cetera, et cetera. It can also sort of trend out future predictions. So there's two things to talk about here, which is, you know, how are we looking at the golden quarter coming and what are we thinking about sort of, you know, the Cyber 5 and Black Friday and stuff. But I'll actually start with, I think something that's really, really underutilized and needs to be really adopted by commercial organizations in the brands and the people developing the products. So for example, Google Trends will be able to say and predict if trail running shoes are on, are on the rise and starting to sort of pick up a trend. Now, if you've got a six month lead time to deliver trail running shoes, that could be slightly problematic. But if you sell them, what does that mean for you? Well, actually what you might need to do is look at your commercial trading plan. You put your trail running shoes in your shop window, you put them on your socials, you put them on your homepage, you put them in your email because you meet the customer where they are, the customers are telling us that they want trail running shoes and so give them the trail running shoes that they're looking for. So it's really amazing at helping you. I mean, you know, we've, I mean, I've done this for years and years, right? You've kind of got your, you've got your trading plan and you always talk about suntan lotion in the summer and you talk about hay fever at the hay fever times. And when it's flu season, talk about flu season. Well, what if that's not relevant? What if actually something else is hugely, hugely relevant during that moment and you want to be able to capitalize on that. So Google Trends can help you, as I like to say, predict the trends before they get trendy. So that's, I think is fascinating from a category point of view and we can do it for over 200 categories and subcategories beneath it. And then when I think about Google Trends, it's also fascinating is Micro Peaks and how obviously there's so much focus, quite rightly so, about the Golden Quarter. And it's where most retailers, as we know and Black Friday turn from being in the red to in the black. But what is fascinating, I think and what we're seeing in search is this huge rise of what I would call micro peaks. And I'll give you a flavor of that around what we see around Black Friday because I think it's very pertinent. But, well, let's also talk about things like Valentine's Day and stuff like that too. So what we're seeing in Google search for this Golden Quarter is what's very positive is we're seeing a positive trend in consumer intent. Right. So although we've got this rise in comparison queries, although we've got rise in people searching less on brands and more for generics people want to buy. They're already searching for Black Friday and we are November 3rd, can't even remember, and they're already searching for Black Friday. The demand is there is what we would say in sort of Google terms in the UK in particular, because Black Friday is falls on the Friday of Thanksgiving. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in the uk. We never know when Black Friday because it moves weekend after weekend.
- [26:10]
John Evans
I'm trying to think now as you talk about, I don't know when Black Friday is.
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Sophie Neary
Well, you, you know, and then there's.
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John Evans
A Cyber Monday as well, and then.
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Sophie Neary
There'S the Monday afterwards. Yeah. So what's very interesting Back to. I think you know what's different because I think that's what's important. The same is the same as the same this year. So 2024 is the first time in five years since 2019 that Cyber Monday is actually falling in December because Thanksgiving, because it's the last Friday in November, is actually falling on something like the 30th of November this year. So it's like right at the end of November.
- [26:41]
John Evans
Let me check this. So even in the uk, Black Friday is determined by. It is a celebration in the US that has no relevance to any UK audience. Yes, I didn't know that.
- [26:50]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
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John Evans
So can't people choose Black Friday dates for UK audiences? Is it all that we're driven by uk, sorry, US calendar event.
- [26:59]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, it's extraordinary.
- [27:01]
John Evans
Wow.
