Episode 685: 3 Jaw-Dropping Takeaways from Shoptalk & SXSW

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Ralph Burns and Lauren Petrullo reconnect to unpack Lauren’s whirlwind tour through three of the biggest marketing events of the year: ShopTalk, South by Southwest (SXSW), and Podcast Evolution. From radically inconsistent product launches to Gen Z’s zero loyalty game, Lauren brings raw, in-the-room insights that challenge conventional playbooks. Discover how $200K vendor booths, haunted childhood bedrooms, and an invite-only Google quantum AI session all tie back to the future of customer experience and brand building. Whether you’re scaling eComm or rethinking your retention funnel, this episode is packed with unexpected lessons, real-world tactics, and a few wild stories you won’t forget.

Chapters:

  • 00:00:00 – Kicking Off Another Wild Ride on Perpetual Traffic
  • 00:00:26 – Did the Hosts Break Up? Ralph Spills the Tea
  • 00:01:16 – Lauren’s Back—with Ghosts, Nostalgia, and Chicago Vibes
  • 00:03:50 – Ghosts, Toe-Breaking Drawers, and Voodoo Blessings
  • 00:05:37 – The Conference Circuit Is No Joke (But It’s Hilarious)
  • 00:06:54 – $200K Booths, Ugg Swag, and the Vegas Vendor Jungle
  • 00:13:10 – Radical Inconsistency: The Strategy You Didn’t Know You Needed
  • 00:21:21 – Forget Perfection—Launch Loud, Messy, and Real
  • 00:21:39 – Loyalty Through Limited Drops and Cultural Flavor
  • 00:22:44 – 11 Million Receipts a Day? Fetch is Playing 4D Loyalty Chess
  • 00:24:59 – Your Real KPI? What Happens After the Purchase
  • 00:29:23 – Beyond Facebook & Google: Hunting Down Fresh Ad Gold
  • 00:31:32 – Two Conferences, One Mic Drop Recap
  • 00:33:39 – AI Isn’t Just a Buzzword—It’s Changing Everything
  • 00:41:24 – Catch Flights, Not Feelings: What’s Coming Up Next

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

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Read the Transcript:

3 Jaw-Dropping Takeaways from Shoptalk & SXSW

Ralph: Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, and the founder and CEO of Tier 11 alongside my amazing co-host.

Lauren: The founder of Mongoose Media

Ralph: We are so glad you joined us. And contrary to popular belief, we have not had a podcast divorce. Lauren.

Lauren: would say such words.

Ralph: There was talk on the social medias about this, but it is not the case. Why is Ralph doing all these shows all by himself? Well, it’s because Lauren’s travel schedule and my travel schedule have been.

Ralph: Insane the last three weeks. However, we did do that show, you know that those two shows with iron, garlic in Orlando, which was amazing. I think you were high on drugs on that one as I recall. But anyway, we’ll [00:01:00] set that aside. So go

Lauren: Had allergies, bad allergies. Oh my gosh.

Ralph: Who takes edibles when they have allergies? I don’t know you. anyway, so, we’ll leave links in the show notes if you haven’t listened to that, Lauren on drugs. just kidding. So great to have you back on us doing a live episode. It feels like it’s been months. So, you are in Chicago right now.

Lauren: Yes.

Ralph: Very cool. Now, I know you grew up there and you are in your childhood home.

Lauren: I am.

Ralph: a podcast isn’t, isn’t that kind of like how far you’ve come since you’ve last lived in that house. Here you are in a top 25 marketing podcast in the universe, and you’re in your humble beginnings there in Chicago.

Ralph: So what’s it like?

Lauren: well, it’s definitely a little surreal. I mean, little Lauren, when she last lived here was, still in high school, and then I like lived in people’s houses because I wasn’t allowed to live here anymore. That was about.

Ralph: I like your parents already.

Lauren: Ah,[00:02:00]

Ralph: Yeah.

Lauren: well, yeah, my mom, my dad had passed when I was 12 and my mom moved on to a new boat faster than I would’ve anticipated.

Lauren: And me being like a mean teenager didn’t get along with him. And, I turned 18 didn’t mean I had a place to live anymore. So it’s interesting being a place that like, was not a safe sanctuary for me. And then it’s like, you know, you grow up a little bit and then you’re like, okay, you know what? I thought I was like a big fish in a small pond when I lived in Chicago because I couldn’t leave the house without running into someone. And now I’ve come back and I’m like, no one knows who I

Ralph: No one knows me. Right.

Lauren: my friends have moved on. A lot of them have moved to the suburbs. all the neighborhood has totally changed.

Lauren: It’s like a whoa. And the person that was me that lived here, like I thought I was gonna be a professional soccer player. Like I was playing, planning to go to play soccer. I was gonna play at D one University and then continue on. then I learned quickly how little female athletes make, so

Ralph: right. [00:03:00] Unfortunately, yeah. Unless you’re Kaitlyn Clark and you get huge corporate sponsorships or,

Lauren: Yeah, but that’s new. That was not the case when I was in high school. No, no, no, no. I had friends that played professional soccer and they were making $36,000 a year,

Ralph: Unbelievable. I think Caitlyn Clark’s like salary is still like 56,057 that we can Google this quickly, but it’s, it’s not much. But obviously she makes a lot of money. WNBA is thankfully really taking hold. So yours like sleeping in your, like your, the bed like you grew up in kind of thing or back in your bedroom?

Lauren: I’m back in my little bedroom with my radiator and I see some holes in the wall and I’m like, did I create those? What happened? I had, my house is, like an older farmhouse. So it’s like almost 200 years old. Fun fact. It’s definitely been haunted throughout most of my life. Oh, my niece went to the hospital ’cause she was petrified for three days.

Lauren: Like it was bad. Like we’ve had everything from voodoo [00:04:00] doctors to priests come in and bless this house. if you ever wanna hear the stories, like they’re real, but if you don’t believe in ghosts, totally fine. The things that happened in this house, I will never question that to be, not true. So.

Ralph: unhappy spirits or like spirits that are just, I don’t know, misplaced to keep coming back and visiting the place, although

Lauren: There were a few violent episodes growing up. They were all around my younger brother David. Like I remember being in the TV room where it was like my brother was reaching for a drawer. So my father was handicapped. He had one leg, so he slept downstairs. And so we called his bedroom the TV room ’cause it’s where we’d always watch movies with him.

Lauren: And they were at our school function, picking up our report cards with the teacher and my brother went to reach for a drawer. And he was like, the drawer was here, his hand. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see the

Ralph: this on YouTube. Right?

Lauren: Sorry if you’re listening, just know that it was like inches away from actually touching it.

Lauren: He went to reach and the drawer shot out and broke his toe

Ralph: Oh, okay. So [00:05:00] yeah.

Lauren: yeah, there like another time my mom was pushed down the stairs while carrying my younger brother. that those are the two violent things that come to mind. But yeah, there’s stuff like all the time. And I had a lock bed when I was 16, and I built it like so the fan sat over part of my bed and a few times I’d wake up in the middle of the night and the fan had just turned on

Ralph: Oh boy. So yeah, some, some, some Polter guys, some, some spirits there that are, still visiting the, the world that we know. no sightings last night or the night before since you’ve been there, it sounds like I. None. Good. All right. That’s good. So you, so you slept well. Well, you’re in Chicago because you’re at yet another conference and today we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about what you’ve learned and what we’ve learned.

Ralph: Like both of us have been traveling quite a bit. I was at a show as well, but I think your shows are a little bit more marketing and more perpetual traffic related as opposed to some of the ones that I was at, which are more, industry specific. So. If you were at South by [00:06:00] Southwest, you’re now at Podcast Evolution

Lauren: mm-hmm.

Ralph: you also went to Shop Talk, like those are three biggies right there.

Ralph: So you’re definitely making the rounds. I mean, obviously, going there for sales and marketing and so forth and meeting people. But you went to a lot of the lectures, I’m assuming. So let’s talk about, for those people who have never been to. South by Southwest and or Shop Talk. And I know we got a lot of e-commerce listeners here.

Ralph: Maybe start there and what have you learned? What have you picked up? What, what does the Perpetual traffic listener, need to know highlight wise if they did not make either one of those conferences? ’cause chances are they probably did not. So yeah. Lay the goods on us.

Lauren: well, I’ll say first and foremost, they’re not cheap conferences to attend.

Ralph: Yeah.

Lauren: shop Talk is like a five grand ticket. there’s like different tier levels, so depending on if you’re a brand, if you’re a vendor, all that type of stuff. So there’s a price point to get you into the doors.

Lauren: so I’ll just start with Chop Talk ’cause that was last week in Vegas, which is at the same time as Prosper actually, which is a huge [00:07:00] Amazon conference that I’ve been to multiple times. So I ended up really fortunate that I got to meet with a lot of the people in the Amazon space, and my good friends were filming their podcast live.

Lauren: So I went to, Norman Kevin’s. Marketing Misfits podcast live because podcasts, or sorry, because Prosper, Amazon’s big event was at the same time as Shop Talk, so there was some really good bleed over. so that’s highly focused on Amazon, which is if you’re an Amazon listener, you know it. What they really learned at that event was.

Lauren: You have to build off of Amazon to develop a brand. And then shop Talk is predominantly Shopify focus. It’s Shopify sponsored ad and like full disclosure tickets, $5,000 to have a 10 by 10 booth. Ralph, it’s $20,000. So some of these booth, they spent a hundreds of thousands of dollars. I asked a few of the vendors and they had invested like one brand spent $200,000 from the labor to the booth, to the booth setup.

Lauren: Plus like [00:08:00] some parties that they were throwing for invites to specific targeted buyers for their service.

Ralph: Wow.

Lauren: So the point of admission, like you walk in and everything was gold, disco ball theme. there was a dj, a DJ before you walked in. And when you walked out just to set the tone, there was lunch, there was snacks everywhere.

Lauren: These, the people that were vendors, again, they’re investing 20,000 minimum. And they’re everything from like ad parties to software as a service provider. it’s a lot of app and tech stuff. Like a lot of, three pls, A lot of, ways to work on loyalty programs. All the brands we use, recharge was there, rebuy was there.

Lauren: Like Postscript. Oh man. They had some, they had a full coffee bar with tea. They were the only coffee bar that had tea. So I got my lavender matcha every day with Postscript. Klaviyo had a massive setup and like they had a giant horse that was there. Criteo had, a great booth setup and all of the [00:09:00] vendors that had nice displays also had their own talks.

Lauren: So they made a stage in their booth where they brought. Really big names. To talk about using their various services. So honestly, like the thing that about Shop Talk, where I feel like should I go, I mean, one, if you can afford the ticket, it’s the place to be. I ran into clients, I ran into people from Chicago, like it was a who’s who.

Lauren: There are 50,000 people at this event. and you could spend the full three days on the showroom floor. If you ever go, I’m gonna say spend your first day, do a swag hunt because, there was one brand attentive they were doing. Customized Uggs, you get a pair of customized Ugg slippers. that was the swag level that people had provided, right?

Lauren: yeah. Reba made these awesome tarot cards for e-commerce. I mean, oh my gosh, the, they had a store. It was, you get your money’s worth by being on the vendor floor, and I’ve never said that about a conference [00:10:00] ever.

Ralph: Yeah. So did you go to any of the lectures at Shop Talk?

Lauren: Yeah. So, the lectures, which was interesting, so they had an upstairs stage and they had some side, side rooms. Honestly, the best lectures were the ones that were inside the application and the software vendor booth.

Ralph: Interesting.

Lauren: So for example.

Lauren: Klaviyo had, a small stage where they would bring the, the, the, sorry, let me explain why they were better is ’cause they had people actually using the software.

Lauren: So especially for the software we’re using or we’re evaluating, we got to hear at Criteo stage, the head of drug and pharmacy marketing for CVS and she was talking about how she’s managing this massive catalog. And what she has to do to protect and like showcase all the different brands and how she has in website ads across the 30,000 different SKUs.

Lauren: So it was hearing directly from the person who’s in charge of it versus being the marketing person talking about the software itself. So from [00:11:00] the lectures upstairs that I attended, it was more of like a who’s who, and they were promoting or advertising something. Whereas with the vendors booth, because they brought in people from true classics, they brought in people from a lot of the big brands that they’re working with.

Lauren: You heard directly from the brands. And it didn’t feel like a sales pitch at all. It was more authentic. And then because those stages off were so small and they weren’t a part of the main agenda, you got to talk to them. You got to connect directly with them, the team at Fetch, so I actually went to Adweek.

Lauren: They had an open house as well at the same time. So they rented out an entire penthouse of the Four Seasons. And so there was like 40, 50 of us there, like an invite kind of thing. and Fetch had sponsored one of the panels that I had attended. And then they also had this massive presence at Shop Talk, and they like gave verbatim so many strong insights that I didn’t see in any of the presentations at Shop Talk.

Lauren: But that’s what I’m [00:12:00] saying. Like the thing that surprised me was one, I couldn’t believe the swag two, the booths were like CES level, massive. you got to meet with people that you work with. Shopify of course, had this massive presence. Oh. there was one brand called Disco, and they had an IV lounge.

Lauren: That was how they do it. You wanna hear 30 minutes on their pitch as a third party advertiser.

Ralph: Went hung over people.

Lauren: It was Vegas, so they had an IV lounge. there’s.

Ralph: there in Vegas now. Yeah.

Lauren: hundred percent. There was, a business that helps you if you wanna expand to international shipping. they brought a massage chair. They had like 10 masseuses, so they had massage chair and they did hand massages.

Lauren: So of course the joke was like, I got a handy at Shop Talk.

Ralph: Yeah. Oh, that’s good.

Lauren: Yeah. Like.

Ralph: bag and swag

Lauren: So AdRoll had like professional headshots, like you could spend the full days just in the vendor space. Definitely. Some of the presentations, that I enjoy the most, were when they were not talking about ai,

Ralph: Yeah. I [00:13:00] wonder if there were any AI talks at CHOP Talk? It was my first question. Geez. I wonder if, so non AI talks, give us some takeaways. Like one of the,

Ralph: what are the biggest things?

Lauren: in terms of the non-AI stuff, I think, what really blew my mind were two different individuals telling me stuff. So, someone from Flamingo Estate, had talked about this concept of radical inconsistencies. And I never thought about it. It blew my mind. And I’ll tell you why. Tropicana orange juice is consistent with making sure every glass tastes the same, but the reality is, is not every orange tastes the same.

Lauren: It comes from a different environment as harvest at a different time, depending on what was used to help grow the plant.

Ralph: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: With Flamingo State, they talked about celebrating and embracing the radical inconsistencies because that’s what wine does. You care about what year, with single origin coffee, right?

Lauren: You care about that [00:14:00] specific flavor so that you make sure that you find the one that you like. it was just in a generation like Gen Z. Gen Alpha was also a large component of the event, which is what I liked the most because it’s the emerging class of buyers and gen Z is broke, they don’t have money, and they have zero loyalty,

Ralph: Ah,

Lauren: loyalty. And so it’s this like race to the bottom to compete for that new customer acquisition. So a lot of the non-AI content that I enjoyed was about how do you retain loyalty? How do you. Ensure that the person who you acquired becomes loyal in an age where if you’re not authentic, if you’re not polarizing your audience, gen Z won’t care.

