Full Transcript for Digital Platforms Shaping the Future of Business with Aruna Ravichandran, Allison Ferenci, and Arjun Rai

by the end of college, we had raised a few hundred thousand dollars towards the project, 32 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:04.160 but again, we were way too early. 33 00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:09.000 But then figured out that social media marketing and marketing in general for small businesses 34 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.400 wasn't at the level it should have been for underdogs. 35 00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:14.680 And we like to call it small businesses underdogs. 36 00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:18.400 So I ended up launching the company that we're working on now, which is HelloWoofie. 37 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:19.400 It's been interesting. 38 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:23.120 It's been definitely been a lot of ups and downs the last two years. 39 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.520 We had 10,000 dollars left in the bank and we had to make a decision. 40 00:02:26.520 --> 00:02:29.600 Are we going to shut the company down or are we going to go all in and make it work? 41 00:02:29.600 --> 00:02:33.440 And with my insane, you know, personality, I said, I'm going to go all in. 42 00:02:33.440 --> 00:02:37.960 So I put in 170K in product cards and savings rebuilt the company from the ground up. 43 00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:40.320 And just one miracle after the other, you know, happened. 44 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:42.040 We launched in December 2019. 45 00:02:42.040 --> 00:02:44.800 We grew 21,000 percent last year in 2020. 46 00:02:44.880 --> 00:02:49.000 We did over 200,000 in revenue and we'll probably do half a million this year in revenue. 47 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:54.240 The point of the matter is just as we were about to die, we figured out that we need to keep going. 48 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:56.600 You need to keep going and miracles do happen. 49 00:02:56.600 --> 00:02:57.600 Hey, I love that. 50 00:02:57.600 --> 00:03:01.800 I will say it's painful and some people say this because they've never done it. 51 00:03:01.800 --> 00:03:05.600 It's easy to like be, you know, a motivational influencer when you hadn't gone through anything. 52 00:03:05.600 --> 00:03:09.240 But when you've gone through it and I've been on both sides of that at the grounds, 53 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:12.600 what is amazing, what you learn failing sometimes, like you said, 54 00:03:12.600 --> 00:03:17.320 you learn not how to raise money and not how to build an MVP and it's probably helped. 55 00:03:17.320 --> 00:03:19.200 I'm sure with what you've done with Hello, woofie. 56 00:03:19.200 --> 00:03:23.000 Once you're pushed up against the wall, you really figure things out. 57 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:26.960 Either you figure things out or you just crumble, but we opt to figure things out 58 00:03:26.960 --> 00:03:30.160 and help other small businesses figure things out as well, especially the small ones. 59 00:03:30.160 --> 00:03:30.640 Yeah. 60 00:03:30.640 --> 00:03:36.560 And that's a big topic, you know, we're a digital agency and we work with small to meet, 61 00:03:36.560 --> 00:03:41.680 getting more into medium-sized brands just from a scale perspective for us and what works for us. 62 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:47.040 But having worked with being a small business, having own small businesses and working with them, 63 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:52.920 it's a really underserved category because they typically do not have the budgets, 64 00:03:52.920 --> 00:04:01.400 the sophistication or the ability to kind of leverage what has become a democratized internet. 65 00:04:01.400 --> 00:04:06.960 But they don't have all of the assets are quite all of it put together. 66 00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:10.240 So I love anything that's getting and working towards that, 67 00:04:10.240 --> 00:04:12.120 which really seems like what Hello, woofie's doing. 68 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:17.040 It comes down to offering data-driven solutions for the price of a cup of coffee, 69 00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:21.640 because to your point, small businesses are just faceted, they're unsophisticated marketers. 70 00:04:21.640 --> 00:04:25.720 They think they know what they can say, but they're just a whole idea of winging it 71 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:29.840 when it comes to the perfect coffee, the perfect emojis, the perfect hashtags, the images, 72 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:34.480 doesn't cut it when you're competing with the biggest unlimited marketing budgets in the world. 73 00:04:34.480 --> 00:04:39.680 In 2021, winging it is not a strategy for any business, for any startup, for any freelancer, right? 74 00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:42.240 And so we were like, okay, as soon as you start typing, 75 00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:44.640 it'll start complying the sentences for you. 76 00:04:44.640 --> 00:04:47.400 You'll find that hashtags for you, find the emojis for you. 77 00:04:47.400 --> 00:04:51.120 This goes back to the idea of a dog I'm pointing to my dog right now, which is the mascot. 