About Ethan:

Ethan is the VP of Marketing for Placer.ai and loves helping businesses unlock the power of location analytics.  Prior to Placer, Ethan was the Director of Corporate Marketing at SimilarWeb and the Vice President of Headline Media.  Ethan shares his expertise in applying location data to marketing research questions and business goals, especially for retail businesses.  Ethan explains how studying location data and asking the right business question drives marketing ROI.

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Guy wants to offer podcast listeners exclusive content from his upcoming book, The Post: Covid Marketing Machine: Prepare your Team to Win.  Check out Guy's exclusive offer to access excerpts from the book and receive a free consultation from the ProRelevant team!

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Video of Interview

Hi, I'm Guy Powell and welcome to the February

episode of the Backstory on Marketing. If you haven't

already done so please visit pro relevant.com. And sign up for

all of these episodes and podcasts. I am the author of the

upcoming book The Post-COVID Marketing Machine: Prepare Your

Team to Win. You can find more information on this at my

website marketing.machine.prorelevant.com.

Today we're speaking with Ethan churn offski. He is the Vice

President of Marketing for playster.ai. And prior to play,

sir, he held senior marketing roles at similar web and

headline media. Welcome, Ethan.

Thank you so much guy. Great to be here.

Yeah. So glad to have you. I'm always really

impressed with the place or offering and, and I just find

that that whole technology to be fascinating. But before we get

started, tell us a little bit about the genesis of how you got

into marketing.

Sure. So I actually kind of my marketing

career started in, in kind of public relations and the PR side

of things. And originally I had want, I finished kind of grad

school and I wanted to be a journalist and I had offers to

go work at a couple of a couple of outlets. And I saw how much

those outlets were paying. And we were pregnant with our first

child. And I realized that I probably wasn't going to be a

journalist. So I went to PR thinking it was the flip side of

journalism, obviously, it's far from it. But it was just this

really interesting entry point into into marketing and under

getting to work with, you know, dozens of really exciting

companies and understand how they approach marketing, how

they view the building brands, and then taking that that's kind

of how my career got kicked off.

Yeah, interesting. And I guess PR, yeah, the

opposite of journalism would be maybe PR for like a politician

or for whatever, something like that. But yeah, PR in the

business world is definitely like journalists. Well, I don't

mean to say it's not journalism, but certainly different.

It's a it's, it's fascinating, because I

think it's your first, any the really big value that comes from

starting a career in PR is you are slapped in the face with the

wreck, I guess unless you work for like Apple or Uber, you're

slapped in the face with the idea that nobody cares. And if

the starting point is nobody cares, you need to figure out

how to make them care. And that means telling your story in an

effective way. It means really thinking about the audience of

your audience. It means understanding how to create that

win win with the channel you're looking to tell your story

through. And so so many of the lessons that you learn in that

PR setting are widely applicable as you kind of expand your

marketing focus in these kind of in house roles.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, and in reality,

that's what marketing is all about. And certainly geolocation

services, you know, makes that even better. So you know, where

you really then know exactly who your client is. And and almost

in many cases, you can almost get down to a one to one

relationship to where you are really personalizing that

message and that experience, specifically for that person.

So it's so it's really interesting, because

I think the the geolocation space, and it's kind of widest

reach, you have this spectrum. So on the one hand, you do have

kind of companies that attempt to enable that, that one to one

relationship and kind of location based advertising. And

in that case, think, you know, I love Starbucks, I love blueberry

muffins. When I walk past to Starbucks, they want to be able

to say Ethan, get 50 cents off this blueberry muffin, if you

buy a coffee. That is a really interesting kind of channel,

there's a lot of value to and it's super fascinating it what's

what's really interesting is how different that is from what we

do, though we're part of the same space. So place or when you

think of when we kind of think of ourselves is really a

research platform. It's enabling you to understand what's

happening at a macro level, at retailers across the country. So

if you think like, you know, people vote with their feet,

we're showing you how they vote. But we the The really

interesting thing is it's essentially a storytelling

platform. So whereas like an advertising platform would say

again, how do I reach Ethan when he walks past a Starbucks? We're

a platform is giving you all this information about what's

happening in the world. And then we're saying to the marketers

that utilize it. Okay, now that you have this information, what

decisions would you make differently? How would you

operate a little bit more effectively? And I think that

research orientation has been really fascinating, especially

as a marketer working for placing

well and especially also, you know, you're not

necessarily just getting you know, a sample size through some

circles. Have a and it's never large enough. And then here, you

know, you can basically say, you know, hey, I did this ad. And

you know, in 45% of the people that we were kind of targeting

in these regions went to this went to the retail location or

did something different. And then but over here, something

else happened that and that that level of information is, is

incredibly valuable to a marketer as they are now really

trying to always get that last half a percent 1% 5% better, you

know, and this, this kind of capability reels that really

allows them to do that.

Yeah, I agree with you completely. I think the

fascinating thing is, in so many areas, it is that incremental

improvement of, we're doing a really good job, we want to get

a little bit better at all these elements. But in so many cases,

you're it's just a fundamental shift in how they view a process

when you think of something as simple as a trade area. Right.

So every retail location, every restaurant has their assumption

about who they're reaching, with any given location. And, you

know, if you think about five, six years ago, this was a

circle, drawn around the space and at a certain mile radius

length and said, this is this is what it is, this is who we

reach. When you look at the actual true trade areas within

our system, you see that, you know, you see that trade area

and all this amorphous weirdly shaped glory, and challenges

very basic assumptions about how you would operate where you're

succeeding where you're missing an opportunity, how close by

that opportunity might be, how far you're actually reaching and

why. So I think this ability to provide that level of clarity

and visibility at the worst case, it's the incremental

progress, but in many situations, it's, it's again,

it's bringing a lens that provides visibility that just

wasn't there before.

Yeah, absolutely. And certainly, you know, you

bring up retail trade area, but the flip side of that is also

where do I place my stores? And, you know, so you also have them

the the development side on a, you know, for retail, so that

they can make sure that the traffic patterns and whatever

else is really ideal for that location, and for that business

versus somewhere else. So it really, really fascinating how

you can use the data?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you think

about the lifecycle of the entire lifecycle of a retail

location. I'm trying to figure out what site I want to build a

shopping center in, drop a traffic pin to understand who's

passing by and what are the audiences nearby? And is there

an opening? And okay, then we decide there is we build this

center, what should should we fill it with? Who should we be

able to get this great anchor tenant who has the best cross

shopping and CO tenancy patterns with that? Alright, so that

Center continues on what marketing events do we want to

run to help drive traffic to that center? How do the

retailer's within that center better leverage, you know, the

data to to make these decisions, but then someone else comes in,

and they want to buy that center and make that decision and how

to reorient it. And so the whole lifecycle of a low retail

location, whether it's the shopping center, the specific

retail space itself, the ability to provide value throughout this

from the start finish of that lifecycle is one of the things

that I think gives the platform a whole lot of power. And it

gives us this really interesting viewpoint, to start trying to

understand what are the factors that influence success or lack

thereof, on a, you know, whether it's by retail segment by

retailers, you know, by specific retailer, by region, by type, it

makes it really interesting when you can get to that level of

granularity.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and then not only that, but

you can also see what's going on with your competitors. So you

can see you know, what your traffic pattern is, or could be,

and then you can also see, then, you know, there's a, there's a

competitive store, you know, a mile away, or in the same

shopping center, or wherever it is, and you can then start to

see whether, you know, you're, whether they're advertising or

your advertising has an impact, but also then, generally how the

whole category is working. And I think that that information is

so much better than what you otherwise get. So yeah,

it's not even it's the, it's all of a sudden,

you're able to view everything through a single lens. So one of

the biggest challenges with data is having proper context. And

so, you know, we say this at the time, if you're a retailer, in a

specific region, and during the pandemic, your visits were down

5% Is that good? Is that bad? It means nothing in and of itself.

Because if I'm down 5%, but all of my competitors are down 10%

I'm doing great. If I'm down 5% my competitors are up 20% I'm

getting crushed. And so that contextual understanding of

performance and the ability to to then go one level deeper and

say, Okay, why? And how do I how do I break this resource down in

other ways to give me an indication of what are they

doing well, that I'm missing out on where are there opportunities

that I might want to focus on in the future? How do I get you

know, one of the things I always love is when you think of a

concept, we will look at a brand you know, for launches their

store in store concept, right? It with with, with Kohl's. When

we look at Petco and Lowe's, we're taking that Sephora Kohl's

interaction as some sort of benchmark, there's a way to

learn from that experience. And that's across retail. And I

think what's really fascinating is, if you could learn from

other people, if you could understand what competitors are

doing, if you could take inspiration from sectors that

you're not even operating in, that's what this product gives

you the ability to do to almost kind of transport yourself to

any retail location and get that insights as if you were visiting

the center itself.

Yeah, absolutely. And I find that also valuable

not only for retailers, but the manufacturers that are selling

in retail and so that they can see that when they run a brand

ad or the retailer runs a co op ed to see then what the what the

impact is on traffic patterns. And whether they're actually

driving people to the store or not. And whether then, you know,

the overall traffic goes up, maybe you know, any ad write

rises, raises all boats, but it could be that my ad actually

gets people into my stores or my my retail outlets better than

what the competition does. So there's also a value at the at

the manufacturer level,

completely, I had a colleague who put it put

it best, someone asked him who gets value out of place your

data. And I by the way, obviously, I'm incredibly

biased. I think we're the greatest from the space and, you

know, data in general, for this for these spaces, I think it's

important to kind of give that wider lens. But this colleague

said, Walk drive down your street? And how many shopping

the main road in your town? How many shopping centers? Do you

see? All of those are customers? How many tenants Do you see

Filling the spaces in the shopping centers, think of all

the products and services that are sold through those tenants,

the people who build around it, you know, that's the people who

invest in those companies, the people who kind of try to the

civic organizations that are attending to attract those

retailers into their, into their communities. This is the breath

that you can reach. And I think the thing that we one of the

elements that we get most excited about is that ability to

establish a single language to cross those chasms between and

you know, you're bringing up the manufacturing brands is a really

important one, we saw this during the pandemic, we had a

customer tell us that year over year data, they would have been

having a discussion with a major retailer about demand planning.

And your your data was kind of you had threw it out the window,

because what you're supposed to do with it situation was so

different. Yep. There, the point of sale data that they got was,

you know, four to six weeks delay. For six weeks, things

change so dramatically. And they were looking at visit data and

correlating demand with visit data because that they could

get, you know, with a three day lag. And so what's so

fascinating is in a changing environment, what we've seen the

last two years is just this rapidly changing scenario where

you need to adapt so quickly. If you I think data helps in any

situation. But if you don't have data to help you make those

decisions and pivot as effectively as possible, you're

going to be over reliant on guesses, and it's going to put

you at risk.

Yeah, absolutely. And especially nowadays, if

somebody if your competitor has the tool, and you don't, they

are absolutely at an advantage. And they and I don't know how

much difference it would be. But it's it can be significant, you

know, for retailers. Now, what about other industries? Where

else would you see the use of of this kind of data?

So I think, I think retail is the primary

space, but it's all the the spheres of retail. So again, the

shopping center, the retail, real estate, the manufacturing

companies, the investors, the civic organizations, and so just

that it's quite a sizable group of companies. When you think

also office real estate, you know, if I'm dealing with

multifamily at a large scale, this is going to interesting

data, just understanding the shifts in areas. So take

something as simple as migration patterns, how different they've

been as a result of the pandemic. So really interesting

data that we've seen, but also from other sources like urban

digs, which looks at leasing patterns in New York City. And

you found at certain points during the pandemic, there was

this really fascinating shift of people who are a little bit

older, maybe had stuck around in major cities a little bit longer

than they would have traditionally moving to the

suburbs, and that being replaced by younger people who can now

afford to move into the city. And what's really interesting

here is, if I understand those patterns in those shifts, on an

area level, I can identify opportunity. So Raleigh, North

Carolina, great proximity to amazing universities. People

want to can choose flexibility and therefore emphasize an area

with a higher quality of life, they don't have to spend as much

living in let's say, San Francisco, they can stay there

and still find a really high quality tech job. And that

understanding of where those shifts are happening, where that

opportunity might exist, it's a really powerful lens that can be

used to make much better decisions. For the companies.

We're operating at that scale.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And very

interesting, I didn't think about the, you know, the, the

patterns of how people change and where they move to and from,

during the pandemic versus pre pandemic, and now maybe, you

know, post pandemic, so that makes, that makes a lot of

sense. So, if I'm a retailer, and let's say, um, I don't know,

Lowe's, or maybe that's not a good example. But if I'm a major

retailer and got stores around the country, what is their ROI?

So what, what's the ROI on your data? What is the value to them?

What is that'd be pretty big, what is,

so it's gonna be different values for

different groups of the company. So in the ideal scenario, your

site selection team is using the product to figure out where

should we put the next door? Try to understand which stores are

performing well, and which ones aren't. I need to right size

because I'm overextended in a certain region, which store do I

remove? Do I remove the store that has the highest sales, the

lowest sales? Or do I move the store that's cannibalizing the

most? And by removing, I'd have the least impact on an overall

market? How do I understand performance over time? How do I

understand it compared to kind of the key competitors? And that

takes us already into kind of that competitive intelligence

strategy team? How do I really understanding my performance. So

if we try a new initiative, if we how we're doing overall, how

is the wider space we're operating in, in general are

doing overall. So think for, you know, Lowe's is a great example.

Lowe's, Home Depot, Tractor Supply, setting the world on

fire in 2020 2021, a lot of those months visits are down

year over year. But it's not because they did bad, it's

because they just went so high that they when they dropped

back, they were still higher than they were before. But the

only way to understand that is by having a context for the

entire market. Then as a marketer, I want to do other

things. I want to know how different campaigns worked in

different regions, I want to understand the impact of my

competitors campaigns, and what's what's moving the needle

there? And understanding how do I figure out which types of

activities are really moving the needle for my organization. So

this ability to go from that market planning, site selection,

real estate team, to the store operations team, to the strategy

team, to the marketing team, and enable all of them to have that

conversation with the same data. That's one of the biggest

pieces. I mean, I'm not telling you anything, you that's going

to surprise you. But one of the biggest challenges with with

data is that even within an organization, many of us are

using different tools. And so I say I'm seeing X percentage

change based on this tool, and they say, Well, I don't see that

I see something totally different with my tool. So the

idea that you have a language that can help traverse those

divides, and can be used by all these organizations. I think

that's almost, you know, as valuable as anything, you know,

we were talking, you know, before the show about, you know,

different places in the world in different languages. If you put

a, you know, a German speaker, a French speaker, you know, an

Italian speaker, and someone who speaks Japanese in the same room

and ask them to do its collective task, it's gonna be a

lot harder than if everyone's speaking German or English or

whatever it may be. And I think that's one of the things we view

as a huge long term value is that ability to have that single

language.

