Business as Usual: Piper Creative

Transcription: 

So good afternoon, everyone. It is Wednesday in Pittsburgh. And I believe we might be getting the first real snow of the season. I'm thrilled to be here as Hump Day. And I know many people are trying to figure out how to get into the right holiday spirits given everything going on in our world. So hopefully you're all staying safe and sound and there's no need for you to really go out too much other than to buy bread. So this is Audrey and I'm the president and CEO of the fix protect counsel, Jonathan kersting, is with us as always, he's the Vice President of media and marketing storytelling, some keep his eye on chat. Thanks to Huntington bank for the work that they've been doing with us and supporting us. And if there is another PPP version that's coming out, I'm sure that we'll hear about that over the next week. And Huntington bank will be pretty active and making sure that our members get what they need in terms of the support, and also want to give a shout out and recognition to 40 by 80, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech Council and our focus there is to make sure that we support entrepreneurship and workforce development across the region of southwestern Pennsylvania. We've muted your mics. But that doesn't mean we don't want to hear from you. We would like you to participate in our chat session. This is not an opportunity to sell your wares. This is an opportunity for you to focus on our guest. And our guest today is that I will introduce Aaron Watson in one moment. But before we go into today's program, I would like to give an acknowledgement of today's programs executive producer, and that is Jamal big staff. And let me tell you about Jamal. Jamal is a high school senior from Nazareth prep, who is in his third year interning with us at the tech Council, which involves one day a week of on site. And we're obviously in virtual as today's cases with our staff. Jamal not only developed the concept for today's program, but also secured our speaker for the day. And we're looking forward to having Jamal produced more businesses, usual sessions for us, and perhaps someday, taking my chair to co host his own session. So thank you, Jamal, and I'm going to Jamal will bring them all to the forefront in a few minutes as we do a little bit of a dive into our question. So now I want to jump in with our fun and esteemed and creative guest. And that is Aaron Watson. From Piper creative. I believe he's runs Piper creative if that's correct, I would call you the CEO. And he founded it, but we're gonna bring him to the forefront. And I before we start, Aaron, first of all, thanks for taking the time with us. I know that you're always busy and running around doing amazing things and telling your own stories and stories of other people. And you've actually helped us at the tech Council and many of our members. So first, I want to start and just say How are you? How are you doing through this process? And tell us why and when you started Piper creative? Of course,

yeah, um, all things considered, I'm doing really well. I think that, for me, 2020 has been mostly a reflection on how blessed I am and how many challenges other people have had to face through this. And so I have, you know, not in a sort of like particular practice, which is very easy for me to reflect on how many things I have to be grateful for in the face of such challenging times for so many. Um, I started Piper, it'll be three years ago in February. And the idea was this epiphany that companies were going to need to create a whole lot more content for digital platforms, and they weren't going to know how to do it. Sure. Some companies have the natural media capacity, they have the interest, they have the gear, they have the person and they want to make that investment. But a lot of firms, we're not going to be able to produce enough podcasts, but enough videos on YouTube, you know, have the ability to shift from platform to platform as the platform does your tends to change. And so I pitched my eventual co founder, Hannah Phillips, on the concept of being a company that I set up vlogs for other companies, and we're gonna vlog ourselves along the way. So what that's turned into is an agency where we help our clients, like I said, Show up really well on YouTube really well in a podcast format really well on LinkedIn. And we're kind of developing services around vertical video short form like tik tok and Instagram Rios and Dubsmash and platforms like that. But simultaneously, we We're doing that every single week ourselves. So we publish new podcast episode, every week, we publish five videos a week to YouTube, we publish daily to LinkedIn, we publish daily to Instagram. And what that then allows is we can learn through doing ourselves and transfer that to our clients. And you know that that was really the big opportunity that I saw, as I looked around, I surveyed the landscape. And, you know, there's 20 year old agencies in town that have 11 subscribers on their YouTube channel. And, you know, I just can't imagine not taking the second largest search engine on in the world seriously, and calling yourself a marketing company. So that's been that's been, you know, the impetus behind our efforts. And 2020 has been a big year of learning to that end.

But haven't you seen the pace of change in terms of 2020? While you talk about reflection? What do you think in terms of the pace of change,

so it's whiplash, it's whiplash for anyone. But for us, it was a little bit of, you know, we, we kind of thought that we were focusing on things that people were still waking up to. And after 2020, you just can't, you can't stay asleep to these things anymore. Like, you know, Brian, as we were emailing here prepping for, for the actual interview, I actually post on LinkedIn yesterday about this event that we were doing. And he was talking about how his household became a YouTube household. And that's very natural to me, like I've spent basically anything that wasn't like a Steelers game, or an NBA game is time spent watching YouTube as opposed to watching linear TV. And that's the norm for anyone in my generation, or to my junior. And so there's just an explosion to the adoption of these platforms, we've seen an enormous explosion of viewership on our own channels, we think partially because we've refined our techniques a little bit partially just because that's where the appetite has been. But it is, you know, just incredibly, it feels incredibly good to have actually like kind of been in the pocket in terms of like, where the puck is going, as opposed to watching the puck race away from you.

Right, right. Absolutely. So what do you think so let's let's now that you brought that up, what do you think for 2021? In I mean, I adoption and the appetite and television? Yeah, I I

think that it's negligent for any company with any marketing budget to not be spending time around a digital video strategy. If you have a very limited budget, then that probably means making a video within the editing suite of tik tok, which is literally free. More if you can have anything beyond that, you need to be owning key search terms on YouTube. So when someone Google's you, you know, it's well past known now that SEO is a strategy we need, you need to get your site indexed, so that someone puts in a Google search and your pages come up. And then maybe you're competing with a competitor, via by, you know, putting your company when someone searches their company's name in like a pay per click function. But there needs to be a similar consideration for the second largest search engine on the planet YouTube, also owned by Google. Do you own basic keywords there? Do you think? If someone is searching for you, or something related to what you do, do you have a chance of showing up? And if you don't, it is negligent marketing to not address it.

But so talk but talk a little bit about the appetite shift? Do you think it's because the behavioral shift that you're seeing, what do you attribute that to?

So I think a part of that is honestly not being in the office and not having someone over your shoulder. Like we saw a ton of consumption of LinkedIn in 2018, and 2019, because it was the only platform that was socially acceptable to have open on your screen while you were in the office, and someone's looking over your shoulder, like, oh, they're on LinkedIn, they're still like doing something. But no one thinks that way, if you're on Instagram, or if you're on YouTube, or on these platforms, but now in a remote environment, the reality is, is that no one works eight uninterrupted, just robotic hours, we are not machines, we are humans, we need to decompress me to take some time, we need to go look up a how to video or we just need to see some, you know, puppies running around to like, refresh ourselves before we take on the rest of the day. And so in some capacity, the ability to have those kind of natural bite sized moments of consumption throughout the day without some sort of person over the shoulder looking at what you're doing has enabled people to embrace that even further. And similarly, you know, tick, the tick tock thing is more a kind of natural iteration of social networking algorithms. So there's a fantastic post by Kevin Kwok about how quickly their feed learns exactly what it is that you want to watch and how quickly they're able to fill on their machine learning algorithm with each individual users preferences. Which is really the key to making a feed engaging. But it's the same type of thing where we find ourselves with more downtime we find ourselves frankly, looking more to escape needing to take a breath from either the election or the pandemic or whatever other thing may be affecting you this year and wanting to get away from it. And those are the two best places to do it on demand.

Let's bring Jamal on real quick. So Jamal, I mentioned that to everyone about Jamal, big staff. He's been with us three years. He is at Nazareth prep. And he he kicks our but quite often we learn a lot from Jamal. So Jamal, you want to pipe in and ask a question. I meant Do you like the way I said that pipe in?

I like it. I

like it. So yeah, just got it. Hey, Jamal, want to ask Aaron the question?

Yeah. So Tick tock, Instagram rails have become really popular among young people. How are businesses leveraging these technologies?

Yeah, I mean, the starting point is, is the savvy businesses are realizing that it's not just young people, it's 2.6 billion worldwide downloads of the tick tock app, there's more than two points, if you just think of a percentage of humans on Earth. That's way beyond young people that's now nearly a majority of adult humans on the planet. And so recognizing from a starting point that this is just the latest iteration on what storytelling looks like, yes, we can all you know, love a really highly produced 60 minute documentary, we can love our two hour crazy long podcast interview. Those are forms of consumption that we've all adopted and integrated with different digital platforms. But the reality is, is that that those bite sized chunks, those very quick decisions does this hook me in the first 135 seconds is how most content is actually consumed. When you're scrolling through the feed. When you're trying to be an engaging storyteller. That is the format that people are used to consuming. And so some companies are specifically operating there and growing. We've seen enormous restaurants, coaches, consultants, but you know, mechanics, people that work in the physical world, that the the twin of Tiktok dalyan in China is a social commerce app. So if you in any way, shape or form resonate with being in retail, you need to recognize that the underpinnings for Social Commerce that is already prevalent in the second largest economy on earth is coming here. The Instagram redesign the sensuality that they're placing reals, is them preparing for the same type of super app where commerce from point A all the way to final transaction happens within one single app, they're laying the groundwork for that now. And if you're not prepared to sell in that environment, what that looks like is if you're if you're an apple farmer, what that looks like in China is you walk out to the apple farm, you point to the fresh apple on the tree, and you say you want to buy this apple, and then right there in app purchase can be completed. And you can see the the application of that for anything that's sold. That's retail, that is enormous. If you aren't thinking in those terms, if you aren't preparing your business to sell in that type of environment, then you're going to miss the boat. And so the business application is you have to get comfortable, you have to get uncomfortable with it. Because it's new, and it's foreign. It's difficult at first, but you have to get uncomfortable so that you can become comfortable. Because at some point, it's going to be the cost of doing business.

No, I totally, I totally agree with you. And I think I see people skipping this chapter. They think they can skip this chapter. And just like much of innovation, people hold on to things that they just are real familiar. And that example. You have questions here, Aaron. So there's some questions. I don't know, Jonathan, I can't see jonatha. No

questions here?

Well, a bunch of questions I'd really like you to answer.

Absolutely. Aaron, thanks for joining us today. It's always great getting your insight that keeps us sharp at the tech council as well, too. So Leslie, June wants to know, do you think or have evidence that baby that the baby boomer segment is reaching is searching YouTube in any significant way? if one's clients are 40 and older, like myself? Is YouTube a place where they go regularly?

Absolutely. So the starting point is, is like I said at the beginning, Google owns YouTube. So literally on our own channels on Piper's own channel, and I've got the number up here, I don't mess it up. 45% of our views of our YouTube channel come via Google search. So what's happening is someone's typing into the search bar on Google. And a YouTube video is getting surfaced as one of the top results that's actually driving views for us right now today. And every I think we can agree everyone uses Google search. So there so right there off the bat is one instance where you're reaching that older potential audience even further, on a on a YouTube advertises. That's a too, but the advertising tool is used for remarketing to anyone making any query. So we're working with someone right now that's selling a software. And when people search in need of a certain type of software, we are remarketing to them a specific ad just because they've made that query. So suddenly that does not that is age agnostic. And I don't have the actual, like tangible, like what percentage of people over specific age are using the YouTube, but in the reports that I've seen, I have absolutely no doubts in the same way that we have no doubts that there are people over the age of 40. On Facebook, I would imagine that a very similar appetite for content is happening on YouTube, maybe not as consistent consistently of a habit, but it is, without a shadow of a doubt there.

I'm way over 40 and I definitely am on YouTube quite a bit, we've noticed that the tech Council which is really cool is if you search business, as usual with any of our guests, the first result is our YouTube video of that guest and a Google search result which is wrapped what you're seeing right now. Yeah, yep. So Todd has been trolling your enter your LinkedIn profile and wants to know, he says, he's his he sees, um, I see your, your city with this will be our finest hour as a backdrop. Can you speak to what this means for you? Great question or not? Yeah,

so that's a bit of a curveball. Um, I posted that right at the beginning of the pandemic. And that was taken from one of my absolute favorite writers on the internet by the name of Ben hunt. And, and the framing was from the very jump, he was he was so early to recognize Miss, but we weren't getting real numbers, from very early on, there was gross mysteries, representations, about the risks and the pervasiveness of the virus. And the framework has to move to a wartime mentality. And what that really means is less about violence, or aggression, or hatred towards others, and more towards the way that in really difficult times, people rally around one another, they look out for their neighbor, um, you know, for me and my fiance, here, we live in a condo, that meant knowing there's some other elderly people in the building and saying, hey, you need us to go get groceries, you need us to like run an errand for you. Because you're clearly more at risk. We're here for you. That means it's basic stuff, like wearing a mask, and being vigilant and considerate of other people. But recognizing that as scary as it was, and it was scary in March, recognizing that, at the same time, this is when people get to show their deep character and their care for one another as humans. And that is what will make this our finest hour, it's our chance to show how great we really are because it can only be demonstrated in the difficult times.

You're so wise. So wise. And Aaron, just for everyone to know Aaron has helped us at the tech Council. So if you can't tell his enthusiasm, and and his smarts about all of this, he really cares. He's really got a huge amount of compassion. And he is not afraid to say anything. So as you can, as you can see here, so a whole bunch of wisdom. So Jonathan, there's still some more

few more here. Yeah, you gave some good comments here. Aaron, in the questions in the chat here. So to vendored, right wants to know, could you speak to the need for companies to have both a web and mobile app presence if we're looking to sell to the general public?

So I don't have a definitive view on this. But I will regurgitate something that someone much smarter once said to me, as a founder of a company that used to be the VP, VP of sales for just his name's Jeremy cop and one of the absolute smartest dudes that I've ever come into contact with. And what he basically said was, Why do I need an app? And and that was basically framed as short. It's nice, short, yes, it's good. And we can completely understand why some of the biggest companies in the world have their own apps and have built an enormous business off of that. But there's a pretty big hurdle to downloading a new app, at least for me, and I think, for a lot of people. And so everything that he built, knowing that we were a small startup, we weren't the most funded, we weren't the, you know, most technologically sophisticated, we're kind of playing catch up. And we're working with less resources was to make everything web based, so that you could drop a link to someone and they could operate with it, you had less lock in, you had less control of that end consumer. But it was kind of a easier point of entry for most people to the technology that you're building. So in general, and we've actually, you know, helped a couple companies that were kind of just getting off the ground, we've kind of pushed them away from immediately building an app because you need one that works on iOS and one that that works with Android and there's maintenance cost, and there's changes. When you constrain it to being web based, you have a greater likelihood of keeping those initial startup costs constrained. And then you can always build into those other formats in the future.

So, let me let's jump into this. We really love the banter that you created talk about sort of like branding, but there, but there, there was more to it than this. So we enjoyed the banter that you had with Darren Grove, who is the founder of true fit during the run up to our tech 50 events. But talk to us about what you describe as collabs.

Yeah, so to quickly anyone who might not be familiar, both Darren and I were finalists are both Darren's coming truefitt and my company Piper were finalists first solution provider of the year. This was the second year in the row that we were lucky enough to be nominated for that. And last year, we did basically like fight posters. So we were like facing one another the way that like boxers might. And this year, what we did is we declared meme war on one another, which was if you think of famous fight scenes, like Captain America, versus Iron Man, or you know, a battle scene from Game of Thrones or something, we basically stitched our heads on top of the respective characters and had that battle play out on LinkedIn as a kind of run up to run up to the event. And the idea there is actually kind of its collabs, which is recognizing that there's a there's a loyal group of people that love truefitt, follow truefitt ride for truefitt. And there's a group of people that are loyal to Piper ride with Piper and getting to cross pollinate. Those is an amazing audience building strategy that I've witnessed, because we've done 450 podcast episodes, and I've seen, you know, employees and fans and followers from different companies that we've interviewed, come and become part of the Piper audience. And then the other element of that story is in the same way that I said, the storytelling style of tech talk is something that folks need to learn. Yeah, there's the photo from however long ago, um, the storytelling style of tic Tock being something that will invade other platforms and kind of become just an internet native method of storytelling is means I mean, means have been on the internet forever, from, from Reddit forums, to Twitter to everywhere, but you don't see it so much on LinkedIn. So really what we were doing, you know, we call ourselves creative. Creativity is very much, you know, taking ideas from one place and moving them to another. And really, what we were doing is taking this idea of live action means that we've seen, you know, folks from barstool sports use to declare war on one of their enemies to shore. And we did that playfully against another company here in Pittsburgh that frankly, I liked Darren, we, you know, we've collaborated with to fit in the past. But that energy was something that, you know, we were able to instigate and create a little bit even more excitement about the tech 50 Awards.

It's so interesting, because in many ways, you both could be competitors. And so instead, you're flipping it. And that's something that I'm hoping that our listeners can really understand that you're flipping it, and you're leaning into it. So talk about are there any other examples of where we should be thinking about that, and why that's so important in this day and age? Because I'm seeing more of that as a strategy. Yeah,

I mean, I think that the truth is, the harsh truth of the digital age of the internet age, is that there will be exceedingly large gains to an exceedingly shorter number of winners that there's a degree to which the the winnings concentrate on a few players. And you see, you could talk about that in pop music, you could talk about that in tech, you could talk about that in almost any domain. And so what that means is even companies or firms or teams that would have traditionally seemed large, in any other point in history, need to Hoover up they need to assemble more partners and allies and squads in order to compete in today's day and age. And frankly, Piper we're thinking about that all the time. Like I think that there should be like from a collaboration standpoint, there should be a Pittsburgh creator house where some of the biggest creators and we know a fair number of them get together and you know, cross pollinate their audiences more aggressively. I think that from a small business standpoint, that used to look like your, you know, your networking lunch, where it was the accountant and the lawyer and the insurance agent all getting together and, you know, handing referrals back and forth. That's just an analog version of what I'm talking about. We're just adding the fact that yes, referrals are still a thing. Yes, you know, being able to create those dots and connect them is still a thing, but at the same time creating content together is also a very viable, our Avenue the same idea.

Well, you know, there is I do believe and I don't know whether you believe this, but is there is there are there any questions for us before I jump into this, Jonathan, any questions or comments?

Yes, we have one that came in here. basically what's new Aaron, can you speak to the importance of consistency In patience when building a brand, especially online, Hmm,

yeah, I mean, I've been doing my show for four and a half years, we've been doing the, the company here for coming up on three years. This was far and away our best year. It's clearly compounding. I was talking about it someone last night, if we can feel it compounding, when you're right there, you can kind of see the compounding happen. But you're still in the early stages of that arc where it gets crazy and exponential way on down the line. But it's brutal, like like I've told this to, you know, people that were trying to get started, or maybe in the early stages, I've said this candidly, like I can remember wanting to quit the first year, every other week, because it wasn't going I thought I was gonna be Tim Ferriss, and like four weeks or something, and that obviously didn't occur. But that's you know, that's that's the the naivete, or the maybe delusion that you need in order to kind of get started to see that potential to be so entranced by it. But the reality is, is that like, you know, that it's 1000, small adjustments along the way. And the only way that you can get to the 700 and 11th, is by getting to the 710. And so, you know, we joke about it all the time, where we'll look back on like the way we did the thumbnails on our YouTube channel two months ago and be like, Man, what were we thinking, but we only were able to reach that point of realization by getting to that point two months ago. So that's the only way to do it there is that the overnight sensation thing is a myth. I can't tell you how many times podcast guests have told me that I can't tell you how much just the data bears that out in terms of the blogger that posted every single day for 10 years, and then all of a sudden, they're an overnight sensation. Just the way the world. That's why

I say about Pittsburgh when they talk about autonomous vehicles. I'm like, yeah, that's a four decade overnight success. Yeah. Carnegie Mellon on on autonomous trucks for for almost four decades. So right, yeah. Okay, we just got the recognition. I'm gonna jump into the last question, but I want to tell you don't compare yourself to Tim Ferriss. He even gets drunk on the show. Okay. And, you know, I think that you're calibrating yourself differently. But I can see where you might use those benchmarks. So let's you'd like to talk about building ensemble brands. What does that mean? And why do you think that's so important?

So the starting point that's important for that is, is a piece by David parral, called naked brands. And basically, it's this idea that the companies, the brands, the firms that we really engage with, look very different than prior generations, like we can think about lebrons production company, or Serena Williams, investment firm. And I it's not just sports, but this kind of like personality, entity centric type of brand that gets built. And how that lends itself to behind the scenes, it lends itself to authenticity, it lends itself to a deep trust, because you're hearing this person's voice, articulate the idea or what they believe in. And one of the shortcomings I've actually, I got dinner with David and we spoke about this specific idea was one of the kind of fragilities of that model is that it is highly dependent on the individual. So to use the LeBron example, once again, um, you know, he would have some sort of devastating career injury, or, you know, whatever reason, he just decides he doesn't want to be in the public eye anymore. And he doesn't want any sort of business entities, it actually submarine his entire business platform that, you know, probably employs dozens of people and creates all sorts of economic opportunity. And so how do you hedge that specific risk, and what we've come to this is something that we, you know, if I need to do like a trademark or something, but we start calling it an ensemble brand, which is if you think about the Kardashians, or you think about from yesterday, from earlier time, like the friends show, where there was these very distinct collection of personalities, no one is a mirror image of one another. And someone has their favorite and someone has their least favorite, but they interact with one another. And whether that's a reality show environment like the Kardashians, or something more staged, like friends to use those easy examples. That is where you get an almost limitless supply of potential narratives. And the way that's manifesting itself right now, most popularly is in the different houses. So if you've seen, like hype house in these different Tick Tock house ideas, what is happening is all these disparate creators are coming together, cross promoting one another, and rising tide lifts all ships, they all see their platforms grow substantially. And there's actually a business model behind those houses where they turn into talent met, talent management, they sign collective deals that everyone gets a cut of, and there's really cool kind of scalable ideas there. But if you think about that, once again, back to that idea of if it was the referral, you know, group of 10 professionals in 10 different industries. That is really awesome. Or a law firm by itself and their different departments and their different specificities creating this picture of these different characters interacting with one another. So for example, you know, I this is this seems asinine, but I like, you know, crunchy peanut butter, Hannah likes creamy peanut butter. That's my co founder. And we'll have a debate about that. And that seems silly, or we'll debate like, our favorite Christmas song over Christmas time. And that that in a vacuum seems silly. It's like, Aaron, I don't understand why it has anything to do with me selling more widgets or me getting more business. But the presupposition the starting point for any sale is someone else's attention. You can not sale sell to someone if you don't have their attention first. And what we're talking about is on that arc of the sales process, that initial attention point, what could potentially garner attention, no one wants to hear about the features of your thing for the 18th time, and you probably put yourself to sleep talking about if that's the only content that you ever make. But this is that well that you can go to to come up with the next piece of content that you might want to create to fill the pipes and put out as much as we've put out over the last couple years. It's it's predicated on the ensemble idea, there's a one star, there's a one product that we talked through the features, there's a collection of characters, they bounce into one another, it's life, it's messy, and you allow that messiness to become different narratives.

So we're at the end of our show, I want to tell everyone First I want to give Jamal, thank you for having Aaron on the show and for joining us and being such a great intern. And I want to thank everyone for joining us today. I believe that we put out Piper creative you see it there you can find him. He's easily accessible. And you can see tomorrow we have a really another great guest Mola. He's a CEO and and well, they're brothers,

the father and son,

Brett, father and son.

Yeah. Yes, buddy. Graduated CMU, very young age. That is

way cool. So everyone can tell the kind of energy that Aaron has. He's passionate. He's smart. He's trying to kick us to the future. And he's no BS about it. Really appreciate Aaron your energy and your drive and all that you bring to this. It's something that, you know, I deeply care about and making sure that we're at the precipice of all things. And I think you're right 2021 is going to be insane in a really great way. Thank you for your reflections. Thank you for your compassion. So we will see all of you tomorrow. And if you want again, connect with Aaron directly. You won't regret it. Be good.

Thank you, everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai