GAIN Momentum - Lessons from Leaders in Hospitality, Travel, Food Service, & Technology

​GAIN Momentum episode #50- The Medium Is Still the Message for Digital Marketing | with John Marraffino
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the GAIN Momentum podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in travel, food service, hospitality, and technology. I'm joined by my co host here, Chris Tomseth, and our special guest today is John Marifino, the founder, owner, and president of VMC Media, a company that specializes in advertising for the travel and hospitality So, Jon, before we get into our first key question that we ask all guests, I'm wondering if you could give us a background on what VMC Media does and how that's changed over the past 30 years.
John Marraffino: Thank you, Adam and Chris. So, I founded VMC Media in 1996, which is almost 30 years ago if I'm dating myself. And when we started, it was a pretty simple business. We had three major networks. We had some out of home companies. We had some magazines. And I remember making presentations to clients. We had a tendency as advertising practitioners to make things so complicated and in hindsight, like, you know, the radio buy like 15 slides and the TV buy and in hindsight, we made it more complicated perhaps than it should have been.
fast forward to today, I probably would say that a guy like me could not get into the business and do what I did. Today, you gotta be a data scientist or a PhD in data. So it's, the market is. Change drastically. We've evolved over the years, so we started as a traditional agency, and then, as digital became a force, we slowly evolved our dollars, our clients budgets to digital, and, you know, I'm a big believer, depending on the size of the business, I'm a big believer in, in adjustments.
when you got a big shift, you want to make adjustments, you don't want to make hard turns, especially some, some national brands or regional brands. So over the years, of course, we've, uh, added, uh, digital, all forms of it, and, uh, now we're probably, I'd say, 50 50, digital, traditional. We still do TV, radio, out of home.
And of course, the social and the programmatic and so forth. And there's a whole bunch of new interesting tools that I think are great for the travel industry that are coming up. You know, we represent about 40 clients. I'd say maybe 30 40 percent of our business is travel or travel related. So we've got a good skew.
That was intentional on my part. Gives us an excuse to go to places like the Bahamas or wherever when there's meetings. so that's in a nutshell. And just as background, we grew this company to be one of the largest independents. We're an independent company. In the country, uh, right up, before COVID.
COVID affected us disproportionately because we're obviously at a strong travel category. So I don't know if I could make that claim yet, but as far as independence, we're a force in Canada to be reckoned with.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, as that as a background, let's dive into our first question. So Jon, when it comes to scaling a business, what is the single piece of advice you would give entrepreneurs from your perspective as a professional in the travel technology industry? Okay.
John Marraffino: I'll break that up, I guess, into two parts. I mean, there's one question is, you know, what does it take to be a businessman, entrepreneur, and grow a business? And the other is, You know, more technical, and maybe I'll handle the technical part. And we made this mistake over the years, numerous times, as you might appreciate software and hardware is changing so rapidly that when we first started getting into it, at one point we built our own software, built our own hardware, and we also tried to onboard things that were super complex.
So we've tried and failed numerous times. I guess the number one thing I will say is, you know, there's so much out, stuff out there from a technology perspective that I think the key thing is you want to keep it, number one, keep it simple. Number two, don't try to build or buy stuff, just lease it, use it, white label it, because you can plug in and plug out whatever you need as things change.
so, one of the mistakes we made in the past was, uh, exactly that, trying to build our own tech and or, trying to onboard technology that, frankly required more time to run than it was worth. So, I think if I can say one thing is When you're choosing your technology, A, keep it simple and keep it flexible.
Don't buy it, white label, rent it and make it plug as much as you can plug and play. No one has a crystal ball because no one knows what's coming. So I think the most important thing is whatever you decide to sign on to, focus on keeping it simple and keeping it flexible for, uh, for the future. All right.
I mean, from a business perspective, you know, there's a million things that I could speak to. I always. and you know, we're B2B obviously. So I always, when we started the business, I would always try to walk into a potential client. With the thought of you're going to have to tell them something that they don't already know, and I think we all understand and realize that.
You, you hate when you're sitting in a creative presentation where somebody brings you an idea you could have thought about on your own. We're a media company, we don't do creative, but I took the same approach. So, whether, it's B2B or B2C, you always want to position things in, take that extra time, It's easy to check the boxes, but take that extra time and say, okay, I'm going to walk into this person or people in a boardroom.
I'd better be bringing them something that they would not have thought of on their own. Whether they buy it or not is irrelevant, but it shows that you're thinking outside the box and it shows that you're original and creative. So one, I think one of the elements of our success in the past has been that philosophy.
And I would, when we started the business, I'm not kidding you, if I had a presentation, you know, in three weeks, sometimes I couldn't sleep. I would, it would just keep spinning in my head. What can I say? What can I say? What can I say? And sometimes I wouldn't come up with it till like, you know, a few hours before the presentation.
But it's easy in all business to go with your template and check the boxes, regionality, seasonality, allocation of budget. But you gotta go in and tell something to people that they would not have normally. You gotta make them see, oh, that's interesting. Whether or not they buy it or not, you have to do that, right?
So, that would be my thought from a business perspective.
Chris Tomseth: Jon, do you have a, uh, a most memorable or a really particularly memorable example of, uh, maybe where you did that with a client and presented something that just made them
John Marraffino: Yeah, I think, we launched a smart car here in Canada which is owned by Mercedes and Mercedes were globally aligned with the multinational, but we handled the Canadian launch, A smart car. We held it for about four years and they continued their global alignment.
But I remember when we were, you know, at the time, the most obvious thing for a car launch is television. Um, that was the most obvious thing. And I remember looking at this car and I thought to myself, this car is surreal. It's not real. It's up here and, if you just go with a typical television ad and I'm watching television amongst the multiple channels over there, people say, is that a European thing?
Is it's not real. So the pitch was, you know, let's make this real. Take the car from up here and bring it down to the ground and I said avoid the whole branding exercise, which is a no no, right? Skip it and just start taking out black and white ads and newspapers and billboards on the street saying the car is 199, 000 as if it's already been on sale for ever.
So you're making it real by just Your messaging being, this car is on sale and it's there, it's in front of you, it's it's not up here. So and I'm probably doing a bad, not explaining this very well, but it was to bring the car from some notion of what looks like a vehicle here to make it real.
It's on the street, it's for sale, it's 199 a month, for instance, right? that was, one example, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Well, you're, you're getting back to the medium as the message, you know, we, we talked about this before the call. We can mention it now, the whole Marshall McLuhan principle is, as I interpret what you said is that rather than try to launch the smart car and make it this new, new thing that was a little bit esoteric and out there by putting it in the black and black and white and having like a.
A half page near the back or somewhere like that, it seemed like those ads were running for a long time and therefore it made it seem like the car had been on the market for a long time.
John Marraffino: Correct. And it made it real. And I'll give you another example may pertain, and I won't mention the cause, but we were pitching a paint company, right? So, again, when you get the brief, it's like, here's your target, your demographics, here's your regionality, here's your timing, you know, when we're sitting around putting the plan together, you know, instead of saying, you know, who's the target, how old are they, where are they living, what is that, we, basically, the question was, how can you own colour?
and you all know this, if you ask a different question, you get a different answer. So, when you say, how can you own colour, then all things open up. So, in the first. Uh, scenario, you know, again, X percent on broadcast, X percent on print, X percent on digital. In the second scenario, you start to think about, well, maybe we should advertise in the makeup section.
Maybe we should advertise in the barrier section. but maybe we should advertise, you know, like, where can you own color? Right? we have tried over the years, not always successful, obviously, but, uh, to bring, uh, clients ideas that they would not normally think of, and sometimes they're a little out there, they don't buy into them.
but, uh, that is something that I think has resulted in part to our success over the years.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I think that's a great lesson is bringing new ideas forward and being courageous in bringing them forward, then presenting them in a great light that can be received to give that idea the breadth it needs. And I have seen that as a lot of ideas die on the vine simply because they aren't conveyed in a simple or accessible manner.
John Marraffino: Especially in digital meetings, I act as translator sometimes, you know, because, you know, a lot of practitioners after a few, they assume that the client knows all the terminology and they just go off and you have to literally act as a translator is what he meant, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: we work. more or less in the travel and hospitality space. And right now there is an issue in that space as it relates to awareness and just the competitiveness where hotel brands are competing against juggernauts like Expedia and booking for for share of mind and then travel destinations the world is open.
So I'm wondering if you could lens this idea of bringing one idea forward. What Is one idea that you would recommend for hotels and or DMOs, destination marketing organizations, to enhance the share of mind for the products they're trying to sell?
John Marraffino: From a travel perspective, um, overall, think one of the, in my opinion, one of the, very much for joining us today, and we hope that you will join us again soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Other products, you know, it's, it's emotional, it's high price, it's high interest, et cetera, et cetera. But so you need a canvas, especially if you're a destination, you need a big canvas.
And, when that was something that TV was phenomenal at, and now we've all moved to a screen that is four inches by six inches and seeing. An ad, I'll be targeted on a screen that is, you know, the ad is actually an inch by two by four inches. So how impactful is that? So the thing I like about connected TV is that people are now going back to the big screen and you can envision a shot of a hotel or a destination or on a minimum.
I would 40 inch HD surround sound. It's a different experience, right? So I have a lot of faith in the travel category on and for connected TV, and also because you can now add a lot of data layers to it. So in the past in Canada, if you did broadcast, you would have to do the whole country, the whole city.
You couldn't do a neighborhood. Now with connected TV, I can zero in and only, I can do it by FSAs if I wanted to, and layer, interest to the people that which is fantastic. But the canvas is, um, In my opinion, we've kind of lost sight of that. the creative and the campus, we lost it.
We, it's important and we have been focusing obviously on data and reaching the right people at the right time and so on and so forth, but, I mean, I don't know if anyone's worked in sales, but I'll give you an analogy. If there's, uh, You have one salesman knocks on 10 doors, and then another salesman knocks on the same 10 doors.
One guy sells 9, the other guy doesn't sell any. So, sometimes, how you position the message and, the canvas that you're in is, utmost importance. maybe because I'm older, but I think we've gone too far away from the creative process and, uh, too far away from, The big and bold, especially in travel, you need to be big and bold.
You need to be, the campus needs to be colorful, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, talking about big and bold gets us into our second question because, you know, swinging for the fences oftentimes means you strike out. So, Jon, what are some of the common pitfalls or failures that you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid when scaling their business?
John Marraffino: from my perspective, I've made, two mistakes, and I think everyone makes it. the first one is when you start a business, because, well, when I started it was just me. Then as you grow, you, you're very reluctant to, pass off responsibilities and to pass off tasks and delegate tasks, and you don't want to hire and so on and so forth.
So, when I started, I risked being the bottleneck for my own business because I wanted to do everything and I didn't trust anyone to do it. And as soon as we started to grow and I started to hire people and I started to hand off account, that's when my problems started. So I, I'm working on this business for five years, no problems.
I handed it to Bob and now the client's not, but so that, from that perspective. It's inevitable, right? but then as our business grew, the mistake that I made is we kind of hired too much. And, COVID, was an eye opener for me because we had to reduce during COVID our staff significantly, And now that that's behind us, our businesses come back. And the work is getting done. So the temptation as you're growing quickly is to just. Bring in more bodies, bring in more bodies, bring in more bodies. And that was a mistake because if I look back I say I probably could have done with literally half the people that I had.
But when you're moving fast, business is growing, clients are coming in. Oh, we need this person, we need that person, we need that person. So at the outset, I made a mistake of not being able to Let go and try to do everything myself. And then as we grew, I overcompensated the other way and could potentially have done with a fraction of the staff.
that we are now working with lean and mean and fast. The other thing is avoid, obviously vanity metrics. Now, when, when I started the business, they were very important. I remember when I started the business, I said, okay, I need a Bloor Street address, or I need a Yorkville address, or I need a Bay Street address.
as a marketer and advertiser, my address cannot be, Mississauga, Scarborough, Woodbridge. It has to be, you know, it has to communicate. It's part of the advertising process. That was very important when in the 90s, in the 80s, in the, you know, early 1000s, but today that's irrelevant. So avoid, avoid the vanity metrics, the big address, the big offices.
I think people's mindsets have changed, business people's mindsets have changed. You can run a business, uh, from wherever. So, uh, avoid those vanity metrics because they You know, they can, very, very, uh, expensive. and the other, thing that I would say, that some companies make, because we got to a point where we're acquiring some of our competitors.
And, you know, it's not like buying a product. In this category, there's not a lot of people that are for sale. So when an opportunity arises, obviously, the owner, if they're an independent, they always have an overvalued sense of what their business is worth. So if you look at a deal, let's say you're.
Trying to take over a competitor and they give you the price and you know that price is high. In other words, that business is not worth that much. you gotta resist that because A, you don't know when the next piece of business is going to come up. B, one of the best way to scale is, well, scale quickly is to acquire competitors.
So, that person's been running that business how many years? It's near their heart. They're reluctant to leave it. You know that the business is worth X, but they're asking for X plus 40 percent. you gotta look at it for yourself. Never mind, do you want the business? Yes or no, buy it. And as long as, do the numbers, make sure it makes sense to your bottom line.
But don't get too hung up on this, oh, I'm paying 30 percent more than that business is worth. Because you walk away from it, you gotta be waiting another five years for another opportunity. So that, I thought, is, uh, pitful when it comes, uh, to go. And one of the, as you might appreciate, Adam, from a business perspective, one of the fastest way to grow is through, acquisitions.
Because. From our perspective, which is B2B, gaining clients is, uh, it's a dog's breakfast, you know, you, we're modest. Every year when I set out, I said to myself, okay, we just want one or two new pieces of business a year. Because if you get too focused on your business, you're going to start losing your existing customers.
So service the living daylights out of your existing customer and try to win on attribute. So that's great, but the school is steady and great, which is not bad. But if you want to grow and grow quickly, the best way to do it is to obviously acquire some of your competitors.
Chris Tomseth: Jon, question related to that. So both when you, were and are hiring employees and, potentially acquiring competitors, how do you make sure that those people, uh, like fit into the culture of the company that you created? Because I would think that's pretty critical. Mm
John Marraffino: we've had a few experiences in the past with it. it wasn't, um, the right culture, but once it, from an acquisition perspective, as a businessman, I, I don't pay attention to it. I bring it, I, I bring it in. if I see something that I need to bring in, I'll bring that business in, and then I'll try to make it work.
Right now, most people, eventually, you know, most people are, I like to believe are a good, decent human being. So over time, when the teams meet, they start to get along and so on and so forth. The ones that don't fit. They will bleed away on their own. In all honesty, over the years, I've had to fire very, very, very, very few people. And the ones that I had, it was because of things that were untowards. But as far as culture is concerned, most people come along and follow your, vision. And the ones that don't will bleed away. you know, they'll, if they're not happy, they will, they will leave.
in my earlier years, I didn't give that a lot of thought. Uh, but now I, um, having lived through it a few times, I, I do pay more attention to it. Right?
Chris Tomseth: Yeah. So similar question on kind of the client side in your early years. you know, I've been an entrepreneur myself, so you're just taking whatever you can and, you know, Oh, opportunity for business. You take it when you get to the point where you have, I am sure, uh, that there are business opportunities that you would have almost certainly taken 25 years ago that today you have second thoughts about, talk
about that.
Uh huh.
John Marraffino: Correct. I mean, but that decision is, is more based on, uh, weighing, uh, you know, not so much from a cultural perspective because we're in a serious business. So my culture is to serve you, whether you're a demon or a saint, my culture is I got to serve you. Right? That's what we do. That's what we get.
We're in the service industry. But, in the past, with clients, I've seen other agencies, not to mention any names, say no to pieces of business that then went on to become multinational behemoths. Right? So, like, I'm a big boy. there's clients that are more aggressive, clients that are more docile, clients that really, right?
as long as it's directed towards me, I don't have a problem. Sometimes if, they're perhaps not proper to some of my team. I will sit down with a team member and say, how are you handling this? And if they're not happy, I'll try to move them. And if a push came to shove, there's been instances in the past where we, we have parted ways with clients for that reason.
Right. you know, maybe it's because of my age, but I would say, I never saw the note of business. There's no piece of business that is too small or too large. I'll make it work. Right. Because there's always feast and famine in business, as you might appreciate. I think if you go with that attitude, your odds of success are increased.
I find that a lot of people that start businesses, they go in there with this big business mindset, like. When you're starting a business, you can't have that mindset. You can't say, well, this client doesn't fit my culture, and this one is like, no, no, like, Barring all things, me being, of course, everything's above board and legal, you know, suck up the culture, but you, uh, they're assertive.
I'm exaggerating to make a point here, obviously.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I want to come down the middle with my next comment, and that is the, I kept thinking about the 80 20 rule. So Jon, you're right in a feast and famine, the way to be resilient is to take the business and just service them as best as possible. You know, the, that way, that way you're resilient. Uh, but at the same time is that I have seen clients where 80 percent of your problems are coming from 20 percent of your clients.
So my question to you, Jon, is finding this balance and, and, you know, it's not a hard and fast rule, but what advice would you give to any sort of travel media or even, even hotels to spot vendors where the juice isn't worth the squeeze, so to speak.
John Marraffino: Bottom line is, is it profitable or not, and can a team work with them or not? can a team, can, like I have, you know, people that work for me that are pretty resilient, they have thick skin, and if I approach them and I say, how's this going, is this working out for you? They say, yeah, I got this, don't worry, right?
Even though I know the situation, right? And then others get, you know, flustered and perhaps a And I'm going to be taking them off the business, but somebody else on, and it pushed him to shove, which gave the shop, then I would have to do something about, the client. But again, in three years, I've only had an app that maybe once or twice.
In 30 years, and we've had a lot of clients over the years, only twice did I have to take action that would be considered drastic as in walking away from a piece of business. So I think that is a testament to how I feel about it, right? Very hard to work with, and most importantly, you're making money on the account, right?
If you're making money on the account, if Adam can't work on it, put Chris on it, right? If Chris gets spotted, put Bob on it, you know, and if it gets to the point where you have to walk away, walk away, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. Jon here, we'll move into our third question because we talked about the past and talking about doing the client relationships and the nature of digital marketing, where it was to where it is now. And of course you mentioned Connected TV, which is, has fantastic use cases that we can drill in in this next answer, but we're looking ahead to the future.
So Jon, what do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for travel technology companies in 2025 and beyond?
John Marraffino: most of you are probably, Adam and Chris, going to be very familiar with, I think the most important is the ability to personalize your message, your creative, your imaging, and to really drill down to niches. up until 10 years ago, all our messaging had to be pretty broad and appeal to a swath of people.
Now, you know, we can target scuba divers, golfers, culture, history, weddings, and we can literally rifle target into them, and you've got, you know, the ability to deliver dynamic creative in real time. So, um, Adam, if you're searching scuba diving, we would know about it very quickly. And bingo, you're going to get a scuba diving ad whether it be from a hotel destination or city, right?
I think everybody is, um, in the market. realizes the power of that and the strength of that. At the same time, there's a risk that, you know, when you try to be things to all people, you, you're nothing to anybody, right? So I think it's still important to have, whether you're a destination or a hotel brand, that overarching message of who you are, what you stand for, and so on and so forth, and then drill down.
So I think there's still room, not still, I think it's necessary that you still have that top broad message. but technology today allows us to drill down in real time with sequential messaging. Not only can I target you if you're interested in scuba, but I can also target you sequentially with different messages along your, purchase path online.
And to the point we made earlier, I'm hoping that not quite there yet, but with Connected TV, we'll be able to do that. To me, that. that would be fantastic, to be able to deliver ads on a canvas like the big, the big screen in your living room, right? and it's a hornet's nest is of course privacy regulations.
When, because everything I just mentioned is great and wonderful, but to do it in a private compliant, privacy compliant manner is, um, Scariest hell, like, I mean, I worry about it because obviously I'm not in the weeds, and I think, okay, is this being done right? Is this going to get us a lawsuit? Is this going to, it's like, and you know, Europe has been at the forefront of this and they're pushing really hard.
And you hear companies getting fines of, you know, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, for, you know, Potentially stuff that they may or may not even have been aware of. that's the challenges is how to navigate and, and different regions. Within different countries have different laws, so that is potentially nightmarish, from a challenges perspective, and of course the other challenge of the trial legacy is things we cannot control, like, like the economy.
we don't know what it's going to do, but this category is extremely sensitive to that, spare time and money, right? So, that you, you're not going to be able to control. But, I would say the opportunities, of course, are, and they've already started. The ability to personalize message, dynamic creative.
My dynamic creative admin, I'm sure you know what that, what it means, but basically you load up all your assets into the system, your photos, your, captions, your price, and then the system will literally build the ad on the fly based on what your behavior has been online and it'll price it accordingly, give you the right offer for the right product.
So that, that's super strong and that is the way of the future, obviously, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: So one thing we talked about the getting back to sequential messaging, and this sort of goes into the funnel for hotels. And one thing I'd want to talk about is how KPIs are changing key performance indicators, because there's so many different things. metrics that hoteliers or travel brands can use to parse out all the data that's coming in and how people interact with that data.
Obviously, everyone cares about conversions for hotels. You tie that into bookings in some way, shape or form. Jon, what do you see as the big KPIs that you look for to measure advertising and media success?
John Marraffino: Depending where you are in the travel ecosystem, but if you're a hotel. At the bottom line, you're going to be held accountable for bookings, right? And depending on what the task is, because for different destinations and different hotel groups, they'll be, usually the campaigns are tiered. So, um, you know, up here you got Ford Quality is job one.
Over here you have the Ford Taurus is a great car, and here is the Ford Taurus is 199 a month. Right? so all these brands, so depending on, the metrics will be different for each one of those tasks. But, at the end of the day, today, the conversation and the tonality, Um, it's always about how many, many bookings have you driven.
So that's what we're held accountable to. Is that the right thing to do? You're going to have to do that, but I think it's still important to put out creative assets in the right place to generate a want for it, right? You can't just be putting out ads at, you know, 1. 99 a night or something like that, right?
the one that we're held most accountable for is And, for example, for hotels, it would be bookings, but for destination, on the other hand, let's say you're a destination, there it's more about engagement, and there it's more about, putting out the right, um, and reaching as many people as you can with the right message, and just, you know, Building the awareness of the destination, as well as trying to get people to obviously want to go there by putting out the right images, and they're not, so a destination will not be on a, say, how many bookings did I get?
They just won't, right? They're more interested that we, that we lift their awareness by X percent, that we lift their favorability by Y percent, but when you drill down to, you know, to the hotels and so on and so forth. And even though the first part is still important, at the end of the day, they're going to say, did we fill, did we fill rooms?
Yes or no? Right.
Chris Tomseth: Isn't part of that kind of macro versus micro, obviously for a, a region or a destination, it's a little harder to track specific revenue figures, um, from a given campaign versus a specific property. Mm-Hmm.
John Marraffino: Yeah. So destinations, objectives are going to be different from the hotel's objective, which are going to be different from the airline's objective, which are going to be different from, uh, the hotel's objective. Right. and, and the retailers as well. Right. So I find like, for example, if you look at the retail, uh, wholesale.
Websites, travel. A lot of them make the mistake that their job is to incentivize and get people to travel. It's not their job. You know, in my opinion, the destination is to get you to get you to want to go there. The retailer's job is to book, this website versus the other website. So they get confused and sometimes they put out, you know, uh, Ads that are meant to get you to travel.
That's not their job. Their job is, once you've decided to travel, book here instead of there. , so it's like, you're not going to get me to buy a car if I'm not in the market for a car, good luck with that. But the minute I, decide to buy a car, your job is to get me to buy this car versus that car.
And a lot of people lose sight of that. They, they think that their job is to shop. Travel. No, your job is to sell your website or your destination or your hotel, right? You're not going to get me to do things I want to do. And it's also asking a lot of the marketing and advertising process, but I'm sure, but there, I do see out retailers out there that put out these beautiful, very expensive ads that are designed to make me want to go somewhere.
Not your job. You're a bad example, but you're the Walmart. You know, this product is X dollars. You know, you're the Costco. This product is Y dollars, right? So, I'm cheapening. I shouldn't use those two brands to make an example, but your job is not to get me to want to travel or even decide where I want to go.
Your job is to book me for a retailer, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: It's a very important point is knowing your product and
John Marraffino: And where you, and where you start.
Adam Mogelonsky: yeah, and I'm wondering to tie it back to your, your whole reason of being about bringing new ideas to the forefront to your clients. And I'm wondering what new technologies or new mediums Would you convey to travel or hotel clients that are going to get the message across that they want for now into the next three, four years?
Yeah.
John Marraffino: it'll continue to be so for the foreseeable near future. I'm, um, very optimistic about, as I've spoken about, connected TV. Retail media is also showing huge growth. Now, by retail media, a lot of people think that's, you know, advertising in a Loblaw store or in a grocery store.
No, and I'll tell you what, I think it's good. retail media is They, they obviously the Loblaws and the shoppers and a lot of the retailers have a lot of purchase data and that purchase data with AI and with predictive analytics, you can start to do things, well, if this person bought product A, product B, and product C, they're most likely planning to travel.
so that's an interesting venue that's coming up and you're not advertising in the retailer's establishment, you're, you're using their data to reach them the market. across the, the internet ecosystem, right? again, you get into privacy compliance, you, you're not buying their data, you're using them to deliver the ads for you.
So that's an interesting, but, and I think out of home, still, it has, um, a good place because, uh, because for travel it is big and bold. You can target it by, uh, regions locally, and, uh, I think at a home, uh, maybe dodge a bullet as far as a lot of the traditional vehicles are decreasing, you know.
Traditional TV viewing is going down, people are cutting cables, traditional radio is still holding the ground but decreasing, trains falling off a cliff, but at a home, it still, I think, has a very strong, uh, place for travel, right? So, the obvious ones for the next few years, of course, social still rules.
In my opinion, Connected TV is going to be very important. At home, continue, will continue to be very important.
Adam Mogelonsky: Just to drill down, uh, to talk about compliance, uh, you know, GDPR is the big one. And then getting into this whole idea of, Retail media. Can you briefly just unpack that in terms of what that means regarding first party data and how travel or hotel companies can get involved with key retailers to find new customers or to help retarget existing ones?
John Marraffino: for example, in the U. S. especially, too, a lot of, retailers are becoming, are getting into the ad business. And of course, online, you have the Amazons that have been doing it for some time. But in the U. S., a lot of the, large, largest retailers are, are getting into the ad business.
So, They now have platforms that loads purchase data. So if I buy a product, I can't go to a retailer and say, okay, I want to deliver ads to the person who bought this particular competitor of mine's product, but what I can say is I want to buy people, I want to target people who bought this category, uh, whether that be cold medicine or whatever.
But more importantly, I think with AI and we're going to be getting there, there's, they're going to potentially connect Docs that are not obviously connected. So I'm gonna make stuff up. You buy a book, you buy glasses, and you buy chewing gum, and for whatever reason, the model realizes that people who perform those three actions are very likely to perform this other action.
And which you could not do
as a human, right? So the opportunities are, again for travel, with the data, is, you know, using the obvious, person by sun, time, motion, or whatever, that's too obvious. But, um, you know, a person performs this action, that action, that action, within the next six months, is highly likely to, uh, book a hotel, book a flight, book a destination, right?
And we don't know what those dots are, but, The system will, right? So I think that's the opportunities there, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, I think the classic case in that was Target where they were using machine learning and they were able to identify, if women were pregnant or not, uh, before
based on their,
purchasing.
Chris Tomseth: Target knew
they were pregnant before, uh, their own, like, fathers did. It was, like, teenage girls getting
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah.
John Marraffino: this is a while back, I remember reading a story where they were able to look at people's banking patterns. So, you know, most people's bank receipts are now in certain days, in certain ways, certain amounts. And they were able to drill down and then identify people that potentially were a threat, as in terrorist threat.
I remember reading this, so I don't know the accuracy of it, but if I recall, they actually were the zero and's of people that were a threat just by connecting unrelated dots
Adam Mogelonsky: Wow.
John Marraffino: action, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. They're able to give a confidence interval for that. And, uh, of course the early application of that utility within banking information has been fraud. Uh, spotting it, uh, you know, that's a big deal for hotels and you look at and it's like something like people who book a hotel within 72 hours of arrival are, you know, a hundred or a thousand times more likely to be a fraudulent payment than somebody who books three months ahead of time, so to speak.
So it's, it's interesting that regard, but Jon, let's move into our fourth segment. And final question here, which is, what are the key things innovative leaders and entrepreneurs should prioritize and focus on to gain traction for their business?
John Marraffino: So, I think, and I hate to use these words because they're so obvious, artificial intelligence. I think that you should use it to save time. To be efficient, but I think that, um, you should, for originality, creativity, you should use your own brain.
So use the tools to save time and be more efficient, but you're not going to win or be original or be creative by just using those.
So you got that, that's where you got to use your head or your team's heads. Cause as you know, of today, most AI tools are just collecting data. What's out there and original thoughts are not already out there. So I think use the tools to make your day more efficient, more effective. Cheaper, faster, but you got to sit down and you got to come up with the idea of the creativity yourself.
You, you're the one who has to sit there and say, okay, how can I do this better? How can I make it better? Sure, use the tool. But I say, you use artificial intelligence to be more efficient, use real intelligence to be more creative, right? And the two combined can pack a punch. because, um, I don't know about you guys, but I used to have, when I had two screens, I used to have, my email and, you know, Google, now it's email and ChatGPT, and it makes your searching, as you might imagine, for information, A thousand times more efficient, so I save time, I'm more efficient, but if I gotta go after a piece of business, um, I use the tool to research the business, but then to come up with what I'm going to say, the idea, the angle, I do that myself.
Because if you ask most of these platforms, you're going to get generic answers. Rubbish. You know, do this, do this, do this. Yeah, thanks, I already knew that, right? You gotta, you gotta come up with that stuff on your own, in my opinion. Maybe the tech will get there one day where it will actually be original, but right now, every time I've used it, it hasn't been that original.
That's what I would say as far as, moving into the future. And, and, and it's obviously different, um, B2B and B2C. Because when you're, you know, when you're B2C, it's all about the systems, the technology. The image, the marketing, when you're B2B, you know, you get other things into the mix, the relationship, the personal relationship, your reputation, do you deliver, um, as a businessman, I think from, especially from a B2B perspective, something as simple as just doing what you said you were going to do.
is, um, underrated. Just, if I say something to you, Adam, and I say, I got to get this done. I'm going to do it. Even if I got to break my back, you won't know what's going on behind the scenes, but I'm going to get it done. Uh, and it may cost me money. I think just something as simple as if you say something, just do it.
It's so underrated today. little things, even little tiny things that a client may, may ask you and offhanded, not important. Don't worry about it. Get it done. Um, so in a B2B, there's a lot of other dynamics than there is in the B2C market, obviously, right?
Adam Mogelonsky: I think that's the best way to end it off here is because I do see a lot of people viewing AI as a crutch, but really it's an empowerment tool if it's used properly on the efficiency side, not on the creative side. So by being more time efficient with the basic stuff, you're freeing up more time for that real intelligence, that creativity.
John Marraffino: 100%,
You can spend more time thinking of creative ways, because, and, you know, we're not creative, we're a media company, but creativity applies to all categories. And if you could free up the time, instead of researching, if you free up that time to just, Try to come up with a different angle, a different viewpoint, a different, you know, that's what makes the difference, right?
That's what makes the difference.
Adam Mogelonsky: yeah. Jon, thank you for your time. Chris,
Chris Tomseth: you Jon.
John Marraffino: Oh, thank you guys for having me, uh, Adam and Chris. Thank you so much. It was great. Thank you.
Adam Mogelonsky: Thanks