Duncan Alney 5:10
I did say that.
Jeremy Weisz 5:13
So what did you mean by that?
Duncan Alney 5:16
I thought I could Wang a lot of answering it. But I guess you’re gonna press it. You know, I grew up in India. And you know, I grew up in Calcutta, which is a very cosmopolitan, you know, maybe the most, in some ways, advanced place in India, to me, anyway. Oh, Kolkata. And, you know, I used to dream about, you know, America, and I wanted to go to America, and I wanted to experience that life, but then I wanted to specifically feel that cowboy vibe, you know, because I’d seen it in movies. And I wanted to, you know, wanted to be a cowboy. But, you know, on arrival, a final final arrival in Montana, you know, after years of living in America, I made it to Montana. And I was like, you know, investigating that life. And I realized that not being able to ride a horse is a critical challenge when it comes to being a cowboy, you know, and so, you know, your life maybe in the office of a modern ranch. So, you know, I guess I still have hope, you know, it could be a market here for ranches, which we actually have an amazing ranch client. So I have realized my team in some ways, but, you know, you may be relegated to struggling shit. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, that’s what I wanted to do it, but it really, it wasn’t about I think, as I’ve reflected on this over the years, it’s less about, you know, wrangling horses, and you know, going to rodeos and all that is more I think about what, you know, cowboys, good cowboys, what good cowboys represent to me, which is sort of that pioneer, you know, spirit forging westward, you know, rugged individualism, you know, the ability to, like Alexis de Tocqueville said, back in the day after traveling in America, you know, the ability to move freely, you know, without encumbrance on that that’s not necessarily, you know, real for me to move freely without encumbrance. But that was sort of the ideal, the American ideal, in my mind,
Jeremy Weisz 7:13
would come and represent for you the American dream, in a sense
Duncan Alney 7:18
that I was gonna say diametrically different than the interconnectedness vastly deeper interconnectedness of like the fabric of Indian culture. Yes, the American dream, correct? Yeah. And I feel like, you know, in being an agency owner, you’re always a cowboy. Because wrangling people, you’re wrangling clients, you know, you’re wrangling all kinds of things.
Jeremy Weisz 7:39
That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s um, like, I I’ve known for you you for a while, and I had no idea that was the case. So that kind of stuck out to me in that interview. And that’s what’s what’s cool. And, you know, you could check out you I didn’t even mention his website, shame on me barrels ahead, calm, you could check out more on what he’s doing there. But, you know, one of the things also stuck out in that conversation, like I love low hanging fruit of what people should be doing that are maybe missing the boat, and they’re not doing and you talked about on the interview? Pinterest, okay, for me, and I don’t know, in your world, you’re all about social. And I’m like, I’m neglecting this channel. And I imagine a lot of people are neglecting this channel a lot. Because people talk about Google, they talk about Facebook. I think Pinterest is I mean, is up there in the top five or so. I mean, you could correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t know. I was reading somewhere. When you said that. I was like, Pinterest is really popular as a lot of people on Pinterest. And I think it gets neglected. So what are your thoughts on Pinterest? And I love to hear about strategies on Pinterest.
Duncan Alney 8:51
Yeah, that’s a great question. I second your emotion about Drew Hendricks being amazing guy. And he just turned 50 A couple days ago. So happy birthday to him. He’s got a great, great experience in the wine space. And so you know, if you’re listening and you want someone to work with in the whitespace marketing specifically, he’s a great guy. But I think that, you know, Pinterest is, well, let’s, let’s take a step back. You know, socialism is a very crowded space in terms of like, the dominant players, right? We think of the dominant players today, you think of, you know, three, we think of Facebook, you think of Instagram and there’s sort of like, unfamiliarity, giant, you know, TikTok where it’s, there’s a lot of chaos, and you know, that the model is is sort of still emerging. We, we started looking at Pinterest very seriously a couple years ago, and for a couple reasons, you know, we’re sort of seeing some of the challenges from a risk standpoint with putting everything into Facebook and Instagram, which, you know, candidly, we, we follow the market and the market was heavy with Facebook, and it’s to Graham, and then I decided that we’re gonna maybe lead some of our clients in a different direction, manage your risk, let’s get onto a platform that candidly is, is better for food and beverage. Now, having said that, it’s a longer play, you know, so you’re not gonna, you may not monetize tomorrow on on Pinterest, but some things have changed on Pinterest, you know, they’ve got this sort of fleeting, you know, transient versions of stories or fleets, you know, where it’s, the idea pen is present for a much shorter amount of time, you know, video is big, and the audience has changed to probably 45%. Male, it’s a large audience, on Pinterest, on Pinterest, yeah, wow, that’s shocking. And food and beverage, you know, beauty, do it yourself kind of things, those are the top categories of top three or four categories on Pinterest. And so that led us down that path. And I don’t know if this is the right time to say this or not. But, you know, we are working with a company in the bicycle space. And, you know, as you say, personal transportation. And I just have to say that personal transportation, visual, you know, it’s it was it was a layered program, you know, with, you know, posts and boards or, you know, pins and boards, and, you know, doing some engagement intersecting with other brands and affinity brands. And when we started doing ads, and, you know, we were able to with a with a tiny span, able to generate, you know, $125,000 in revenue for them, even though that’s not a number to sneeze at, right. And so that really changed our perspective. And like, this is a great opportunity. But like anything else, you know, the strategy is almost easier sometimes with these kinds of things than the day to day tactics. Because the day to day tactics are changing. And, you know, it’s like a, it’s like a, I think the right word is estuary, right? It’s like the delta for river where, you know, there’s a sandbar one day that’s gone the next, you know, there’s some sandbars that are like two miles wide, three miles long, and there’s others that are five feet, you know, and so I think that that’s the sort of ongoing struggle with social is the the ability to like, find places to connect with your audience to actually produce some tangible results. And I think Pinterest is, is and and candidly, the brand team at Pinterest is really motivated. They’re easy to work with less technical difficulties. So yeah, I’d say it’s a very compelling and you know, candidly, that a lot of brands out there but there’s a lot of brands that are not on there, it’s still Yeah, imagine
Jeremy Weisz 12:48
I’d love to talk about c outside of Pinterest, but I was looking it up while you’re you’re talking. Like it’s it says when I looked it up as as Pinterest is the 14th largest social network in the world, and this was as of January 2021. And you know, some of the people above other people you you talked about, right? Facebook, Instagram, tik, Tok, Snapchat, you know, those are, but Pinterest is, is in the top, top 14. So, which is which is huge. Right? So,
Duncan Alney 13:20
I think it’s a question of what works for your audience in your niche. Right. And so I think that for food and beverage, especially, it’s a great, it’s a great opportunity, you know, so we, you know, we want people to have a diversified portfolio, you know, where they can build the credibility and you know, hopefully find some website traffic and sales so yeah, I think the thing about it is crazy is like how much time people will just spend on their you know, you’re cruising around. Next thing, you know, you’ve been on there for an hour, I and Pinterest even
Jeremy Weisz 13:51
ranked at ranked ahead of Twitter, in this. So that’s pretty remarkable. Are there any other other underutilized channels that you know, your team, you’re probably evaluating lots of channels, I love what you said kind of as a concept. And strategy is really, the ultimate is just connecting with your members connecting with your tribe, wherever that is, it could be at a local church, it could be on Facebook could be wherever. So what are some underutilized channels, either it can be online or offline? I don’t know. You probably just, you know, in your process of discovery with these companies discover some interesting stuff.