Lauren: And all you’re doing is racing the bottom com to share in on the lowest margin possible for new customer acquisition. And [00:15:00] so they talked about different, changes in, cultural differences of. How different markets inside the United States. It’s so big, it’s almost like Panamerica, the United States, right?

Lauren: Such a massive culture. How they’re,I talk a lot about how like Latinos and Latinx individuals tend to have more loyalty and they spend more. How, a lot of Gen Zers born and raised in the US are doing Klarna and Afterpay. And of course what happened during the event was Uber Eats. Was talking about how they’re doing layaway plans.

Lauren: So now you might have to like, oh, I can’t go to the movie. I still owe a dollar on my Snickers that I bought three months ago. So talking about generational marketing, talking about how do you tap into, different, groups in the United States that you can grow into buyers, how do you develop loyalty?

Lauren: And then also how do you stand out and how do you. Evolve as a brand that can leverage radical inconsistency so that you encourage repeat [00:16:00] buyers that stand behind your brand’s promise, but get to experience a more authentic product versus always the same Tropicana. So the, the radical inconsistency was huge.

Ralph: gimme an example of that because radical consistency is what, like the, the industrial food complex is based upon and many, many products. Obviously using Tropicana is one, McDonald’s and Burger King or another one. I mean, the, the point is, is like, are you talking about this specifically and how it impacts the Gen Z demographic?

Ralph: Gimme an example of what that would be, or maybe for the listener.

Lauren: So the Gen Z graphic, but also for higher ticket products like individuals. Again, it goes back to the authenticity. They know that brands are in trial and error phase. If you’re at the pa, like you talk about the radical inconsistency, you’re talking about McDonald’s and major corporations that have figured that stuff out, but Gen

Ralph: We’re gonna deliver the same product no matter what. It’s gonna taste exactly the same, even though [00:17:00] the beef comes from, 14 different places in your Big Mac,

Lauren: Exactly. So for the brands that have that radical consistency, they’ve figured out a lot and they’re held to a higher expectation. But if you can be like authentic, and it’s not just Gen Z, millennials will pay more when they understand the truth behind the brand and what they’re going through. ’cause they’re humans behind the brand.

Lauren: And when you’re radically consistent, you’re just a corporate versus being an actual brand. So there’s an example of this one, when she has a lipstick. That they made, they have this like new patented smart lipstick technology so that when they did this like test launch, they sold like a few hundred of them and then the owner actually got on the phone call with people and one person had said Hey, like it malfunctioned or something.

Lauren: The technology stopped working and the owner was like, I’m so sorry. And the person in the response was like, we know it’s not supposed to be perfect. And so when the customer is I know it’s not perfect, but it’s actually [00:18:00] perfect for what I need right now, they are enveloped in your brand. So that like launching a new product that’s not perfect.

Lauren: launching, like in Germany there’s a whole wave of like grocery stores that sell imperfect fruits. So you can get a carrot that has like the most awkward shape ever and it’s on discount, but it’s still a good carrot. Like it just, when you can celebrate the moments of, yeah.

Ralph: stock,two ends coming out of the same, I don’t know, top of the carrot,

Lauren: it looks like an AI generated carrot from nine months ago.

Ralph: Right, right. So radical inconsistency, so are they recommending this for brands in general or just newer brands and that, how it relates back to the, the owner’s journey or the, the, the about us page in essence, like what makes us different?

Ralph: Is that sort of what you’re saying here?

Lauren: Yes, and with new product launches that like you don’t have to be perfect to launch, you just have to be authentic so you can. Enter new markets, you can [00:19:00] develop new products and you can launch without destroying your brand, brand, e brand equity, or even your relationship with your current customers as long as you, in a way like, Hey, we’re trying something. And it’s gonna be like, this is the first batch. this happens a lot. Breeze is a company I love and they had a batch that tasted very different and then people ended up wanting more of that mistaken batch. And it’s just that when something is inconsistent, when we’re human, when we’re developing.

Lauren: Customers wanna be a part of that story. They wanna know about the evolution and they wanna be able to say, I know when, or, yeah, that one didn’t work, but I’m gonna give you a try again because things were human. And that if you can celebrate the radical inconsistency, you talk about that in your About us, you talk about that in your brand voice.

Lauren: You celebrate the user’s journey with you. You’ll have stronger loyalty is what they’ve seen time and time again, especially if you’re selling a more expensive product.

Ralph: Right. [00:20:00] Does that mean that the user and the consumer, I guess, or the customer in this particular case, sort of feels a part of the creation of the journey and as a result of that inclusion, therefore they are, indoctrinated into the brand and feel a part of the brand? either directly or indirectly?

Ralph: Is that sort of part of the, how the human psychology of this is all working?

Lauren: A hundred percent. Because even when you’re able to get their feedback into it, because they know it’s not perfect, they know that they help shape the direction for the next person, and having that contribution

Ralph: Mm,

Lauren: brings a lot of brand loyalty. I.

Ralph: Right. Makes sense. So when you’re launching something, don’t like, the expression that, I think it was Reed Hastings that actually first said it is, if you’ve launched a product and you’re not slightly embarrassed by it, then you’ve launched it. Too late or too, yeah, you’ve launched it too late.