78 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:54.560 Not only are you an underdog, but just like your dog, man's best friend, 79 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:57.280 he's always there teaching you when, how and what to post. 80 00:04:57.280 --> 00:05:00.880 And so we started with social because that was the lowest hanging fruit. 81 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:02.720 Then we went into blog scheduling. 82 00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:06.440 We were like, why aren't small businesses blogging, especially during the pandemic, 83 00:05:06.440 --> 00:05:09.000 when they know that digital marketing is super important. 84 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:10.760 And so you can auto-complete a blog post. 85 00:05:10.760 --> 00:05:13.560 You can optimize the B-Bad if I censored it for you. 86 00:05:13.560 --> 00:05:17.800 And then you're like, okay, we got to help small businesses with emails and emails and notes. 87 00:05:17.800 --> 00:05:21.640 So we actually built a Chrome extension that does everything I just told you about 88 00:05:21.640 --> 00:05:23.640 in any text field on the internet. 89 00:05:23.640 --> 00:05:28.120 Small businesses are really not seeing

their customers come through the door the way they used to. 90 00:05:28.120 --> 00:05:29.320 Where are they going? 91 00:05:29.320 --> 00:05:31.320 They're stuck at home, they're quarantined. 92 00:05:31.320 --> 00:05:32.520 But guess who's winning? 93 00:05:32.520 --> 00:05:35.080 The biggest companies in the world, especially in the media business, 94 00:05:35.080 --> 00:05:35.960 are winning. 95 00:05:35.960 --> 00:05:40.120 The Netflix, the Hulu's, the CNBC's, the CNN's are winning, which is great. 96 00:05:40.120 --> 00:05:41.800 Because they're producing a lot more content. 97 00:05:41.800 --> 00:05:44.520 The industry grew 80% during the pandemic. 98 00:05:44.520 --> 00:05:47.720 And I was like, who are small businesses scheduling content? 99 00:05:47.720 --> 00:05:48.840 Of course not. 100 00:05:48.840 --> 00:05:53.880 Until now, we've been working with Amazon to build a world's first smart speaker scheduler. 101 00:05:53.880 --> 00:05:56.440 So literally, you can go to our platform, schedule a video. 102 00:05:56.440 --> 00:06:00.760 And so long as your followers and your customers are following you on the smart speaker app 103 00:06:00.760 --> 00:06:02.600 that will develop for you for free, 104 00:06:02.600 --> 00:06:07.240 then they're able to see the video, audio, or text to audio content within seconds of you scheduling it. 105 00:06:07.240 --> 00:06:11.400 Talk to me about I'm a small business and I'm signing up for hello woofee. 106 00:06:11.400 --> 00:06:16.600 What that process is and exactly what the application does. 107 00:06:16.600 --> 00:06:21.080 So the process is you typically small businesses will go to hellowoofee.com. 108 00:06:21.080 --> 00:06:25.240 They'll schedule a demo or in some cases they'll buy the product and then schedule a demo. 109 00:06:25.240 --> 00:06:27.560 Because one of the things that I love doing is funnels. 110 00:06:27.560 --> 00:06:30.760 It is a funnel all the way through to signing up to buying the product. 111 00:06:30.760 --> 00:06:33.560 Once you buy the product, you redeem the code and the offering, 112 00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:35.800 there's funnels inside to schedule demos as well. 113 00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:38.200 In case you haven't done that, sign up for the newsletter. 114 00:06:38.200 --> 00:06:39.640 So we believe in funnels. 115 00:06:39.640 --> 00:06:42.840 And I really, really wish if other small businesses could do the same 116 00:06:42.840 --> 00:06:46.440 when they're onboarding customers, whether in real life or online, 117 00:06:46.440 --> 00:06:51.240 you really need to keep having pop-ups and reminding people that there is more 118 00:06:51.240 --> 00:06:53.000 than what they've already paid for. 119 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:54.920 And it's to their advantage to be able to do that. 120 00:06:54.920 --> 00:06:59.560 As far as the product is concerned, as soon as you start putting in content into a library, 121 00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:03.000 the idea is that it starts figuring out how similar is a content. 122 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:04.840 So you don't get in trouble with other platforms. 123 00:07:04.840 --> 00:07:09.880 One of the issues that small businesses face is that they keep posting the same thing over and over again. 124 00:07:09.880 --> 00:07:11.480 And that's not okay according to Twitter. 125 00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:16.440 We actually built a compliance engine that prevents you from going above 95% in similarity. 126 00:07:16.440 --> 00:07:21.320 Now you may not realize that you might be at 96% or 95.5%. 127 00:07:21.320 --> 00:07:24.360 We will tell you that, hey, this hashtag, this word, 128 00:07:24.360 --> 00:07:26.360 too similar, this phrase, too similar. 129 00:07:26.360 --> 00:07:29.400 Why don't we help you double-click on it and swap it off for something else? 130 00:07:30.040 --> 00:07:33.480 Again, for a coffee shop owner, they don't have a degree in marketing. 131 00:07:33.480 --> 00:07:37.320 But if we can help them be competitive and not get into trouble, 132 00:07:37.320 --> 00:07:39.720 that's a huge value I for the business owner themselves. 133 00:07:39.720 --> 00:07:42.600 The idea is to build a platform for creative. 134 00:07:42.600 --> 00:07:46.680 We don't want to build, quote unquote, the Bloomberg terminal of the world that's super clunky 135 00:07:46.680 --> 00:07:48.680 and super over-informative. 136 00:07:48.680 --> 00:07:52.120 We want to build something that's super beautiful yet super data driven. 137 00:07:52.120 --> 00:07:52.680 I love it. 138 00:07:52.680 --> 00:07:57.400 So essentially, we're helping small businesses keep their content relevant, 139 00:07:57.400 --> 00:07:59.160 fresh, and compliant. 