Duncan Alney 14:30
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, YouTube is, you know, the, we’ve been predicting this for years is that YouTube is already big, and YouTube is about to get bigger. You know, I think that somehow YouTube has managed I think maybe because of the barriers to entry being There’s no age discrimination, right? Did you watch YouTube? Whereas you know, if you’re a kid, you can’t necessarily get on Tik Tok or Instagram, unless your parent gives you their phone right but But YouTube you got a device you can get on and say think that YouTube sort of by, by maybe by design, and by some serendipity remains a very accessible platform. And so, you know, for example, my kids Han, and he, you know, he can find anything on YouTube, and he watches like self help videos, and he knows stuff and that containment, I think that, you know, when you think about him, he sort of like, before the down that Gen Z, Gen Z, you know, age group, so he’s like, you know, just at the end of that, like, at the, at the edge of the next one. And YouTube is huge. So I think YouTube is big. I really, I’m very, I have sort of this continuous interest in LinkedIn, even for b2c companies. Because I think people want to know who’s behind the brand. And like, for example, if you really wanted to know who’s behind Coca Cola, you can figure out who’s behind Coca Cola, because you can go on Netflix, and Netflix, you can go on, on LinkedIn, and you can figure it out, right. And I think that LinkedIn is a great way to, to, you know, to like hire people and demonstrate your culture and like build partnerships and stuff like that. So when I when I see b2c companies neglecting that it’s not the top of my list to tell them hey, listen, you got to consider LinkedIn for other reasons, right? Because you got the greedy marketer syndrome, right? I know, you had Marty from SiteTuners on here a few months ago, and Alec some, you know, great guys from site units. And they talk about the greedy, the greedy marketers syndrome, it’s like, I don’t know you, but when you get married to me, you know, I don’t want you. But will you buy my $7,000 product that say no, and say, Hey, let’s get to know each other. Right? It’s like, Sure. I mean, some people might buy cars, like they buy cupcakes, but most people don’t. You know. And so I think that the other thing, I think, you know, a little bit off of what you’re saying, but there’s a lot of chaos with these platforms, right? And the challenge that brands face isn’t necessarily being able to get on the platform didn’t get on, but how did they sort of like connect with their tribe in a meaningful way. And the number one challenge isn’t necessarily publishing. It’s the which content to use, right. And so the traditional model is the brand creates all its own content, which is unsustainable, right? brands can only contain create so much content, and even the brands have the deepest pockets, where there’s a whole UGC model, right, so people are creating content, and you use their their content. And then there’s, of course, that kind of the overarching piece above that is the creator model, where there are people that are really good at creating content, they’re going to create content for your brand. And of course, the third one, you know, which is the, you know, the contentious one, which is the influencer model, and the influence that has a following and, you know, has some ability to influence, you know, behavior, hopefully, and they’re going to create content for you. So I think that, you know, whichever platform you’re on, um, it’s so many like Reddit, I think a great platform to but Reddit is sort of like,
Jeremy Weisz 18:00
Reddit is right behind in this. I don’t know how accurate this is. I’m always assume everything on the internet is accurate. But this chart is right, it says Reddit, right behind Pinterest, as far as the rankings go, so they must be 15th or whatever on this list.
Duncan Alney 18:17
So Reddit is, you know, I think they own their own slogan or something like it’s the something of the internet. What is it, though? It’s the I can’t remember the I’ll look it up real quick. But you know, it’s interesting. Reddit is sort of like it is it is a paradox, in a way because it is seriously anonymous, and and significantly authentic. Right. So, are there trolls on Reddit? Oh, hell, yeah. Is there humor on Reddit? Definitely. You know, I mean, there’s a subreddit for anything from Elephant collars to jokes to, you know, cats to, you know, IBS to whatever you want. There are, there are groups on Reddit. And, you know, there’s a new guy who’s new, like, not necessarily like, yesterday, but in the last year or so who’s heading up monetization at Reddit. And so they’re doing a lot more interesting things on Reddit. But Reddit remains a challenge for brands, I think, because, you know, you can’t post on Reddit. There’s no front end, Jeremy, there’s no front end. On Reddit. It’s like you are who you are. And if you try to be something or not, they’re gonna tear you to shreds. And then Reddit is also like, where certain movements have emerged lately, right? Where the whole Gamestop thing like, came about on Reddit, like Reddit was where all that stuff happened. So I think that, you know, there’s that whole thing as well. But, you know, I think Snapchat is interesting as well, you know, I just again, I mean, we could go through the whole list, but probably the core advice I give people is like, where are you going to be able to connect with people, you know, and part of that isn’t just a did there, but then you’re able to cut through the clutter and connect with them. And can you can you build a sustainable content model?
Jeremy Weisz 20:07
You know what surprised me with this Duncan I’m gonna, it came out HootSuite put, I’ll give credit to Hootsuite cuz I’m looking at HootSuite short here for a second here. But I’m going to share my screen in this to see if I can just show people they’re interested in looking at it. But what surprised me about this and I don’t again, I don’t know how accurate this is. Let’s just for argument’s sake assume it is. But Whatsapp on this chart his third, which was shocking to me, so you have Facebook, YouTube, Whatsapp, and then Facebook Messenger Instagram, web chat, TikTok, whatever. I don’t even know what that other one is flicks like, QQ I don’t know what that is. But, um, WhatsApp, does that surprise you at all that WhatsApp is third here.
Duncan Alney 20:55
So it’s interesting that we’re having this conversation today. I was just thinking this morning how, like, deeply integrated, I am into the WhatsApp world. Mainly because we’ve, we’ve had clients in other countries. And you know, I have a whole network of people in other countries and especially in India. And so peep, you know, what’s up is almost it not almost is a verb at this point, right? So people will say, Yo, yo, you know, what’s up me later? And people don’t even say what’s, at least to my untrained ear. They don’t even say what’s up? What’s up, they say what’s up? Right. And so there’s all kinds of marketing that goes on on on WhatsApp, we haven’t really looked deeply at that yet. I mean, I see things all the time, since I’m on their groups, a huge. And candidly, I mean, it’s owned by Facebook, you know, so there’s that whole piece there. But it’s real. I mean, it’s definitely big in other countries. Facebook Messenger is much, much bigger. I mean, you know, with the rise of instant messaging in a stable way, Although who knows how secure it is. That’s, I think, a real opportunity. I’m going to look at that list. It’s really small.
Jeremy Weisz 22:12
QQ I don’t even know a cube it looks like QQ I have no idea what that is. But, you know,
Duncan Alney 22:17
to be honest, I haven’t paid attention to it. Telegram. We keep hearing about, you know, for all kinds of different reasons. It’s supposedly, I’ve heard both that it’s terribly insecure, and that it is secure. So I don’t know what the reality is. And I’m personally not on Telegram, but you know, yeah, telegram is one of the ones at the bottom of Twitter is so funny the shooter for
Jeremy Weisz 22:38
Quora is there a twitter and reddit so Cora, I know people, you know, frequent a bunch as well. So yeah, the last ones look like Reddit, or it’s Pinterest than Reddit than Twitter than Quora.
Duncan Alney 22:52
Yummy. I think that this chart is too big. We needed like a smaller chart. I mean, this is just like, too, it’s too easy to read this. You know, I think that connection opportunity is how you assess it, right? Because, I mean, obviously, you can’t be on all these platforms, like even the most sophisticated brands get the fact that they can, like FOMO, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s interesting how so many, even like mainstream agencies and brands are not paying attention, you know, to these other opportunities. You know, I, we have colleagues, you and I both have colleagues where, you know, and we were that agency, you know, a couple years ago, where we weren’t doing a whole lot outside the main platforms. Now we’re, you know, we’re everywhere.
Jeremy Weisz 23:37
I want to talk about, you know, which kind of goes into the fundamental piece, which separates you know, what you do when people contact you, which is the strategy piece and so I want to talk about kind of your audit and animal, you know, analyzing process when someone comes on how that works. And, you know, just to just to wrap up that last conversation, you know, our mutual friend David Melamed is a huge WhatsApp person. I think he said he’s got huge groups on WhatsApp uses it, like you mentioned the groups and, and has a big following of groups on WhatsApp. So there you go, but talk about a company comes to you, and you start off with kind of auditing what they are doing and analyzing what they’re doing. Talk about that process. Yeah, and that’s,
Duncan Alney 24:29
that’s a, that’s a key part of how we operate. And I’ll even say that, you know, hats off, you know, to the team at Firebelly, over the last couple months have taken our own audit, you know, up several notches to a whole new level of deliverable. But, you know, people like Lauren Johnson, who you know, on our team and Sam Dietz and Emily Hines and Abby and Tatyana have all done a great job, but what happens there is you essentially it’s almost Like I, when I tell clients, you know, why do we need an audit that segment, you know, you’re in a boat, and you are in the middle of a large body of water. And you’re not really clear, you know, you’re going to an island that’s, you know, 600 miles away, but you don’t have a clear understanding of what’s going on in the past. Right? You don’t you don’t know. And so you know, that what the audit does is it really gives you clarity on what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. You know, from a content standpoint, you know, which kinds of content have performed, and which haven’t? And what’s the opportunity for improvement? You know, where’s the engagement coming from? Are they people that are advocates? Are there people that are no legacy complainers, or trolls, you know, all that kind of thing. So you know, what’s, what’s happened in the past, and then they layer that with the competitive analysis and saying, okay, like, these two or three real competitors, or, you know, this aspirational competitor, you know, what are they doing? And, you know, we look at that as a funnel to so you’re looking at what’s happening, you know, from an awareness engagement, you know, website, you know, graphic, if there’s any conversion happening, can you look at all that we look at the ads to see what’s happening there? You know, look at what, what you’ve done with influencers, how is influencer play, work, you know, we call it performance creative, or we’re looking at creative that performs, you know, and what that does for you, and gives you a sense that when you start looking at those trends, you look at the data, you start getting a sense of what’s working, you know, what can we can we extend ourselves into the future, then you say, okay, like, I know, that every time I post a picture, you know, off noodles, and there’s a cocktail and an apple next to it, that blows up, right, and so, let’s do more stuff with apples, you know, let’s say it’s an up, you know, let’s show the apple more. And so, now, you’re going to say, Okay, I’m going to, let’s see, the strategy that becomes like, you know, feature, you know, the Insight is we feature more products off the apples, you know, and also consider, like Asian food. And then you, we extend that into larger strategy. And the strategy could be like, you know, dominate this market or increase, you know, increase sales over there, or, like, you know, you know, improve, improve top of mind awareness, whatever the strategies are the based on objectives, and that, then we get into that, and that’s a collaborative process, you know, with clients. For years, we did strategy on the fly. Instead, we just did it. We did it, and it wasn’t always visible to our clients that we were doing it. And so recently, you know, we made a switch into a, into a, into a very, like, sophisticated and agile strategy, deliverable deliverable, we’re doing it every three months, you know, because in social media, the whole market can change in three months. So, you know, can we, and that’s a serious commitment, you know, it’s very hard. It’s very hard. And, you know, I have a great team that works very hard on it. And so, and we’re also looking for new people. And so, you know, it’s been interesting. We work with some we collaborate with some some top strategists as well, but you know, finding strategy people it’s very difficult. Only finding finding the quality of strategy people that we want is very difficult, like you work for two years, you’re not a strategist, you’re you’re you may be a very knowledgeable tactician, but you’re not a strategist, and strategist is someone that gets digital in general, and then also understand social in a very deep manner. Full talk, I want to talk about
Jeremy Weisz 28:41
hiring because I know right now this point in time you are hiring and what you’re looking for, but you mentioned trends, and without divulging company names or anything I’m just when you think back the past couple years, what was an unexpected trend that you have seen like you gave an example like in a picture we found that putting an apple in there actually boosts in that may be again we’re talking for this whatever individual product that is and you don’t have to say what the product is but I’m just curious of because you’re doing a lot of analyzing every single day what’s been unexpected trend it could be in a picture it could be I don’t know in content in general, and if people should be considering doing or at least thinking about as far as their social ghosts
Duncan Alney 29:33
Jeremy have great questions. I don’t know that this is necessary, these unnecessarily unexpected but I think which is like part of our whole brand promises to make brands more likeable. And you know, you may say like, why why should they be more likeable? Right? Okay, well, you know, you don’t have a choice of whether to engage with the IRS so it doesn’t matter if they’re likable or not. But you know, you have a choice on whether to to engage with them. We went from your local dry cleaner to your grocery store to your car company. Right. So within that kind of sphere of likeability, I think being what we we find unexpectedly, and also we can predict it sometimes is that being likable and nice and friendly and helpful on social media just goes so far, you know, when you reach out to a brand and say, Hey, what’s happening with this, and, you know, they, they help you solve the problem, or, you know, there’s a complaint and they resolve it, I think that that is, remains unexpectedly sort of, like, true and relevant, like, you know, being human wins, you know, putting people first wins. And that’s sort of also my, one of my key philosophy. But some other ones are, you know, I didn’t expect Pinterest to explode, like the sparkline. So Pinterest has been great. Vertical video and video in general, just continue to be amazingly compelling. We’ve put, obviously, we work with you. And, you know, we have a heavy emphasis and view that layered rich content, like podcasts are the way of the future, I mean, even even shorter content, like reels, which is no longer than, you know, story or post. It’s been interesting also, to see the rise of reels, and sort of this crossfade that goes on between Tik Tock and reels, you know, my partner, Jeremy Kane talks about the crossfade. And the mixing, you know, sort of like emojis are greater than regular language, and memes are greater than emojis, you know, and it’s, it’s a, it’s a new vernacular, right? It’s like, this is the creative vernacular, and can you speak, and a lot of brands can’t keep up with that, like, they can’t keep up with that, you know, it’s like, don’t tell me that you’re going to get your testosterone shot, like, show me a picture of so send me a GIF of like, someone all roided up, right. And I immediately know what you’re talking about. Right? It’s like, you don’t have to spend 1000 words, you can send me that one image. So I think that those are sort of some things that we’re seeing, I think, unexpected for Firebelly that we joined, you know, the ranks of the less than 1% of agencies in North America that accept crypto, this unexpectedly, something we did. And, you know, it’s working out for us so far. So I think like, you know, last year, his realization was saying no, is good. And this is the realization is when you want to say no, think about whether you could say yes, and what are the terms that you’d want to say? Yes, under? So. So those, you know,
Jeremy Weisz 32:50
you mentioned one thing that stuck out donkey, which is like, you know, responding quickly, um, you know, being human responding quickly, is that, you know, I know, in the social world, you know, you do paid social is that, what do you do stuff in that realm, as well as like, responding, helping brands respond, or,
Duncan Alney 33:12
yeah, also, you know, in terms of scope of services, you know, we come in, we get people going with this strategy, but then we also be, we help them publish in an ongoing basis, all their organic work, organic is basically all the messaging messaging that you see on these platforms, and bringing all these different kind of content streams together. On the paid piece, it’s like, where you’re paying for placement, right, you’re paying to reach more people you’re paying to get in front of people that would click through to go to your client’s website, or, you know, you’re paying for, you know, more audience, you know, or the opportunity to have people, you know, join your audience, as opposed to buying followers, which is always a no, no. So the paid piece, you know, it’s like, you really can’t, in my opinion, have a true social program without a paid piece. And you got a lot of people that don’t get it, well, why should I spend money? Well, you know, you can, it’s always a chance, something could work for the first time, right? And people can’t really do that without paying any more. We work with sensors, we help identify advocates. We, you know, we do creative services work which, you know, photography video, we’re doing design now. So it’s a it’s an socialism exciting world, you know, you know, unexpected thing that happened for us is that we figured out how to make social listening liable, you know, socialist things where you’re monitoring keywords, and seeing who’s talking about what like your brand, you know, your brand words, your competitors, you know, that kind of generic terms. And the human element is always a piece that was elusive, so the market wanted to pay one thing, the cost is ridiculously high. And so we figured some of that out. And, you know, we’re not leading the market, like my buddy Rob key and conversing on, you know, who’s like, you know, using natural language processing, you know, and, you know, some sort of like, different types of machine learning and AI to like, predict, like, what’s going to happen based on compensation? Like, we’re not doing anything like that, but what we are doing is we’re making, you know, consistent drawing consistent insights based on what people are talking to us or talking about. So, and then community managers as well, you know, we’re looking after people’s communities answering questions and stuff like that, and looks like we’re about to go to a 24 hour models blows my mind, you know, you know, offering 10 Hours of Service was enough now to get clients saying, hey, you know, I want someone I want someone to be answering that 24/7. But I mean, you know, you got to remember, we’re a tiny company, we’re, you know, 10 people about to be, you know, 15 people, I mean, that’s a huge amount of growth to go. That’s like, adding 50%, you know, so, and, you know, I’m just, I’m fortunate and blessed, and I’m living my best cowboy dream.
Jeremy Weisz 35:49
Community Management seems like it would be a popular service. And very helpful. But let’s, let’s talk about hiring for a second. Okay. I am always intrigued by this conversation, as a business owner of what people are looking for how they hire, and what do you look for?
Duncan Alney 36:08
Oh, you know, we look for we look for, we look for good humans that are looking for, you know, some freedom, they’re looking to work within a framework and, you know, and some structure, but it’s a, it’s an agile person that gets social. And, you know, they want to be a part of a certain kind of culture, we’re not a cult, but we definitely have our own culture. And yeah, you know, it’s, it’s people that, that get social that want to work with a values driven company, you know, it’s like focus, integrity, reliability, and excellence. And definitely, like, you know, as unpopular as it may sound, too, for from a client’s perspective, like, in my perspective, a client is not always right, there’s going to be times when the client is wrong, I’m gonna take my team side every time. You know, we want to make sure the client wins, but I’m never going to throw one of my team members under a bus, you know, to keep the client, the clients will come and clients will go, my team is with me. So, you know, those are, those are courageous things to say goes along with the fire in the belly. Right. But yeah, you know, that’s who we are. And that’s why certain kinds of clients want to work with us, just in case people,
Jeremy Weisz 37:20
someone’s listening, and we’re also talking in a moment of time, what positions you hiring for now, in case people, someone out there knows so Yeah,
Duncan Alney 37:30
ya know, we’re looking for, you know, people that get and want to work in organic social, which is, you know, writing content and sourcing imagery and working with our designer and, you know, putting stuff out managing the community, you know, crawling insights, you know, contests, all that kind of stuff, like, you know, you’re managing a community really is what you’re doing paid social people who get, you know, how does targeting work, you know, how to get something in front of people, how to get them to do something with it, right? That’s, and the and the platform’s help you with that, but you still got to have that instinct, like, you know, and candidly, like paid is it is, for a person that is very much into scrutiny, you know, we look at the same stuff day in and day out and try to make it better. So, you know, someone like me a little bit of ADD, not not the right person, right, I get the big picture. I know how to move resources and solve problems, but I don’t have that level of sophistication when it comes to scrutiny. Influence so they’re also looking for organic social people were looking for paid people really looking for, you know, talented people that you know, want to make a difference in social and you know, do good work.
Jeremy Weisz 38:35
You know, Duncan, first of all, so I have one last question for you. Thank you, thank you for sharing your knowledge and your expertise and stories everyone should check out Firebellymarketing.com, learn more, check out their podcast as well. We’re all should we point people towards online to learn more?
Duncan Alney 38:58
I think those are two good ones, you only we’ve done some cool stuff. In the past, we used to have a YouTube show called the Fire where we interviewed, you know, people in Indianapolis, which is where we originally based were everywhere, all over the country now in terms of people, but about the fire was a cool little show. And we have playlists we put playlist together on Spotify, and those have just been named by Billy stereo. So it’s like, you know, we want to we want to use music, to communicate, you know, the building world around our clients, but also world around us. You can tell a lot about people but the music they listened to, or don’t listen to, but those are the key places, you know, if you if you type in Duncan on me, you can find me, you know, in a few places too. So LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, those kinds of places.
Jeremy Weisz 39:42
So this is not my final question, because you sparked another question, but because you mentioned the music what what is your favorite song? Or two songs like if they’re announcing you to speak at this big social club Friends, what What song do you come out to? What are your favorite?
Duncan Alney 40:06
That is amazing question and I will I always like to backup my dad’s by data. And so this is my on repeat list. And my on repeat list on on on Spotify, I believe in both streaming and like real records and stuff like that. But, you know, I have been, I think if I had to pick the song, the couple of songs that have consistently been around, I’m on 53 that have been around my whole life. You know, I would say Vienna by Billy Joel, which is, you know, a song about like, thinking about, you know, visionary, your vision of where you want to be in slowing down and getting to a place that’s always going to be waiting there for you. And every day is like Sunday, you know my Morrissey from the Smiths. But the what I don’t know, you know, I’m really listening to you and going nowhere by the birds Call me when you land by old sea brigade. So those are two that I’ve been obsessed with. I’ve been listening to the love club by Lord a lot. Love good ear for the roses by Elvis Costello. You know, I liked I mean, I’ll tell you one song that everyone should listen to at least once although my significant other and son will tell you this sick, you should have it. Because I played all the time is manifest. It’s an Andrew board collaboration with Erica Warren’s drum Warner strum. And it’s about you know, being at the edge of, you know, great decisions and like sort of like your, you know, your destiny and what role you have. And so, I also like, you know, a lot of Indian, you know, chanting and so I love it,
Jeremy Weisz 41:45
thanks for sharing that. So that was not my final question, but because it just sparked me because we had a team meeting yesterday, and that was we like to have a question that just everyone gets to know each other better? And that was our question, which is, what is your favorite song? Or what’s a song that you would come out to? And you get some interesting answers. And I know, you know, my knowledge and expertise of artists in songs is, is slim to none. I love listening to music, but I couldn’t name what the song was called the artist. So I was always I was like, looking up what people were saying. But my last question, Duncan, for you is, you know, I know you work with a lot of different types of companies, B to C. And I love to hear, as of late, there was an appliance brand that you are doing work with. And I’d love for you to just talk for a second about something that was exciting about that campaign or something, it was going well, about that.
Duncan Alney 42:48
Yeah, so I’m not at liberty to announce the brand, yet. It is a brand that most people would know, in the home appliance space, you I’ll even go for as far as saying it might find it in your kitchen. But they came to us, and they said, hey, you know, we are a highly demanding group. And we want, you know, we want to know, what we’ve done with social recently, and how can we do better, and the head of marketing, you know, very talented person, but also said, like, Listen, you, I am going to need to be convinced. And so, you know, our team, you know, and by the way, while all this is going on, I’m leaving to go to India, to look after my very sick father, and help my mother who’s having trouble coping and he has dementia. So um, you know, it’s like a life or death situation. So I’m, you know, we have, you know, some change going on at the company, that a new, you know, pardner joining the company, and I’m like, Okay, see you later, I’m out, we got this opportunity, you guys manage it. And so, you know, Jeremy King, who’s our, our, our, our, the partner I’m referring to and heading up revenue at Firebelly. And Lauren Johnson, who I mentioned earlier, who’s a longtime Firebelly player, and some of the people on our team, once again, mentioned, really took what we did, and said, you know, what, we’re going to know everything we can about what this brand and its competitors have done. And so they did a lot of human analysis. They used, you know, several different tools. But what they did was that we were going to build a bullet proof, audit and analysis of what this brand has done in the last nine months. Now, you’re going to understand that most most companies in our position would do three months, they might do six months. And the reason is that that’s a lot of data to be looking at. And they did nine months to make it meaningful and they really produce such a an amazing set of insights. Not only did it look good, so not only was the substance good, but even look good. And the client said, we don’t even want to go through it, we’ve read it, and you’re hired. And to me, that was, you know, that was just that, that was unexpected. Because they’re typically people want to read it. They want to ask you questions. And so I think that’s what you were referring to. Right? It is. I mean, I wasn’t a friar was
Jeremy Weisz 45:22
anything specific, but I knew that you’d work with an appliance brand. Yeah.
Duncan Alney 45:27
And what’s interesting is that, you know, does this sort of like this, I think, limiting belief that you got to be big, you know, in terms of revenue, or budget size to do big things. And what we got out of that piece that was really great was you can be small and have a big impact, right? It’s all about, like, culture, Will, political culture will eat strategy for lunch. And so every day, and so I think it’s like, you know, it’s like, if you have a great culture of feeding people well inside your company, treating your customers well, and producing great products, you know, and great digital experiences to accompany those products, that, you know, that’s compelling. And you don’t really have to do a whole lot more than that, you know? So that’s kind of what we found out was that this company really has its shit together.
Jeremy Weisz 46:23
Duncan, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thank you so much, everyone, check out FirebellyMarketing.com check out their podcasts, check out more episodes of InspiredInsider and Rise25 and all that and we’ll see you next time. Thanks, Duncan.
Duncan Alney 46:38
Thank you, Jeremy.