Lauren: Yeah.

Ralph: In essence, do, you don’t [00:21:00] have to be perfect in the first iteration of it. That’s the reason why every time there’s a Microsoft update or a, for that matter, like an iOS update, it’s just get it out there and then we’ll fix the bugs afterwards. not necessarily what you’re talking about.

Ralph: They’re more just like speed to market, but there is a speed to market part of this, which I think is important for businesses to really. Consider. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to get done is better than perfect. There are certain exceptions to that rule, but I think what you’re really talking about here is sort of embracing it, but also being transparent and authentic in the messaging.

Ralph: Saying like, all right, this is part of our new rollout with this new product. It’s not perfect, but we welcome your feedback kind of thing.

Lauren: Yes, and to embrace the moments where if someone has a different palette or if like you’re selling a version in the South United States versus like Alaska. Those differences, I mean like I can carry that over to like Disney Times. We would have specific merchandise available in different locations. I.

Lauren: Even like Pandora did this really [00:22:00] well, you cannot get that Pandora charm unless you’re physically in this specific store.

Ralph: Mm.

Lauren: radical inconsistencies in the inventory available.

Ralph: Ah, yeah. Okay.

Lauren: So you end up building brand loyalty and people will then make. A Pandora stop in their vacation. Louis Vuitton does this with the stamps, you can get your passport stamped with their gold marking that you can only get in the various Louis Vuitton stores.

Lauren: So people will go out of their way to connect with a brand because of the radical inconsistency of availability.

Ralph: Right, right. Which just engenders more loyalty to the brand and all the other things that go along with it, so very, very cool. what else? Digital alarm, what was the, what was some of the other, talks that you saw that really sort of blew you away?

Lauren: Well, Robin with fetch, she’s the CMO, smartest female marketer I think I’ve ever met. she brought something that rocked my socks. So fetch, I learned about them from the Super Bowl. They had the ad where they were giving away $10 million. You scanned a QR code [00:23:00] and then you watched on, this live app.

Lauren: Where they were just giving away all the money. They said, instead of us spending money on an influencer or on the ad, we’re just giving it all to you. And they were talking about their loyalty program. So I was like, oh, down. I win raffles all the time. I didn’t win, but I participated and learned about fetch.

Lauren: And then they had this like massive presence at Shop Talk again at Adweek as well. And I learned that they have 11 million receipts uploaded every day.

Ralph: Wow.

Lauren: 11 million receipts are uploaded into their app, and what that tells them is that the brands they work with, they can say, this person bought Coca-Cola at Walmart and then bought it also at the gas station.

Lauren: So they can see the purchase history and the journey of the various customers, which then allows fetch to. Push products in certain markets for them to acquire, right? It’s Instacart a little bit, but for a more loyalty based program. And so what I had learned from their 11 million [00:24:00] receipts every single day was a further emphasis of yeah, gen Z has zero loyalty to your brand and they’re going to, win.

Lauren: On convenience and price. And we’re in a market where, you know, like Temu and, and Xian and all these other brands are coming directly from China, competing against small mom and pops or like local brands, that the only way for you to stand out. You cannot compete on convenience and price unless you actually can.

Lauren: And if you do, just know that you’re not gonna maintain that loyalty. So you need to have big margins, which is where. Tim and Shein have been grown into such massive companies over the last few years, but again, going back to the people will pay more.

Ralph: As a

Lauren: People are interested in buying better products, but if you’re selling a commodity that’s genericized like it’s not differentiated.

Lauren: If you can’t stand out for a brand. You have to compete on price and convenience. and even then you’re just, again, in that race to the bottom. So talking [00:25:00] about the ways that you have to impress upon the post-purchase experience more than ever. So you have to earn your customer’s loyalty. Like side note, at Mon Expedia we talk about there’s three main.

Lauren: Email buckets you have. There’s someone who never bought from you. I call ’em a subscriber. Someone who’s bought from you only once, and someone who’s bought from you more than once. Those are the three different ways you talk to people in your email ecosystem, and the biggest opportunity in the next two years as we’re in this, like AI will.

Lauren: Eviscerate several different brands ’cause people will make it faster, more convenient, and just take over. You have to go for the people that bought from you once and figure out why they didn’t buy from you again. And if you can earn that renewal business, you’ll be able to survive. Where most people are neglecting it.

Lauren: They’re just so focused on net new customer acquisition, which we talk about in the marketing kpi, the marketing NPIs all the time.

Ralph: Absolutely.

Lauren: But you have to make sure that once you’ve acquired [00:26:00] that customer and you did all the hard work, your work doesn’t end.

Ralph: That’s a really good point is the cus acquiring a new customer and knowing what you can pay to acquire a customer is really, is just step one.

Lauren: Yes.

Ralph: ’cause after that it’s really, it’s, well, you’ve already paid for them, you can go out and get more, but how are you gonna maximize? Them as a repeat buyer for you, and then ultimately turn them into a brand advocate.

Ralph: And for people who aren’t aware, fetch is really, is a rewards app. Like how do they specifically ask, or, or, or how do they teach you to use it? And like for e-commerce specifically, is there any specific industry? let’s get into specifics like, what the, the use case is.

