The Pop-Marketing Podcast

This week we're talking with Ian Baer, founder & Chief Soothsayer at Sooth. We discuss finding the human within our marketing data, the power of nostalgia & popular culture in our marketing & the differences between a spokesperson and a brand advocate. Had a blast taking with Ian and I know you'll find it as interesting and inspiring as I did. Follow Ian Baer: LinkedIn: https://www.lin...

Will Campbell, a co-founder and CEO of Quantasy, joins me on the podcast this week to discuss how modern marketing is now a blend of advertising, technology, entertainment and culture. It's not just talk, Will has proved this cocktail over and over with client's like Lionsgate, NC, Sony, Honda, Google & Facebook. We talk through each part of the mix and dig into how they used this blend to hel...

Gaming trends for brands from competitive to casual with Gamesquare's VP of Brand Strategy, Brandon Painter. The shifting perceptions of a "gamer", brand on-ramps into gaming, the emergence of game movies that don't suck & gettin' cozy on cozy games. Brandon chats it up on all this and more, giving marketers and brands an insider view of the culture of gaming going into 2024! Follow Brandon Pa...

An interview with Michael Kaye, OKCupid's Head of Brand Marketing & Communications where we talk about the culture of dating & relationships. OKCupid has been matching people up for 19 years and still sets itself apart in the SWIPE RIGHT 2023 dating world. Michael tells us how OKCupid's uses Pop-Culture loaded user questions feed its algorithm to connect you with people that match your vib...

Kristian Hansen is redefining what it means to build brands through online community. His slow-fashion denim brand that he scaled from a single TikTok post has a 100k person waitlist and he did it with a $0 ad spend. We chat it up about how he is using community building and direct customer research to turn the tides on the fast fashion industry by tossing traditional marketing tactics in the bin....

Our annual Halloween Spooktacular episode - Tim Canton, Director of Experiential Activations for Thirteenth Floor, Co-Founder of Panic Fest & resident expert in all things horror joins us to talk about his journey and love affair with the horror genre, bringing the worlds and characters of horror & fantasy from film to the real world for fans to experience in a new way and how film studios...

What if children held the keys to the future of marketing and pop culture trends? In this episode of The Pop-Marketing Podcast, I sit down with Terence Burke, SVP of Research, Editor-in-Chief of KidSay's Trend Tracker, and Ryan G Scofield, VP of Marketing, to explore how they extract and analyze insights from the most genuine and unfiltered audience - kids. Whether it's their take on the Metaverse...

This week, we're talking toys with Kyle Wlodyga, Associate Art Director at Super7. Kyle is the Papa Emeritus III of toy design, blending his love of all things metal and plastic into some of the most iconic pop culture-guided action figures and collectibles ever created. We talk about the explosive growth of pop culture collectibles, their origins, what a blind box is, and we go deep behind the sc...

Get ready for a crash course in scarcity marketing! On this episode of The Pop-Marketing Podcast, I'm hanging out with Dr. Mindy Weinstein, author of "The Power of Scarcity" and all-around scarcity marketing expert. We'll be chopping it up about everything from sneaker drops to eSports and how these brands are harnessing the power of FOMO to hook their customers. Tune in for a smart and fun journe...

Are you ready to learn the secrets of fandom marketing? In this episode of The Pop-Marketing Podcast, I sit down with Jenny Stiven, a veteran of the entertainment industry, with Fox, Universal, and Lucasfilm. She shares her unique insights into the world of fan marketing, providing valuable strategies for brands looking to engage with fandoms. Hear about her journey from Lucasfilm to her current r...

Roaring into the world of branding and design with the strength of a T-Rex, this episode of The Pop-Marketing Podcast is set to be a thrilling adventure! Your host, Joe Cox, teams up with the Principal and Chief Strategist at Dyno Creative and Adjunct Professor at Laguna College of Art & Design, Daniel Adoff, to uncover the Jurassic-sized impact of design on the ever-evolving landscape of pop...

This week on the Pop-Marketing Podcast, we're joined by Brian Davidson, co-founder of Match Node. Brian shares insights into running successful paid social media campaigns, the struggles and triumphs of selling tickets for events, and the fascinating future of NFTs in the ticketing industry. Plus, we discuss the importance of maintaining a healthy organizational culture for aligning branding and r...

Jeremy Corray is the Executive Vice President of Coolfire Media and leads the creative vision behind some amazingly modern video marketing campaigns for his client's brands and businesses. However, in this podcast, we zero in on something much more down the Pop-Marketing rabbit hole, where we have a deep discussion about the wonderfully weird origin of Voltron, the 80's western introduction of Jap...

In the connected world, where there is a conversation, there is a community manager. A manager, a moderator, and a mediator of online conversations, a community manager is the link between your company, IP, or brand and your audience. Alex Hutchi brings their perspective from the driver's seat of this ever-evolving and often misunderstood profession of the community manager. We break down the ups...

Tom & Amy Czyz are an Optometrist husband and wife entrepreneurial force behind SLY, a benefits-driven drink designed for gamers and esports athlete needs. Launching a new product is tough, but launching a new drink product...that's Ludacris. That is unless you break a few rules and see old things in new ways. In one of my favorite interviews of 2022, Dr. Tom & Amy Czyz give us a crash course in m...

Ever wanna hear what songs your favorite athlete listens to psych themselves up before the match? The tunes your favorite artist spins to inspire their next creation? Chatting with Mikhael Porter, co-founder of Needle Music this week about the socialization of music, the rise of the music influencer, and creating a social network built for both the music artist and the music curator to thrive. Che...

This week I'm talking with InStreamly's co-founder Wiktoria Wojcik about the current state of gaming and its role in Gen Z's lives. She shares her insights about the digital future of life, entertainment, and marketing. We chat it up about how brands are capturing consumers' attention in live streaming on Twitch & YouTube, esports explosive growth in the west over the last few years, and why Gen Z...

This week on the Pop-Marketing Podcast we're separating the hype from the hero of Web3 with Social Fresh's Jason Keath. We cover NFTs, DAOs, the on-ramps for brands and marketers into the metaverse, and why Jason felt that the impact was big enough to create the #NFTFresh conference. If you've been interested in how your brand or your career can take advantage of the emerging world of Web3, this i...

Jared Leshin discusses his latest book "Advertising and the Nature of Reality", what advertising can teach us about our reality, and why we should care. A former 3D artist & game maker, Jared explores advertising from a cognitive theory & philosophical lens, helping us get a tiny bit closer to understanding the nature of our reality and ultimately, the nature of advertising. Why do bees choose the...

Social Psychologist & Author, Dr. Kevin Payne is back on the podcast to break down why brands are so bullish on offering user experiences and how the pandemic has increased the gaps between how audiences perceive their world. We talk about marketers finding and riding the "Edge" between familiarity & novelty, why "safety" in brand messaging gets tricky when you are trying to motivate behavior and...

Continuing our exploration of fandom and how to connect through popular culture, we welcome Erin Novodvorsky, The Geek Travel Agent herself to the show. Erin has spent 17 years in the travel industry, designing travel experiences around the specific needs of fans of popular culture. You may have heard of Lord of the Rings fans making a pilgrimage to New Zealand where the movies were filmed, but th...

Luke Hurd, one of the most influential augmented reality instructors & creators in the world as well as Director of XR for VMLY&R joins us once again to talk about the other side of the metaverse. Contrary to popular belief, the incoming of web3 & the metaverse isn't only about escaping your reality through VR goggles, but about getting more out of the real world and getting our attention off of t...

Ryan Stephens is a Creative Director & founder of Electric Seaweed, an agency specializing in surf culture. This So-Cal native talks about how surf culture would impact his identity & his future career working for iconic brand Vans. Why does surf culture translate to audiences nowhere near an ocean? How does a brand integrate into a sport that's traditionally anti-marketing? Where does the surf cu...

Continuing our exploration into Esports & gaming culture, I am talking with Tyler Farnsworth, the CMO of Built By Gamers. Built by Gamers is a leading esports organization that develops top talent in the world of competitive gaming and content creation. We talk about the new gamer identity & the stereotypes that still persist outside of the exploding communities. Streaming, lifestyle, content prod...

Afrikan Caesar is the creator & host of The Sneaker Box, the #1 podcast in sneakers. Caesar is also a powerful voice of the sneaker culture community and a hell of a pop-marketer for not being a marketer by trade. Caesar shares with us the origins of modern sneaker culture and how sneakers have become a vessel for so much meaning and impact in popular culture. A fascinating interview, with easily...