- [27:01]
Sophie Neary
But what this means is we have this unbelievably unique and a great opportunity dynamic in the uk because one of the things that's different about this year, so there's sort of reasons to be fearful, reasons to be cheerful, reasons to be fearful about Cyber Monday falling in December is it's very, very late. And Instead of having four weekends between the Cyber 5 and Christmas Eve, which is when shops really come into their own and everyone visits the shops to do their Christmas shopping, is actually we only have three, because Cyber Monday is now falling in December. What that does mean though is that shops are going to be more important than ever before. Things like click and collect. So we are seeing Super Saturday, which is a Saturday before Christmas Eve being bigger than ever. So something like + 24% of Google search queries will be on Super Saturday and that's going to be near me. Click and collect, order in store. Because probably by then everybody will be reaching their last day delivery. Delivery, get it in time for Christmas and next day delivery. So that's every retailer I'm talking to right now. When I go and talk to them, I'm like, make sure you've really, really got your lay down plan for all of this. Sorted out. The real opportunity though, and what I'm super excited about is this rise of this phenomenon that we at Google call Fake Friday, which is all because customers are going, oh, it's like, isn't Black Friday around now? And what we saw last year is this 87% of the volume of someone saying on Google Black Friday on the Friday before Black Friday than on Black Friday itself. And in terms of a reason to be cheerful, Google clicks are 17% cheaper the Friday before Black Friday.
- [28:41]
John Evans
Wow. Ladies and gentlemen, auction.
- [28:43]
Sophie Neary
Right.
- [28:43]
John Evans
Fantastic.
- [28:44]
Sophie Neary
17% cheaper the Friday before Black Friday than they are on Black Friday itself because it's an auction. Black Friday, very, very competitive.
- [28:51]
John Evans
Presumably you might get double demand then because you might pull it forward. You pull it forward, you get people into your category and then they might then repeat by because they'll be seeing Black Friday offers everywhere else and go, oh, I should also see a bedroom one.
- [29:02]
Sophie Neary
So what I say is you have an opportunity to conquer the Twin Peaks and what I'm advising people to do is to come up with time bound limited offers over Fake Friday weekend and then you go all the way the following Black Friday weekend as well. And like so many retailers have already launched their Black Friday offers that great. But we know that there's obviously there's a drum beat, there's a whole kind of, you know, build up and the sort of tentpole effect. There are very, very clearly back to searches, the barometer of the people, two huge tent poles. So my sort of headline for all of this is Winning in December, starts in November. Really, really lean into Fake Friday and you have an opportunity to be far more profitable. Because even if you get 2/3 of the sales on fake Friday, you get versus black Friday 17% cheaper means you have a greater profitability margin.
- [29:54]
John Evans
I think last Christmas I was talking to Amazon and this actually becomes a problem for their inventory management. So for them, they want to pull it forward as much as they can so they can see where demand is. They can start getting products shipped from around the world into warehouses and manage that. So the fact that it's so late, it's just going to cause huge supply chain challenges.
- [30:12]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, I mean, well, there's a reason they're the best retailer in the world, right? Yeah, that's what Prime Day does. It also sucks forward. But I also think what's, what's really smart and what I'm really pleased about this year is that this year lots of retailers went head to head with Amazon over Prime day. Amazon take 30p in every pound. Right. And what I, what really worries me about retail sometimes is they go, well, we just don't want to compete. You have to compete because Amazon has done a great job of educating consumers that there is going to be a huge offer moment in the market. Consumers are searching for offers, so meet them with offers. And you know, Argos did a great job with a red label sale. Curry's did a great job and you know, kind of taking the fight a bit to Amazon because 30p and every pound is gone now. So if you're an online retailer in the UK, there's only 70p in that pound that's left. So meet your customers where they are.
- [31:04]
John Evans
Yeah, I mean I thought, I mean the fact that prime have emphasized even in day delivery I think is a genius move, isn't it? So they can fulfill even at the last minute. And that's got to be worth a lot, isn't it? People panicking.
- [31:15]
Sophie Neary
Just for Christmas, one of my team did have a very exciting meeting earlier this week with a retailer who I can't share yet about how we will use Alphabet Wing so our drone and do drone delivery.
- [31:28]
John Evans
That's very exciting.
- [31:30]
Sophie Neary
I'll come back on the podcast and talk about that.
- [31:31]
John Evans
Do that, do that. I've seen teaser videos for that kind of thing and it's just mental, isn't it? You know, people getting their sort of fast food deliveries dropped in front of them kind of thing like this, you know, from kind of specially air conditioned unit. Incredible.