140 00:07:59.160 --> 00:08:00.200 Exactly. 141 00:08:00.200 --> 00:08:03.240 And do it over and over again and never miss a beat. 142 00:08:03.240 --> 00:08:05.480 And that's not just what social like I was mentioning. 143 00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:08.200 We built a product called Journal that does it for blogging. 144 00:08:08.200 --> 00:08:11.720 We then built a smart speaker scheduler that does it for smart speakers. 145 00:08:11.720 --> 00:08:15.160 And our whole mission is to build the biggest company to help the smallest 146 00:08:15.160 --> 00:08:16.120 every step of the way. 147 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:21.800 We literally mapped the entire English language word by word to figure out exactly 148 00:08:21.800 --> 00:08:25.800 which words, which emojis, which other emojis, based on the emojis you've used already, 149 00:08:25.800 --> 00:08:30.760 which other hashtags tend to be used with one another, based on 200 million data points. 150 00:08:30.760 --> 00:08:33.800 We're giving you the ability to understand what's being used in real time. 151 00:08:33.800 --> 00:08:36.760 And then of course, we're all cavemen, like our images, right? 152 00:08:36.760 --> 00:08:40.280 Automatically find royalty-free images, not go to Google images, 153 00:08:40.280 --> 00:08:42.440 because

you may or may not be able to use those images. 154 00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:47.480 The image-based platform is doing really well because the fact is people are visual. 155 00:08:47.480 --> 00:08:50.120 It's surrendered really well because it was visual as well. 156 00:08:50.120 --> 00:08:51.960 And then video was introduced and guess what? 157 00:08:52.040 --> 00:08:55.720 My theory is the more we get frames per second, 158 00:08:55.720 --> 00:09:00.520 the more frames per second, it's easier to distribute content by frames per second, 159 00:09:00.520 --> 00:09:04.200 like TikTok, it being example, or YouTube being example of video formats, 160 00:09:04.200 --> 00:09:08.440 the more engagement you'll get, and the more competitive it will become to market. 161 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:09.720 And I'm really bullish on that. 162 00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:12.280 The evolution from Facebook to Instagram, 163 00:09:13.320 --> 00:09:18.840 obviously Facebook agreed with it when they bought them for what now seems like a valued 164 00:09:18.840 --> 00:09:20.840 price of $3 billion, I think it was. 165 00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:25.080 But yeah, but it was the same thing, because everything was super text based on Facebook, 166 00:09:25.080 --> 00:09:26.920 everything was getting wordy and lengthy. 167 00:09:26.920 --> 00:09:32.280 And then the simplicity of the image-based on Instagram took off, 168 00:09:32.280 --> 00:09:35.480 and then exactly what you're seeing with TikTok on the video side. 169 00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:37.480 Video is king, I think, as we say. 170 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:42.920 And then you've got to ubiquitous nature of 5G networks coming that makes all of this happen. 171 00:09:42.920 --> 00:09:46.120 So my other theory is that waves per second, right? 172 00:09:46.200 --> 00:09:49.080 It's all about getting more data in a unit of time, 173 00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:52.280 and then being able to allow everyone to access that capabilities. 174 00:09:52.280 --> 00:09:57.240 Any trends, anything you're seeing beyond what you guys are bringing to life on HelloWoofy 175 00:09:57.240 --> 00:10:00.680 in the small business space for this year in 2021? 176 00:10:00.680 --> 00:10:03.080 Well, I just face it, from a relationship perspective, 177 00:10:03.080 --> 00:10:08.920 from just development of society in general, everything that would have happened in five years, 178 00:10:08.920 --> 00:10:09.960 happened in five months. 179 00:10:11.160 --> 00:10:14.200 And speaking of trends in the business world, you see the same thing. 180 00:10:14.280 --> 00:10:15.080 It's so interesting. 181 00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:18.520 People are becoming adaptable, essentially, to the circumstances. 182 00:10:18.520 --> 00:10:21.000 And I like how video is becoming more common. 183 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:22.840 Delivery is a lot more common now. 184 00:10:22.840 --> 00:10:26.600 People, you know, the last mine delivery is a trend is huge now. 185 00:10:26.600 --> 00:10:28.520 And then, like I was talking about smart speakers, 186 00:10:28.520 --> 00:10:33.960 I mean, we're seeing a lot of content distribution channels really double downing on that. 187 00:10:33.960 --> 00:10:35.640 And from the infrastructure standpoint, 188 00:10:35.640 --> 00:10:37.880 because not only more people on the internet and connecting, 189 00:10:37.880 --> 00:10:41.960 but they're working from home, they're pushing residential areas to have 190 00:10:42.760 --> 00:10:46.680 almost enterprise-grade technology to actually allow them to connect with one another. 191 00:10:46.680 --> 00:10:51.320 How mapped out of a strategy do they need to have if they're coming on board with HelloWoofy, 192 00:10:51.320 --> 00:10:56.280 or is it pretty much like plug and play like with how they come into the platform? 193 00:10:56.280 --> 00:11:00.760 We wanted to make it so simple that even your kid could use this if they were an influencer, 194 00:11:00.760 --> 00:11:04.120 right? We know so many kids around the world who are YouTube stars and whatnot. 