Yeah, absolutely. And way back when I'm sure

you're familiar with the Kodak brand and Kodak, film and stuff

like that. And I remember talking to the to the VP of

research, and he said, you know, what's really bad and what he

tried to do within the company is have a benchmark and a

language that everybody can use, so that if everybody gets their

bonus The CEO also gets his bonus, because he said, what

happened is everybody made their numbers they all, you know,

figured out how to game the system. And the CEO says, Well,

yeah, but sales went down, where's my money. And so to your

point about using common language across the company is

critical, because it has to then be something that really aligns

exactly with the your corporate code with your corporate

objectives. And if it doesn't, if you're measuring the wrong

thing, then you know, garbage in garbage out, it's going to be,

it's not going to be helpful for anybody.

Yeah, I think I think company alignment, and I

can, you know, it's interesting. So I joined this company, when

we were 20 some odd people, today, we're well over 300. And

the, the strength you get as an organization, when you are

viewing the world, as a unit, and not as lots of disparate

elements all pulling in different directions, is a huge

asset for us. It's a credit to our leadership, and you know, to

the, you know, people who are founders and those who had that

initial vision, we're able to pull all of us into that vision.

And I think it's anywhere, the more you can create alignment in

how you're viewing the world, the better you'll be able to

attack it as a as a group.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So now,

of course, then there's the all this kind of privacy and

legislation coming out. Tell us how plates are fits in that and

what do you see kind of as the future for, for those

discussions?

So I think, again, we kind of touched on

this at the top of this, this spectrum of companies and what

you're trying to do, you can, you can almost think of it as

relating to three core questions. What type of data do

you take in? What type of data do you show? What type of data

do you make money off of? So again, partially, because this

was a key part of our ethos, but also, you know, we're a company

that, you know, we only launched in 2018. So GDPR was already a

thing, CCPA was already a thing. So we're a privacy by design

company, and we don't ingest any personally identifiable

information into our system. So we don't take in any personal

information, we certainly don't show anything in our platform,

you can build in processes to ensure that you know, any place

under a certain number of people, you don't show on the

platform at all. And so you create these built in

limitations so as to account for privacy. And then all we sell is

our estimations. And so that's the that's the product

ultimately. And in that way, we make sure that we're aligned

with privacy interests. And I think what you want to

ultimately see in this space is two things, one, regulation that

makes sense for the different players within the space. So if

I'm, if I want, again, to do that location based advertising,

which means I want to know where Ethan is right now. Okay, but

then there should be a very specific set of regulations and

options and the like. And the same for research companies, you

know, that we need to be treated in a very specific way to ensure

that our practices are in line with user interest. And I think,

the more sophisticated we get about this conversation, the

better regulations, we're going to come to, the better products

we're going to build. But I also think it's unbelievably

important to the simplicity that happens in the privacy debate is

not very helpful, because it misses out on the levels of

nuance, and what the fact that there is so much opportunity to

find that Win Win where you can provide the value without having

to infringe on privacy.

Yeah, and I agree with that, of course, I'm in

marketing. And I think that I think that advertising messages

have a value, and people are interested in them. Because at

the end of the day, they are going to buy something, and it's

much better to have them more well informed so that they're

going to have a better customer experience. And they're gonna be

more satisfied with what they buy, as opposed to buying

something that they that may not fit. So marketing, to some

extent is is also about education. And so I think, you

know, getting that stuff right is critical,

but it doesn't what's the value? Ultimately?

Yeah, think. Alright, think about Sears. Sears wasn't a

stupid company. They were incredibly successful. They were

overextended. And therefore, it was really challenging to have

to make the move as quickly as they needed to in order to

adjust. What if Sears had been able to right size, their

properties more slowly over time with data like this? They're

likely still around today look at Macy's or JC Penney,

companies were amidst these more significant right sizing

projects. And they're doing some really strategically and that

means that more Macy's are staying open, serving their

audiences, keeping the people who have jobs, they're going

paying rent to the shopping centers that they're sitting in.

It's a net positive but even think about the small business

so guy imagine you and I we decide to open our own pizza

chain. We'll opened up our first one in Atlanta, Georgia, right,

we opened up our second one in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, and

we're doing well, with both, it's time to open up number

three, we're choosing between three locations. The problem is,

if we get it right, great, if we get it wrong for a business as

small as ours, it's gonna have a massive impact on our company

might even close it. So the fact that we can, we can have access

to affordable data, not just something that Pizza Hut and

Domino's can use, but us and our small pizza chain can use

increases the likelihood that we can go from one store to three

stores to 10 to 50. And that ability to kind of support that

50 to 100 location chain, the smaller ones, even then that

creates this much greater diversity is much better ability

of smaller businesses to grow and scale and to do so in a

sustainable way. That creates a net benefit for the wider

economic situation as well.

Yeah, absolutely. And fair enough, I, you know, I,

you're you went more on the research side, which absolutely

has value and, and definitely see that because, you know, here

you have an investor, as, as me the pizza owner, and you and the

pizza owner here in Atlanta. And if we are able to make those

decisions better, we are going to be able to hire more people.

And also, you know that that is a benefit not only to those

people, but to the customers that are interested in what

we're selling. And so, yeah, that that, that makes a lot of

sense. And it's interesting, I like the the other point that

you make is that you're more on the research side, as opposed to

the execution side. And I think that's a very different are a

very interesting distinguishing characteristic in terms of what

you're offering versus what you what you might typically see as

geolocation services in optimizing my advertising and

getting them these, these kind of unwanted or maybe not so

wanted, commercials are believed to be unwanted commercial.

Yeah, I think we need to, we need to empower

the consumer. I mean, this was, you know, to talk in our kind of

advertising, marketing language, how this wasn't all that long

ago, we were having a big conversation about native,

native advertising. And there were some people who were like,

This is the worst thing that's ever happened in the world, and

others who were like, This is the greatest The reality was

somewhere in between, but we need to take the steps to ensure

that consumers, users, viewers, readers, are given enough

information so that they understand what's happening in

front of them, and maybe they can make those decisions, you

know, and that native advertising conversation. No,

look, we've been looking at editorial content for years, we

didn't ban it, because it's an opinion, we said, we have to

make it clear that it's an opinion, but that's okay, we can

consume opinion too. So I think if we focus on end user

empowerment, giving them easy access to the tools to make

their decisions to opt in and out of what they do and don't

want, but also that they understand what they're seeing,

I think we're going to end up in a much better situation than

then attempting to create kind of blanket restrictions that

don't necessarily make sense. And most people probably don't

want.

Yeah, well, and, and unfortunately, on legislation

and regulation, it's it has to do then also with the education

of the the legislators and the regulators, so that they really

can understand the difference and the value that's that's

behind there. Because I think you're right, I mean, some of

these some of these proposed legislation, and you know,

they're kind of like, Hey, we're gonna block everything. And, and

that really doesn't just doesn't make sense. Yeah, absolutely. So

let's talk about the future where, where now, or what do you

see as the the promised land in three or four years from now for

Pacer?

I think the there's a couple of things. I

think there's three pillars. pillar number one is continuing

to build out our own platform. Right. So how do we continue

adding features, creating simpler workflows? So I have a

specific business question. Here's the tool that helps you

answer that specific question as quickly as possible, right. So

to put empower our users to get from point A to point B faster

than ever before, and to give them more ways, you know, more

point A's and point B's to get to. The second level is a big

focus on what we kind of our marketplace, which is our

marketplace brings in other data sources, so like demographics

data into the platform so that they can be layered on top of

our platform and more easily accessed and utilized. So this

investment in how do we expand the number of perspectives that

we can bring into play so that we can understand a space and

any setting it's happening in the physical world more

effectively. So a simple example. Traffic is down. Year

over year in a certain space What if I showed you that there

was a massive storm that day, and that's why it was down, I

was in more information to get to that decision understanding

faster. If I show you a place, and I show you the crime rates

around it, and I show you plan developments that are happening,

and I show you drive time analysis and all of these other

layers, it's only going to enrich your ability to make

better decisions based off of the data. So that's a huge focus

for us as well. So enhancing our capacity, partnering with more

companies that are able to bring in all these new perspectives

into the mix, we have this wider view on what's happening. And

I'd say the last bit is, is a constant effort to improve those

areas that are the pillar of what we do. So how do we get

ever better on the data accuracy side? So if we're, we feel like

you know, he's got a 5% margin of error? How do we get it to

four and a half percent? 4%? excetera? How do we get better

at partnering with our customers? So understanding

their needs better, being more as invested as we can be at

scale? And then the accessibility piece, how do we

make it as simple to use, I think one of the things that

always is ever present when especially when you talk to more

experienced professionals is they'll look at a platform like

this, and they go, this is great, but you know, I've never

know how to use this, this is too complicated for me. And we,

we vet very aggressively push back on this concept, I think,

you know, you're learning to utilize data. And there's always

going to be space for, you know, consultants and those who enter

data science teams, and those who really get it internally and

externally. But we, the more we teach people to become familiar

and to engage with and to show that, actually, we're kind of

constantly dealing with data every single day of our lives,

and most of us are using it quite effectively. That level of

engagement is just going to increase that conversation we

were talking about before, which is just to make the wider

ecosystem for data is so much more effective.

Yeah, no question about it, and and our business.

More data, accurate data, vetted data, complete data is always

better than less. And, and I like your point where you are,

you know, bringing in more pieces to help either, you know,

all your clients or this potentially, you know, some very

specific ones, so that they can make those data, make those data

driven decisions better and be able to place that, you know,

that pizza, that pizza joint, or pizza joint in Atlanta

significantly better. Because I that is that's what everybody

wants, I mean, if I'm going to invest in data, and I'm going to

pay, you know, whatever it is, I want to make sure I'm getting

return on it. And I want to in in an ideal scenario, I want to

be able to use it in as many places as I can, and then be

able to take as good value as I can. And each one of those

different, you know, operation or operational areas that that

might be where it might be valuable.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think one of the

things we talked about quite a bit is this the the kind of the,

the nice to have, and you hear this as a vendor very often, if

you've ever worked, if you've ever kind of worked with or a

technology company, you'll talk to a company in the last few

Well, are you a need? Or are you a nice to have? And I I have

increasingly increasingly resent the question because if you look

at retail, specifically, look at Target and Walmart. In the midst

of the pandemic, they had grocery delivery, buy online,

pick up in store, curbside pickup stuff that they were able

to roll out instantly. They didn't make it up. Now, they had

been investing in these capabilities for years and years

prior having a sense of where retail was going what they would

need. And essentially, they were constantly investing in the nice

to have where is the future? Because if it's a need, you're

too late, you should have been investing in this before. And I

think the more we educate, whether it's retailers,

technology companies, whoever else marketers operations, you

know, market planning, learning to live in the nice to have is

how you stay ahead of the curve.

Yeah, and actually, there is a really good article,

I'll have to send it to you the from on Steph Curry. And, and it

sounds like you may have seen it, but the article is just it's

he his goal is to do much, much, much better on getting three

pointers and he practices but he is he practices so that he gets

his margin of error is down into like the one or two inches he

could be three or four inches off, but he wants to get his

margin of error on that basket. are going through the hoop by

over two inches. And what's interesting is to your nice to

haves versus your need to have is that the top performers think

of things like that as a need to have because I have to keep

getting better. And I can't just stay the same I have to get

better and better he has to get like, you know, a millimeter a

millimeter a millimeter on average better. And the best

performers realize that that that want to have is not a want

to have it as a need to have because they they have to then

stay ahead of the game. And and so then I think you're right I

think place her is one of those things. It's not a it's not a

you know, a nice to have it as a need to have for exactly those

reasons.

No, I think you I love I love the Steph

Curry example. You know even it's interesting, I was having a

conversation about this with another marketer have you think

of the brilliance of the warriors, is they built a team

around something that used to be nice side world players. So

three point shooting thing, Steph Curry's dad, great three

point shooter, there's a wonderful role player alongside

some great players. Were the main pieces. Steph Curry Klay

Thompson, these three point shooters became the core of a

strategy. And they said are how do we build around this

strength? I think increasingly what we want to see in retail,

but this applies to any business is understanding. What are your

strengths? What are the things you do really well? How do you

measure those things? How do you kind of measure improvements?

But how do you build around those strengths? The fact you

know, it's interesting one of them one of the most fascinating

conversations we've had in the retail space is off price retail

and omni channel, I think where we were in 2020 Burlington

stores closed their ecommerce site A month later, the pandemic

hits every article is basically like Burlington, you morons. You

are so out of touch, say goodbye to Burlington. Within a year

Burlington, his numbers are higher than they've ever been.

They're crushing. They're one of the best performing retailers in

this space. And that takeaway isn't that ecommerce is bad or

omni channel is bad. It's just that Burlington ecommerce

shouldn't be Macy's, e commerce or target e commerce or Amazon.

It should be Burlington, e commerce. And the more companies

utilize data, their data, other people's data to understand who

they are and what they should be in their market. That's where

success comes take Amazon as well. Look at Amazon's grocery

push. Amazon buys Whole Foods. Is it the greatest success we've

ever seen? Probably not. Did it help define Amazon, Amazon Go

and Amazon Fresh which are proving to be far more Amazon

ish in their nature and likely a better long term solution for

what they want to provide? Absolutely. And so this ability

to kind of understand yourself test things, but build around

your core built around your strength? That's what's going to

drive a lot of great things in the retail space.

Yeah, absolutely. And even Walmart's acquisition

of jets initially. I don't know whether but they certainly have

been able to get their ecommerce going. And I think they are

going to give Amazon as hard as it is they are going to give

Amazon a good run for the money on the on the E commerce side.

Completely. We I mean, I love that the Walmart

jet example to me is incredible, because it is was the

acquisition successful? If you just read the acquisition of

jet? Probably not. Did it make Walmart amazing at ecommerce?

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that that's a company that, you

know, we don't always think of as being super innovative, but

constantly investing and trying to figure out what their future

looks like. And that's why they are still such a massive retail

giant. That's why we even think of them as capable of competing

with Amazon. It's because of that investment and that focus

on innovation.

Well, and that's kind of where the where Steph

Curry's example comes in, it's the best, always striving to do

slightly better. So but anyway, before we close, is there any

one big message that you'd like to get across? I'd love to keep

talking to you. Because I think there's really good stuff. But

at some point, we have to close. So is there any one big message

that you'd otherwise like to get get across?

I think the data accessibility and the data

conversation, we need to start embracing that everyone in the

organization needs to access data. And the more we do this,

the more great ideas we're going to come up with, the better

we're going to be able to embrace data in the future, and

the better decisions we're going to make.

Yeah, I agree with that. You know, data

transparency and data, data is is like a liquid and if it gets

across to everywhere, then that That is that is ideal and, and I

think to your point that using the same data across the entire

organization really, really makes a lot of sense. So

unfortunately, I do have to close this out but Ethan, thank

you really so much. Thank you, thank you. It's been awesome I

you know, I'm a definite fan of the of this have the data and

the research the components that you that you provide and and it

certainly helped to educate me and hopefully, you know, the

audience will also see the same thing. So in any case, then

please visit place or.ai place or.ai And then you'll find a lot

more information on how you can use this geocentric data to your

advantage especially in retail but there are certainly many

many other applications. And then lastly, please stay tuned

for many other videos in this series on the Backstory of

Marketing. Please visit marketingmachine.prorelevant.com/getting-started.

That's a mouthful, but marketingmachine.prorelevant.com/getting-started.

So Ethan, thank you so much.

Thank you, Guy. So much fun to do this.