- [31:45]
Sophie Neary
Incredible.
- [31:46]
John Evans
It's like watching a sci fi movie, isn't it when you see that kind of stuff.
- [31:49]
Sophie Neary
It really is, yeah.
- [31:50]
John Evans
We must talk about YouTube of course, the other half of kind of the Google empire's role is it. I saw some data and I think it was just last week about the amount of share that YouTube has of TV which. Or broadcast which I, which slightly blew my mind because I think one of the things, the amazing thing about YouTube is like, is it TV, is it social, which is it? And the ability to target specific, you know, very, very, very tightly and also to entertainment platform. But what does the data tell us about how people are using YouTube?
- [32:22]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, well the way that I like to think about YouTube is it's, it's really, really unique and it sits as you just sort of alluded to absolutely at the intersection between social and TV. What the data says is that in the UK we have 46 million adults watching YouTube every single month. And what is interesting is that 49 of all people who watch YouTube watch it on the big screen. It is that big, big TV experience. Other fun facts about YouTube is there's quite a big difference in the ad load on YouTube which came out in a recent Enders report, compared to the ad load on other TV terrestrial TV channels. So the ad load on YouTube is 2 minutes per hour versus 4 or 5 minutes which is the average on other terrestrial TV channels. So with YouTube you have this amazing reach, you have multi device but by far the largest component, 49% on a big screen, reaching the vast majority of adults in the uk. And then there was this Bard report that came out, I think two weeks ago that also shows that for 35s and under they watch more content on YouTube than all of TV combined.
- [33:35]
John Evans
That is incredible.
- [33:36]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
- [33:36]
John Evans
I mean the stat that really blew my eye, I think was because that I probably would have expected.
- [33:41]
Sophie Neary
Yes.
- [33:41]
John Evans
But was the YouTube watched on TV was second only to the BBC.
- [33:47]
Sophie Neary
Yes.
- [33:48]
John Evans
And that, that's like mind blowing because that is, you know, that's taking on, you know, replacing the role of traditional broadcasters. Incredible.
- [33:55]
Sophie Neary
All partnerships with the broadcasters. Right. So we have an amazing partnership with the BBC, a channel for itv, all of the terrestrial TV channels and organizations. And I think what's really interesting now is that they are also making content for YouTube. So we had the Olympics over the summer this year, over 7 billion views of Olympic content on YouTube. And again, what's interesting is the journey. When it was the Tokyo olympics, it was 3 billion. So more than double in just four years. I mean, 7 billion. What, there's like 8 million, 8 billion people on the planet. Like, I just, I don't even know how many zeros that would be if I was had to write it out. So. And what the BBC did brilliantly was they did these wonderful sort of 10 minute excerpts of, you know, this is the Simone Biles moment. I'm so sorry, I can't remember the woman's name. Who run the trampoline in gold. I mean, I watched that trampoline in gold. Like it's 10 minutes of just pure joy and amazing skill and dexterity and gymnastics in the air. And so that I think is what's really exciting and is brilliant is that also we partner with enormous great big content giants of the content world like the BBC, like Channel 4, like ITV. And also what the unique thing about YouTube is, it's also a platform for the individual creator in a way that is very, very unique and different to social media. So one of the things that I always like to think about YouTube is, and this is where it's more like TV or more like, you know, using a Netflix or an iplayer is the content is evergreen. So three times a week on YouTube, I do a Pilates workout with this amazing, amazing YouTuber called Lily Sabri to check her out. I sort of have vague definition in my arms because I've been doing her Pilates arm workout. The one that I do every single week is over two years old. And even today she still gets comments on it. She gets likes, she gets like the snaps and claps. If you think about the difference of that on social yeah, you can do some amazing, amazing influencer and creator content, but it's sort of gone, right? It has its sort of tentpole viral moment. It's great for that, but then it's gone. Whereas on YouTube we have. There's some content that L'Oreal did with a content creator over three years ago, and it's still getting. Still getting, you know, engagement and likes today. So it's more like a sort of TV channel. And that's. That's what I'm saying. It's sort of. It's like this intersection between TV and social. So the content is evergreen, the content is longer. So we do see a big rise in growth of watches of content 2 minutes and under and 20 minutes and over. But what we tend to see much less of is a sort of super, super lesson. Sort of one or two seconds, people come to YouTube and then partly because of the, you know, the big screen watching, it's a different, more absorbed, more engaged experience.