195 00:11:04.120 --> 00:11:08.280 And so we wanted to make sure that you were not only using something that was super simple, 196 00:11:08.360 --> 00:11:12.440 but data-driven and, you know, honestly, when as soon as a small business jumps on board and gets 197 00:11:12.440 --> 00:11:15.880 start, you know, starts using it, there's not a lot of learning curve. 198 00:11:15.880 --> 00:11:17.720 And they literally just have to start typing. 199 00:11:17.720 --> 00:11:19.160 It'll do the work for you. 200 00:11:19.160 --> 00:11:24.520 And the more you do that, the more you notice how easy it should have been to do social media 201 00:11:24.520 --> 00:11:28.920 marketing. And then, of course, you can do other parts of blogging and scheduling other kinds of 202 00:11:28.920 --> 00:11:33.320 content as well. We have that whole Robin Hood effect, essentially, which is we want to build 203 00:11:33.320 --> 00:11:36.280 the biggest company helping the smallest. But how do we do that, right? 204 00:11:36.280 --> 00:11:39.560 And this is great for other startups and other small businesses who are listening in, 205 00:11:39.560 --> 00:11:43.320 is you want to involve your customers from the very beginning. 206 00:11:43.320 --> 00:11:47.640 And I encourage each and every one of you who is listening in to build a community. 207 00:11:47.640 --> 00:11:50.200 We build ours in Facebook, call content masters. 208 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:53.640 But every single day, people are telling us what's working. Every single day, 209 00:11:53.640 --> 00:11:56.520 they're literally telling us what's not working. They be make a mistake. 210 00:11:56.520 --> 00:12:01.000 They're happy to tell us that in the Facebook event, I'm happy to respond in video format. 211 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:05.400 And I just encourage everyone to make sure that you're not just building a business for yourself. 212 00:12:05.400 --> 00:12:10.520 You

really have to focus on the community and get your customers involved, get involved as well. 213 00:12:10.520 --> 00:12:14.440 You know, we talk about this at the agency. We've been working on some Cisco. 214 00:12:14.440 --> 00:12:19.880 We've been helping our partner, ScanSource. And I'm really excited to have Aruna, 215 00:12:20.440 --> 00:12:27.080 Ravi Shandran on the show, the CMO of WebEx by Cisco. Aruna, welcome to the show. 216 00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:30.920 Oh, I am so excited to be here. And thank you for having me this morning. 217 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:35.560 I think you're such an inspiration in your position in what you've done and your kind of your 218 00:12:35.560 --> 00:12:38.440 history. And I'd really love to just kind of start there. 219 00:12:38.440 --> 00:12:45.000 So I was born, raised in India. And very earlier on, you know, my career path in India was 220 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:51.240 actually chosen for me by my mom, who's a big inspiration. And I was told that I had to bake 221 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:55.640 three career paths. I had a choice and I had to bake only one of them. It's an engineer, 222 00:12:56.440 --> 00:13:04.520 a doctor or a loser. And very earlier on, I loved Math and I decided to basically pursue a 223 00:13:04.520 --> 00:13:09.640 career in engineering. And so fast forward, got my bachelor's in computer science, came into 224 00:13:09.640 --> 00:13:16.760 the United States, had a very, very successful career as a group from an engineer to an architect 225 00:13:16.760 --> 00:13:23.480 into an engineering director. Ten years into a very successful career, I decided that I'm going to 226 00:13:23.480 --> 00:13:30.520 make a pretty big and a risky move and decided to go into the darkest side of the business, 227 00:13:30.520 --> 00:13:36.440 which is all about marketing, because I knew that I could make a bigger impact. Because even while 228 00:13:36.440 --> 00:13:42.520 I was in engineering, while I was a really good engineer, I always, always gravitated towards 229 00:13:42.520 --> 00:13:48.280 the voice of the customer. I also believe that the symbiotic marriage of technology and marketing 230 00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:56.200 together was an untapped supercharger, which pretty much will help in terms of innovation and growth, 231 00:13:56.200 --> 00:14:01.480 not just for my career, but also I could play a big role in terms of being able to help technology 232 00:14:01.480 --> 00:14:08.760 companies. And now I see the world in a very different way through the lens of a CMO. And so 233 00:14:08.760 --> 00:14:14.520 given that, you know, I've now been on the marketing side for about 15 plus years, and it's been a 234 00:14:14.520 --> 00:14:19.560 continuous journey of learning. It was a pretty risk-carrier path because, you know, when you make a 235 00:14:19.560 --> 00:14:25.160 change like that, after a very successful engineering career, you don't know what you don't know. But 236 00:14:25.160 --> 00:14:32.760 I am blessed, grateful, and really happy from actually taking the chance and making a shift into 237 00:14:32.760 --> 00:14:39.080 the marketing side. You bring the technical side of the engineering, which is the science, if I can 238 00:14:39.160 --> 00:14:45.960 call it that. But you had this natural, we're kind of spirits. This natural humanity that, you know, 239 00:14:45.960 --> 00:14:51.480 comes with, you know, the art of storytelling. And it sounds like, you know, you've been able to 240 00:14:51.480 --> 00:14:55.640 kind of bring those two sides together because a lot of times, you know, marketers, a lot of them, 241 00:14:55.640 --> 00:15:00.760 that's not a standard career path. It's usually like one or the other. Like, I'm into the building 242 00:15:00.760 --> 00:15:06.440 blocks of engineering of how these things happen or these products are built versus the art of 243 00:15:06.440 --> 00:15:12.360 telling about them in some unique way. That's a pretty unique path. It definitely is a huge 244 00:15:12.360 --> 00:15:18.760 advantage because if you think about B2B companies, technology tends to be pretty complex. And so, 245 00:15:18.760 --> 00:15:25.480 like I said, I'm definitely grateful for my engineering background because it gives me the ability to, 246 00:15:25.480 --> 00:15:30.920 you know, build a narrative at a higher level, but also gives me the ability and the seat of the 247 00:15:30.920 --> 00:15:37.720 table with my customers so that I can dig deep into the product sides. It's definitely a balance 248 00:15:37.720 --> 00:15:43.400 and it's tough, right? Like, I always tell people, you can probably be very good at two things. 