Marketing Matters

All right, we're on. So, welcome to Marketing Matters. This is the show where I get to interview and learn from some of the brightest minds in marketing. On today's show, I have an old friend of mine, Steve Zucker, Steve Decker. Steve has a company called Zucca Creative. He's the CEO. He's a super incredibly creative guy, somebody I've known for a while. I had the pleasure of working with him on a bunch of great event, you know, product and branding projects when I was at Seagate. Steve is also an innovator. He actually kind of gave me the first experience of VR. I went to his office and tried it out there, which was cool. And he's brought a lot of that to his clients, and he helps them constantly innovate. So, welcome to the show, Steve. It's great to have you here. Hey, Rick. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. This is great. You know, one of the things I love starting out with, I stole this from another guy who used to host the show, is I like to, you know, put this in a comic book metaphor. Every great character in a comic book has a backstory. You know, they have an origin story. You know, it doesn't matter if they're a villain or, you know, a minor character. They always have an origin story. So, talk to me about your origin story. How'd you get into this? How'd you get into marketing and, you know, creative agencies? No, this is so cool. Now, do I get to paint myself as a superhero, as a super villain, and then kind of shape the story accordingly? 100%. Yeah. All right. So, I started work at Netcom in 1995, back during the browser wars. So, our web browser was WebCruiser. I worked on WebCruiser, and this is just before Netscape came out. In fact, I keep here on my bookcase. One moment. So, back then, this is all pre-search engine. So, back then, this is the 1995 edition of the Internet Yellow Pages. The second edition, by the way. So, before you had a search engine, you had to look up in a book where the websites were. You know what's funny? That was before I started back in 95. You know, what's funny is there's like two levels to that. The first level is, for those of you that were around when there was such a thing as a Yellow Page, you know, that's a funny thing. But then, there are people who are probably watching this that have never heard of a Yellow Page because they haven't been around in 20 years. They don't even get the joke. I love the idea that the moment somebody started the typeset and it was out of date, right? Like, I talk about like, you know, what's the Greek hero that was pushing the ball up? Sisyphus? Is that right? The never-ending job you're going to fail at? Yeah. Can you imagine somebody going, can you make this book? But as soon as it's going to be out of date in like 30, you know, just do it. Anyway, so, I started there as one of the non -engineering people. And it was a wonderful time to get involved in the Internet, to be surrounded by really some of the really great people who worked at Netcom that were helping work on, you know, hacking and FBI investigations and just some great stuff. And it was a wonderful time. I learned a tremendous amount. From there, I went to work for Deloitte in their Internet Consulting Group, which was then called the Distributed Computing Infrastructure Group, DCI, something like that. And we worked with a lot of financial firms, E -Trade, American Express, Schwab, kind of in their nascency as they were growing up. And again, I was the non-engineering guy, but I was one of the few people that was able to talk to the engineers, understand what they were saying, and then actually explain it to the business people or the CFO or the person who had the budget on why we need to do stuff. So, I kind of became the, why are we doing this again, guy that they would bring into meetings. And a lot of it, I felt that a lot of engineers would focus on what do we need to do? Or like, what can we do? But it was a lot of a what. And I was always the guy who was asking the why, like, well, why would we do that versus this? Or why is this more important than that? Or why is this going to help us sell more? Or why will this make us more competitive? And in what order should we do those things? And so, I was always kind of that guy. And I would say, well, that's, and that's probably really at the core of marketing, right? Is, you know, you can't do everything, or maybe you can do everything. Even if you had unlimited money, unlimited resources, there's still a natural order in which you want to be able to launch a product or a service to build and get the next thing. So, there's a lot of that asking, like, why you should do something, or in what order. So, that's, and then from there, I went to a startup. Again, I was the only non -engineering guy. So, I had to deal with the board of directors, the patent office, the FCC. I had to write our bank, like, everything that was, and then I had to, oh, we need a website. So, I had to design and build a website in, like, what year is this? Like, 19, I don't remember what it was, 2000? I don't know. But so, I had to design and write