In this episode, Ryan Shenefelt is joined by our expert digital strategists, Ally Machala and Julian Klepach, to reveal the potential of location analytics. Discover how tools like Placer.ai can harness the power of location intelligence to help you leverage area data to effectively target advertising, understand your audience base, and gain a competitive edge. We also discuss a recent Apple ad disaster and Samsung's quick and creative response. 

The conversation doesn't end here! Find us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, sign up for our newsletter, or send us an email at: info@thinkdenovo.com with the subject "Dear de Novo." 

Links:

Placer.ai

Leveraging Location Data to Unlock Customer Insights

Creative Briefs:

Crush! | iPad Pro | Apple

Creativity Cannot Be Crushed | Galaxy Tab S9 | Samsung

TV Advert 30Sec | KC910 Renoir | LG (2008)

Transcript for Podcast Episode 4

Leveraging Location to Enhance your Marketing

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;20;16
RYAN
We're doing this. All right. 

JEN
Hello and welcome to this. Where are you talking? Oh my God. All right, we'll try this again. Ryan, are you settled? 

RYAN
Settled.

00;00;20;18 - 00;00;41;06
JEN
Okay. Hello, and welcome to Think Fresh, a podcast brought to you by de Novo Marketing’s Collective Creative. Coming to you from our Ideas Institute and here to talk about all things marketing. Insights on new trends, innovative ideas and marketing tools you can use in your day to day life, and whatever else we deem relevant. I'm Jen Neumann, de novo CEO and your host.

00;00;41;08 - 00;01;05;15
RYAN
And I'm Ryan Shenefelt, account manager, innovation and education lead and resident nosy eavesdropper, always looking to push the envelope. 

JEN
He is indeed very, very nosy. 

RYAN
Today, we're going to talk about customer analytics tools, specifically Placer.ai. Today's episode is a solo cast. Jen is not with us today, but we are being joined by two fellow deNovians. Today we have Ally Machalan and Julian Klepach.

00;01;05;15 - 00;01;27;14
RYAN
Welcome to Think Fresh friends! For the people listening, can you tell us a little bit more about your roles at de Novo? 

ALLY
Thanks. Ryan. This is Ally Machala. I am the digital strategist here at de Novo. So, spending a lot of my time in paid campaigns and helping clients, put together strategies that get results. 

00;01;27;14 - 00;01;49;10
RYAN
Awesome, awesome. Julian, what about you? 

JULIAN
Well, thank you for introducing me, Ryan. I'm the digital coordinator here at de Novo. You could call me Ally’s right hand man. but I also do a lot of organic social media and digital marketing as well. 

RYAN
And, Julian, you you have been known as our resident Gen Z. 

JULIAN
Yes.

00;01;49;14 - 00;02;11;03
RYAN
Thank you for thank you for keeping us fresh. So today we're going to be talking about location analysis specifically for our customers or your competition's customers. Ally, Julian, can you tell me a little bit more about like what location analysis is and why it's important for us? 

JULIAN
So location analytics help you know more about the people who are actually coming and going
into and from a given location, which in turn will help us better target our advertising campaigns without having to, let's say, manually survey all of the people who come into a store or coming to, an event. So before digital advertising, everything was dependent on location and those physical visits. And that's still just as important. But now we have a few more tools to work with. When you make advertising campaigns, especially digital ones, a lot of the time these days you are kind of guessing.

00;02;40;13 - 00;03;04;27
JULIAN
These are the type of people that we need to reach. Something like location analytics takes that guesswork out. 

RYAN
Yeah. So digital advertising now, we know it's really reliant on cookies and determining what you're searching for, things you search for in the past… kind of building a profile around your audience. So we have access to all of that. But it doesn't necessarily say how many people are coming into your location.

00;03;04;29 - 00;03;22;14
RYAN
The only way to get that in the past has been like door counters or physically counting how many people are at an event, or how many people are in your store, in your shop. Or even in your community at a given time. But with this tool, it allows us to actually track that in as real of time as possible.

00;03;22;16 - 00;03;50;27
ALLY
Essentially, it tells you very specifically where your people are coming from. So location wise, but it also give us information on demographics, similar interests and just all kinds of information that we can then use to implement better targeting, using contextual targeting, like what are their favorite places? Where do they go after they visit your store?