Lauren: Good question, and I’m glad you brought it up because, sorry, for listeners where I’m just like skipping passes, like it’s been a whirlwind of conferences. But, so the reason why people upload their 11 million receipts is because facts will then analyze the data and you get points. So you get points for what you pay for.

Lauren: So a lot of this you can use [00:27:00] in your business. So you’ve already acquired them. Like how do you earn their loyalty? You have to keep supplementing them in some capacity, ’cause someone else will fetch. You can turn your points into gift cards for Ulta, gift cards for Sephora. And so you might have a promotion where it’s like, hey, if you buy bubbly from Walmart this week, you get four x points.

Lauren: So if you’re gonna buy bubbly anyways, or you’re gonna buy like uh uh, LaCroix instead, you’ll switch to the bubbly. Because you’re incentivized to make that purchase because the incentive, I mean, you’re already gonna buy something anyways and the incentive can unlock gas cards, beauty cards, all that type of stuff.

Lauren: So it’s, it’s heavily incentivized to share your, your data, and then you’re sharing all of your purchase history, all of your data. You can see where someone made that purchase. What else did they purchase alongside that order. So say you bought the bubbly at Walmart, but while you’re there, then you also bought a snake plant.

Lauren: And then fetch can use that data.

Ralph: I don’t even know what a snake plant is. Quite

Lauren: I’ll show it to you. It’s right next to me [00:28:00] on this table.

Ralph: snakes? Okay. Oh, there it is right there. Well, I learned

Lauren: over to YouTube to see what I look like with a snake

Ralph: I call, you know what I call that? I call that a plant. anyway, so you can see user behavior through the app, which then affords you the opportunity as the business, as the.

Ralph: marketing analyst to then what? Create,

Lauren: on co, like co-branded products to

Ralph: offers that you

Lauren: mm-hmm. Locations to emerge into. Because if, say like you’re using a tool like Fetch and you’re pushing bubbly at Walmarts, but you make zero purchases in Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts, maybe the flavors you have don’t resonate with that market.

Ralph: Hmm. Yeah. Super interesting. So it’s an app. Well, obviously we’ll leave links in the show notes for this as well. Is it specifically for, well, that was at Shop Talk. Was it specifically for Shopify only? I’m not even

Lauren: No, no. So like Instacart, you have [00:29:00] to have your brand already distributed in other stores. And I imagine the same is true with Fetch. but like that, that’s where it like works. If you have a product, if you have a CPG that is in a Walgreens or in a CVS, like Instacart Fetch, there’s a lot of resources available to you to buy ad space in like the Amazon equivalents of those.

Lauren: Consumer buying places that are often way more affordable. So like for me and like in transparency at Mon News Media, like we’re getting super aggressive, like Q twos just started. So we are like meeting with every possible like ad distribution network ever. So if you’re listening and you have one, let me know, get on my calendar, because we wanna make sure by Q3 we are testing and launching ads and everywhere but the big three as new places.

Lauren: Ahead of Q4. So Q4, Facebook, Google, TikTok, like those are known very expensive places to put your media. So we wanna do additional media buying. And so we’re like Q2, we’re testing, we’re we’re interviewing and we’re trying all these different places. Like I’m at the podcast [00:30:00] evolution, so I’m, I’m talking to Hey, what does it mean to buy ads on Lipsy?

Lauren: what are the podcast networks? ’cause we just wanna have a stronger omnichannel presence and be more. Efficient with our ad dollars. so the point of that is that the event was amazing. Learning about Instacart and fetch ass alternative streams of advertising space selfishly really resonated for me.

Lauren: and I think could be relevant for a lot of our customers and, and perpetual traffic listeners for sure. and if you are one of those networks. Get us a deal to give the perpetual traffic listeners. ’cause Reddit always has their Reddit credit, but it’s only like 500. but either way, like the shop dog event was amazing.

Lauren: They had a lot of competitors to Shopify, which was interesting. I met some awesome people, like some a hundred million dollar brands are just sitting like CMOs of a hundred million dollar brand is just sitting next to you at the lunch table. It’s really a who’s who place. and this was my first shop talk, but I will never not go.

Ralph: Hmm.

Lauren: The [00:31:00] floor, the vendor floor pays for the ticket in and of itself, 50,000 people. You have huge influencers from massive companies. Again, the price of entry is so high so that it does lean into mid-market and above brands. There’s always things to do in Vegas. Prosper was at the same time. So if you have an Amazon store, like there’s like huge, huge, like I was with like, nine figure brands.

Lauren: Prosper there. Like it, it’s just like this huge concentration of that space.

Ralph: Super cool. So last but not least, south by Southwest, you were there as well. We’ve got some big highlights on On Shop Talk, but I know you have a conference that you have to get to and I have to get back to meetings. So what’s the one big takeaway that you got? And don’t say, oh, AI is the next thing.

Lauren: from South by Southwest, or was it like that all AI applied as well? Everything was AI side. I will say my big takeaway though, okay. No. So my favorite things, so South by Southwest for [00:32:00] the such note are in Austin, it takes over it’s like hundreds thousand people. there was like lots of different lounges, even if you’re in the area, like I met people that were going to events, like KPMG threw an Austin party.

