Big Things Podcast
A weekly show where we talk about the big things we're watching in marketing, social media, pop culture and sports. We also talk through signals we’re seeing that could inform the future of digital marketing.
You can catch the podcast every Friday wherever you listen or watch it on YouTube. Be sure to follow us on Instagram or TikTok for updates on every episode.
Big Things Podcast
Nutter Butter TikTok Has Us Tripping (E2)
Welcome back to Big Things! This week we’re taking a deep dive into Nutter Butter’s social media strategy, celebrating human error, why college students aren’t reading, Amazon’s “Red Zone” (NHL’s Version) and how Snapchat thinks it’s the antidote to everything.
More from us:
- Mitzi Payne @mmmitziP
- Mike Payne @mmmiiike
Timestamps:
- 04:00 – How the branding for Big Things came together. [clip]
- 05:00 – Personal shoot prep.
- 08:30 – What we’ll be talking about this episode.
- 09:30 – Giving feedback/working with your partner.
- 11:00 – Thing 1: Nutter Butter is the name on every marketer’s lips right now.
- 24:00 – Gen alpha and snack brands.
- 22:00 – Celebrating human error.
- 25:00 – Thing 2: College students aren't reading.
- 29:00 – Thing 3: Amazon will debut an NHL version of the NFL Red Zone.
- 35:00 – Signal shows streaming services are changing to second screen watching.
- 41:05 –Thing 4: Why do brands keep trying to make AR glasses happen?
Big Things with Mitzi (@mmmitzi) and Mike (@mmmiiike).
For more from Arcade, follow us on Instagram and TikTok @helloarcade. https://www.arcadearcade.ca/
Production by Morgan Berna, editing by Oliver Banyard.
I'm Mitzi. This is Mike.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, sorry, I wasn't ready to start, okay.
Speaker 1:Are you down to do that part?
Speaker 2:Am I yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Big Things. I'm Mitzi. This is Mike.
Speaker 2:This is a show where we talk about a lot of things Big things. Namely big things that we're seeing in marketing, social media, pop culture and now, to my utter joy, also sports. We'll talk through signals that we're watching that could influence the future of digital marketing, and you can catch the show every week on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. And, for the juicier bits, check out our Instagram. Engage with us. We had a warm welcome on Instagram this last week with episode one. Thank you all for your kind comments.
Speaker 1:It's been an exciting week. We're getting like, a lot of love, a lot of validation, which is always nice when you're launching something new.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:It's very scary. I almost was like let's pull the plug. This is too scary, I don't. I don't know how I feel about this, but I'm glad it's out here. Yeah, me too. I don't know how I feel about this, but I'm glad it's out here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, and I keep reminding myself. We don't have to act like we're different than we are. We don't have to put on a persona. We don't have to act like we're experts at this. We're just figuring it out. We're just being us.
Speaker 1:We're just trying to be a little bit better every week, so thanks for your patience. Hopefully you're enjoying this. If you have suggestions for us, leave a comment on our YouTube.
Speaker 2:One note I had for myself was speaking with more energy, so hold me accountable.
Speaker 1:I'm going to try. Last time I was a little too calm and collected. You just said you got to be ourselves. You are a calm and collected guy.
Speaker 2:It's true. Alright, I'm just going to be me.
Speaker 1:Do you notice something different about me since last week?
Speaker 2:You're wearing denim.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I'm wearing a different outfit, but anything else.
Speaker 2:Is this a trick question?
Speaker 1:It's not a trick, it's a test. I'll tell you what it is. I did a little tint to my hair.
Speaker 2:Really. Yeah, I went a little tint to my hair Really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went a little darker.
Speaker 2:Just manual, like at home, by yourself.
Speaker 1:Manual at home.
Speaker 2:yeah, Just like one of the nights when you shower.
Speaker 1:I got this little gloss. It's like a brown hair gloss, so I did it last night in the shower.
Speaker 2:Last night, mm-hmm Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I did it because I felt like when I was watching the clips, my hair was just like a little too light. Well whatever you did, it looks good. Like I said, I'm trying to get 1% better every week.
Speaker 2:You notice anything different about me.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:You got a haircut.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I guess Fair enough.
Speaker 1:Anyways, if you're here and you're a listener of Waves or Tea for Lunch, you're going to like this show. It's a lot of similar topics, but instead of interviews, you're going to just get us and it's going to be really fun.
Speaker 2:You just get us.
Speaker 1:There's still more news, more pop culture. We're going to talk about signals and trends, like you mentioned, and, yes, sports.
Speaker 2:And we got stands this week. We do got stands. This week we do got boom arms, whatever you call them. We talked last time about how we're going to iterate we're already iterating. It's true next time we might have to have a different table because these stands are a little making a little top heavy.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and the other thing you'll notice is our everything just looks better like our cover went live. That was really exciting. Yes, we did this huge photo shoot and I had so much riding on this photo shoot. If I didn't look amazing in these photos it was going to be bad for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was nervous. I was nervous about the outcome because I know we've done shoots before where you or both of us didn't really like the outcome, and it wasn't because of the photography itself, it was just. Maybe it was something we were wearing, maybe it was our hair, maybe it was you know, whatever it could be. So, yeah, we put a lot into this one and we got a lot out of it. We feel pretty proud of the results.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was so fun to do it, like that day was so fun. We went in the studio, we worked with the photographer, I got my hair and makeup done, which was, yeah, life-changing, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that whole week I felt like I knew what it would be like to be married to Kim Kardashian or something just like, and you loved it right. I'm surprised we didn't have a crew at our house doing all of these things, yeah, so leading up, to everything you did, I'd be happy to.
Speaker 1:Thanks for asking.
Speaker 2:Leading up to everything, you did, I'd be happy to Thanks for asking.
Speaker 1:Leading up to the shoot, I did my hair, I got my eyebrows done, I got them laminated, I got Botox, I got a facial. I just did everything Because originally the concept for this shoot, like our podcast cover, was a close up shot of my face and I was like, oh boy, here we go. This is like you know, I haveup shot of my face and I was like, oh boy, here we go, this is like you know.
Speaker 2:I have to immortalize my face and make sure it looks really good like I'm not even in it.
Speaker 1:No, you were gonna be in it, but like I really cared about how my face was gonna look.
Speaker 2:It was gonna be more close-up, where previously our shoots have been more like styled and there's like a scene yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So it's still like I'm so happy with the final cover, it looks so good, um, but yeah, I was like really like did so many things to prep for this shoot and literally the night before I I've been doing, I've been appointments, appointments, appointments. The night before the shoot you were like, oh, I just remembered we have the shoot tomorrow. Like I have been planning and like my whole month revolved around like the date of the shoot and like working backwards to get everything done for the shoot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had booked a hair appointment, like a haircut, for the morning of and forgot kind of until the first the couple of days before, and fortunately the timing of the haircut worked OK because setup needed to happen and your makeup needed to happen at the studio. So it could have been dicey, but I glowed up, showed up, glowed up just in time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was funny too because we were like, we're not going to wear all black, we have to, like, bring lots of color. And so we did so many different, not so many different, but a couple different outfits with, like, light clothes and colorful clothes. And then the last outfits we did, we just like, let's just try it. So we threw on black clothes at the end, and then that's the one we ended up using for the cover.
Speaker 1:Yep, it was so fun. It was fun. I had like someone like blowing my hair. I had like a Beyonce treatment. It was so fun, yeah do you like? Doing photo shoots.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't necessarily say it's something that I like aspire to do often but, I enjoyed myself. I was gonna say our photographer, phil, who did that shoot, was just awesome. He was really good at making you feel comfortable and he was getting some poses out of you and some facial expressions letting you know when you're working or when maybe you need to change it up he was so good at directing us, yeah, even directing you it was hard to know sometimes who he was directing.
Speaker 1:So he'd be like give me some hip, and you know like throw him a little hip and he'd kind of look at me funny you're like, not you her yeah, exactly, no, you just stand still literally he'd get mike in his pose and, like you, would just stay still for 30 seconds and I have to do like this whole, like situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah my quads were sore after that just from like holding the same pose for so long, but we made it. We got a cover out of it and shout out to our team at arcade especially, I'd say, chester put a lot into the the mark itself, but it was definitely a team effort and this isn't something that we could do at this level if we didn't have a for sure an agency for sure, we are so lucky and blessed. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, Hashtag blessed. Well, this is going to be a good show. We have a few things to cover we're going to be talking about. Here's a quick summary of what we're going to talk about yeah, take us through it, Mitzi.
Speaker 1:So our latest chaotic TikTok fixation is Nutter Butter. Everyone's talking about Nutter Butter. We will be talking about Nutter Butter on this episode. We're three weeks into the school year and college students have given up on reading. Amazon prime is set to debut the hockey version of n? Sorry, nfl's red zone, but it's going to be a hockey version, so nhl it's a hockey version of the football red zone got it just notes on my script who wrote this? I wrote the first two as you, and in things that nobody asked for snapchat.
Speaker 2:Keeps trying to have a counterpoint to everything as they push their ar glasses forward. Yeah, that was a edit that I did on your initial script.
Speaker 1:I posted a story yesterday about how you gave me feedback.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:And it was very demure, very classy. Just for the record, this is not very demure, very classy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm learning a lot about giving feedback to Enneagram 3, virgo Alpha female.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're learning a lot, or you have learned a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I've learned a lot and I'm learning, always learning, Am I right? Married folks in the chat? But yeah, yesterday I think I don't, it was for a caption, it was for big things posts, yeah, yeah, and I had some thoughts, but I felt like it was good already, so I just wanted to make sure you knew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just loved subjective feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because that, like to me, is like I can take it or leave it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd say like a mantra a lot of people have in life is ask for forgiveness, not permission, and I live by that in a lot of contexts. But in marriage I would say it's the opposite it's ask for permission, not forgiveness. So here we are Great and that is a life lesson actually. Yes.
Speaker 1:I sent you a TikTok or a Reels and it was like this guy doing like man on the street interviews and he was like hey, hey, hey, like how long have you two been married? And he goes to like random couples that look like they've been married for a while and they're like oh, 25 years, like oh, 30 years, or like years, like oh, 30 years, or like 15 years, and they're like what's the secret to marriage? And, without fail all of them in this compilation, they're like just do what she says, she is always right I sent it to you, yeah all right thing.
Speaker 2:One today in unhinged tiktok. Before I say what it is, I gotta. I gotta comment on the fact that last week we were saying how unhinged is very third wave.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:And kind of over. And now this week for the first story we're kind of celebrating unhinged. But this one really takes it to a whole new level.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Nutter Butter is blowing people's minds and truthfully making everybody uncomfortable. It's a name on every marketer's lips right now because of their truly crazy TikTok, and I would say like I was a fan for a while of Wendy's social content and the way they did on Hinge, but this makes it just look so tame.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's like disturbing. It reminds me of that video game that like is really violent and graphic. It's when they like like hijack cars grand theft auto. Yes, because some of them are kind of like crime scene vibes. Yeah, yeah, I guess scene of the crime, kind of.
Speaker 2:Thing but it's like a chocolate bar, like, not like is it a chocolate bar or it's like a peanut butter sandwich or something like that, like a peanut butter cookie sandwich?
Speaker 1:hmm, isn't that kind of like a chocolate bar? It's a packaged snack.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any chocolate, though, oh really I don't think so, it's just a peanut butter bar Interesting. Where's our fact checkers when we need them?
Speaker 1:Well, the brand account. Sorry is it?
Speaker 2:It's a cookie, but with like peanut butter in the middle, like filling.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 1:It's a cookie, but with, like peanut butter in the middle like filling yes, yeah, that's the mess of the crime scene, anyway, totally yeah. It's like everyone's freaking out about this account, and I did a deep dive on what's going on with this account, how it started, why it's happening, and I was really impressed to see that it's an account that's run by an agency, which is so shocking to me because this screams in-house. Like in order to post content that unhinged, that disturbing, you really need buy-in from, like, the top of the food chain, and so, like we work in agency. Like to get that kind of buy-in from a client is so hard to do, and, and not only that, they committed to this whole strategy, this unhinged TikTok, for over a year before it started to see fruit, and that's another thing that's so impressive to me is like this agency got buy-in from a client to do this kind of content and they also got buy-in to stick with it, like for over a year before they started to see returns on it.
Speaker 2:You know what I think. It is what I think. There isn't really approvals happening. You know the. You know even you tell this story kind of when you talk about how you got into marketing and even at the magazine that you worked at, you were responsible for social media on the on the marketing team, even though you were very junior, and I feel like you kind of talk about that time as like the higher ups didn't really care. It was like an afterthought to them. Social media was a non-factor cause. They just weren't accustomed to it. I feel like that there's brands that are still like that with Tik TOK and especially like older, like Gen X or even Boomer, like executive level leaders that are just like they care about Instagram and probably maybe X or whatever else, but TikTok to them is just still where kids are dancing, so they don't really take it seriously and I feel like a lot of brands get away with doing things that they otherwise wouldn't because some of the upper leadership don't really care that much actually so.
Speaker 1:This is their social strategy. It's like instagram too, and apparently I was like reading this article about it. The client is like on board.
Speaker 2:They're like down for this well, I know there's like a social media person. Yeah, on the client side but I want I'm just I don't know if there's like much more of an approval process than that.
Speaker 1:Maybe, yeah, yeah it's like whatever's on their brain.
Speaker 1:The other cool thing about this is it's run by an agency and originally like there's a, there's a lore to this account and it all kind of like comes to a head with this like person named Aiden.
Speaker 1:So a lot of their content is about this like Aiden character. It's like they'll have like Aiden kind of like in their content, like the word A-I-D-E-N, and apparently the root of that was over a year ago. There was this marketing student who decided to comment on Nutter Butter's Instagram account every single day for over a year with just the name Aiden and that's his, his name, like his first name, aiden, and then people in the comments start to like it, start to engage with it. They were also starting to post Aiden, so then the social team integrated Aiden into the actual content and then that person, aiden, who started that, eventually became an intern at the agency that ran the social account and now he's part of the creative social team that runs the whole account yeah, file that under creative ways to get a job no kidding, I think it's super cool it kind of reminds me of.
Speaker 2:I don't like, we both follow lots of meme accounts, but I and I don't know if we pay as much attention to them as we used to, because they're just less culturally relevant. But um, I remember there would be a lot of meme accounts where there's this one account that would always be like one of the first to comment and they'd always say something witty. I want to say his handle was like farrokh or something like that, and then people would start to even comment and be like I, I beat farrokh to the comment section, like stuff like that right or some people would get annoyed with him and like get out of here.
Speaker 1:Like yeah, not that deep. It's not all about you, you know, not you again.
Speaker 2:Um, or I remember there's another guy that used to comment on everything about kanye and he would always comment the same thing. It was always like yay, da goat no cap or something like that, and he was in every comment section.
Speaker 1:But and now today we have those like spam bots accounts that are like dm me this and get like a thousand dollars yeah take us back to when just real people were spamming the comment section I know. Anyways, aiden got the job aiden got the job, but it's super cool to see netter butter blow up. It's not personally the content that resonates with me. It's like really not my brand of content, like I'm personally like not engaged with it, but I can like look objectively at the situation and I respect it yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:I don't think it would be the type of content that's in my algorithm, but I have to admit I spent a while scrolling through their, their tiktoks, just being like deeply, strangely fascinated I don't captivated.
Speaker 1:I saw a few and I there was some I like couldn't even watch the whole thing. I feel like it was like glitching my brain out. Like that can't be good for you to like glitch.
Speaker 2:Maybe it is, maybe it's. Maybe you just need a hard reset once in a while.
Speaker 1:I probably do Ayahuasca.
Speaker 2:That's kind of what it feels like.
Speaker 1:Like imagine you're pitching something like this to a client like a creative idea. It's like let's go off the rails. Like here's a sample grid. Yeah, like I can't picture a sample grid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I can't picture, I don't think I have the like finesse or the like presentation skills to get this. You don't have the twisted mind to even come up with.
Speaker 1:No, I for sure couldn't come up with this, but I just I don't. I think what blows my mind is that they brought this to the client and the client's like approved, like how did they get that approved? It's like that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:That's where I really don't think there's much of an approval process. One because it happened, but two because it kept going for a year with very little success. Like it's a year later now that they're finally going viral. And it's not even because it finally caught on. It's because this one influencer on Tik TOK posted about it and her video went viral, and now it's picked up.
Speaker 1:all this traction and a bunch of other influencers started doing similar tiktoks to her, just making the rounds in like the marketing circles. Yeah, because we were like just shook, it was like lightning struck and now it took off.
Speaker 2:But what does nutter butter have to lose? They were not relevant before this. They probably had their traditional media channels that reached their typical audience and helped them grow their five to ten percent a year, maybe, or just stay static.
Speaker 1:So apparently the client is like a company that owns several different snack brands, and nutter butter is one of their portfolios yeah companies I mean, it's not dunkaroos they gotta, they need they kind of needed lightning to strike right.
Speaker 1:That's what is like when people ask me what's your dream account and or your dream client, I always say like a snack brand, because I think snack brands have the flexibility and like to just do something crazy. But now I'm like I don't think I could dream up something this crazy, like do I even deserve a snack brand? Do I deserve my dream client? Because I truly, like I for for sure can come up with this. And then I think about like hey, what if someone on our team brought this to us and was like let's try something like this.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing is, how much longevity does a strategy like this have? Like they've done it for a year, but without much success, until they had a moment, and now they have this big hit of press and attention. But like, how much longer do people want to watch that type of content?
Speaker 1:true, but do you think it's going to be kind of like immortalized like wendy's is like wendy's in marketing circles. It's like the, the example that everyone goes to when you think of like unhinged social content or tone of voice. So I kind of feel. I don't think so no but also this article I read was talking about how like this is really so Gen Alpha, like coded, because Gen Alpha is response to this kind of content.
Speaker 2:Jen Alpha, we need to get you in the chat. We need you to let us know is this stuff that you would keep watching, or is it just disturbing enough to grab your attention for a moment, and would it cause you to try Nutter Butters?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the other side of it, because we always talk about how content needs to be educational, entertaining or inspiring.
Speaker 2:It's a cliche, because it's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's the other thing that I was thinking about with, like, my dream content, like, or my dream client, like I want a snack brand, because also, their marketing isn't really tied to business growth, it's more so tied to brand awareness.
Speaker 2:Right and just brand affinity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's doing the job. I mean, everyone's talking about Nutter Butter right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think this kind of content could generate affinity with a very niche audience, but I don't think it has long-term mass appeal. I want to ask you something well, I think it could.
Speaker 1:I want to ask you something. Okay, I was thinking about nutter butter and I wonder if we need to have a space to just go wild and be crazy and just like do off the rail stuff. It's obviously not going to be in arcades channels and we're not at a place we can like propose this to a client. What if we had, like, an arcade burner account?
Speaker 2:would we have an audience on it, or it's like zero.
Speaker 1:But it can be kind of like I mean, people listening would know it existed, right, but it could just be like where we just crash around, get a little unhinged but I'm trying to understand, like is there, does this have a niche audience, or is it like, just for us? I don't know you don't know, I just want like are we missing out on like potential?
Speaker 2:you want me to answer as, like the like with my CEO, hat on no, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Why? Because it's unbillable.
Speaker 2:I'm scared to look at our utilization and all the non-billable time.
Speaker 1:I knew it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Already we're hemorrhaging non-billable hours just with all these kinds of projects.
Speaker 1:I understand Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, well, the other idea that I had.
Speaker 1:Actually, if we're not going to do an arcade burner account, what I think we could do is do a digital art gallery that's dedicated to celebrating human error. So we've been like with scan club. We were talking about ai and how ai is like. There's so many I mean, every day there's like another ai feature, another ai tool, another way to like get smarter with like writing content, creating captions, like creating ad variations, like really like the machine you can like plug in, like who am I talking to and what am I selling, and it'll like come up with like a million variations of ad creative and things like that. You could try and test.
Speaker 1:But I thought it was like sometimes when you're looking at content, when I look at content, I'm like, oh, it's really cool to see and think about the team that did this. And I actually saw a piece of content or an ad creative and the credits to that ad were in there and it was like the photographer, the video team, the assistants, the set designer, like so many people go into making great beautiful content and you know, good advertising takes a team. So I thought it'd be cool to like really start celebrating those like human moments. I think anyone who works in digital content or marketing, like you live and die by your typos and like you really do everything you can to like avoid those mistakes. But what if we like flip that a little bit and just had like a tumblr-esque kind of like page that just like celebrated those human mistakes?
Speaker 2:I think you're onto something there. I would love it if it was like kind of crowdsourced too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not just from our team, but that just like celebrated those human mistakes. I think you're onto something there.
Speaker 2:I would love it if it was like kind of crowdsourced too. Yeah, not just from our team, but from all the marketing homies around the world, all our designer friends.
Speaker 1:Totally Like five years ago if I saw a typo in a subject line that I got from like a brand, I'd be like oh my gosh, how embarrassing. But now I'm like okay, oh my gosh, how embarrassing. But now I'm like okay, like so-and-so wrote that line, like that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like this. We'd love to see it. Oh really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's unbillable.
Speaker 2:That's okay.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's like for the industry.
Speaker 1:It's for the people. Yeah, okay, so we'll keep you posted on that once we get that going, because I think it'd be really fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, start creating a folder for all your typos and the social posts that you publish that you shouldn't have.
Speaker 1:You know what I was also thinking? It'd be fun to like you know those I don't remember exactly what airline it was, but there was like a social media manager for an airline that just like lost it one day and they like tweeted some like intentional, like profanity riddled tweets and it went crazy viral and everyone's like what's going to happen to the social media manager? They're obviously getting fired. And then the like airline company had to come out and be like you know, this is what we decided to do with this person. We're not going to fire them, we're just going to move them into a different department. But that was also a moment where, like, their human emotions got ahead of them and they like just kind of like lost it on the job, and I also want to celebrate that why do you want to celebrate that?
Speaker 1:because it's so human, like all of us like obviously it's not professional and obviously it's like not something we want to like model, like we don't want to like advocate for you know, losing your temper on social, but it's like it's showing you like okay, like there are days where you just like have a bad day on the job and sometimes you can work under people that like don't support you and don't understand you and you're using the tools you have to speak out or whatever. It's like not good, obviously, but I also thought that was like would be an interesting example to show in a little gallery.
Speaker 2:I don't think that belongs in the same concept, but I think that could go on a burner account.
Speaker 1:Okay, burner account sweet, All right. All right, let's talk about another thing.
Speaker 2:Thing two. Yeah, students aren't reading, why not? Like what students Like university students Like university students.
Speaker 1:Right. So college students and high school students aren't reading this year, and this is not just like my perception. There's an article in Teen Vogue that talks about it.
Speaker 2:But basically college professors are starting to pare down their required reading because students just aren't reading, and some of the factors that are contributing to this is distraction from devices or social media, and then attention spans are just getting shorter, which checks out the thing is and I was trying to while we prepped I was trying to find some data around this, but I I'm just curious if university students have been big on reading for a long time, like is this a notable trend or shift in the last few years or with a specific generation, or is it just like it's been like this for a long time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the article was talking. They interviewed a bunch of like college professors and apparently pre-COVID which, like everything has changed post-covid. But pre-covid they'd like do a signed reading and then they'd ask questions about it and everyone would like shoot up their hands. And so now, post-covid, they're back in the classroom doing the same thing and they're getting like crickets and I think they they're trying to get to the root of. Is it that they're shy? They don't have like the confidence to talk about, you know, answer a question in front of their peers, but what it seems to be is that people just haven't done the reading and so people are like professors shortening their reading lists and things like that in order to spark more engagement from their students interesting.
Speaker 2:I honestly would have thought it was more about, like, social skills, post-covid yeah. Yeah, but I didn't read much in university, did you no? I barely read in university, and we went to university a while ago.
Speaker 1:I know A long time ago, forever ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I even even the textbooks for the classes I didn't really want to spend too much time in the textbooks.
Speaker 1:Do you remember how expensive those textbooks?
Speaker 2:were yes, I still have PTSD from those costs.
Speaker 1:It was like $900 for like a semester.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:And it was like four, three pages for the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like I don't know why you price a book at such a high cost.
Speaker 2:It's almost like they think that if you have the knowledge contained in these pages, you can do anything like I'm not going to take these that knowledge and run like I have to actually learn how to do this totally we all read those textbooks and we came out of university feeling like we still had a like we barely knew anything yeah, and at least my textbooks too were like communication studies, like right, it's not, it's not like a medical journal and a lot of it is like business case studies and stuff like that too, so it's like not even original thought. It's just talking about an example right.
Speaker 1:The other thing that was so frustrating about college is like do you remember if you'd started a new class, you'd get like the syllabus, yeah, and the days of those classes were corresponding to like the reading for that day, so you had like homework before you even started. So you're like sitting in this class, got your syllabus and you're like already behind yeah, did you ever do the reading before? The first class.
Speaker 2:No way did you ever even go to the first class like yeah, sometimes I, I feel like most.
Speaker 1:So many people just skipped the syllabus class I know, know, but you were already behind, like you, even if you got there on time, you were behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like something isn't right about that.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of things that aren't right about the school system. It's a racket, I'm telling you.
Speaker 1:Well, we can move on to the next thing. I don't want to get into that kind of conversation. You don't want to get my political views on education not today cool. Save that for once we have a little bit more audience affinity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go. Thing three amazon is going to debut nhl's version of the nfl's red zone for the 2024 regular season nhl version of the nfl red zone got it say that five times fast.
Speaker 2:So we talked about Amazon last week, just like we talked about unhinged stuff. We've got a bit of a theme going already, just two weeks in, because we talked about them last week, because Amazon Prime has a Thursday Night Football deal and they're testing AI features and all that stuff. Go back to episode one and listen to that. But it seems like they're pushing even further into the sports category with the NHL, whose regular season is starting just in a matter of weeks. So a little bit of context into what NFL's Red Zone is, just so you can understand what the NHL and Amazon Prime is trying to do. Nfl Red Zone is a program on Sundays, because most of the NFL's games fall on Sunday. It's probably like 25, 28 games or something like that 28 games in one day.
Speaker 2:There's a morning slate and an afternoon slate and that's what's captured in Red Zone. None of the primetime games are in Red Zone. So Thursday night football, sunday night football, monday night football those are all single primetime games. Those are outside of Red Zone. But Red Zone is basically five hours of nonstop programming, from the beginning of the morning slate to the end of the afternoon slate on Sundays. And the best part about it is that there's no commercials, because more and more as you watch single games in any sport, there's so many commercial breaks and they're long.
Speaker 2:It almost feels like I have to check this in terms of the actual times, but sometimes it feels like you're watching more commercials than you are actually watching sports.
Speaker 2:So that's what red zone does and it's just this like non-stop adrenaline hit. It's great for people and that like betting, which sports betting has really taken off as regulations have changed not me, but um. It's also great for people in fantasy sports, like if you've drafted players on a team and you're competing with your friends and you have specific players that you want to watch. You get all the big plays and you don't miss a thing. So that's what makes NFL Red Zone interesting and that's what it sounds like Amazon Prime is trying to tap into with the NHL.
Speaker 2:The interesting thing is they're going to be doing it on Thursday nights, which I thought was odd because it's at the same time as their Thursday night football programming, which just seems like you're kind of splitting your audience. But then it's also interesting because NHL's games aren't as concentrated in a single day as NFL's are. So where NFL on Sunday, you're getting like 26 games or whatever in that five-hour window. Thursday night, for hockey maybe there's like five or six, and there's not a red zone, there's not like a scoring zone where you know that a touchdown is about to happen.
Speaker 1:It's just like constant back and forth.
Speaker 2:So I kind of wonder if, in the NHL's version, if maybe some of the what you're going to be seeing is going to be after it happened, as opposed to. Yeah, it's almost like highlights, but just moments later, as opposed to highlights hours later, once the game is done, you know. So, yeah, curious to see what's going to happen with that, how it'll be received. I'm going to try it, I'm going to watch it and see what happens.
Speaker 1:Oh, you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sports baby, you are too. No, by proxy.
Speaker 1:I don't know about Red Zone. You know I've really progressed in my journey as an NFL fan this year. The one thing that I cannot get into is Red Zone. It's so intense and I think I just get so wrapped into what like one game and those players and everything leading up to that game, and then it's like I'm watching that game and then suddenly they're switching to another game. It's like a whole other set of players and you're like, well wait, what happened to that other game?
Speaker 2:that's interesting and yeah, because that is now that you're saying that that is kind of taking away the things that you like more, which is like the in-between moments. I'm like give me the splash plays. You're like give me the stuff that happens after the whistle or before kickoff.
Speaker 1:And the thing that's annoying too in red zone is like there'll be like an injury on the field and like they'll do like a whole like replay, slow motion. This is what happened. Look at this guy he's on the floor and like let's see what kind of like coming in and it's like, oh, go into the next game. And this guy scored a touchdown. It's just like the emotional roller coaster, like I want to know what happened to that injured player yeah, and also like too quickly sometimes yeah and I'm like, but where do I find out what happened?
Speaker 1:and then, when they go back to the game, it's like the game continues and goes on right?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of like dividing the audiences a little bit, where maybe these more intense programs are for more intense fans not me and fantasy sports players.
Speaker 2:And then the single game opportunities are more for, like intro level fans or fans of a specific team that don't necessarily just need the highlight reel, cool, well, anyways, it's going to be called amazon prime, coast to coast. It'll be happening on thursdays at 7 pm, starting october 4th, I think, is the debut. So so check it out, let us know what you think. Let us know if you're more of a single game before and after, in between the plays, kind of watcher Watcher is not the right word Fan Kind of fan. Or if you're a Red Zone kind of fan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm neither.
Speaker 2:Neither. I don't think you went from like yeah, I'm really getting into sports now to like yeah, I don't like any version of these games.
Speaker 1:I just, yeah, I don't know, it doesn't sound like it's for me.
Speaker 2:Before we move on. I think one of the things and one of the reasons I thought this was an interesting story is it reminds me of a signal that we talked about a few months ago with Scan Club at Arcade, where streaming services were starting to change the way that they do programming for TVs and movies to be less like complex plots and more what they called for second screen watching, and that was a response to what they perceived audiences to be doing while watching, which is mostly being on their phone or talking to each other, or even watching in groups right um, and the shows needing to be simple enough and even like, repetitive enough that if you're distracted you're not missing the plot, and that was super interesting.
Speaker 2:And we started to see signals, too, around music getting shorter and songs getting shorter because, people have shorter attention spans, but also because of algorithms and social platforms, where these songs are getting clipped, and even some of them are getting popular because of their use on a channel like TikTok or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think all of our attention spans are shorter. I also find that like for me to sit for two hours and watch something like. It's really hard for me to just focus on one thing, it's true, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like. And so actually there's this influencer I follow, tinks. She rates shows and movies based on like how much she's paying attention to her phone while she watches them. So some shows she's like I didn't even look at my phone, so you know like okay, that's a good show. Or you're like, oh, I was like on my phone like half the time, like pretty average, you know.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of like how we're watching content, at least television yeah, it's been honestly a big shift for you, because we used to love movies, used to love watching movies. We'd watch movies at home. We'd go to the theater, we'd get popcorn and diet coke, yeah, and candy, the whole gamut. But now it's like I, I'll suggest movies. Sometimes you're like, nah, do we need to?
Speaker 1:I just don't find movies like that engaging these days and I feel bad because, like I really respect the art of filmmaking, like I, I really do see, like the humans behind the camera.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just kind of feel guilty about it because like it is like a beautiful thing like filming and like storytelling through film, like it's beautiful thing and like I'm a fan of like the Oscars and like you know that kind of stuff. But I just find movies kind of boring these days, like it's just really hard to sit and engage. And it's funny because, like I also like long-form content but like I just have a hard time with like scripted movies, I guess yeah. I don't know it's been, it's been.
Speaker 1:It's been a really tough season for me in movies they're just not second screen enough for you maybe, and it reminds me I'm reading um Matthew Perry's memoir, which is really good.
Speaker 1:I'm actually listening to it, so I'm like hearing him talk. But it they talked about or he talked about in his book about when friends aired and when it aired it became like the number one show and it got this like really like special prime time spot and it was at like 9 PM on a, a Thursday and he reminded listeners in the book that in those days you planned your life around the shows you would watch. So you'd like rush home to be able to watch the show and then so that was a huge deal, like when you were positioned in the evening and that would like help catapult the show. Or like you have to earn certain spots and like get certain ratings. But now, since, like we can access anything and any show and any piece of content at any time, it just makes it feel like a little like less special. You almost like need the second screen to prop up these shows that make you even want to watch it, like sometimes those shows like reality shows that I want to watch because everyone's talking about it.
Speaker 2:So like it's part of like the marketing, for that show is my second screen yeah, like half the fun of consuming a show or a movie at this point is like reacting with your friends or your or this cohort of people that are consuming it in real time and reacting to it at the same time totally like having a take on it yeah, like we were late to game of thrones, but that was a huge part of game of thrones being so popular was people anticipated sunday nights when the new episode came out, everyone was reacting to it, and if you weren't, you were missing out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that reminds me. In university I interned in dc and, like our whole house, it was like 50 interns on Thursday nights I'm pretty sure it's Thursday nights the whole house would gather for two shows, and one was the Office, which I didn't watch. I skipped that gathering. Yeah, I know, can you believe it? I'm like love the Office now.
Speaker 1:The other one is Project Runway, which was where me and my friends hung out and it's so funny because, like that was a big part of our social life, like getting together with your friends and watching the show that would air on tv at a certain time, right it's crazy, but like we don't really like watch shows with our friends anymore, I kind of want to though with our friends like our actual friends or just like as a social activity yeah, in real life yeah, I kind of was thinking we should maybe have a watch party for the golden bachelor bachelorette well, I was just remembering.
Speaker 2:I feel like there was a little bit of that, even like four or five years ago, pre-covid, but like friends getting together to watch the bachelor and stuff like that and even speaking of fantasy sports before. Sometimes people even do pools around shows like that yeah. Like American Idol, you like, pick your winners and your favorites and you get points for how long your people stay in and if the one you picked gets to the end.
Speaker 1:I feel like that would be fun. Yeah, it reminds me like bingo. We talked about that last week, about like bingo becoming like a really hot social activity. Yeah, for millennials. Activity for millennials, elder millennials For us. For us.
Speaker 2:Anyways, do you want to go to the thing? Four, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm actually shocked that you brought this up at the top of the, because I didn't know if we were going to go here, but I'm down yeah let's do it. Let's do it Okay. Snaptap is making AR glasses, but I'm down. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it Okay. Snaptap is making AR glasses. Tech companies are so obsessed with making AR glasses, which have so far been rejected.
Speaker 2:They are so obsessed.
Speaker 1:Well, they are. They're so obsessed with it and it's like we're not there, you know, okay. So just so you know who's obsessed with making AR glasses, meta has collabed with Ray-Bans to create their like AR glasses. Apple released Vision Pro, which we both tried a few months ago, a few weeks ago, it was pretty cool. Be honest, would you buy one?
Speaker 2:If it was cheaper yeah, like the Vision Pro is definitely cost prohibitive If they had priced them at even like $1,500 or $1,000 or just under $1,000.
Speaker 1:It was more than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're like $3,500 USD or something like that.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 2:It's like by the time the exchange rate hits. For us Canadians it's like close to $5,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shout out to our friend Gary, who has Vision Pros, and let us both try it when we were in Vancouver. It's a really cool experience because you can like watch a movie and like be in a field. I was watching this like movie about, um, what was the animal? Rhinos?
Speaker 2:I don't know you watched it, I didn't watch it right, I didn't watch it. Right, I didn't watch it with you I watched Free Running Parkour.
Speaker 1:Oh right, Parkour. So they have these like a sorry, no vision, pro movies that you can watch and you can like the scene that comes up to you like in your AR glasses. And I watched one with rhinos and I was like get these.
Speaker 2:You've never been so close to a rhino.
Speaker 1:Too close for me and I watched um like an mls game, but you're literally on the field yeah and I was getting nauseous.
Speaker 2:I was like this is too much activity for me yeah, it like reminds me of when 3d movies started to become a thing and something would fly out at the screen, at you, and I still don't like 3d make you jump yeah, they're like a worse version of this by far this is the new levels levels Okay.
Speaker 1:So Apple released their Vision Pros this year. Amazon also sells Alexa infused glasses with their own sort of like mob boss aesthetic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, google it.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, and so Snapchat is entering the AR glasses scene. They're releasing their own AR glasses, which so far have been rejected by consumers yeah, I just find snapchat, their delivery of things is like off-putting to me.
Speaker 2:maybe I'm not the audience because I'm, like you said so nicely, I'm an elder millennial, um, so maybe I'm just missing, I'm not the part of the target demographic, but I just feel like they're trying to position Snapchat itself, the platform, as like an anti-social media platform which, let's just be honest, it's social media. I get what you're trying to do, but it's not landing for me. And then now, with their AR glasses, they're trying to frame it as like anti-computer or anti-device, like it's like supposed to be a replacement for those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which, yeah, I understand Vision Pro is doing that as well. It's like bringing those screens or those functions into your natural environment. But it's just the tone and the message that they're using, specifically compared to Apple and Meta, that just doesn't sit with me. It just feels snarky. Yeah, or like smarter than you.
Speaker 1:Totally, and I think Snaps glasses take their like filters and put them in your real life, which, like nobody needs that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like that seems like a gimmick and waste of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not about we're not into AR for the filters, no. But speaking of meta, they do have those ray brand ray-ban collab glasses, but they also just dropped new ar glasses called orion and I was seeing some content around those and they actually look interesting. I feel like meta is going to be the antidote to the. The cost prohibitive nature of the vision pros like apple's going to be this like premium positioned product that very few can afford and justify and then meta is going to be the mass appeal one.
Speaker 2:That is almost as good, because it seems like they're more. They look more like sunglasses, they're not like those huge goggles that go on your face right but they have similar functions but they're lightweight. You can still see your surroundings and kind of like transparency mode with AirPods. It's like I feel like with glasses instead of goggles. You feel way more a part of reality, like when I was trying the Vision Pro. I'm sure you get used to it, but they're heavy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they do feel like goggles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it still feels like, even though you can see through them, that you're separate from what you're seeing.
Speaker 1:They are heavy because Gary who bought them, whose glasses we tried, he was doing neck exercises to make his neck stronger. Yeah, shout out to Gary.
Speaker 2:Drop your neck routine. But I don't know if he did that for Vision Pro or just because he wants a strong neck.
Speaker 1:Oh, who knows?
Speaker 2:Just wants to be a thick neck daddy. You know, I kind of want to be a thick neck daddy too. Say that five times fast. Back to the AR glasses.
Speaker 1:Totally. It's not for me. I feel like the theme of this episode is like this is not for me.
Speaker 2:I'm blushing because I said thick neck daddy, I can't believe you said that. I know I don't have anything else to say about that.
Speaker 1:The only thing I have to say is that, like snapchat, can do whatever it wants and it's just like a space I avoid as a consumer and as a parent right. Right End of story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, miss me with Snapchat.
Speaker 1:Miss me with Snapchat.
Speaker 2:You heard it here first, I'm still an Instagram guy and I think I'm going to eventually try the meta glasses.
Speaker 1:Okay, I could see you rocking those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they kind of look like creative director glasses too, so it's like a good aesthetic. Too bad you weren't the creative director. I know, but I can, I'm still like an agency guy totally yeah, you're the ceo yeah, I guess some days janitor some days well, like usual, we didn't really plan how we were going to end this thing but I do have our infamous gong so any last words instagram, like, subscribe.
Speaker 1:Check us out on youtube thank you for listening and see you next friday.
Speaker 2:Let us know your favorite AR glasses. I hate that thing. Why? This is the real stuff. It's too loud. It's like a legit drum brand. Oh really, yeah. It's like an actual instrument Only the best for big things.