and build a website. I had to write all the copy and do all the stuff. I had to figure out how everything worked, which was super, super funny to think about how all that stuff happened. Even something like affiliate marketing that was, that was alive and well way back in 2000, right? But in a much different form, understanding a lot of how just stuff on the Internet kind of worked, which was great. And then a couple years later, I started Zooka, the advertising firm where I work now, predicated on the idea, how can we help web and interactive technologies to help companies compete more effectively? That's, like, kind of what my career had led up to. And so, that's what I've been doing for the last, now, 16, 14, 15, I don't know, whatever years, doing that. So, am I a supervillain or am I a superhero? I don't sound like a villain. I kind of wanted to come across like a villain, but I don't think I did. Yeah, I don't think so. I didn't kill anybody or... No, no, I mean, you know, without the swords in the background, it would just... Yeah, it's my attempt to be a menacing, but yeah. I know, it's working. It's absolutely working. Now, I want to kind of, you know, do a little bit of background before the show and look up and see where you'd been before Zooka. You came up as a baseball player. When I go to Google and I search for Steve Decker, on the right-hand side, there is a picture of you, and it says underneath it, professional baseball player. Oh, it sounds like Google probably has its streams crossed there, because there are... We are both Steve Deckers who live near each other, but we are different Steve Deckers. Let me... I haven't tried this before. Let me see if I can share this window. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. So, can you see this? Oh, yeah, look at that. Oh, my gosh, that's totally me. Professional baseball player. Whoa, that's hysterical. Probably the better part of, what, like seven, eight years? I'm like, did he... Was he really a professional baseball player? Wow, that's really funny. Is he older than me? Yeah, no, that's funny. Yeah, he's... We're... Yeah, no, wow, dude, that's... That is super funny, though. That's my photograph on top of his bio. So, I think you should frame that and put it on the wall and tell people that, you know, you're a famous baseball player. Or use that somehow, yes, absolutely. That's amazing. I'm absolutely stoked. That's like... That's the best thing I've heard all day. That's awesome. Thanks for that, man. Well, you can see why I was a little confused. Yeah, yeah, or you were looking for a very different origin story, like tell me how you transitioned. But that's what I was wondering, like how do you learn from baseball as a catcher? I mean, you know, you work on the agency side. So, I mean, I suppose you used to, you know, have the balls thrown at you. It kind of helps with all the criticism. Yeah, there you go. That's right. Yeah. So, talk to me a little bit about, you know, you run an agency, you own an agency. I imagine the agency has been, you know, kind of hit hard with COVID, just like a lot of businesses, as, you know, clients have kind of slowed down, or maybe not. I mean, what's been the experience? Well, I think, you know, here in the Silicon Valley, I think we've all been, I mean, many people have been very fortunate that we've been able to move and work remotely, right? I mean, like this room did not look like this a year ago. There was nothing on the walls. It was like storing, like, stuff, and I turned it into my office. So, I think there's a lot of people who were able to... Not everybody was able to just start working from home. And I'm very fortunate that I'm in an industry that allowed us to do that. We were fortunate in two respects. Towards the end, about two years ago, we really started putting an emphasis on better digital project management tools to be able to assign tasks, track tasks, track job profitability, job effectiveness, just do all that kind of stuff, be able to do it using online tools, because we started having more or increasing number of people kind of around the country, different specialists that we were working with. And so, we had a platform together to be able to sign, track jobs, and do all that kind of stuff. So, when COVID hit and everybody had to go home, we already had a lot of really good tools in place to manage projects. And this woman, Adrienne Colleton, who's our Director of Operations, I give her full credit, was all her. It really saved our bacon. And then speaking of bacon, we've been working with Formell Foods for the last three years. They're one of our larger clients. And we were smack dab in the middle of that transition to online grocery and online pickup, and drive by Walmart, pick up your groceries on the way home, and Instacart, and Amazon, Amazon of Offal Foods, was trying to push towards Amazon Fresh. And so, here's this giant corporation that's never really sold anything online before, that all of a sudden really has to come up to speed really fast and figure out how are we going to do this, and turned around to