#26: Apple vr headset, Whatsapp communities, CNN & Gamestop fire their CEO

This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In this episode of the Contrarian Marketing Podcast, we discuss Apple's VR headset, WhatsApp channels, and the future of Meta, formerly known as Facebook.

With TikTok taking headlines at the Mobile Apps Unlocked conference and Meta nowhere to be found, what does this mean for the future of tech companies? Can we really count them out? As Kevin says, "I think you can never ever count a tech company out, especially a tech company with tons of cash."

They also delve into

* The psychology behind contrarian marketing strategies

* How Apple's VR headset might change the game for communication and productivity

* Whether WhatsApp channels disrupt conventional brand marketing

* If AI can change the playing field in search

Join Kevin and Eli as they dissect these questions and much more!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Contrarian Marketing Podcast: Apple's VR headset, WhatsApp channels, and TikTok at Mobile Apps Unlocked

[00:00:00] Kevin: Stop.

[00:00:05] Eli: Hi, welcome to another episode of the Contrarian Marketing podcast where we give you ideas you might not be thinking about today.

[00:00:11] Eli: We're talking about Apple's VR headset, WhatsApp channels and other news.

[00:00:16] Eli: Eli, you just went to an event that is not the Apple WWDC.

[00:00:21] Eli: Tell us about it.

[00:00:22] Kevin: So I went to an event in Vegas call the Mobile Apps Unlocked conference and they did an interesting thing where they allowed all marketers who are not at agencies to go for free.

[00:00:33] Kevin: So I'm not a big fan of paying 1000 $502,500 to go and attend a conference because if anything we've learned from the Pandemic, you could do a lot of learning without going anywhere.

[00:00:44] Kevin: I go for the network, but I don't know necessarily if a network is worthwhile.

[00:00:48] Kevin: So I don't really want to invest 1000 $502,500 in that conference because I can't go to that many.

[00:00:52] Kevin: Like I would certainly do that for most the most awesome conference, but for a conference I've never heard of before or vaguely knew about, not sure I'd do that.

[00:01:00] Kevin: But this conference was free for marketers.

[00:01:02] Kevin: Obviously I had to pay my own travels in Las Vegas.

[00:01:05] Kevin: It's called mobile apps.

[00:01:06] Kevin: Unlocked.

[00:01:06] Kevin: I think it was 1000 2000.

[00:01:08] Eli: People talks about mobile.

[00:01:10] Kevin: Of course, a lot of growth marketers there met fascinating people.

[00:01:13] Kevin: But TikTok was a headline sponsor and they had dozens of TikTok employees.

[00:01:18] Kevin: And they talked about all the things that TikTok does gaming, creative partnerships, a lot of things that go well beyond influencers.

[00:01:26] Kevin: Dancing to the latest pop on TikTok videos, but really like how they integrate and how they monetize and how they can partner with creators.

[00:01:34] Kevin: But what I felt was thought was fascinating was TikTok was headline sponsor.

[00:01:38] Kevin: Facebook was not there.

[00:01:40] Kevin: Meta was not there at all as a sponsor, as a booth, as anything, and they didn't even have any employees there.

[00:01:47] Kevin: Now I get there are austere times at Meta, they're doing layoffs, maybe they are not out there as much as they used to be, but to not be there at all seemed fascinating to me.

[00:01:57] WhatsApp and the future of Meta

[00:01:57] Kevin: So we're going to talk today about WhatsApp which is a Meta company.

[00:02:02] Kevin: But I think it's interesting that where Facebook is going and how they're going to retrench and how they're going to pivot.

[00:02:08] Kevin: I think you can never ever count a tech company out, especially a tech company with tons of cash.

[00:02:13] Kevin: Like how many times has Microsoft been counted out or how many times has even IBM been counted out?

[00:02:18] Kevin: And then they came out there with Watson and you're like, oh, IBM is cool again.

[00:02:21] Kevin: And people are saying maybe Google is behind the times because of chat JBT, lots of cash.

[00:02:27] Kevin: So Facebook, certainly the usage of Facebook has been declining.

[00:02:32] Kevin: I just saw this quote.

[00:02:33] Kevin: I don't know if you watch Ted.

[00:02:34] Eli: Lasso, of course, I just watched the last season of the third sorry, the last episode of the third season.

[00:02:40] Eli: Yesterday.

[00:02:40] Eli: I'm not going to spoil it.

[00:02:41] Kevin: No, don't spoil it because I watched it.

[00:02:43] Kevin: But we don't want to spoil it for our listeners.

[00:02:44] Kevin: But did you see the part where Keeley got in trouble because she had a it wasn't a sex tape but it was just like a tape leak.

[00:02:51] Eli: It was pretty close to sex tape.

[00:02:53] Kevin: Yeah, close enough.

[00:02:54] Kevin: Whatever.

[00:02:54] Kevin: It's not real anyways.

[00:02:55] Kevin: It's a show.

[00:02:56] Kevin: And they told her that she had to put out her apology on the socials and they said you don't need to put it on Facebook because that's just for old people and rapists or something like that.

[00:03:04] Eli: Pretty harsh.

[00:03:05] Eli: Pretty harsh.

[00:03:06] Kevin: That was pretty harsh.

[00:03:07] Eli: I'm always a shoestring away from deleting my Facebook account and yet at the same time I am going to say that Meta's total number of users has gone to all time highs and I.

[00:03:17] Kevin: Feel like Instagram and WhatsApp, but not through the Blue Facebook.

[00:03:22] Eli: Well, not for us.

[00:03:23] Eli: And I think even in the US they actually edit more Blue Facebook users.

[00:03:27] Eli: But it's not our generation.

[00:03:29] Eli: We're not the target audience of Facebook anymore.

[00:03:31] Eli: I think it's I don't know about.

[00:03:32] Kevin: You, but I am.

[00:03:33] Kevin: I'm old.

[00:03:34] Eli: Not that old.

[00:03:35] Eli: Come on, it's not that bad.

[00:03:36] Eli: We're going to talk a bit more about Meta in just a second.

[00:03:39] Eli: There is some exciting news, especially for creators and for brands.

[00:03:44] Apple Launches $3,500 VR Headset

[00:03:44] Eli: But first we got to talk of course about the news of the day, maybe for me and not for Eli, which of course is that Apple has launched a $3,500 VR headset.

[00:03:56] Eli: Now I got my own opinion about this, but I know Eli, you are the biggest Apple fan out there, so I'm going to let you speak first.

[00:04:03] Kevin: So I used to be very anti Apple.

[00:04:06] Kevin: I never purchased an Apple product, ever.

[00:04:09] Kevin: I used a MacBook when I had a full time job because it was easier, of course.

[00:04:14] Kevin: But when it came to purchasing products, I was never part of the cult of Mac or the cult of Apple.

[00:04:19] Kevin: I've always had Android devices.

[00:04:21] Kevin: My wife had an Apple device for some time and I didn't provide tech support for it when things happened.

[00:04:26] Kevin: But I said if she was on an Android, I was going to be able to help it because I understood it.

[00:04:29] Kevin: But I wasn't going to go learn an Apple system.

[00:04:31] Kevin: So I've never purchased any Apple products.

[00:04:33] Kevin: But I did recently purchase an iPad and this is my first Apple product and it's sucker man.

[00:04:39] Kevin: I think it is a slippery slope to an iPhone, which is a slippery slope to maybe a MacBook, which next thing you know we're going to be doing this on a VR headset.

[00:04:47] Kevin: So I typically think that a lot of what Apple does is extremely high end tech.

[00:04:53] Kevin: It's not necessarily mainstream.

[00:04:55] Kevin: That's my first opinion of the VR headset.

[00:04:58] Kevin: I think it surprises me how many Apple watches have been sold because again, it's an expensive high end tool that you don't necessarily need if you're just trying to tell the time or get notifications.

[00:05:10] Apple VR headset and its future impact

[00:05:10] Kevin: Love to hear your thoughts on Apple VR headset and how you think it'll be used, especially at that price tag.

[00:05:15] Kevin: I mean that price tag, it almost needs to be used expensed by companies rather than individuals.

[00:05:21] Eli: The first thought is who is going to buy that?

[00:05:25] Eli: And I think this is fulfilling a couple of purposes.

[00:05:30] Eli: One is for Apple to have something out there.

[00:05:35] Eli: I do believe that in the future we'll use VR and AR.

[00:05:39] Eli: I don't believe that future is that close yet.

[00:05:42] Eli: This is a high end consumer product for the richest of the rich, for maybe a few hotels or experiences that might provide this.

[00:05:51] Eli: But this is not a yeah, you know, and maybe people said this about the $1,000 iPhone as well, but I don't see this being something that millions of people will buy just yet.

[00:06:01] Eli: Maybe in the future when the price comes down and the price will come down.

[00:06:04] Eli: The second thought is what's the use case here?

[00:06:08] Eli: And it's really only a few use cases.

[00:06:10] Eli: One of them is games.

[00:06:12] Eli: And I don't think there is a killer game out there yet that you need these glasses for.

[00:06:17] Eli: I might be wrong, I'll stand corrected.

[00:06:19] Eli: I haven't tried them out yet, but I don't see this killer game yet.

[00:06:22] Eli: The other one is sports events where you might be in the middle of a baseball field and that's going to be very attractive to people.

[00:06:28] Eli: And then the third one, and that to me is the one that has the most utility and value is the office.

[00:06:35] Eli: I think VR and AR is the best way to foster connections when people work remotely and that's where meta ism, is innovating heavily and I think that's their best trot.

[00:06:46] Eli: Right.

[00:06:47] Eli: I think VR and AR glasses are going to come through a work setting.

[00:06:51] Eli: They're going to be a productivity tool to foster connection and to improve the experience you have when you communicate with people.

[00:06:57] Eli: So that's kind of the first thought.

[00:06:59] Eli: Again, the last thought that I'm going to say, which I think is a bit more contrarian, is typically innovation comes from the bottom up.

[00:07:08] Eli: It's cheap and affordable, it comes from startups.

[00:07:11] Eli: But I don't think startups are yet at a place to build affordable and good enough VR AR headsets.

[00:07:18] Eli: So it has to be Apple.

[00:07:20] Eli: And I think Apple actually has the best trot at making this a truly broad customer or consumer success.

[00:07:28] Eli: But that time is not yet.

[00:07:30] Eli: So I don't think they're going to make money on this in the next five years, but I think they're going to might set themselves up to crush it over the next ten years.

[00:07:38] Kevin: Yeah, I think it's fascinating that they're trying this after Google failed.

[00:07:41] Kevin: I mean, Google Glass failed is useless.

[00:07:43] Kevin: Have you ever tried the google Glass?

[00:07:45] Eli: I have not.

[00:07:46] Eli: But Google is not a good hardware company.

[00:07:49] Eli: They're not a consumer hardware company.

[00:07:50] Eli: So this was a mood shot, and Apple has tons of experience in selling to consumers.

[00:07:56] Kevin: Okay.

[00:07:57] Kevin: And now Facebook tried, but Oculus is not saving Facebook as a company.

[00:08:01] Kevin: So it's just interesting that Apple is trying this when there have been some notable failures.

[00:08:08] Kevin: Oculus was not driven towards the business market, so maybe, maybe that's different.

[00:08:14] Kevin: But again, $3,500 for a remote work tool when all of a sudden apple included companies are requiring that their employees come back to the office.

[00:08:24] Kevin: Kind of interesting.

[00:08:25] Kevin: It is.

[00:08:26] Eli: I heard that the quality must be amazing.

[00:08:28] Eli: It must be absolutely outstanding.

[00:08:30] Eli: Again, I haven't tried it out yet, so I'm going to reserve final judgment, but those are the early thoughts you already started.

[00:08:35] WhatsApp Channels: A New Way for Brands and Creators to Connect with Users

[00:08:35] Eli: We mentioned Meta twice in this conversation.

[00:08:37] Eli: Once with the TikTok event you went to, and the other time the Metaverse and all the hardware that they built with Oculus.

[00:08:45] Eli: Now there's a new interesting development from the Meta side, which is on WhatsApp, and that is WhatsApp channels.

[00:08:53] Eli: So in essence, WhatsApp channels are simply channels you can follow.

[00:08:57] Eli: They're going to be interesting for brands and creators to basically broadcast their content.

[00:09:01] Eli: And I think that could be an interesting channel for brands moving forward.

[00:09:06] Eli: First of all, because WhatsApp has very broad adoption, I have to fact check myself and look at the latest numbers, but I think they're not too far away from a billion people.

[00:09:15] Eli: And there are not that many channels out there.

[00:09:19] Eli: We recently spoke about innovative marketing channels.

[00:09:21] Eli: You're going to find the episode in the show notes, but there aren't that many channels out there that aren't super crowded.

[00:09:26] Eli: And this seems to be more of a channel where you can select the content you get, but it is similar to an email where you get the content straight to your inbox, or in this case, straight to your WhatsApp phone.

[00:09:38] Eli: So I'm bullish while there's not a lot of information out there, got to keep an eye on this one.

[00:09:44] Kevin: Yeah, I think.

[00:09:45] Kevin: WhatsApp is an underutilized asset for Meta?

[00:09:49] Kevin: For Facebook?

[00:09:50] Kevin: They bought it for 19 billion.

[00:09:51] Kevin: I think it was 19 billion and everyone thought it was insane, but it was an amazing purchase.

[00:09:56] Kevin: And they've really grown that platform.

[00:09:59] Kevin: But the reason I say it's underutilized is because they're not monetizing it at all.

[00:10:05] Kevin: They've tried to put ads, I think in India, maybe they injected ads, but they're not monetizing it directly.

[00:10:11] Kevin: And there are a lot of different uses of it where they could inject themselves more into some sort of monetization strategy, but they're not at all.

[00:10:19] Kevin: And then one thing that is interesting about the one way they are using it, of course, is backlash.

[00:10:24] Kevin: But again, people are using the people that use Blue, Facebook.

[00:10:27] Kevin: So when they log into the regular Facebook app and they're people you may what do they call people you may know, or people you should know or people you should connect with or whatever it is you get freaked out by who shows up.

[00:10:39] Kevin: They're like, oh, that's my ex boss, or that's my ex girlfriend, or that's the person that tried to kill me, or something like that.

[00:10:45] Kevin: That's actually feeding off the context that you've uploaded through WhatsApp.

[00:10:50] Kevin: That's the way they're using it.

[00:10:51] Kevin: And it's helping, in theory, build that social graph in Facebook and maybe in Instagram too, but otherwise they're not directly monetizing.

[00:10:59] Kevin: So it's great to see an innovation within WhatsApp that allows them to do it.

[00:11:03] Kevin: There are things within WhatsApp, like there are businesses that post statuses.

[00:11:06] Kevin: They post the sales and you follow our business, here's our sale.

[00:11:10] Kevin: Facebook is not injecting themselves into that process at all and trying to help promote that status, helping to gather followers for that status.

[00:11:18] Kevin: There's so many things they could do.

[00:11:19] Kevin: So it's great to see Facebook investing in there.

[00:11:22] Kevin: And like we said earlier, don't count them out.

[00:11:25] Kevin: They've got lots of cash, they've got a huge network between all of their different platforms.

[00:11:29] Kevin: They have many, many billions of users.

[00:11:31] Kevin: So lots of potential there.

[00:11:33] Eli: Yeah, thanks for fact checking me here.

[00:11:35] Eli: I just want to correct myself.

[00:11:37] Eli: I said they're close to a billion users.

[00:11:39] Eli: Actually.

[00:11:39] Eli: They actually have over 2 billion users.

[00:11:41] Eli: So massive channel, I'll be the first one to start broadcasting there because I'm hungry for a new channel where I can be early and where I can establish a a presence.

[00:11:52] Eli: The thing that I'm going to be most curious about is the discovery aspect.

[00:11:56] Eli: So how are people going to find new creators and brands to follow?

[00:11:59] Eli: Because that will be its own little optimization game.

[00:12:02] Eli: Call it WhatsApp SEO or maybe don't.

[00:12:04] Kevin: Well, one of the things I love about Facebook is the ability to market and to use interest targeting.

[00:12:11] Kevin: So I would love if they could plug that into WhatsApp.

[00:12:14] Kevin: And you can get more followers for your channel.

[00:12:16] Kevin: You can get more people to see your channel, or more people to see your statuses or add to your groups and do all that with just Facebook marketing.

[00:12:23] Kevin: And I think that's great.

[00:12:25] Kevin: Facebook is the number one channel for doing interest targeting because they've got so much information, except with the usage declining, it's harder and harder to target people.

[00:12:35] Kevin: Again, like we said earlier, I don't log into Facebook that often.

[00:12:38] Kevin: I don't use instagram.

[00:12:39] Kevin: So yes, Facebook has my data.

[00:12:42] Kevin: You can in theory target me, but I'm not seeing those ads if I'm not on Facebook.

[00:12:45] Kevin: Facebook does actually have other ad or other ways of showing ads, and they have partnerships with apps, but it's far more limited.

[00:12:53] Kevin: If you don't have those apps, you don't have those gains.

[00:12:55] Kevin: But again, if they can get you on Facebook, they have almost everyone on WhatsApp they can get you on Instagram, then they can target you and maybe they'll revive Oculus now that Apple showed them there's potential there.

[00:13:06] Kevin: And they can inject ads into Oculus too.

[00:13:09] Kevin: And then you can have an immersive experience with an advertiser speaking about ads and broadcasting.

[00:13:15] Missing the boat: GameStop and CNN's failed attempts to adapt

[00:13:15] Eli: CNN just fired their CEO and there is another company who also fired their CEO, and that is GameStop.

[00:13:22] Eli: And there are interesting similarities between both of them.

[00:13:25] Eli: They both kind of missed the boats, but from different ends of the spectrum.

[00:13:29] Eli: So GameStop, they tried too much contrarian stuff.

[00:13:35] Eli: They tried to save their fading or eroding business with a crypto platform or a blockchain platform that went up in smokes.

[00:13:43] Eli: Business has been dying for years and nobody has really been able to turn it around.

[00:13:47] Eli: And then CNN, on the other hand, they've been moving too slow.

[00:13:51] Eli: They weren't able to really establish themselves as a streaming platform.

[00:13:55] Eli: They wrote off a 300 million US dollar check where they tried CNN Plus as a streaming platform and then overnight pulled the plug from that.

[00:14:03] Eli: And now the CEO has to kind of pay the price for not establishing themselves and CNN on the streaming horizon.

[00:14:10] Eli: Eli, how have both of these brands missed a boat?

[00:14:13] Eli: I mean, from your perspective, what is your opinion?

[00:14:16] Kevin: I'm going to be super contrarian here.

[00:14:18] Kevin: I think both of these businesses don't need to exist at all.

[00:14:21] Kevin: I think they're hanging on to an old vestige of something else that we just don't need.

[00:14:26] Kevin: I mean, GameStop is a retail store in a world where many people buy things online.

[00:14:31] Kevin: Do you need a GameStop when you can even go to GameStop.com?

[00:14:34] Kevin: A Sharper Image, like they went out of business, but sharperimage.com still exists.

[00:14:38] Kevin: You can still buy Sharp brand, it still exists as a brand, but you just don't need Sharper Image stores.

[00:14:41] Kevin: I think the same with CNN.

[00:14:44] Kevin: There's a lot you can say around the politics of CNN.

[00:14:47] Kevin: I think they thrived on Trump.

[00:14:49] Kevin: You wanted that narrative of anti Trump a couple of years ago already, that Trump has not been president.

[00:14:55] Kevin: Now, is there a need for media?

[00:14:58] Kevin: Is there a need for 24 hours media that you're going to watch and that's profitable now?

[00:15:03] Kevin: I won't argue against the need for media in general.

[00:15:05] Kevin: You're not going to have TikTok influencers and Twitter thought leaders and LinkedIn influencers flying to the interesting places in the world and riding in tanks alongside the Ukrainian army.

[00:15:16] Kevin: That's not going to happen.

[00:15:18] Kevin: You need the media.

[00:15:19] Kevin: You need a funded, official, accredited, organized media to do that.

[00:15:25] Kevin: So media should exist.

[00:15:26] Kevin: But do you need to watch it 24 hours?

[00:15:28] Kevin: Do you need a talk show to digest the latest thing that maybe happened in politics, when you can sit on Twitter and digest it just the same while you're multitasking, while you're supposed to be at work, you don't need to watch that online or on TV.

[00:15:41] Kevin: Even worse, do you even need to watch it streaming?

[00:15:44] Kevin: Do you want to catch up on the latest argument between two talking heads, five talking heads, or however many talking heads they have, when again, you could just go on Twitter and participate in it.

[00:15:54] Kevin: So I think that CNN is they've been around for a very long time.

[00:15:58] Kevin: They popularized the idea of 24 hours media when there was no 24 hours media.

[00:16:03] Kevin: And I think now do you really need 24 hours media?

[00:16:06] Kevin: So maybe that's what CNN struggling with.

[00:16:08] Kevin: Is it's an entertainment platform?

[00:16:11] Kevin: We had an episode on streaming.

[00:16:13] Kevin: Look at what HBO did.

[00:16:14] Kevin: HBO merged into Max and I just got a notification.

[00:16:18] Kevin: Do you have Xfinity or what do you have for Internet?

[00:16:20] Eli: There xfinity.

[00:16:21] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:16:22] Kevin: Okay, so did you get an email from Xfinity saying they're pulling peacock out of Xfinity?

[00:16:27] Eli: No, but what is peacock again?

[00:16:29] Kevin: Exactly.

[00:16:30] Kevin: So there's a million streaming platforms.

[00:16:31] Kevin: I got an email this morning saying, sorry to tell you, but you no longer get peacock for free.

[00:16:36] Kevin: There's a good reminder that I even had peacock for free from Xfinity because they're both owned by NBC, owned by GE.

[00:16:41] Kevin: I think it's a struggle, like all these streaming platforms, netflix, crackdown on, password sharing.

[00:16:46] Kevin: So do you need a CNN subscription?

[00:16:48] Kevin: Is there even a reason that you need to watch or even pay for a CNN streaming subscription?

[00:16:54] Kevin: So I think that bigger question is, should they exist?

[00:16:57] Eli: It depends on the content.

[00:16:58] Eli: They had.

[00:16:59] Eli: For example, one show with Scott Galloway, and I would have loved to pay for that because the guy is genius.

[00:17:06] Eli: However, I think there's going to be consolidation at some point where all these streaming networks are going to be facilitated by YouTube, TV or someone else.

[00:17:14] Eli: I don't think all of these are going to survive and people are not going to pay for all of them, at least not constantly.

[00:17:20] Eli: You might pay for a show for a while and then you got to cancel your subscription again.

[00:17:24] Eli: So that's going to be challenging.

[00:17:26] Breaking News and Dopamine Addiction

[00:17:26] Eli: But what's interesting, and one thing that I want to highlight is how breaking news and this kind of news real where you constantly have news and then a few ads in between.

[00:17:36] Eli: There was the original dopamine factory before Twitter came out, before these social platforms come out.

[00:17:43] Eli: And I'm just tired, man.

[00:17:46] Eli: I'm tired out of the constant dopamine cycles.

[00:17:49] Eli: I'm tired of Twitter, I'm tired of endless scroll.

[00:17:53] Eli: And breaking news to me is just endless scroll once the news broke their old news.

[00:17:58] Eli: And so basically, people watching that, I see it, I know people who watch that stuff constantly.

[00:18:04] Eli: And are they younger than 80?

[00:18:07] Eli: Slightly, but not much.

[00:18:09] Eli: That's exactly the point, right?

[00:18:11] Eli: That's kind of the dopamine addiction of the older generation and much older generation.

[00:18:15] Eli: And so they're going to die out of it.

[00:18:18] Eli: They're missing addressing younger audiences and bringing new audiences on board.

[00:18:22] Discussing AI-Powered Search and The Future of SEO

[00:18:22] Eli: So let's wrap up, speaking about one company that is struggling with something very similar, and that is Google and Alphabet.

[00:18:29] Eli: Now, YouTube, to be fair, is incredibly hot with the teens and the young generation.

[00:18:34] Eli: But Google is increasingly replaced by other platforms like TikTok.

[00:18:39] Eli: I see.

[00:18:40] Eli: It my fiance's sister, she's in her early 20s.

[00:18:43] Eli: She searches so much more stuff on TikTok.

[00:18:45] Eli: And I'm not here to say that TikTok is the SEO killer or the Google killer.

[00:18:49] Eli: This platform is struggling to address and keep young audiences as well.

[00:18:54] Eli: And they recently launched their search Genera Experience, which is based on AI, which we just recorded a full episode about.

[00:19:01] Eli: But Eli, a lot has changed since we recorded that episode a week ago.

[00:19:06] Eli: What's your freshest take on this?

[00:19:08] Kevin: So I actually think that Google is going to win.

[00:19:11] Kevin: I think because they own the platform, they have all the users, they can keep getting people back onto the platform from all their other, from Android, from Gmail, from Sheets and Docs and all the other things that Google does.

[00:19:24] Kevin: But I'm very bullish on Google's future.

[00:19:26] Kevin: I think what they're doing with Generative AI, it's buggy right now, but it will improve.

[00:19:31] Kevin: They launched an update to Bard, which is what's powering Generative Experiences to begin with, which you can now do logic.

[00:19:38] Kevin: And in this blog post, which we'll link in the show notes, they explain System One thinking.

[00:19:41] Kevin: System Two, which is based on Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize winning economics theory, which is System One is your initial emotional response, and System Two is more thought out.

[00:19:52] Kevin: So system one, where system two is more logical.

[00:19:56] Kevin: So system one is barred.

[00:19:58] Kevin: It's just language like it gives you a response, it may or may not be correct.

[00:20:01] Kevin: System Two can do logic and that's where Google thrives.

[00:20:05] Kevin: So Chat GBT is competing on the system one.

[00:20:07] Kevin: It's just a large language model, can give an answer.

[00:20:10] Kevin: System Two is where Google's been great at this for the last two decades.

[00:20:13] Kevin: And they're doing logic like you can ask it math questions, it's pulling from knowledge graph, it's using the massive superpowers of Google.

[00:20:22] Kevin: So I think that's where they win.

[00:20:24] Kevin: I think there's no competitor right now that's as good at both of those as Google.

[00:20:28] Kevin: It as long as they don't lose market share.

[00:20:30] Kevin: I do think Google wins, even with their buggy product.

[00:20:33] Eli: I think nobody can be Google and Search.

[00:20:36] Eli: I much more think that other companies are going to try to fragment search and kind of break it apart.

[00:20:42] Eli: For example, Microsoft.

[00:20:44] Eli: I've changed my opinion.

[00:20:45] Eli: I don't think they're trying to win with Bing.

[00:20:47] Eli: I think they might have a chance to win with Chat GPT, which is a completely different experience that now also features Bing search results, or they're just going to bring the whole damn thing into the taskbar at the bottom of your screen.

[00:21:00] Eli: They might break it out of the browser and bring it to the operating system level.

[00:21:04] Eli: So there's a whole lot of interesting stuff going on with AI search and SGE.

[00:21:10] Eli: But I think one of the biggest trends that most people don't have on the radar is that you might just not need the browser anymore.

[00:21:16] Eli: It might live natively in an app, or in Google Sheets, or again in your taskbar.

[00:21:21] Eli: And so I think the biggest chance for other companies is to change the game.

[00:21:25] Eli: Instead of trying to beat Google ad it.

[00:21:26] Eli: Google has one search period.

[00:21:28] Eli: But the question is now, how can you change the field?

[00:21:31] Kevin: How can you change the playing field?

[00:21:33] Kevin: Absolutely.

[00:21:34] Kevin: And you're right.

[00:21:35] Kevin: I don't think anybody's going to be Google.

[00:21:37] Kevin: I think the playing field is changing underneath Google, and they're now catching up and changing with it.

[00:21:43] Kevin: A recent newsletter, I talked about how this is what Google's always been doing.

[00:21:47] Kevin: These are featured snippets.

[00:21:48] Kevin: These are knowledge graph.

[00:21:50] Kevin: They had LLM to begin with, but they didn't want to release it for two reasons.

[00:21:53] Kevin: One, innovator's dilemma, because they would kill their business model, and they're definitely hurting their ads for the people that are in the beta.

[00:22:00] Kevin: And the second reason is that it's risky.

[00:22:02] Kevin: I mean, when it comes to Knowledge Graph, most of knowledge Graph is correct.

[00:22:06] Kevin: I know, like, you search certain people, like one search, I think Rand Fishkin, there was a picture of Neil Patel that was based on knowledge Graph is broken.

[00:22:13] Kevin: But for the most part, knowledge Graph is accurate.

[00:22:15] Kevin: It pulls off a structured data.

[00:22:17] Kevin: LLM is not LLM can say offensive, wrong things.

[00:22:21] Kevin: Like it can give you the wrong advice and you can follow and do serious harm to yourself.

[00:22:26] Kevin: So they can't control it because they don't know what's out there.

[00:22:27] Kevin: So I get why they didn't release it, but now that they are releasing it and they are working with it, I think they will win.

[00:22:34] Eli: We're green too much, Eli.

[00:22:35] Eli: We got to change that.

[00:22:36] Eli: But one area or kind of one place?

[00:22:39] Kevin: You're wrong.

[00:22:39] Kevin: You're just wrong.

[00:22:42] Eli: Do better now.

[00:22:43] Eli: So much better.

[00:22:44] Dealing with disagreements and building strong business partnerships

[00:22:44] Eli: One area where we're not agreeing all the time, or where we disagree more, is our new Slack Group.

[00:22:48] Eli: Eli, you want to talk about that secretly?

[00:22:51] Kevin: Not secretly.

[00:22:52] Kevin: We quietly discussed this a couple of weeks ago in an episode.

[00:22:56] Kevin: We want to launch a Slack Group that would help consultants become better consultants.

[00:23:00] Kevin: We have the slack group.

[00:23:01] Kevin: We're going to put up a link where you can apply to be a part of this.

[00:23:04] Kevin: We want to make sure it adds as much value to everyone that is in the Slack Group, and of course ourselves too, that we just want to have a high caliber of the best consultants out there.

[00:23:12] Kevin: We have not yet defined what the cutoff will be, but this will be for really, the best consultants.

[00:23:19] Kevin: And just to give a sneak preview to an upcoming podcast, the greatest of all time, the Goat of consulting.

[00:23:26] Kevin: Alan Weiss, who published, I think, six best selling books on consulting, the Million Dollar Consulting or Consultants book, which is the first one he came out with in the late eighty s I learned everything from and he's had six updates to that book.

[00:23:38] Kevin: So we just interviewed him for a podcast.

[00:23:41] Kevin: This is our very first interview ever.

[00:23:43] Kevin: So if you're not subscribed and you're just listening to this podcast for the first time, this one's coming.

[00:23:47] Kevin: This is going to be the best episode we have.

[00:23:49] Eli: Man, I'm still on a high from that conversation.

[00:23:52] Eli: There's going to be so much we have to record an episode about that episode, just digesting and commenting on all the nuggets that he got out.

[00:23:59] Eli: So, yeah, everyone look forward to this.

[00:24:01] Eli: That was an absolutely mind blowing conversation with many things he never mentioned before, many fun stories about tanks and trains and jeopardy.

[00:24:13] Eli: It's going to be a wild one.

[00:24:14] Eli: So, yeah, Eli, this is a wrap.

[00:24:16] Eli: Looking forward to talk to you again next week.

[00:24:17] Kevin: Thanks, John.

[00:24:18] Kevin and Eli Discuss Contrarian Marketing Strategies

[00:24:18] Eli: And now it's your turn.

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[00:24:41] Eli: As always, thanks so much for tuning in and here next week.

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