249 00:15:44.200 --> 00:15:49.960 Two things. And that is a true statement, at least from myself. If you want to be a jack of all 250 00:15:49.960 --> 00:15:56.120 trades master of none, so be it. But if you really want to be good at your discipline or really 251 00:15:56.120 --> 00:16:01.480 want to be good as a mother, you'll have to make a lot of hard choices. And I did a lot of hard 252 00:16:01.480 --> 00:16:08.040 choices during my career in order to raise my two goals. Let's talk about the book dev ops for digital 253 00:16:08.040 --> 00:16:12.840 leaders. What was your inspiration for the book and what was like some of the key takeaways you 254 00:16:12.840 --> 00:16:18.440 want readers to get from it? As I talked to a lot of the C-suite customers and I learned about some 255 00:16:18.440 --> 00:16:24.360 of the best frameworks and practices they've got here. I looked around and I saw that there were a 256 00:16:24.360 --> 00:16:30.600 lot of technical books on DevOps, but there was no book which was like a Chronicles of DevOps, 257 00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:37.000 which talks about good frameworks and disciplines which customers have actually adopted and deployed. 258 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:43.000 I will always be a technology-oriented CMO and I will gravitate towards that. And

one of the reasons 259 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:49.880 I also wrote the book is because it basically helps build talk leadership. So because there are so 260 00:16:49.880 --> 00:16:54.920 many different opportunities out there and like I said, I am really obsessed with the voice of 261 00:16:54.920 --> 00:17:00.760 the customer. The customer is the game and I'll go above and beyond in order to make sure that 262 00:17:00.760 --> 00:17:08.040 we keep customers happy. Your key initiatives with WebEx and both maybe in the last year or so, 263 00:17:08.040 --> 00:17:13.640 but if certainly moving forward, what are some of the priorities for you with the brand? 264 00:17:13.720 --> 00:17:20.040 Things have changed radically. Video conferencing was known by a selected few, especially large 265 00:17:20.040 --> 00:17:24.840 enterprises, but the ones who actually knew about video conferencing. Now, even a three-year-old 266 00:17:24.840 --> 00:17:30.680 knows what is video conferencing, right? Because with the pandemic, the whole market around 267 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:36.600 video conferencing being able to talk to people in a virtual way has been completely democratized. 268 00:17:36.680 --> 00:17:43.160 And so in fall of last year, the Cisco leadership team, the G2 Patel, my manager, who's the 269 00:17:43.160 --> 00:17:49.960 EVP of a collaboration business, decided to basically make a big investment on the marketing side. 270 00:17:49.960 --> 00:17:54.680 At that particular time, we realized that we faced a tough situation because with the pandemic, 271 00:17:55.160 --> 00:18:01.960 even though we continue to be the leaders in the enterprise space, but we did not have the 272 00:18:01.960 --> 00:18:08.440 hearts and minds of the end users, right? Like we did not have a perception that we are cool and fun. 273 00:18:08.440 --> 00:18:13.480 And so it was a big challenge, which the team and I had to basically undertake. That is where 274 00:18:14.040 --> 00:18:20.920 the team did a phenomenal job. First, we had to overcome perception issues. Second, we had to land 275 00:18:20.920 --> 00:18:27.560 big punches in the awareness fight that our new and louder competitors were already started to 276 00:18:27.560 --> 00:18:32.840 have a play in the market. And last but not the least, it's not just about video conferencing. 277 00:18:32.840 --> 00:18:38.520 It's about owning the conversation around hybrid work. I had to implement with my team three 278 00:18:38.520 --> 00:18:46.280 important strategies. One, had to rebrand WebEx. So in June 2021 of this year, for the very first time 279 00:18:46.280 --> 00:18:53.000 in WebEx's 25 year history, the team rolled out a brand new rebrand campaign with WebEx. 280 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:59.080 For us here at WebEx, our purpose, and especially here at Cisco, is to create an inclusive future for 281 00:18:59.080 --> 00:19:05.640 all. And a big part of this rebrand is to also to send that strong message. Everything across the 282 00:19:05.640 --> 00:19:11.720 board, we want to make sure that we represent a diverse group across geographies, across age 283 00:19:11.720 --> 00:19:19.160 groups, across location. Because with WebEx, now we have the ability to basically bring everyone 284 00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:24.360 together regardless of where you're actually located, regardless of the time zone. And so technology 285 00:19:24.360 --> 00:19:29.880 becomes a big enabler. We basically then launched a global campaign, which is called driving hybrid 286 00:19:29.880 --> 00:19:39.720 work. And this campaign, we created with our favorite customer, McLaren, the Formula One team. 287 00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:45.400 It's awesome to see the multiple different faceted use cases, which Zach Brown, 288 00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:51.480 now a bit of fabulous relationship with Zach Brown. And he actually told you the value he and 289 00:19:51.480 --> 00:19:56.600 team are actually getting with fan engagement with their downstream technology with WebEx. 290 00:19:56.600 --> 00:20:02.840 I don't think we've completely digested as a society, especially a working society, is the complete 291 00:20:02.840 --> 00:20:07.720 picture of the hybrid work environment. And it sounds like WebEx is at the forefront of kind 292 00:20:07.720 --> 00:20:12.200 of helping define different things. I hadn't thought about the equal state at the table. When you 293 00:20:12.200 --> 00:20:17.720 think about the mindset of participating in these things and where you might be, and thinking 294 00:20:17.720 --> 00:20:24.520 about it in a smart, concise way about how to make people feel truly included, no matter where 295 00:20:24.520 --> 00:20:30.440 they are in the world, be it home, be it work, be it office, whatever that might, I say, 296 00:20:30.440 --> 00:20:37.000 is really fascinating and really forward thinking about some of the psychology involved with the 297 00:20:37.000 --> 00:20:43.160 hybrid approach. It is. And I'll add another thing, right? Like there is this growing concern about 298 00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:49.480 you know, mental video fatigue, people are, you know, if you look across the board in the market, 299 00:20:49.480 --> 00:20:55.240 it's all about, you know, mental wellbeing. And that is another area where I think technology 300 00:20:55.240 --> 00:21:00.120 can play a big role. One of some of the key things we have actually done in order to basically focus 301 00:21:00.120 --> 00:21:06.520 on employee wellbeing is to come up with partnerships. So we recently created a partnership with 302 00:21:06.520 --> 00:21:12.440 Ariana Huffington's company. She's got an app which is called a reset app. So with that particular 303 00:21:12.440 --> 00:21:18.120 partnership, like if you are going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, research has shown 304 00:21:18.120 --> 00:21:24.200 that if you take a five minute break between your virtual meetings, it has a tremendous role to play

305 00:21:24.200 --> 00:21:29.080 in your mental health. Any big things out there that you're seeing coming? Work is not about 306 00:21:29.080 --> 00:21:35.560 where you work. Work is about actually what you do. And technology now becomes a huge 307 00:21:35.560 --> 00:21:41.960 enabler to ensure that work gets done regardless of whether you're working from home, 308 00:21:41.960 --> 00:21:48.920 office or anywhere in between. And I think I am extremely excited for what Cisco can actually bring 309 00:21:48.920 --> 00:21:54.360 to the table to our customers, our prospects and everyone around the world in terms of 310 00:21:55.320 --> 00:22:01.640 being able to help everyone to embrace hybrid work. We're getting meted today. We're getting AR, 311 00:22:01.640 --> 00:22:11.000 VR, MRPR, all the R's here, all the realities with my friend Allison, Farency, CEO and co-founder 312 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:15.080 of Camera IQ. What's up, Allison? Hey Ryan, thanks so much for having me today. 313 00:22:15.080 --> 00:22:21.400 Hey my pleasure. I do want to start with what got you into the AR world. 314 00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:30.280 So my background is as a creative technologist, I have been for better or worse in the AR-XR 315 00:22:30.280 --> 00:22:37.880 space for the last 10 years. I got started when I was in graduate school doing a masters in interior 316 00:22:37.880 --> 00:22:43.000 architecture and digital interactive art and was really fascinated about what it would mean for 317 00:22:43.720 --> 00:22:48.440 digital content to occupy our physical world and was a believer that I could actually bring 318 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:53.800 those two realities closer together. How's that entrepreneurial journey been for you? Look, 319 00:22:53.800 --> 00:23:00.120 I think, and you know this as an entrepreneur yourself, I think the key to being an entrepreneur's 320 00:23:00.120 --> 00:23:06.680 perseverance, there's kind of what is your idea is the market right and then are you willing to 321 00:23:06.680 --> 00:23:12.360 just stick it out because no matter what shit's going to be hard prior to founding Camera IQ, 322 00:23:12.360 --> 00:23:20.280 I had an AR agency, so had the benefit of understanding where Big Tech was investing from the hardware, 323 00:23:20.280 --> 00:23:25.160 meaning into cameras, right? So most ubiquitous piece of hardware in the world. You look at 324 00:23:25.160 --> 00:23:31.000 Apple ads today and this is all they show, right? Is the camera had the benefit of watching them 325 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:36.760 double down on the computer vision software. So the software that enables the camera to actually 326 00:23:36.760 --> 00:23:42.440 see and understand the world around them, watch consumer behavior change from everyone becoming 327 00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:47.240 a photographer with Instagram to the rise of stories and Snapchat to you know everyone being a 328 00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:53.560 creator because of TikTok and then also