us and said, we need your help figuring this out. So, we were very fortunate in that we actually got even a little busier as a result initially of COVID, because we had to take, they had 23 brands, Skippy Peanut Butter, you know, Spam, Jenny Turkey, you know, you name it. They all of a sudden had to figure out how to do a lot of work digitally to get themselves in shape. And a lot of the bulk of that work kind of fell on us. So, we were lucky that we were able to take and leverage a lot of our knowledge on Internet marketing mechanics, and then apply that to a mature industry that was in transition, and go through that with them, and both learn a lot as Amazon and Walmart were changing how they were doing things, but also just growing our own sales sense. So, it actually was a bit of a boon to us, and actually kind of helped us out a lot, because we were in the right time, you know, right place, right time. Those two factors, being able to move digitally and have our team perform at a really high level, and then we were in kind of a very nutrient-rich environment, I would say, for growth. Those two things helped us out a lot. That's cool. We're very fortunate in that respect. Yeah, you know, one of the things that, you know, I've talked to a lot of folks, and then even ourselves, one of the things we noticed was there was a big rush to go online with a lot of companies. And so, particularly, you know, in the end of Q1 or beginning of Q2, there was just a sudden influx, which, you know, really, it's kind of like when you look out at the lake, and it's nice and calm, and it's crystal clear, and then a boat goes by, and it, you know, stirs up all the salts and stuff, and you can't see the bottom anymore. That's kind of what happened with digital, where many people flooded to the market that, you know, prices went sky high, efficiencies went down. Like, there was a lot of churn that, you know, the first few months were just terrible. But, you know, it started, you know, people started to figure it out, you know, towards the end of Q2, beginning of Q3, and they finally kind of, you know, we've kind of reached a balancing point, you know, competition's still higher, you know, people are still probably spending more money than they should, you know, against us and against other companies. But, you know, the net-net is, you know, it's kind of balanced out. Have you seen that with your clients, where there was like a rush at first, and then they kind of dialed back as they kind of figured it out? I would say on the, across whether or not it's in the business-to-business space, selling technology, software and hardware products, which is a big chunk of what we do, or even the consumer world, I think universally, companies found, CMOs, business leaders found that they were more responsible and more accountable for their digital relationship with the buyer of their service or their product. If you sold through value-added resellers, if you have a technology widget, you're used to working with consulting firms, or if you sold through somebody else, a lot of those face-to-face meetings and sales things, like if that, if your value-added reseller wasn't doing a good job, well, you had to step up. And in terms of where people are doing a lot more research and trying to get better educated around everything that they're trying to buy, whether or not it's for their corporation, for their IT department, for their home. So I think people, businesses had to become a lot more accountable for the information they had online, how persuasive it was, how articulate it was, and how quickly did it lead to a purchase decision, or a lead gen, or signing up for a thing, or doing something. You had to have content that, in whatever it means for you and your company, converted or drove a sale or contributed to an interaction. And I think websites and digital interactions had to do a lot more heavy lifting because we just became more reliant on digital channels. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. I agree with that. Yeah, you know, I can imagine, you know, I'd read an article and they were saying something about, you know, in the first few months afterwards, Co-Kit, you know, cut their advertising budget by like 80% or something like that. And I can imagine the agencies that were servicing them were probably having heart attacks, right? Yeah, and we did, we did, yeah, it was a mix. Some of our clients did cut back. And then some, for others, like some of our, the ones that are in a kind of what I'll call more infrastructure technology, they're not really worried about this quarter, they're worried about, you know, the sales cycle on those purchases, if they're significant purchases, and software and IT were much longer, so they were less sensitive to it. Or, or even some startups were like, yeah, I'm not really worried about now, I'm, I got a six to eight month window anyway, I'm building stuff. So it really changed a lot by industry, by client. Yeah, it was pretty varied. Cool. You know, one of the things that always stood out for me was, you know, and I hearken back to some of the projects we worked on, you know, it went back to, you know, when Seagate relaunched our brand at CES, you developed that booth for the retail products. And, you know, some of the other work you've done with us with videos, and, you know, the different product launches and things like that. And one of the things that I always recalled was how much you were, you know, kind of pushing for innovation and experimentation, trying new and, and different things, which is where you and I got on that track about VR years and years ago. Yeah, you know, so what what's driving that passion for you around customer experiences? And, and where do you think things are going? You mean, like, what drives drives me, me personally, personally, to be passionate about that? Um, wow, Rick, that's a really good question. Um, I like to win. Whatever that means. I like to win. I like to be on a winning team. I think winning attracts winning. And I think I also like to have fun while I'm doing it. I have. I've worked in companies and worked on projects, literally, I remember once where I worked on something where the leader literally called it a death march and said, this has got to be done by this time by this date, or it's a death march. And I was like, wow, that, you know, okay, that's the next six months of my Toledo. And so I think when you can be doing something that's, that's fun, and is really having a positive impact, it's I think it's easier to get to get your team excited about it. It's easy to get everybody excited about it. And I think if you have something that you enjoy working on that you're having fun that you think creates value, I think that's that resonates itself in mind of whoever's looking at it or consuming it. So in the world of marketing projects, if you've got something that's really cool, that's going to, and you're having fun doing it, and it's really good work, it's going to have a positive impact. And then if everybody enjoyed working on it, and you know, that's, I think, I think I would rather work on projects where I'm having a good impact and I'm having fun and I'm doing something cool. So I think it just makes life more enjoyable. So I think that's what drives me from a personal perspective. Does that answer your question? Is that kind of what you're looking for? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just curious if there was like, you know, you know, some something that caused you to be like, you know what, there have been so many bad, you know, kind of customer experiences, I want to go figure out how to make the best one possible. Well, I think that's, I think that's always true. I think we're always striving for how can we be better? How can we be more persuasive and engaging? And, and I think everybody is always striving to do that. You're absolutely right. Well, you know, I, you know, me for a long time. And one of my passions is around web experiences, you know, specifically web user experiences. And I am that guy, I am that guy that will take the time to send a long email to the webmaster, you know, providing free consultation services, so they can fix their stuff. And I can enjoy the experience that I'm having on their website. And, you know, I try not to be, you know, the male version of Karen. Is that a Ken? I think that's a Ken. I think you're right. I think it's a Ken. I try not to be the Ken. But you know, at the same time, it's like, wow, you know, I remember I reached out to BMW one time, I received an ad for BMW. And they're like, motorcycles, and they're like, check out this motorcycle. This is a really cool motorcycle. And it said something about, you know, it goes further than other motorcycles. And oh, that's interesting. Like, you know, it's a better mileage, you know, what's the deal, I clicked through, and there was absolutely no fulfillment on that promise. Like, and I clicked and I clicked and I clicked on me, it was a local reseller of BMW, not the corporation who'd put on the ad. And so all they had was inventory on their website. And so you know, I spent a little bit of time and I wrote it up. I said, Hey, look, you know, you showed me this ad, this is what I thought I was gonna go find, but I couldn't find it, if you're really helpful. And, you know, basically, you know, like, hey, I can send you a brochure to your home. Rick, I have to tell you, the meeting I had right before this is we are working on a messaging project for BMW, about a wacky new technology and why people would want to why BMW is more desirable. We're going through this is the exact discussion we're having. I don't think I can say about it now. But in another X amount of time period, we should talk again, because it would be fascinating to bring say, hey, here's the challenge we had. Here's it's exactly what you talked about. It's BMW has this statement they want to articulate, and how do we back it up, support it and make it persuasive. That's, that's something we're working on right now. Well, and again, my free consultation is, and make sure that your resellers carry through on that promise, like they not only show the inventory, but have enough product information so that somebody who is not familiar with BMW motorcycles can actually figure out what it is you're talking about. So yeah, yeah, this is this is this is regarding their electric car lines. And, and, yeah, it'll be it'll be it'll be interesting. Yeah, so cool. Yeah, you know, I was I was I was talking to somebody the other day. And I forget if they still are, but for quite a while, BMW was the number two electric manufacturer behind Tesla, because of the the i3. And I guess it sells particularly well in Europe. Not, you know, it sells well here too, but not Europe. And so for a while there, they were they had unseated Nissan and they were they were number number two. And I think they're they're working the way back there. But that that whole environment, it's getting it's getting really competitive now. You know, I've enjoyed talking about this on the last few shows, because it I don't know, I don't think it comes up naturally. I think I keep introducing it. But you know, one of the things that drives me crazy is, you know, you've got Elon from Tesla getting up there, he's like, you know, we don't do marketing. In fact, I'm getting rid of my whole PR department. And when you have, you know, the leadership role in a kind of a monopoly, hey, no problem. But all of a sudden, now he's got Ford coming at him. He's got Audi coming at him. He's, you know, got BMW, Toyota's, you know, entering the framework aggressively. Now he's got Nissan. So I think, you know, it's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next, you know, six to nine months with all these companies coming in hard, particularly Ford. Ford knows how to do marketing, you know, love them or hate them, they know what they're doing. And so I think they're going to give them a run for the money. We'll see how how Tesla does once, you know, Ford really kind of hits stride. Yeah, I agree with you. It's that is a fascinating space. There's some really interesting marketing challenges. Yeah, you're right. When you're the only guy in town doing something really unique. It's always, you know, on the one hand, I always like to say that, and I deal with this a lot in the technology spaces, sometimes it's easier to sell a product when the buyer has a good frame of reference. I'm just like that one, but I'm twice the speed, half the cost, twice the size. I'm, you know, this one, when the buyer has a nice frame of reference. And when you bring something totally new, around a technology, you have to explain to somebody what it is and why they want it. That a lot of times, it's just really hard. It's an, it's an, it's, it's just, it's a, it's a difficult challenge. Tesla's nice, because it's they've, well, I don't know, there's a we could go on a whole electric car, you know, like, you know, universe, but there's going to be, I think you're absolutely right. And that we're going to see some changes in the market. Over the next six months, I think it's gonna be fascinating to watch it unfold, especially as Tesla tries to understand how much of their brand is Tesla, and how much of it is Elon Musk. And in the same way that, you know, Steve Jobs became intertwined with Apple in a very powerful way. What is what is, what is Elon's role and how much of he is part of that brand? You know, that's, I haven't heard somebody put that analogy together. But I actually, I absolutely agree with you there. I think that that is a completely fair comment. And in fact, think about how strong the the name Steve Jobs still is today. And he's, we lost him many years ago. And yet, you know, you know, you still think of Steve Jobs over Tim Cook, right? Yeah. And he is he is like, totally, completely intertwined with with Apple, there's there's no separating. And I think the same thing applies to Elon and Tesla. So good comparison. Now you've worked on some cool stuff over the years. Do you have any favorites, like any projects you worked on for companies? You don't have to pick the ones you worked on with me. Oh, let's see. Um, yeah, you know, do they have to have worked? Do they have to have been effective? Or what was just fun? What's the give me some of each one of them that worked one of them that didn't work. But you know, sometimes the more fun one is the one that didn't work. We did a, we did, we did a project. So this was a this was a laundry detergent brand was a very, very large laundry detergent brand. And we and we'd, we've worked with them for a while, we had a really good working relationship with the leadership team. And, and April fools was coming up. And we said, let's do something. And a lot of the laundry detergent brands they have, like, you know, they're selling on one thing, cleaning power and efficacy, and there's not a lot of personality around them. And we said, you know, your brand can really benefit from being more and a lot of brands can benefit from this, not just them being more holistic. If your if your brand was a person, who would it be? And would you want to hang out with them? What does it say when you buy a product, or a service, you join their tribe. And in some cases, we do that very overtly, right, you buy a Harley Davidson, when people get those tattoos, you become a Disney person, people get those tattoos, like when you some of those cases, and we're seeing it now, too, with, you know, some brands have like, like parlor, there's like that those those brands have very strong affiliations, where when you join and make this purchase, you really become part of this tribe. And we said, well, when you buy a product, what does it say about you? And they were like, oh, you know, shit, like, you know, not a lot. And we said, well, let's, you know, let's work in that direction. Let's try to do that. So we explored a different a bunch of different ideas. And, and so we came up with this idea of, you know, it was, you know, and it was, how do you get and this was admittedly stereotypical. And so, you know, forgive me, but it was, but it but stereotypically, it was women who were doing the laundry. It was, hey, women, how can you get your husband's to help with the laundry? We're gonna launch a new beer scented laundry detergent. And so we had a whole video, where we were interviewing guys, like where they were talking about how much they love their laundry, and they love doing laundry. They're like, oh, man, even my towels smell like this, like construction workers, like two guys working on the freeway, like, dude, I love the way you smell. And they're like, yeah, you know, and just, just funny stuff. And then an interview, like some women, and they'd be like, this is a terrible idea. And guys are like, I love it. And we interviewed some kids, and they're like, my dad smells weird. And we just had a whole, whole bunch of fun with it. We showed scientific tests of guys trying to find fragrances they like smelling, wrenches, and screwdrivers, and you know, guns, and then finally, they put a beer in front of them, they'd knock the guy away and drink the beer. It was a blast, the client loved it, they were super excited about it. And we tested it, we have, my company, we have a network of bloggers that we do a lot of testing and evaluation with. And one of the keys to marketing is test, test, test, right, to be the most effective. So we took this video, and we and we tested it, because we wanted these bloggers to also claim that they used it and like do a whole April Fool's thing, like they bought it, but their husband loved it, or whatever, a beer drinker in their family. And we had some moms come back and say, you know, alcohol is never funny. People die from alcohol, alcohol kills. This is a very funny idea, but would have been just as funny, if you would have made it engine oil, or bacon, or something that didn't kill people. And we're not going to participate in your April Fool's Day stunt. And we immediately took that back to the client and say, shit, we didn't think about this. That could Mothers Against Trump Driving, are we glorifying drinking, and this is a family brand, and we're like, oh, shoot, it became so obvious, right? You've got this family brand targeting families with children in the home, because they're the ones that do the most laundry, and you're talking about drinking, and we're like, this was a mistake, we need to pull this, and we need to come up with something else really fast. And they were like, and it happened to be a male who was a client, he's like, I love the idea. And we're like, we think the potential back, there's there's some, you know, this could go badly. And we're going to come up with something else. And we're gonna come up with something else really fast. And we're gonna do a quick and dirty, and we're gonna fix it. And we had to pivot to chocolate chip cookie scented laundry detergent, which was still cute. And we did some things with people like taking, showing them taking their socks out of the oven and smelling it like you walk in the house, it was like you make cookies. And, and it didn't have the production values of like the video, it was just a quick photo shoot that we literally did like in a day. But to this day, that brand still gets calls saying where can they buy cookie scented laundry detergent? Oh, that's awesome. They still get those calls. It's out there on the Internet, people see they're like, oh my god, I want it. And they call them. And so the, you know, we the miss was, we have you ever heard the expression? Right drunk edits sober? Yeah, yeah. So I think there's a lot of really good marketing stuff that happens when you really want to take really be creative and really stretch and really challenge yourselves and challenge the parameters and challenge assumptions and come up with really amazing stuff and just brainstorming just freaking go nuts. But then you have to, in the light of day, look at it again and say, what did we make? And let's let's examine our audience and how effective is even how you have to kind of do that homework. And so we are up on time. Let me let me thank you for for being on the show. And you know, let's let's definitely keep in touch. All right, man. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah