Mark Vandegrift
Welcome back to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is our strategy sorcerer, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, how you doing today?

Lorraine Kessler
I am doing well, Mark, enjoying the lake life.

Mark Vandegrift
Good! Nice, nice. Is it nice and hot up there today?

Lorraine Kessler
It's really hot. It's been gorgeous. Weather has been pristine. Couldn't ask for more.

Mark Vandegrift
Awesome. Good. Well, we need a relaxed Lorraine because the topic today is we need to chill on it a little bit. It's like fine wine. We need to let it age.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, if you tell me to relax, that just makes me tighten up. You just created stress. That's all right. It's the world of an Italian American.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, that's right. Well, today we have an interesting topic. We are going to talk about Reddit's recent rise in search rankings and how it's now the top user generated content platform for search rankings.

Lorraine Kessler
That's crazy. That's crazy crazy.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. But we always have to do a little bit of, you know, some brand news update. So I'm going to connect the topic to the update. So to tie into today's topic of Reddit's rise in search rankings, I have a Reddit thread here that's in a marketing community known as a subreddit, okay? And the thread starts by someone asking, what's the most creative or crazy marketing campaign you've seen recently? So I thought it might be interesting to go through some of the replies in the thread and see what people have to say. And we can have Lindsey throw these up on the screen as we talk about them here. So the first one is this final destination log truck to promote the upcoming sixth film. And the comment was, this is number one, this is genius marketing and crazy to anyone who hasn't seen the films. So it has this logging truck with the final destination on the back of it. Okay, any comment?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Well, we just did an episode on out of home and its effectiveness, right? Wow. This is a powerful example and fun example of out of home, using context with great relevance to final destination films and what they're all about. I think it's a superb marketing, superb.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, they did a good job. Okay, number two was Lego making real life size F1 cars and making drivers drive a lap in it. Did you see that?

Lorraine Kessler
I did. It's incredible, stunning, stunning, creative. What a way. I can't imagine a better way to capitalize on a sponsorship. I mean, at first you're thinking, well, why is LEGOs sponsoring Formula One? Because it's really unlimited imagination. You can build anything and they show it. And then on top of it, the PR attention that this drives, right? It's just, it's a great story and how these designers were challenged to come up with this and all of the things they had to go to to reproduce life-size and actually put two drivers in it. I mean, and being so faithful to the product and to F1, I just think it's an amazing, relevant execution in every way. And even though Legos has had some history, I think, in building life-sized things for their parks and various things, this was totally a different animal because it had to be able to ride, it had to do a 3.3 mile lap. It had to work. And I think because we represent Goodyear, the only parts on it that are not Lego are the wheels and tires, which were on loan from Pirelli. It's just a remarkable, just a remarkable execution.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, you said animal, which made me think, have you seen the big Lego animals that they have in different botanical gardens and stuff? Aren't those incredible?

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, yes. They're incredible. I mean, this is, they're showing that, you can build anything with a Lego, you know, and, the fact that this thing, you know, the next thing you know, they'll join SpaceX and send one to Mars.

Mark Vandegrift
Ha I'm not riding in that rocket. Good, well number three is ASICS dog ambassador campaign. And the response was ASICS dog ambassador campaign really motivated me to take my dog for a run with ASIC shoes on. So what did you think about this one?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, mean, dogs are high attention scorers. People love dogs. So anything with a dog, it's going to get attention. And it's a very cute ad. It's entertaining. And it has a public service kind of feel about it, right? But I'm not so sure it sells shoes or ASIC. I think the best thing it does is it helps seek the brand name, which looks like an acronym. I had bought these shoes. I liked them. I hate the name. I can never remember it. It reads to me like an acronym. So maybe the best part about it is it does create a feel good, but it's certainly not as powerful as the other two examples I think that we just went through. And it does help with name recognition, which of course is important, but it doesn't tell me why I should buy ASIC. Maybe it tells me why I should buy it. It might tell me why I should buy a dog.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, you notice I spelled it the first time I said it so that everyone knew what I was saying. Of course, it's going to be on screen, but I'm the same way.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Maybe someone watching this, if we have a viewer or two, they can tell us where this name derives from because I don't get the name at all.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, yeah, it doesn't connect very well. Okay, number four is Duolingo. And we had to have one in here that didn't hit us in a positive way. And that the person said, Duolingo killing the owl was pretty genius. I'm not sure genius is the word for it. What do you think?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I'm not a fan of this at all. First of all, I was like, I mean, it's total misdirect for me, right? I didn't know what Duolingo promotes. So it's a big gimmick to have this owl named, is it the owl named Duolingo too, or what's the owl named? Duolingo.

Mark Vandegrift
I forget, no, there's a different name to it. We'll have to have Lindsey throw it up on the screen afterward.

Lorraine Kessler
All right. I had to, I actually had to Google what the product was, right?

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. Well, my daughters use it. We used it before going to Italy for learning some Italian. But so I know what the product was, but the owl, I mean, that was kind of their baby. So it was interesting that they did what they did.

Lorraine Kessler
I don't know, to me, marketers, I think should be cautioned that your gimmick as a personification doesn't necessarily equal involvement with your product. And involvement with this whole killing the owl and then it being resurrected or brought back to life and all, following that, people must have a lot of time on their hands to follow these kinds of stories and get so involved. But it doesn't, yeah. And you know, that's a whole other medium and that's a whole other genre that people will respond to. I guess I would ask the age old question, much like we did with Jaguar, what's the sales? What's the real conversion in terms of customers? This aside, tracking how many people followed the owl killing, right? And rebirth is one thing. What does it equal customer, true customer, requiring new customers. That's the goal. And so if it does, then anything I have to say is totally irrelevant. It doesn't matter. But if it doesn't, then, you know, that's the only bar that I think is worth measuring.

Mark Vandegrift
Lindsey we need to have you chime in here and give us your take on it. You're the young person that follows Duolingo, so jump on in real quick.

Lindsey Noland
Yah so I did keep up with the killing of the Duolingo owl on TikTok. I watched him die. I watched him come back to life. I don’t follow the TikTok account or use the Duolingo app. But just because the death of duo went so viral, the videos just kept showing up on my feed. And I would watch them it would grab your attention, you're like what's going on. It’s different, it matches the rest of the unhinged content that Duolingo puts out. And I did read somewhere that the campaign had like 1.7B impressions which is equivalent to about 3 Super Bowl spots. So, that was pretty crazy to hear. And the idea definitely gained some traction. Now, like you guys mentioned, did it have people using the app, downloading the app, idk.

Lorraine Kessler
I'm watching the Coburger trial. So this is just where we put our time.

Mark Vandegrift
That's right. Well, let's get to the topic. And I said it was going to be a direct connection. So Reddit is a platform where users post content, links, pictures, videos, questions. There's a lot of interaction, almost more. what we used to know as the forum. Do remember those days where it first came out and it was kind of that forum approach to it? And then they have communities. thousands of them, probably tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. I don't even know what the count is now. And those are known as subreddits. And that's where you get into very specific topics or interests like gardening for interests or pond gardening or any, mean, it's amazing after you Google something where you get into a deeper, what I would say a deeper topic. Okay. It could be gardening, then pond gardening or gardening for people that raise echinacea, I mean, it gets really, really specific. So users can use Reddit to gather information, engage in the discussion, or if you're like us, we read it and we laugh and it's entertainment. It's also popular because it has an up vote and a down vote feature to it. And that determines the visibility of the content So the idea is that if it's popular content, it rises to the top. If it's not, it goes down the tube. So it has 108 million daily active uniques, they call it, 100,000 plus active communities. And get this, 22 billion posts, that's as of a couple weeks ago, and comments. What we're seeing is Reddit is making its way to the top of search results. And in some cases, it'll even appear multiple times on the results page. Yep. So the search visibility, I can't talk. The search visibility rose 191 % last year and it's dominating in the search engine game. It's really outpacing any other UGC content domains like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. I mean, it's just interesting to see. What are your thoughts on this? I've been doing a lot of the talking here. What have you seen as you're getting more rankings and getting a sense for this?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, to me, it's information socialized. So it's very unique. It exudes a very different personality than Google and YouTube, which are much more expert or informational based, right, to me. Because it's almost you're in somebody's chat room about these conversations, whatever it is that you're interested. So I think that's a very unique difference in terms of how it comes across and how you absorb the content and how you feel about it. It just really feels like you are in, you've walked into a room where with a bunch of people who are kind of friendly, who are going to be talking about something you're interested in. So there's a kind of a informality about it that's pretty interesting. So I'm not surprised it's doing well because it's different and it feels different and it comes across different. And it appeals to a very distinct audience who likes that. And so I'm not surprised. I am wondering, and maybe you can answer this, how do we as advertisers, are we able to play to Reddit the way we can play to Google on a search? I mean, is there a way to do that?

Mark Vandegrift
Well, to me it's content marketing, right? So if you're participating in the subreddits where the topic is that maybe of what that business plays in, maybe there's potential to do that. But boy, if you know how it is, when you stick your finger into a community and it's not authentic, you're like, you're in trouble. You know, I look at it this way in terms of the rise in the search. What did we say on the last episode about human touch? It was really important, right? And what it feels like is that Google has acknowledged that people want to get answers from people, but they want the opinion of those people to be crowdsourced. In other words, what we're looking in on when we get a search result on Reddit, is we're peeking into someone having a deep conversation about something and we feel like those people might be professional opinions on that topic from the expert standpoint. So let's say I want some information on rocket science. Am I going to trust a bunch of rocket scientists talking about rocket science? Or am I going to trust some machine out there that hasn't built a rocket before. So I don't know, here's a stat that might put it in perspective for everyone, because rising 191%, that doesn't sound so big, but in the previous year, Reddit was the 78th most visible site in Google US results. That was as of, I think, June 24. And they had made the update in August, which was just a couple of months later in that core update. And all of sudden, Reddit went from 78th up to third.
only behind Amazon and Wikipedia.

Lorraine Kessler
That's incredible.

Mark Vandegrift
So I think that puts a little more context of the significance of that. And then interestingly enough, starting July 10th, Instagram will begin ranking on Google search results. So you'll have public Instagram posts, carousels, reels, profiles, that'll also start showing up for relevant searches. And in my mind, that means that Google is shifting its perspective back to user generated content, which to me shifts it back to this human touch thing because they know that we want results from other humans and not always these machines that we're not sure about where the information comes from.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, and here's an interesting, like I landed on Reddit several, several times for different things. But I find the dialogue and the conversation goes like whopper jaw. It goes off track so many times. And like sometimes it's just opinions and then I'm deep into this thing and I'm, I get kind of lost in it. I'd be interested in like Lindsey, if she uses Reddit, you know, is this my user error, I don't know how to use it, but I find it very tedious and I jump out of it because very often I just want an answer to a problem, right? I have a question, trying to get an answer, and then I get all these comments and all these people and then they go off on these rabbit, you know, chasing rabbits down holes that I don't really care about. Is that the experience or am I doing something wrong? I'm not sure.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, I don't, I mean, I don't think you're using it wrong. Not every Reddit thread is going to be perfect because it's humans. And I think in that there's some authenticity. You're either gonna find an answer that you feel confident about or not, but you're at least able to follow the conversation. And like you said, if it goes off track too much, then you're gonna bolt and go look for something. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
I bolt because it's like, you know, I guess maybe I just don't like all that human chatter. I just want the answer. So, yeah, I don't know. is a very different, but I can see why it's doing well because as I said, it has a unique difference.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, let me give you an example. Do you remember you were shopping for a mattress? You had a really unique problem. What was that? Do you remember what you asked me?

Lorraine Kessler
no.

Mark Vandegrift
about sleeping on your side and how we liked it. So to me, it's almost like with Reddit, where it would be taking that conversation, putting it on Reddit and your question, my answer, your question back, my answer back, someone else chiming in and saying, well, I think this. And so you're just getting a peek into the discussion. And I don't know, I think that our conversation would have been interesting to put there and see if it was anything that other people wanted to chime in about. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
You know what? I'm going to try that. I'm going to try that. So.

Mark Vandegrift
So, and that was just on a very specific product because I gave you the brand name. gave what we paid for it, where you could find it, et cetera. So versus the other option, okay, which is go to Amazon, try to find that product, which you wouldn't find it that one on Amazon, try to find that product and read the reviews, right? But then you're like worried, well, are these real reviews? Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
Are they real reviews? Right.

Mark Vandegrift
is someone in another country writing fake reviews. There's so many ways to game the system. And maybe at some point Reddit might get there, but that's, I think, the power of the up and down vote. I think you can vet authenticity a lot better when you have a group of people discussing something. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
Right. Well, it obviously has hit a nerve that no other informational source is able to quite replicate at this moment in time.

Mark Vandegrift
Right, Well, and you know, our last episode was about AI. To me, this brings us back to the human component again.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, I think that's a good correlation, Mark. It really helps.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. So in thinking about that and maybe thinking of this as content marketing, how do you think marketers should be thinking about the rise of Reddit and the search engines and other user generated contact platforms?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think one thing is they should really pay attention to their net promoter score. Remember the net promoter score is the score you get. People bought the product and how satisfied they are. And then they talk about it or they're willing to refer your product or service. That's the net promoter score. And I think you really better be focused on getting the best reputation with those who've used your product, who've experienced it. you know, making sure quality is free and all those kinds of things. Because if it's going to be like, I just had an order. I ordered three particular types of tops. They're all the same, same color, but they're the only place I can get them. And I, and my order clearly has my size as large. I get the three two days late from when they said, which was already annoying because I'm at a different house. So I had the person open it just to make sure, and they sent me three mediums. All right. So that's really annoying because I like, and like, so on Reddit, I would complain about that. It's saying, well, be real careful. They're really, and then there's no way to call this company. It's near their entire way is return and it's very complicated. So it's very frustrating. So I think, I think Reddit would be a great place. So I think people who make products today and deliver services really have to make sure that they have a high net promoter score. And because that's what's going to generate the best, most positive referrals on something like Reddit.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. And you know, a couple of things here. I want to get your perspective on one area I think that you might have experience in. But what it makes me realize is reputation management is one of our key areas that we serve clients. The number of places where that reputation needs to be managed is a full-time job because you can go to reviews, right? Amazon reviews or Yelp reviews, or you name it reviews, right? Then you have Reddit, then you have other UGC platforms, you know, from Facebook, Instagram to TikTok and everything. And everybody's giving their opinion as to what exactly is great and what isn't. And that, that's a massive undertaking because if you're trying to control your brand reputation at every point, that can be a pretty involved process. So.

Lorraine Kessler
Absolutely.

Mark Vandegrift
What I wanted to ask you about though is you're a wine connoisseur, right? Can I call you a wine expert?

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
Okay. So you're a wine expert. Have you ever, I don't know if the words dove or dived into the world of wine in the Reddit culture. Have you seen any posts around Reddit or in Reddit?

Lorraine Kessler
No, I have not used it for that. Ironically, we received Wine Spectator, which is very highfalutin and totally California biased, which annoys us because there's so many great things happening in wine across the US and the world that isn't just California. So that's the expert snob magazine. But then we have a very handy app called VIVINA that you can go in a grocery store, take a picture of the label, and it gives you consumer reviews. And if it's a more expensive wine, it may give you an expert review too, like James Suckling or somebody like that. And it's very helpful because it tells you the character of that wine and it gives you a rating. And, you know, is it tannin or is it, you know, bold taste or is it white? Is it acidic and all that?
So, super helpful. So that's the way we use technology to really help with wine purchases, particularly the kind of wine you want to buy on a weekly basis.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, that's interesting. Can you imagine a business approach there to expand their reach and actually make that socialized content for Google to index? That would be pretty powerful.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, yeah, that'd be really powerful. Very, very powerful.

Mark Vandegrift
And I think that's where Reddit is. It's just, know, the Vivino is an app. So that's a closed loop, right? It's not being fed into Google that I'm aware of to then index the results if someone were searching a question about wine.

Lorraine Kessler
Right, right. so, and then the only other way I've used is, you know, wine is relative to region. So a lot of times you might Google a region for top wines in a region, whether it's France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the US. And then you'll learn a lot from reviews. There's different people who do reviews, but it's the old fashioned kind of bullying and kind of picking and choosing.
So I haven't used Reddit, but that might be a really good thing for me to experiment with. All right.

Mark Vandegrift
That's your assignment for next episode. That'll be our brand news update is you have to tell us what you found Reddit good or bad on in the wine culture. Yep. Yep. Good. Well, I think we need to leave some of our listeners with some advice. And I think, you know you always have good advice on those that have limited resources, right? Which is my goodness, you've just told me all these places where I have to manage my reputation online and Reddit's just the latest. I don't have the capacity to do that and I don't have the resources to hire an Innis Maggiore or a reputation management firm to do that. So what should I be thinking about in terms of managing my brand and the content marketing that follows out of that?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think to me it's basics. Look at your quality procedures to making sure quality is free. Go back to Deming, which it seems to be a lot of companies have forgotten about. I mean, they just, can't believe the lack of quality in products that I've received. Mistakes, things like you get something you're supposed to put together and it doesn't have all the parts or nicks and dings and, know, Wayfair is a great example. I think at the agency we ordered three of those tables and they were packaged so poorly that they were all damaged and they said, keep them, keep them, keep them. I mean, how expensive is that? So I think, you you have to look at the whole continuum, the quality process for manufacturing, if you're making a product, the quality practice for packaging and shipping it. I just had a thing with mixed tiles where they shipped me four tiles and two of were damaged because of the way the packaging was. So they had to send at their cost both return two more of those mixed tiles. So they didn't make any money. That's so dumb to me. So it's a packaging issue. So look at your packaging, look at who's shipping. If you're using common freight and your little mixed tile foam photos are gonna be in with, you know, safes, they're gonna be damaged, right? So you better like, it's so much of the basics so that there's always customer satisfaction at the highest possible level. And then that way, you don't have to have mitigation at some huge level. If you're doing that, you'll have people rave about you all along the way because you're doing what you should do. And I think even the mitigation is somewhat, there's already a din. There's already a problem. You can only make the situation more pleasant, but you can't make it go away if I'm unhappy with what happened. I have to, you customer service can be good and very good at fixing that problem, but that doesn't make up for the mistake and the lack of confidence. So why even get that.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, so basically don't create unhappy customers from the start. Create loyal customers that do all of your positive PR for you.

Lorraine Kessler
Right, right. do what you say you're going to do. Make the product quality. I think a lot of companies should take a look at their shipping, the way they're packaging things, and how they arrive. And then your follow-up, too. I think it's easy to follow up with a customer to say, what could we have done better? Are you satisfied? Would you give us a score? A lot of companies do that. I think the mitigation route is you're already playing defense and that's your least winning position.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. And you know, it's amazing to me. A lot of companies don't even check this, but I don't know if you know about search engines. It's, it's a thing, but you can actually search yourself and you can search terms that apply to your business. And you can see whether there's something on Reddit complaining about you or your perspective, you know, that that's the best feedback because it's unsolicited. It's, but it's out there in the public and you can address those issues and make your product even better, your customer service better, and get out in front of that type of stuff before every result that comes up is, that product stinks or that company stinks. We certainly have to avoid that. Yep. Good.

Lorraine Kessler
Right. And I think, I think culturally you have to instill in your company a sense that our number one goal is to make every customer absolutely delighted. Right. There are some companies who treat customers who have a complaint as problems and complainers as if it's your problem. Right. We know that I there's local companies who have done that. There's national companies. And people feel that. And when they feel that, that's a double win. Not only did the product fail me, but you as a company failed me. And you're making me now, instead of being the victim of poor service or poor quality, you're making me the perpetrator of ill will.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. Well, let's wrap today. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. And as always, thank you to our listeners for being here with us this week. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share with a friend. And until next time, have an amazing day.