- [36:46]
John Evans
It is, isn't it? No, it's the. The length of it is quite interesting because if I take this podcast in terms of audio, most people will listen to 45 minutes to an hour. YouTube is about 10 to 12 minutes.
- [36:59]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
- [36:59]
John Evans
So it's kind of very different viewing experience in terms of like the average length, isn't it? So what are the trends in terms of the formats on. On YouTube that are kind of becoming more popular? Yeah, you know, long form versus short form.
- [37:10]
Sophie Neary
Great question. So YouTube is actually the second largest podcast platform in the world. And I think that's probably because from a podcast point of view, we're not moving around, we're not having like, whizzy graphics, et cetera, et cetera. But what we recently revealed, that's not quite the right word, but we recently released, that's it, some research called why we watch, which again, when this goes out, we can put it in the links, it's free for everyone to download. And I thought what was very interesting about that is it was looking at kind of markers or reasons why people watch content on YouTube. And maybe it's not that surprising, but along with sort of what came out more clearly than ever before is that emotional markers are actually more important than the quality, the production quality and things like that. And you know, the other study that we also had was that the reason that people go to YouTube, 73% of YouTube of people get watch YouTube to be entertained.
- [38:09]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [38:10]
Sophie Neary
And that sort of makes sense in terms of you think about the sort of the types of content that you have, but for me it's that emotional marker so many ways. It doesn't matter whether you're doing, you know, a one minute YouTube short or a one hour long form content special. It's. What are those notional markers? How are you resonating with your audience? Because people want to feel when they watch your content.
- [38:33]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [38:34]
Sophie Neary
And it's. And it's back to that. So again, if you're a brand and you're thinking about partnering with a content creator or you're developing your own content, that kind of emotional marker quality again is something that I think is really, really making a step change in difference in engagement compared to something that is less emotionally engaging.
- [38:51]
John Evans
Actually got some amazing System 1 data on this. So we did a study in partnership with Lumen maybe a couple of years ago and we took a highly emotive ad and a very non emotive ad. So basically one ad was from Apple. It was very rational, it was all features, it was repetitive, it was close up on the products. We then took a, it was a Barclaycard ad actually with some gorillas in it and basically they were people dressed up as gorillas in a zoo playing cricket. I mean it was very, very funny and you kind of see the reaction to people. It's got some great music to it, there's lots of laughter, it's kind of very engaging. And on our one to five star system, the Apple ad got one star and this got five star. So they're like the two ends of the spectrum, very rational, very emotional. We then actually track the minutes of attention and we did it over, did it on X or Twitter, did it on Facebook and on YouTube. So two interesting things. Firstly YouTube, irrespective of the creative, YouTube achieved two to three times more minutes of attention than the other two platforms. The creative that was emotional. There we go, we carry on. The crazy that was emotional two to three times more minutes for tension again. So basically the difference between kind of low involvement channel with low involvement creative and highly emotive content on a more kind of engaging channel six times. And we also then did a follow up to see how many, you know, brand recall basically after the study, couple weeks and there was a 50% increase in ability to remember the brand had they watched it on YouTube and another 50% had they also seen the emotive versus the functional. So both channel choice and those emotional markers make a big difference.
- [40:28]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, I'm a delighted to hear that. Obviously slightly relieved, but also not surprised and I think it's worth just sort of doubling down on that creative point, because we get a lot of questions about. About AI and is AI going to, you know, suck the creativity about out of everything that we do? And my answer on that. And again, if you go back from opinion versus data, the data says absolutely not, because. And actually, I think this stands true for any platform, whether you're. Whether you're on TV, whether you're on TikTok, whether you're on Instagram, whether you're on YouTube, whether you're on the radio, whether you're on out of home, certainly on YouTube. The single most successful determinant factor as to whether your ad has strong recall, strong consideration, et cetera, is how good is the ad creative? And that is the secret sauce. And so that is why I think we all should still remain really excited and optimistic about, let AI take care of getting it in front of all the right people and understanding things that the human brain could no longer understand. But creativity trumps every time, and if.
- [41:30]
John Evans
Anything, actually even more so because everyone's got the same AI tools. Everyone else can do the media optimization job. You know, only you can make the creative work.
- [41:38]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
- [41:39]
John Evans
Something interesting that I was looking up last night was the launch of Wolverine vs Deadpool. And I was fascinated because you tipped me off to this. But the amount of YouTube creators that got involved in the promotion that film, so you got a big Hollywood blockbuster, but Ryan and Hugh did a tour of kind of YouTube creator content as well in the promotion. So I was looking through a few examples. I mean, you tipped me off to her. But the Chicken Shop Date, for example, and there are a lot of these creators that have got millions and millions of subscribers relatively quickly and very simple formats. I mean, looking at the different ones, I mean, the five that I watched last night, the puppy interview, never have I ever. First we Feast and Lie Detector. They're really entertaining. They're really short form, but there's something funny going on. You know, there's like a twist on the interview or something like that. Most of them, they range from kind of five minutes to 20 minutes. They're quite quick. But the numbers of views were just, you know, tens of millions. Yeah, on that. It's incredible.
- [42:34]
Sophie Neary
I mean, Chicken Shop Date is. Is my second favorite thing on. On YouTube. So for those of you who don't know, Chicken Shop Date is a young lady called Amelia, Amelia de Moldenberg. And the interesting thing is that she actually took this as a format to a TV channel and they said, no, it was too niche. No, her views, she's done, I think, 253 chicken shop dates now, and they've had over 600 million views. And the most wonderful thing, and one of the things I'm most proud about on YouTube is that we do a revenue share and that the creators get the majority of the revenue from YouTube. And every year in the UK, we share 2 billion pounds in the UK. In the UK alone in the UK, 2 billion back into the UK creator ecosystem. And so the wonderful thing is that Amelia, I don't know how wealthy she is now, but I'm pretty certain she has made far more money by launching and creating and developing that show on YouTube than she probably ever would have done had she done done so on a, on a TV show. The, the most recent one that went totally viral was an interview that she did with Andrew Garfield, who I think was Spider man once. Right. And then what you saw there was really extraordinary. So had over 6 million views within, within 24 hours. And again, it's 10 minutes, right? It's 6 million views of 10 minutes of content, not 6 million views of 5 seconds of content. The chemistry between them is absolutely insane. And then Andrew Garfield starts trending on Google search as a result of the fact that he had done Chicken Shop Date with Amelia. And people were tweeting saying, I just watched the best rom com of 2024 with the chicken Shop Date and the chemistry between them. And everyone's going, you know, will they, won't they? What's interesting about that for advertisers and brands is you can now do creator takeovers. So every time I watch Chicken Shop Date, I think, ooh, I'd love some chips. And if I was a burger brand, maybe that didn't sell chicken, but I sold burgers. I would really, really like to have my brand sitting alongside one of the most watched viral video channels on YouTube that talks about chicken and chips and think, how about a burger?
- [44:50]
John Evans
That's incredible, isn't it? It's just mind blowing. And I suppose it's a really good business model because from your point of view, the creators are investing in the format and the production and they're driving their own social following. And then, and then you can put advertising through the platform.
- [45:04]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's that classic thing that a rising tide floats all boats. And the other thing that I didn't realize actually until I joined Google is that viewers understand that and they are happy to watch the adverts because they know that the, the money from the adverts that's being generated goes towards the creator. So they're really happy to watch the adverts because of the fact that they know that that is funding the creator to keep making the content that they love. And in another, probably another episode, we can talk about how you can do brand building and the long and short of it on YouTube and you know, you can do your sort of 32nd long term brand building and your 10 second short term, non skippables, etc.
- [45:45]
John Evans
This is the bit that stood out for me in your report because so ITV used to do this tracker. I think they might still do this tracker which is, are the adverts as good as the programs? And they've been tracking that for a long, long time.
- [45:56]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
- [45:56]
John Evans
It's a really lovely question to ask, isn't it? Reframing is the content you make in the ad break gonna keep people watching through the next going to make a difference? Exactly, yeah. So I think that's a really lovely high bar. And then your report, you had this great question which is, I don't mind the ads if you know, and then which of the following things should, should they do? So if the ad is interesting, if it engages me, that kind of thing. And I think, you know, you were scoring some pretty high numbers and that's reassuring because I guess for me kind of creating content like this, I would be, I shouldn't really say this given I work in advertising, measuring advertising. I'm like, yeah, I certainly want the adverts interrupting the kind of, kind of the quality of the show.
- [46:30]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
- [46:31]
John Evans
But actually it does show you that if you, if you really focus on making the adverts interesting, most people do not mind them.
- [46:38]
Sophie Neary
Exactly.
- [46:38]
John Evans
And they find them interesting. And like you say that that was the one that surprised me was the creator. If they help the creators create, then people see it as a worthy thing.
- [46:46]
Sophie Neary
You know, And I just think that's wonderful. And I think that's something that's very, very. Well, it is something that's very unique to the YouTube ecosystem.
- [46:53]
John Evans
Yeah.
- [46:53]
Sophie Neary
And also it's why creators can be a lot more picky about the content that they'll do with brands on YouTube because it lives forever and it's evergreen versus a viral moment that, you know, it's sort of seen and gone and never to be kind of resurfaced again.
- [47:09]
John Evans
Yeah. Now that's massive as well, because if you've built up your own reputation as a creator, you're kind of quite precious about who you associate with, you see. So you need to kind of be matching your creator with your brand. And values and that kind of thing. You know, it becomes important. What advice would you give advertisers to make the most of YouTube? What kind of things should they be doing to get the most out of a, a kind of partnership on YouTube?
- [47:31]
Sophie Neary
Well, I mean it's a little bit like we were talking about search. So we have, you know, lots of different, well, two different ways as an advertiser to engage in YouTube from an ad product point of view. You can either do sort of do top of funnel or mid funnel consideration. Again there what you need to understand is the different jobs that those adverts have to do. So long term brand building versus short term sales driving. Back to the infamous long and short of it. Those two ad formats do two different jobs. So the headline there is don't make one ad and try and make it do both things. You're better off doing a long term brand building ad and then sort of short term more interstitial commercial driving activity. And actually, I promise I'm not over promoting boots, but we did do this big case study with boots over the summer around that, with their summer ad where they did a great job of long term brand building with long form adverts and then short term more sort of trade driving, you know, offer led. Then of course the third angle of that is the creator community. How do you work with creators and how do you engage with them to build the content with the emotional markers, with the right audience, et cetera, et cetera. And then I suppose the final one because it's new is these creator takeovers. So possibly a competing podcast to yours, John, might be the. What's he called, Stephen? The Diary of a CEO.
- [48:57]
John Evans
I've never heard of him.
- [48:58]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, that dude you can also, you know, advertise around. You can sort of do a channel takeover of.
- [49:03]
John Evans
He does all right.
- [49:05]
Sophie Neary
His numbers are okay, his numbers are okay. But yeah, so, so I think that that's. That without. It's hard to answer that in a very succinct and simple way. There are all sorts of best practices, of course, but they're, you know, they're easily accessible. But I would say what's the one thing that everyone really needs to know and understand is don't. Content isn't all things to all people. Adverts aren't all things to all people. Understand what your objective is. And if it's long term brand building, that's what the advert needs to do. And if it's short term sales driving, that's what the advert needs to Do. And Mark RITSON would say YouTube is the only platform that you can do both the long and short of it.
- [49:40]
John Evans
That I think is really valid, actually, because the ability to create emotional content that people want to watch. Going back to our point and then to be able to target it at the right audience, we did this report called the system one, called the Addressable Advantage. And so I think we were. One of the case studies was an airline. I think it was Jet2 or something. And I'm going to roughly approximate the school. But imagine it was like it was a couple going away on holidays. He had lovely music and they're going somewhere lovely. And when they looked at just the generic ad, they scored very well. It was like three and a half, four stars are very good. When we then tested that with young couples who are in that demographic, even lived near the airport where they were flying from, all that kind of thing, it went up to five star. So by being able to address the audience, I mean, we see this with diversity. For example, you know, when you see yourself in advertising, people buy from people.
- [50:30]
Sophie Neary
Who look like themselves.
- [50:31]
John Evans
Exactly. You know, you just. What you see is both more people feel happy, more viewers feel happy, and that emotion is more intense. And that emotion being intense is so important because what we found out through our studies is the stronger you're feeling, the more likely you are to click or, you know, view or tell someone or whatever. So that's very important. So being able to combine the emotional markers and great content with the audience that you're trying to go to just makes it more intense, more happy, and more chance of then an action happening taking place. So I think YouTube being that place where those two things happen together is super powerful.
- [51:05]
Sophie Neary
Yeah. And that makes sense when you go back to that other stat, that about 73% of people come to YouTube to be entertained.
- [51:13]
John Evans
Yeah. And I think the second after that it dropped to like 30 for. To be informed.
- [51:19]
Sophie Neary
Yes.
- [51:19]
John Evans
Right. So, yeah, entertainment's beating information two and a half times to one.
- [51:23]
Sophie Neary
Yeah. And then what was the connection one? I didn't write it down. You wrote down the connections.
- [51:26]
John Evans
Did I write the connection stats?
- [51:27]
Sophie Neary
I can't remember. But anyway, the fun fact about that, which.
- [51:30]
John Evans
Oh, yeah, that was about 19.
- [51:31]
Sophie Neary
Yeah, it was about 19. Is. Is back to these sort of micro moments and Halloween and stuff like that. So you sort of go, what? What does that mean? Why would I go to YouTube to connect with people. It's because people sort of have these watch parties and they do, you know, for Halloween, they do horror movie Watch alongs. So they're watching someone watch a horror movie and you know when the alien comes out and they go. And it's this whole thing and it's a massive. In the gaming community as well. So it's all these huge tribes and communities of people that kind of come together to connect around the content that they're really, really passionate about. And I mean, we're old, right? That sort of. I mean, I kite surf, so I like watching kite surfing content on YouTube. But I, yeah, I just, I mean, I love it in terms of, you know, the different ways that people engage and use.
- [52:20]
John Evans
It totally makes sense. I mean, I remember the Olympics, discovering Sky Brown, you know, the young girl skateboarding, she's like 13 or something. I was like, she's incredible. And so young. And then I remember kind of like looking up on YouTube some of the competition she had done. It just allows you, doesn't it, to kind of then discover a depth. And it does, you know, that you wouldn't have done otherwise.
- [52:39]
Sophie Neary
Yeah.
- [52:39]
John Evans
So maybe to round us off then, let's pretend you're kind of host of a marketing podcast. What would your top tips be to break YouTube? Because I haven't done it yet. It's really interesting for me because like audio has really taken off and the most frequent comment I get on YouTube is this content's insane. Why are more people not watching it?
- [52:58]
Sophie Neary
So think about the jobs that the content has to do and spoiler alert, we're going to do some YouTube.
- [53:05]
John Evans
We are. Ladies and gentlemen, look out for this.
- [53:07]
Sophie Neary
You heard it here first.
- [53:08]
John Evans
We're going to be breaking YouTube in five minutes time.
- [53:10]
Sophie Neary
So. So it's about thinking about what, what is the purpose of that content and then how do you. I think there's an opportunity for you to sort of do a bit more work with sort of animating the video content itself. Because it's podcast first, so that makes sense. It's all, as you said, audio. The audio has really, really taken off and been super successful. Right. I think you said it's well over a million downloads.
- [53:32]
John Evans
Yeah, well over a million. I mean, if we combine, well, combining YouTube and audio together, it's probably getting close to one and a half million.
- [53:39]
Sophie Neary
So the, the short form content, the sort of one to two minute YouTube shorts, that's fun, that's snappy, that's like the bloopers, like, you know, what happened behind the scenes. And then obviously then we need to think about more the long form content. How do you sort of make the video maybe more visually Interactive versus two people having a chat. Do you cut it up into different 5 minute episodes? This is what Sophie had to say about Search. This is what she said about the Olympics on YouTube. Like think about how you can really use the assets in multiple, multiple different ways.
- [54:13]
John Evans
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think one of the funniest little clips I've did, me and my colleague Orlando who've got this sort of side podcast called Nevermind the Adverts and he just said something that I found really funny and I couldn't stop laughing and I had to walk off cause I just couldn't do. And then we replaced me with Connie the caterpillar. It was his 50th birthday and we brought him this kind of caterpillar cake. So literally replaced it was the funniest thing. And now my mother in law says when she's not feeling great she will rewatch that and it just makes her laugh and cry kind of thing. So it's just like.
- [54:43]
Sophie Neary
Cause it's got the emotional markers. Yeah.
- [54:45]
John Evans
So she's listened to every episode ever done but that's the one that she always tells me about. There you go.
- [54:50]
Sophie Neary
How cute is that? Now, when we were chatting before the podcast, you said that nearly everyone also watches the last two minutes or listens to the last.
- [54:58]
John Evans
They do, yeah. Like 75 something percent of people will be listening to all to us now.
- [55:04]
Sophie Neary
Yeah. So I'm going to give us a good finish with an emotional marker. I was thinking about this on the tube on the way in. So Google obviously turned 25 years old last year. We've learned that human curiosity is limitless and the whole world learned to explore with Google over the last 25 years. And a lot of people ask me about what is my great hope for AI or what do I think about the future of AI. And the truth is we don't know yet. Right. I mean change has never happened so fast. We'll never be this slow again. But my personal great hope for AI is that it really will give us the greatest gift of all, which is that of more time and more time to be truly present with people who matter. And for me personally, my sister died of COVID It's been the most horrendous couple of years for me and I think we spend a lot of our lives particularly high flying people who want to do well and that's great. But we spend a lot of time at work and the ability to create more time to create connections in real life with people, I just think that is the great gift that AI can give to humanity. So if I finish, I would say on behalf of the 182,000 Googlers around the world, we'd like to thank everyone listening for discovering the world with us over the last 25, 26 years. But more importantly than that, we look forward to exploring the future with you all too.
- [56:23]
John Evans
Oh, that's beautiful. Very well said. And yeah, very poignant with loved ones and yeah, taking the time. You know, there's. Yeah, there's only so much time we got there is use it well.
- [56:34]
Sophie Neary
Yeah. But thank you for having me.
- [56:36]
John Evans
Oh, pleasure. We could have talked for a long, long time. So. And we now need to go off and do our little collection of shorts so people will be. Yeah. By the way, if you're listening and watching this, jump on over to YouTube shorts right now and see what Sophie and I did next.
- [56:50]
Sophie Neary
Thanks, John.
- [56:50]
John Evans
Thank you. Been amazing. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on XenSoredCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.