00;03;50;29 - 00;04;18;26
ALLY
What part of the city or state, or neighborhood, even are they living in? 

RYAN
Talking a little bit more about Placer.ai specifically, Placer.ai is a tool that de Novo uses for location analysis. Can you guys talk a little bit more about what Placer.ai does? 

ALLY
So Placer is a location based customer analytics tool. It does exactly what we were discussing as far as location analytics.

00;04;18;29 - 00;04;41;10
ALLY
It's an online platform that uses individual’s cell phones to track their foot traffic and then uses AI to determine how many people are visiting a given location and layers on that information that we also can get as far as demographics, interests and things like that.

RYAN
So how does it actually track that, Julian? And like, how is it using people's cell phones?

00;04;41;10 - 00;05;12;29
RYAN
How does that all work? I know that people were like, oh my gosh, the government's tracking me. Is that true? 

JULIAN
Well, no, it's not necessarily true. Placer partners with over 30 different companies that specialize in collecting data analytics, and that even includes, you know, like the US Census Bureau, and it includes, like some KPI data aggregators, people who deal with, what are called MAIDs, which are mobile app identifiers.

00;05;13;02 - 00;05;41;18
JULIAN
Essentially, they work with a lot of applications, data brokers, they, Placer themselves, do not sell data. They work with the people who sell the data to turn it into something that marketers can, can use. 

RYAN
So they partner with, with the Census Bureau and things like that for that overlay information. But a big thing that Placer really harps on is all of their individuals that are in what's called their “panel” are opted in.

00;05;41;20 - 00;05;59;24
RYAN
And you opt in on a variety of different apps and things like that. So yes, they use apps that are already on on your phone. Right? Like you don't have to download the Placer app in order to be in the panel. Like how do how does that work? 

00;05;59;24 - 00;06;22;24
JULIAN
So there is no, there is no somebody saying, hey, I want to be on the Placer panel. I want to sign up to be one of these people that Placer like, is tracking essentially. You yourself can end up on a Placer panel if you download an app, whether it be a coupon app, a travel app, game, social media, finance, a lot of these things in the terms and conditions, you'll end up agreeing to being on a Placer panel, even if you may or may not know it.

00;06;22;27 - 00;06;43;12
JULIAN
You are consenting to being on a Placer panel, so it's not like they're doing it without people kind of accepting and agreeing to being on the panel. However, you may not know my data is going to Placer.

RYAN
Right. So those terms and conditions, those terms of service, they are important. So when you do, accept those, you are opting into Placer technically. 

00;06;43;12 - 00;07;18;13
RYAN
They are not collecting any personal information about you. They kind of hash it or they kind of strip your name and different things off of it, but it still does give that really strong customer profile that we were talking about earlier in the episode. 

JULIAN
Right. All personally identifiable information is stripped, and they actually do have a very, they make a big effort in protecting all of the data that they have and encrypting it and essentially creating a, a cloud based, secure data warehouse.

00;07;18;16 - 00;07;41;06
RYAN
And, and one thing about the Placer tool at least, and most of our location intelligence tools or our, customer analytics tools, it's not tracking every single person that is walking through your door. It is tracking the people who are in the panel. And there's 25 million individuals in the United States that are on this panel, and then they extrapolate it using AI.

00;07;41;08 - 00;08;02;16
RYAN
But it's not just like a simple metric. It's not just a simple multiplier effect. So for every one person who's in our panel, it's there are five individuals that live there. So you can't just multiply the number by five. It actually takes into account the type of the type of person that I am. For example, my multiplier for a given location might be 1.2.

00;08;02;18 - 00;08;23;24
RYAN
Julian's multiplier for a given location might be four, and they kind of extrapolate it that way. So it's it's much more advanced than just a, a simple multiplier. But the other thing that they do, they verify it, so they verify it against physical foot traffic. Can you talk a little bit more about that. 

JULIAN
Yeah. So they will even check with a lot of their partners.

00;08;23;24 - 00;08;48;26
JULIAN
They work with, you know, things like theme parks, Major League Baseball. They will check the data that they have extrapolated against real data that they have. So let's say they, you know, are double checking their data from an MLB stadium, like two weeks ago, they will check the actual attendance numbers for that game and check it against what their algorithm has extrapolated.

00;08;49;02 - 00;09;11;03
RYAN
And typically I want to say it's about 99% or more accurate to the actual attendance numbers. And they're in the you know, the nature of an algorithm is constantly being updated to be as accurate as possible. 

RYAN
Yeah. So they take the data that we know and they just check it against themselves and they're like, hey, guess what? We're right.

00;09;11;06 - 00;09;33;19
RYAN
So that means that we customers, anyone who uses Placer, or other tools like this can be confident, right? 

JULIAN
Yeah. 

RYAN
What kind of information, and Ally, this is a question for you. What kind of information does Placer and other tools like this let you collect?

ALLY
So much information. So Placer gives us all sorts of information.

00;09;33;22 - 00;09;55;15
ALLY
The kind of the biggest things that we get to see are where they come from, where they go, we get to see where people live, where they work. It gives us heat maps of all this data so we can see where our superfans live. This is based on frequency of visits and it also lets us know how far they're willing to travel to a location.

00;09;55;15 - 00;10;19;16
ALLY
So how far is the reach of our market? It shows us times of day, days of week that are most popular. It also gives us information about the education level, household income, marital status, and so much more about our customers, which lets us then create a profile to better target others like them. 

RYAN
Yeah, so we're figuring out who our main customers are, especially our superfans.

00;10;19;16 - 00;10;40;17
RYAN
If we can figure out who comes to a given location a lot. So, for example, the Cherry Building where de Novo is, we can see how many times individuals come to the Cherry Building and be like, oh, this type of person comes to the Cherry Building 15 times a year. We want more people like that. But you could think of that for your restaurant, for your business and figure out that profile for them. Right? 

ALLY
Correct. 

RYAN
You mentioned that, it allows you to see where they live and, like, where they work. How does it actually determine that information, though? 

ALLY
So it's mostly looking at the amount of time and the time of day that you're spending somewhere. So, for example, if they're looking at where you work, if you're somewhere, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, obviously this is different for different types of work, but if you're somewhere regularly for an extended amount of time, that is generally they're going to say that's your workplace.

00;11;14;00 - 00;11;36;12
ALLY
It is anonymized. So it's not like, oh, hey, this one person is working at the Cherry Building and they live on this street. But it does the same for where you live. So where are you essentially camping out for the night? And are you going there every day? And then it gives a general radius around that area.

00;11;36;12 - 00;12;07;12
ALLY
So again it's not giving you the exact addresses of the customers, but it's saying, okay, it's like on this street in this neighborhood, so it gets pretty narrow, but without giving away any private information. 

JULIAN
Yeah. So you might know the neighborhood of where somebody that you might be able to find, like popular cities, if you, if people are coming from all around America, like, it could be very good to know, like this particular city, really likes, likes my business.

00;12;07;15 - 00;12;28;02
JULIAN
And yeah, like you said, the data is anonymized, and they also make sure, like, for some other privacy things, like they make sure if they know that the person is under 18, they're not going to be tracking this person. They're also sensitive locations that they make sure not to track, whether it's a women's health center or a military base or rehabilitation centers, things like that.

00;12;28;02 - 00;12;55;27
JULIAN
Even schools, they make sure to kind of limit the data that's coming from these sensitive locations, and they make sure that the data is anonymized. So we're not at Skynet yet. 

RYAN
Yet. Yet.So they basically just track, like, where you live, and where you work. Why is that information important? Why is it important to know if somebody works at this location versus if them if they're just a visitor?

00;12;55;29 - 00;13;27;22
ALLY
I mean, it can make a big difference if it's someone who is working at your location, you want to be able to exclude them from your visitor traffic so that your workers don't skew your data in any way. But it can also give you information on people working around if you have a physical restaurant or grocery store, being able to target people who may not live nearby but work nearby, who are more likely to during the day or right after work, visit your location.

00;13;27;24 - 00;13;48;02
RYAN
Nice. So we've talked about a few different things. What type of business is location analytics good for like who should be using it? Who can use it? 

ALLY
Yeah. I mean, it's good for almost anyone, whether you have a physical location, whether you have a chain of physical locations, or even if you're an online store who has competitors, who have physical locations.

00;13;48;04 - 00;14;17;13
ALLY
So this really can be from small businesses to the largest chains. I mean, we're talking Walmart, McDonald's, literally anything. But it isn't just businesses. So we can even use this for, you know, specific neighborhoods, especially like a downtown district where you can get data on who's working downtown, who's visiting downtown, how can we, you know, improve the district in those ways?

00;14;17;15 - 00;14;37;16
ALLY
It gives you information about events. So if you have a specific event…

RYAN
…like a farmer's market, right? 

ALLY
Yeah. Or an event venue, it can give you a lot of information based on that. So essentially, it's good for almost any business. We do run into some issues with multi-story buildings or any buildings that have multiple floors like malls.

00;14;37;16 - 00;15;05;06
ALLY
And of course, as Julian mentioned, some of those more sensitive locations. 

RYAN
So now let's talk about more ways that we can use it. We mentioned knowing about where your super fans are coming from, but what are some other ways that we use this location data?
JULIAN
I think, one of the cool uses for it could be if you're purchasing traditional media or planning to put up billboards for your clients, you can actually see the routes that your super fans and that your visitors take.

00;15;05;09 - 00;15;27;02
JULIAN
Whether it be certain highways, roads, streets, and you can see these high traffic, these roadways and place billboards on them or you can see other kinds of shopping districts that your typical customer likes to frequent. And then you can put your advertisements in those spaces. 

RYAN
Yeah. So it's not even just like the same city. We're not just talking about neighborhoods.

00;15;27;07 - 00;15;49;13
RYAN
I think you mentioned earlier, Julian, we're talking about communities. So if we're advertising a community in Iowa and they get a lot of traffic from the Midwest, we can see the routes, the roads that people are taking, whether it be to go there or on family vacations. It's like, hey, here's a billboard for our business, our restaurant, because we know a lot of people are traveling on that road, right?

00;15;49;16 - 00;16;13;05
JULIAN
Right. 

ALLY
In addition to knowing where your super fans live, Placer gives you the opportunity to find your true trade areas. So the exact, down to the neighborhood or zip code, location of your customers, whether they're super fans or they've been to your location one time, you can also then overlay that with or view your competitors trade areas.

00;16;13;05 - 00;16;40;27
ALLY
This gives you some really cool information about where the overlap lies or where you have opportunity for poaching, maybe…

RYAN
…a nice way of saying it, a nice way of saying it. 

ALLY
…just you know, the best places to advertise. As far as location, this also helps you discover top competitors. So maybe you thought that one store was your top competitor, but then really looking at it, it's someone else.

00;16;41;00 - 00;17;09;15
ALLY
It can also give you opportunities for even partnerships or cross promotions. If there's a similar business minded business or someone that you could partner with that you are seeing people going back and forth between you and them. So opportunities there for increased visibility, as we mentioned before, it can improve ad efficacy. So it just gives us a better clear view of our true customer and our true market.

00;17;09;15 - 00;17;30;14
ALLY
And then we can use that information to then target similar people on digital. 

RYAN
So, Ally, you previously said where they come from, where they go, what does that actually look like? Like how what do you mean like where what communities they're going to or like, where are they going back home? Or like, what information can we actually get about their journey?

00;17;30;14 - 00;17;52;13
ALLY
So we get information about specific locations that they're coming from. We can look at, oh, they are primarily people coming from home or work, but then we actually get a breakdown of the businesses or locations that they're coming from and the same after they leave. So we can look and see. Okay.

00;17;52;13 - 00;18;16;27
ALLY
So they left my competitor and came to me because that competitor apparently didn't have what they were looking for. or you can see it vice versa. And you're like, okay, what did they have? Why did they go to them after being at my location? So it gets really specific as far as the journey people take, and gives you a lot of information about their movements directly before and after visiting you.

00;18;16;29 - 00;18;50;03
ALLY
It does give you also like they call it favorite places. So this is a little bit more information on where they frequent outside of your business. So less where they are right before they come or where they go right after, but where they are spending a lot of their time. 

RYAN
So like a a clothing or a clothing store or, or a boutique, for example, like their favorite places, it might be a lot of plant stores and then all of a sudden you're like, okay, we want to target people online who like plant stores because they're more likely to like our boutique, because we know our superfans are people that like to go here.

00;18;50;03 - 00;19;11;26
RYAN
Their favorite places are plant stores, right? 

ALLY
Yeah. 

JULIAN
Not only can you use something like Placer.ai to plan out a marketing strategy or plan and decide who to target. But you can then go back and use the place your data to test. Was my marketing effective? You can see. Did I get more people of this demographic?

00;19;11;27 - 00;19;33;05
JULIAN
You know, this month versus the previous month before we had implemented this plan to, let's say, get more people of a higher income into my business. Did we actually see a jump in these visitors, of that demographic? And you can actually, you know, prove did we get the people in that we were looking to, draw into our business?

00;19;33;08 - 00;19;55;00
RYAN
So if everything's like digital, it's really easy to say, like, oh, did we sell more sweatshirts online? Did we sell more event tickets online, or did we get more questions online? Right. This is taking the same information that we track online, but adding like a, a conversion point for in-store traffic. Like we can track to see the efficacy of our ads.

00;19;55;02 - 00;20;12;20
RYAN
If our main goal is to drive people to a location. Right. It's not just like, oh, tracking how many times they click the map button to get directions to our location. It's actually showing an uptick in traffic, which is something we've never been able to do before. 

JULIAN
Yeah. And from where is that traffic and who is actually driving that traffic? Who makes up that traffic? 

00;20;12;20 - 00;20;36;10
RYAN
This is also helpful for grant information. So if you're a nonprofit and you are writing a grant for a new product, you might want to know exactly who is currently coming to your location. You also might do a marketing grant to attract different communities, underserved populations, different things like that. And you can actually track to see if that's working.

00;20;36;10 - 00;20;59;27
RYAN
So not even necessarily retail restaurants, things like that. Nonprofits can really leverage places as well like museums, to see who's coming to their museum, see where they're coming from, how what's the reach of your museum? We talked about true trade areas, and that's just not a radius. So lots of times in marketing it's like, oh yeah, we'll draw a ten mile radius around our location and make a perfect circle.

00;21;00;02 - 00;21;24;27
RYAN
Well, a true trade area is not actually a circle. It is little pockets of people and a little heat map around there. So your circle then becomes almost like a, for lack of a better term, a glob, a glob of, where your actual people are. So you're not wasting your marketing dollars attracting the whole circle or the whole state you're targeting that in and refining it to make the most of your marketing budget.

00;21;25;00 - 00;21;43;07
RYAN
So a lot of benefits of digital advertising are we can use cookies, we can use search history, different things like that in order to target our ads. But I've heard in the news lately, Ally, that some of this cookie information might be going away. Talk a little bit more about that. Is that scary or are we fine?

00;21;43;09 - 00;22;20;10
ALLY
I mean, it can be scary if you're not prepared. It's definitely, marketing is moving more or kind of back, to more contextual targeting. So understanding your audience and their movements and their likes and dislikes more than being able to target specific individuals based on what they've done. So we're really going to have to dig deep into our understanding of our audience, instead of relying on things like cookies to tell us who our audiences are. 

RYAN
We actually have to understand who our customer is to do marketing?!

00;22;20;10 - 00;22;52;06
RYAN
Yeah. Not fair. Not fair at all. 

ALLY
I agree, it's crazy. 

RYAN
Ally, you said if you're prepared for it, like, what does that mean? What do you have to prepare for?

ALLY
Essentially cookies, as long as you have opted into them, will continue to work. However, more and more people are opting out, or making the decision to not have their information tracked, especially as it becomes easier to do that, with a lot of the privacy policies that are going into place.

00;22;52;08 - 00;23;22;14
ALLY
I mean, we've got one in Iowa and that's going to be coming in 2025. There's one at the federal level being eventually, probably figured out…hopefully. And so these are essentially going to force users, our force entities, businesses, anyone with a website to get explicit consent to be able to place cookies for people. Before, we didn't really have to ask.

00;23;22;16 - 00;23;45;06
ALLY
We could just have cookies. We could track anybody who landed on the site. And that was really the main reason why we were able to follow people around on the internet. That's why you were able to get ads from a site you visited two days ago on the site that you're viewing or on Facebook.

00;23;45;09 - 00;24;15;18
ALLY
But due to privacy concerns, most, most platforms actually already do this. Google is just obviously the big one. And they're still in the process of making this change, but it is coming. So eventually it will be no cookies unless specifically people are opting in. And that is less likely, I think, the more that privacy is talked about, the more people are going to be concerned with it.

00;24;15;21 - 00;24;49;21
JULIAN
Yes. Yeah. For some context, there's plenty of regulations going around when it comes to user privacy, especially online. Cookies are just a little bit of code that gets put on your computer and it pretty much tracks you. Once you visit a website, the data can be very personal. It can also be very general. So as privacy policies are implemented across the globe and as user privacy is more at the top of people's mind, and people have more of an opportunity to have their data not be tracked, they have the opportunity to opt out of cookies and other identifiable information.

00;24;49;24 - 00;25;15;19
JULIAN
You know, more people will continue to click opt out, click don't use or sell my data. That's why things like Placer are becoming even more important as those regulations get more stringent, and as users kind of understand more about their rights when it comes to privacy protections, it really allows us to hone in our customer profile, without relying on these things that are going away, such as cookies and other, you know, identifiable information.

00;25;15;22 - 00;25;42;18
RYAN
Yeah. Completely agree. So in summary, cookies are going away. We have to start using other tools in order to figure out who our customer is. We don't just want to guess, we want to actually know. And tools like location analysis and customer analysis help us do that. 

RYAN
Okay. Now it's time for the power of three. The power of three is where we give three practical takeaways where our listeners can go out and try what we just covered in today's episode.

00;25;42;21 - 00;26;04;00
RYAN
And in this case, it's how they can leverage customer insights. And today there are three of us. So this actually works out perfectly. We can each say one. Mine is: If you're curious, go ahead and make a free Placer.ai account. You can create a free account. It's a free trial and it will let you kind of wet your toes, into the location analysis of your customers.

00;26;04;02 - 00;26;26;19
RYAN
Ally, what about you? 

ALLY
So mine is really underlining the importance of understanding who your audience is, where they come from, what do they like? Getting the information you need to really expand on what you think your audience is and starting to know. 

RYAN
Nice. Julian, what about you? 

JULIAN
Well, I would say, you know, take it back to basics. Get a door counter.

00;26;26;21 - 00;26;43;20
JULIAN
If you're not ready to dive into a location analysis platform like Placer, you can still start tracking how many people are actually coming into your location or your storefront. So, similar to what Ally said, you can take some of the guesswork out and really know and get that first party data on how many people are actually coming through your doors, 
00;26;43;23 - 00;27;04;23
JULIAN
and that can help you track the effectiveness of your ads and how much traffic you're actually driving. 

RYAN
All right, so get a free Placer account, actually understand who your audience and your customers are, and get a door counter. The power of three. 

RYAN
Okay. Time for our next segment, Creative Briefs. This is where we review some existing work that is out there.

00;27;04;26 - 00;27;31;09
RYAN
Something that's in the zeitgeist, something topical, popular, sometimes, or just some really great creative or sometimes really rough creative that we want to dive into. This month we are covering an Apple campaign. Apple was historically one of the behemoths of advertising, right? It seems like they could do no wrong when it came to their ads. It started all with their 1984 campaign, and from then it seemed like everything they could do was amazing.

00;27;31;11 - 00;27;55;26
RYAN
But this latest one is called Apple Crush!, and we recommend checking it out. It's in the show notes. We've got the video link in the show notes. But the commercial starts in a warehouse with like a bunch of items seemingly on a stage. Then Sonny and Cher starts playing on a record player, but then after the music starts, you realize it's actually a giant hydraulic press and it starts to crush all of the items that are on it.

00;27;55;29 - 00;28;19;07
RYAN
It crashes through a trumpet, paints, and the paint splatters out, a piano and you hear the piano crunching. The music gets all crunched up, too. A metronome gets crunched, an alarm clock, an arcade game, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Then the hydraulic press opens up, revealing an iPad, and the text on the screen says the new iPad is also the thinnest.

00;28;19;09 - 00;28;41;07
RYAN
Ally, Julian, what did you think? What'd you think of the ad? What's your what's your take? 

ALLY
Why is it so violent? 

RYAN
It is.

JULIAN
It's a weird juxtaposition of, look at all this creativity that you can do. Let's destroy it all. You know, it's all destruction, but it's talking about creativity, right? I thought that was kind of interesting.

00;28;41;07 - 00;29;06;07
ALLY
I mean, it's more than creativity, too. I mean, it's knowledge and the world, and I get what they're trying to say. Absolutely. 

RYAN
Like, what are they trying to say? 

ALLY
Everything you would ever need or want or learn. All in this one tiny, thin iPad, just crushed into it. But I don't think it landed anywhere near where they wanted it to.

00;29;06;09 - 00;29;25;02
RYAN
Yeah, there was a huge backlash online almost immediately. They actually pulled it from, they pulled it from running as commercial spots. They now still have it digitally. You can still view it on YouTube and they're still doing digital ads, but they pulled it from TV placements after like four days.

JULIAN
I didn't even see it on TV. That's how fast they pulled it. 

00;29;25;02 - 00;29;44;19
RYAN
Yeah, I think that they were running it during some of the WNBA and NBA pieces. But like you said, we get where they're going with it. It's like, hey, this one small device can do everything. And it's not just the creative pieces like the painting, the music production, all those other pieces that were crushed.

00;29;44;19 - 00;30;02;27
RYAN
It's an arcade game that crunched up, an angry bird signs. It's like, hey, you can play games on this. It crunched up emojis. So send emojis and text to your friends. This device can do everything and it's small. It's thin. You can carry it with you wherever you want to go. It's like we saw where they're going, right?

00;30;02;27 - 00;30;26;19
RYAN
We saw the benefit. We saw the, the, the intent. But it really missed the mark because, yeah, it's crushing everything. It's like it's literally crushing hopes and dreams. Right. 

ALLY
Right. And how is that different from any other smart device? How does that really set you apart? 

RYAN
Yeah, yeah. And in the commercial, they were also using something that's kind of popular right now.

00;30;26;19 - 00;30;49;21
RYAN
I always see these videos on TikTok of people smashing different things with …with not hyaluronic acid, with a hydraulic press. Right. it'll be like a squish ball or like a squish ball or like a Snickers bar. That's cool, that's cool. So they're trying to tap into something, something cool, like an online trend, but it just came off wrong.

00;30;49;23 - 00;31;11;17
RYAN
Yeah. Like the juxtaposition of that technology with the creative. 

JULIAN
Right. While we're here, can we mention LG's ad from 2008? That is pretty much the same thing. 

RYAN
I, I do not know a whole lot about that one and talk a little bit more about that. 

JULIAN
So it's pretty much the same thing as this ad, except they were using it to advertise their phone.

00;31;11;20 - 00;31;32;24
JULIAN
And so they're crushing violins, instruments, I think an alarm clock, some of the same exact things. And like some of the shots are almost replicated 16 years later. I mean, this came out in 2008, all to show like a little, a little LG phone that nobody would even recognize today. But it's pretty much the same ad.

00;31;32;26 - 00;31;51;13
RYAN
So Apple might not be as creative and original as they thought. Right? 

ALLY
Right. I think that's the consensus. 

RYAN
So, Julian, the ad in 2008, I, I will be honest, I didn't hear about this ad in 2008, so it must not have sparked as much backlash. Why do you think this happened now? Why is the backlash is strong right now?

00;31;51;13 - 00;32;18;17
JULIAN
Well, I think it has a lot to do with, you know, creatives feeling a little bit defensive and people in general worried about, you know, the rise of AI and how that is replacing, you know, artists, game designers, writers, philosophers, all of these things that Apple seemed to be crushing on the hydraulic press is essentially, you know, what AI is doing.

00;32;18;17 - 00;32;42;03
JULIAN
They're crushing the creatives in some ways, and it kind of feels like Apple is, you know, siding with AI or this new thought of, well, let's just put it all on the one thing. Not to mention, you know, Apple is very and has been very AI forward, you know, going into their new developments and some of the features on this new iPad.

00;32;42;06 - 00;33;11;29
RYAN
I will say, however, this commercial does not mention AI once. 

JULIAN
No. Right. 

RYAN
It doesn't mention it anywhere. But is that just so on the top of everyone's mind that it's like so implied? It's just like, oh, we're crushing creativity through AI. 

JULIAN
Yeah, I think the timing of it all surrounding it, you know, is one of the reasons there's backlash around this ad and why we didn't see that in 2008, or at least as far as I can remember, you know, being eight years old.

00;33;11;29 - 00;33;29;09
JULIAN
I don't remember that. I don't know about you, Ryan. 

RYAN
I, I also do not remember it. I do not remember it. I do want to pivot us to a response. And in the world of the internet and how quickly things move, gone are the days of spending months creating a video even though it's going to be on TV.

00;33;29;11 - 00;33;55;22
RYAN
Samsung created a response video to this and they had it posted like less than one week later, less than one week later. And in the Samsung video, it is advertising one of their, one of their iPad competitors. So a Samsung tablet and this one, we see a young woman walking into the same warehouse. Or we're supposed to think it's the same warehouse, but there are crushed items all over the floor.

00;33;55;23 - 00;34;21;26
RYAN
There's a crushed arcade game. There's paint splattered everywhere. But there's also a crushed up guitar. But it's not so crushed you can't use it. She picks up this crushed guitar and starts playing music on it, and she's reading the music off of her Samsung tablet. She's using the tools to create the art. She plays her music a little bit more, and then at the very end of the commercial, it ends up with

00;34;21;26 - 00;34;58;26
RYAN
Creativity cannot be crushed. Almost the exact opposite of the Apple commercial. You're using the tech in order to be creative. Very well done. What did you guys think about the Samsung response? 

ALLY
I mean, I think it was a perfect response. It's a very simple ad overall, and I don't, I mean, if it wasn't a response, I don't know that it would be as powerful, but just really showing how to use the tablet, to create rather than saying everything is in the tablet.

00;34;58;28 - 00;35;33;14
ALLY
That really takes the humanity out of it. 

JULIAN
Yeah. I think Apple really gave Samsung a silver platter of a response. There is an absolute alley-oop and the Samsung team took it, ran with it, and benefitted off of their, you know, Apple's mishap. I think one of the biggest reasons why the Crush the Apple ad didn't land is because it made it seem like the iPad was replacing all of the creativity, whereas this ad is saying no, the iPad, the tablet isn't replacing the creativity.

00;35;33;17 - 00;35;52;15
JULIAN
It is a tool. It is helping you be more creative. And that's, I think, where the biggest miss was on Apple's part with that crush commercial is that this thing is a tool. This is not a replacement. And that's a big thing with AI. I think you should look at AI as a tool. You shouldn't look at it as a replacement.

00;35;52;15 - 00;36;17;03
JULIAN
And what's funny is at the very end, the final screen of this, you know, we mentioned kind of the comparison to AI, with the crush ad, you actually look at the very end of this ad, it says Galaxy Tab S9 series with Galaxy AI. That with component is very important. It is not Galaxy Tab AI, it is with the AI.

00;36;17;05 - 00;36;36;03
JULIAN
It is a human. It is a person working with AI. It is a person working with the tool. It is not. They're not selling you the tool. They're saying what you can do with the tool. 

RYAN
So that's two very different ads talking about a very similar product. Right. But how do we wrap it all up? How do we wrap this all up?

00;36;36;05 - 00;37;03;04
JULIAN
I would say simply put, humans matter. Keep the human element in your marketing. 

ALLY
And creativity cannot be reduced into a very thin piece of tech. It's so much more than that. 

RYAN
Well, you guys, we did it. That was another episode of Think Fresh. Thank you both so much for being here today. Jen wasn't able to be here, but you guys stepped in and talked about location analysis.

00;37;03;04 - 00;37;23;27
RYAN
Customer analysis and all things Placer. Thanks for being here. 

ALLY
Yeah. Thank you for having us. 

JULIAN
It's a pleasure. Thank you Jen for being out, so we could come in.


JEN
 Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Think Fresh.

RYAN
And remember, the conversation does not have to end here. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

00;37;24;03 - 00;37;43;15
RYAN
Review our show on whatever you listen to your podcast on, or share all your marketing trials and triumphs by shooting us an email at info at. Think de novo.com with the subject line dear de novo so we don't miss it. 

JEN
And while you wait eagerly for our next episode, you can get your fix by checking out our blog Fresh Thinking at blog.thinkdenovo.com.

00;37;43;22 - 00;38;01;09
JEN
Stay tuned for more engaging conversations, laughs, and of course, marketing brilliance and be making fun of Ryan in the next episodes to come. 

RYAN
Here's to fresh thinking, sparking creativity, and never being boring. Bye friends!

JEN
Are we swearing on this, or no?