Lauren: There was, she talks like there’s a lot of stuff to do even if you don’t buy the ticket, just be in Austin. and, AI was of course the cornerstone of most talks. south by Southwest has a tech, has a film and music and a marketing leg plus education, which is the week before. So it’s technically a two week event.

Lauren: I can tell you I flew in on Thursday. Started Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And then by Tuesday, ’cause I was staying there for a full eight days, Tuesday afternoon I cried. I was so overwhelmed. I like, I had a moment where I was like, there’s just so much happening at once. I cannot keep up with everything.

Lauren: ’cause the event runs from 7:00 AM two, three in the morning.

Ralph: Holy. I had di I had no idea it was that.

Lauren: unprepared, I was exhausted.

Ralph: that? Like how did you know, like where to go or where to focus your energy? did you have a [00:33:00] plan ahead of it or did you just get punched into Miles as Mike Tyson says, as soon as you got there.

Lauren: I, I was punched in the mouth as soon as I got there. A hundred percent. There’s just stuff everywhere. You can’t walk without being like, here’s an activation, here’s an activation. I went the Dubai Museum of the Future. there was the Brazilian house. There’s like the lounge. There’s you, you cannot go anywhere without running into something.

Lauren: Interesting. The app was amazing. It talked about all the different tracks. So, I went to as many marketing ones as I could. Some were amazing, some weren’t good.

Ralph: Let’s talk about some of the amazing ones, like some of the takeaways,

Lauren: The, well, I,

Ralph: big one you like and you think, this is what I learned at. So by Southwest, like

Lauren: hmm. The big one is I ended up getting an offsite off south by Southwest invite to Google’s headquarters in Austin. and we listened to their big wig engineers and like the heads of Nvidia and a lot of other like missile programming leaders talking about AI

Ralph: Okay.

Lauren: quantum [00:34:00] computers.

Ralph: Yeah.

Lauren: Not what you would expect for a marketing kind of focus, but I mean, obviously we use AI a lot, but just seeing and understanding how AI is infiltrating other industries.

Lauren: So I’m listening to drug discovery weapons, learning about how like these big companies that are building the AI tools that we’re using, Gemini, open ai, all of these things, how they’re looking at AI so that I can be prepared for when it trickles down to. The marketing level. something that I really, really loved was, how they were saying, look, when people talk about ai, it’s the equivalent of using the word vehicle. AI and vehicle have many different versions. You can have a commercial truck, you can have, tricycle, you can have a skidoo, you can have a motorcycle, you can have a sedan or an A TV. Those are all different types of vehicle. Similarly,

Ralph: B, or they’re for pleasure. Right.

Lauren: And AI has all sorts of D. There’s numerical ai, there’s diffusion ai, there’s generative ai.

Lauren: There’s a [00:35:00] lot of different levels of ai. When we talk about AI that we’ve been using in Facebook ads, it’s been around for like years. Years. And then someone talks about ai. They lump all AI together and motorcycles and boats aren’t the same type of vehicle.

Ralph: right.

Lauren: So it was articulated by like actual rocket scientists. How, like the dangers of people blending all AI together because it’s having the wrong conversation. So I know that’s like somewhat of a tangent, but that really empowered me at least when I have people that are like anti AI or so pro ai and I’m like, Hey, can we have a, like a more specific conversation like is this actual ai or are you just speaking out the bandwagon?

Ralph: Hmm. Yeah, I think AI just in general gets either as a blanket statement, either people are afraid of it or excited about it, but it really, it all depends. Like we obviously talk about the marketing aspects of it, but you know, I come from the drug industry and the medical background. It’s like the stuff that they’re doing with AI in those.

Lauren: Huge.

Ralph: [00:36:00] Areas like my son is working at a semiconductor company. It’s like the amount of AI that’s being used in the technology and advancement of like microchips is like a whole other thing. That’s a whole other AI that ain’t chat GPT and Gemini, I mean it’s all based on the generalized, same concept, but it’s very, very different.

Lauren: Machine learning.

Ralph: clarity on like just that, like thinking about it and machine, not all machine learning is the same.

Lauren: Yeah, and I also, what I really loved was them talking about how like AI is data deprived right now, so where AI can come in and it can do like forecasting,

Ralph: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: it’s going to be imperfect until it has enough data. And the reality is, is it’s. Biased data. Data. They don’t have all the languages in, they don’t have, all, all enough data.

Lauren: One example that they have a lot of data is they have weather balloons all around the world that is taking in, that weather data every single hour to help Do you know disastrous forecasting? So whether there’s [00:37:00] a lot of data, predictive weather, right? Because you have all of these balloons everywhere.

Ralph: The application of that for predictive measures is, is, I mean, that could be world changing in many, many

Lauren: for sure. Knowing when a hurricane is gonna come and its actual trajectory path that gives people more time to evacuate. So that’s an area where data is not as deprived as other examples, such as weapons of mass destruction. We have 70 plus year old bombs that we don’t know how they will work because they’ve never been tested.

Ralph: Mm.

Lauren: And then AI is doing all these, so simulation ai, that’s like saying they’re guessing. They’re doing all these different scenarios, but the, the reality is it’s data to pride because we’ve never done anything like it. And in the drug discovery phase, like again, like you can build, which is how like the covid vaccine.

Lauren: Got distributed so well. ’cause they use a lot of machine learning to predict how it would interact with so many different proteins and all of our bodies and DNAs is super different. I’m not [00:38:00] in this space at all. So forgive me if I’m like not articulating this well. I’m trying to summarize it in the way the blonde Lauren dumbest person in that room understood.

Lauren: that AI helped build. New drugs helps build new solutions for different illnesses, but it’s still data deprived and we have so many different ideas that it works until it doesn’t. So the part where AI works until it doesn’t because it’s data deprived, made me again look at how I evaluate and someone’s talking to me about AI and how much they know about ai.

Lauren: I start, my new question is like, what type of AI are you talking about? ’cause if you’re generalizing it. I don’t have enough data to trust what you’re telling me, but two, in the space where you’re working until it doesn’t, and where they saw that in the drug discovery just made me think of like the overall reliance on AI right now is what most people are doing.

Lauren: And I think the brands that will stand out in the next few months are gonna be those that maintain the human [00:39:00] element because AI works really well until it doesn’t.

Ralph: Hmm. Interesting. Well, I think, um, this could be like its own separate show in my opinion. But I mean that, that distinction I think is an important one to make and to think about AI in a different way as opposed to just lumping it all together. Was there anything specific to marketing and or business that you found in that?

Ralph: Particular part of South by Southwest that might be, applied to what you do day in and day out as opposed to how you think about it globally.

Lauren: Hmm. Well, I will say like in the day in, day out, like using AI for like video creation and script writing, stuff like that. Like I listen to the big heads of Paramount and Amazon studios and I. The day in, day out is if you’re in marketing and you’re not leveraging ai, like there’s a countdown to how long your job will exist and listening to the big heads of huge studios because film industry [00:40:00] is evaluating ai, and I know it’s not answering specifically what you asked, but I thought it was important to note that honestly it sounded like they were representing, PR language that they were trying to like.

Lauren: Be kind to the script writers, directors and producers in the room to those in marketing by saying we are not going to take over AI fully. It was like literally I felt that I had been talking to a presidential press

Ralph: Ah,

Lauren: candidate kind of thing, and it was like I.

Ralph: Trying to satisfy all the constituents in the

Lauren: they were lying through their teeth, Ralph.

Lauren: They were like, we’re gonna use ai, so we’re gonna use AI to enhance. So what that told me is at a minimum from marketing level, if you are not using AI to enhance the good work into great, you’ll be left behind. There’s gonna be, the good to great difference is gonna get so large that the people using AI is gonna really just destroy anyone who’s not.

Lauren: And that’s what I took away from that concept because they made it [00:41:00] abundantly clear that we are looking for people that want to use AI to enhance ideas, to make ’em bigger and that who are testing new ways of leveraging ai. That was like the. The ways that I’m like, okay, my team, like every, we’re trying to go harder.

Lauren: Like we just hired of an AI video editor. He is not allowed to make anything without ai. that’s his job,

Ralph: Yeah. That’s awesome.

Lauren: so.

Ralph: So you are at podcast Evolution right now and you’re gonna be coming back from there for our next recording. So we’re gonna sort of leave that as a teaser as to what you learned on that side. ’cause I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast are out. They, one of the biggest questions that I get whenever I do any sort of stage speaking is how do I start a podcast?

Ralph: What is, is it the best thing for me to do based upon what I wanna do as a business owner, et cetera, et cetera, and or a marketing department, should it be part of my marketing? So I think we’ll probably have a few nuggets for next, show we do together, because you’ve gotta get [00:42:00] there and learn all this stuff.

Ralph: So then you can relay it to our millions of listeners here. So. Anyway, that is, those are some of the big takeaways from South by Southwest and Shop Talk from Lauren e Petrillo. And yes, we are back. We are gonna be doing lots of shows in the next couple of weeks. How’s your travel schedule look for the next couple of weeks.

Lauren: Oh, I’m, I’m, I’m not going anywhere. I’m like, I’m gonna Spokane for a weekend.

Ralph: Yeah. And that’s it. Yeah, I mean, I’ve got a, hopefully a trip to Europe scheduled in June, but I’m gonna take some time off ’cause I like living in my own house. I was there this past weekend for a day and a half. I’m like, it’s really nice being here, not being in some hotel somewhere.

Lauren: Yeah.

Ralph: yeah. But anyway, this has been great. I. we will leave links in the show notes, obviously for all the things that we mentioned here, as well as make sure that you do, subscribe over at, perpetual traffic.com/youtube. You can get the video version of this as well, and of course, wherever you listen a podcast, make sure that you do leave a rating and review, [00:43:00] especially a five star rating would be.

Ralph: Ultra fantastic. Any comments that you make over on Spotify, we’ll make sure that we respond to those as well. And like I said, everything that we talked about here today will be over on perpetual traffic.com. So on behalf of my amazing and well traveled and probably needs, uh, you know, a good Night’s Sleep co-host Lauren e Petrillo Till next show, see ya.

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