knew firsthand as a creator how hard it is to create this 329 00:23:53.560 --> 00:23:58.280 content across platform at scale. But still I would say you know it's hard as shit. 330 00:24:00.680 --> 00:24:05.320 It's a lot of pressure but I feel lucky I wake up every day and I love what I do and I wanted to 331 00:24:05.320 --> 00:24:12.680 find the future of of computing and I'm a believer that the metaverse or spatial computing is that. 332 00:24:12.680 --> 00:24:18.600 So as of now running Camera IQ is the best way I know how to do that. With all of these technologies 333 00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:27.160 whether we're talking metaverse Web 3, NFTs, it's all a function of kind of not if but when 334 00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:34.760 and I think part of bringing these technologies to to bear is about the practicality of how 335 00:24:34.760 --> 00:24:40.120 that technology is implemented perhaps as a creative technologist I am at liberty to say this but 336 00:24:40.120 --> 00:24:49.080 like for me tech for tech sake is art. It's all about how we implement that technology to make it work 337 00:24:49.080 --> 00:24:54.520 for whether it's for businesses or for consumers and hopefully and all of that helping ourselves be 338 00:24:54.520 --> 00:25:01.080 more human. Universes kind of being built. I'd love for you to kind of define the metaverse the 339 00:25:01.080 --> 00:25:08.120 way you do and kind of wear all these how all these universes come together maybe or are they? 340 00:25:08.120 --> 00:25:13.720 So what is the metaverse simply to meet is the next evolution of the internet and there's kind of 341 00:25:13.720 --> 00:25:19.400 three defining factors that differentiate it from the experience we have on of the internet today. 342 00:25:19.400 --> 00:25:25.320 The internet today is two-dimensional. The first is that it's going to be spatial. It is 3D, 343 00:25:25.320 --> 00:25:31.080 it is interactive and it's something we can move through whether that is a virtual reality or 344 00:25:31.080 --> 00:25:40.440 virtual environment. So a platform or you know like Vansworld on Roblox or Light Saber on Oculus 345 00:25:40.440 --> 00:25:47.080 right. Those are virtual environments or virtual realities and then there's the mapping of digital 346 00:25:47.160 --> 00:25:53.320 content to our world. So augmented reality. The second is that it's persistent. I can map content 347 00:25:53.320 --> 00:25:57.880 into Times Square and it's going to persistently live there. It's not going to disappear when I'm 348 00:25:57.880 --> 00:26:05.640 not engaging with it and the same is true when we talk about a virtual reality. This is very common 349 00:26:05.640 --> 00:26:10.680 in open world games even when I'm not playing. The game continues and then the third is that it 350 00:26:10.680 --> 00:26:16.680 shared that if you and I are in Times Square not only is that object in Times Square persistent but 351 00:26:17.400 --> 00:26:25.880 we are engaging with it together and seeing the same thing and having it react to both of us. 352 00:26:25.880 --> 00:26:31.640 So in that way it's shared just like you would in a virtual environment. What is it in terms of 353 00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:37.960 its medium? The how? We would kind of couch all of it in the big XR. So extended reality. 354 00:26:37.960 --> 00:26:43.480 Primarily that's going to be augmented reality or virtual reality and then the where is it? 355 00:26:44.360 --> 00:26:49.320 You know I think some folks have this conception that it has to be a head mounted display. 356 00:26:49.320 --> 00:26:55.320 The truth or the reality of it. Unintended there is the ways that we engage with them at a 357 00:26:55.320 --> 00:27:00.520 verse today are through our mobile phones, our tablets, personal computers, gaming consoles. 358 00:27:00.520 --> 00:27:05.160 It will be head mounted displays at some point but I also would argue it's going to be holograms. 359 00:27:05.160 --> 00:27:11.240 It's going to be really any piece of hardware that has cameras and screens so it could be your 360 00:27:11.240 --> 00:27:16.200 Tesla, right? All become computing platforms that help us enter the Metaverse. 361 00:27:16.200 --> 00:27:20.920 Some of the experiences they were building AR and VR kind of into it a little bit like where you 362 00:27:20.920 --> 00:27:25.400 would see through the lens of your thing and see different experiences within retail. 363 00:27:25.400 --> 00:27:29.160 And I always thought that that had all the potential in the world and I think maybe we'll come 364 00:27:29.160 --> 00:27:35.400 back to that now that the usage is more viable so to speak. Yeah you know we talk about how the 365 00:27:35.400 --> 00:27:40.760 what you do with camera IQ today is an investment towards the Metaverse. We're not trying to tell you 366 00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:48.600 you are 100% doing the Metaverse and this is the promise of it but rather hey how do I use 367 00:27:48.600 --> 00:27:55.800 the camera and create different AR experiences that address the consumer funnel meaning 368 00:27:55.800 --> 00:27:59.800 what are experiences that I can run on social that are going to drive top of funnel for me 369 00:28:00.680 --> 00:28:05.800 and have the outcome that I want and we have the data that shows that right so for reference 370 00:28:05.880 --> 00:28:13.720 an AR experience compared to a traditional post on social can reach up to 34x your audience versus 371 00:28:13.720 --> 00:28:20.920 a traditional post on social media photo or video passive in my mind is only going to reach 0.5% 372 00:28:20.920 --> 00:28:25.240 of your audience. So again if you want to widen your top of funnel AR is the most effective medium 373 00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:31.880 if we're talking about engagement an AR experience across kind of any platform has an average 374 00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:37.400 play rate at least the ones coming from camera IQ of 55% when we look at folks at how they

engage 375 00:28:37.400 --> 00:28:43.480 with a photo or video we're talking about you know I think it's like a less than a 10% engagement 376 00:28:43.480 --> 00:28:51.800 rate and then when we look at conversion meaning how do I use AR to visualize a product or try 377 00:28:51.800 --> 00:28:57.640 on a product before we buy our customers are seeing at least a three and a half x increase in 378 00:28:57.640 --> 00:29:02.920 conversion rate and in some cases up to 10 x increase in conversion rate on their e-commerce site 379 00:29:02.920 --> 00:29:10.520 so for us it's less about let's build fucking anything right and do the never been done before 380 00:29:10.520 --> 00:29:16.600 but instead how do you get really practical and insert the camera or AR into the consumer 381 00:29:16.600 --> 00:29:21.160 journey where we know it's going to make a difference in your business. It's always this the 382 00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:28.360 want versus the need like is this entertainment or is this the universe to come like you know 383 00:29:28.360 --> 00:29:35.320 is our world so fucked that we need to get into the metaverse. So I have two minds the first is 384 00:29:36.200 --> 00:29:43.320 kind of putting want and need aside I think if we look at Gen Z which is going to represent the 385 00:29:43.320 --> 00:29:48.360 largest consumer base in the next I think it's like in the next five years they're going to have 386 00:29:48.360 --> 00:29:53.720 the spending power of any generation of all time the reality of Gen Z is they don't consume 387 00:29:54.280 --> 00:30:00.520 the way that previous generations have they're not interested in photo or video they're a generation 388 00:30:00.520 --> 00:30:06.360 that expects to have a voice in platform they all consider themselves creators they are a 389 00:30:06.360 --> 00:30:13.480 generation that expects to see themselves reflected in your brand they're a generation that wants to 390 00:30:13.480 --> 00:30:19.400 play with you before and and participate in your brand before they ever purchase from you 391 00:30:19.400 --> 00:30:25.080 and a lot of that behavior is drawn from from gaming right that interactivity it's also drawn from 392 00:30:25.080 --> 00:30:30.520 from from platforms like TikTok if you want to engage with them you can't just depend on making 393 00:30:31.160 --> 00:30:37.560 your marketing campaigns photo and video you have to be thinking about interactivity which is 394 00:30:37.560 --> 00:30:41.560 a key principle in the metaverse in this kind of next iteration of the internet. 395 00:30:41.640 --> 00:30:45.480 I think you're right there because we have brands all the time they're like do we need to be 396 00:30:45.480 --> 00:30:51.000 worried about this do we need to be thinking about this and I'm like some of them it's the answers 397 00:30:51.000 --> 00:30:55.560 yes and I would say they have to worry about it but they need to be brainstorming and then some 398 00:30:55.560 --> 00:31:01.400

it's like your budget doesn't necessarily allow for it and the opportunity isn't necessarily 399 00:31:01.400 --> 00:31:07.800 here for it and I think it really depends. It's I think it's brand and vertical specific but I 400 00:31:07.880 --> 00:31:12.920 I would say there's kind of two things depending again on on vertical that your brand is in as 401 00:31:12.920 --> 00:31:16.440 like the first is like if you're a product company meeting you're selling a digital good 402 00:31:17.240 --> 00:31:21.960 the most important thing for you to be doing as a business is starting to digitize your brand 403 00:31:22.600 --> 00:31:27.400 you have to start or we talk about as digital twins even if you can't go back in time and digitize 404 00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:31.640 all of your products moving forward how do you make that part of your pipeline that's easier set 405 00:31:31.640 --> 00:31:36.040 than done so which is why I'm like that has to be a day one it should be part of your investment 406 00:31:36.040 --> 00:31:41.960 just based on the fact that visualizing products in 3D and AR can increase your conversion over 407 00:31:41.960 --> 00:31:48.360 three and a half X how do we change our workflow at the top of production and design to make sure 408 00:31:48.360 --> 00:31:55.560 we're capturing those 3D models but if you're able to do that that asset can be used not only 409 00:31:55.560 --> 00:32:00.600 along your entire kind of e-commerce funnel but can be used in your entire customer journey to 410 00:32:00.600 --> 00:32:06.360 help them make a smarter better purchase and that not only increases your sales but will help 411 00:32:06.360 --> 00:32:12.360 reduce your returns so again if we want the metaverse to be as rich and interactive as the 412 00:32:12.360 --> 00:32:19.640 experience we have on the worldwide web today we have to start investing in 3D content don't get 413 00:32:19.640 --> 00:32:24.600 me wrong you can use 2D assets but if we're trying to sell your product you have to digitize 414 00:32:24.760 --> 00:32:31.320 your content in 3D primarily camera Q is actually enabling you to build these experiences and then 415 00:32:31.320 --> 00:32:36.600 have them work across platforms so across all of the major social platforms as well as on your 416 00:32:36.600 --> 00:32:41.160 e-commerce site when it comes to digitizing your products that's a whole nother workflow that we 417 00:32:41.160 --> 00:32:46.440 have a number of partners that we can introduce our customers to to help them do that okay so it's 418 00:32:46.440 --> 00:32:52.280 more of the AR experience once you have the digital assets you can essentially build on our platform 419 00:32:52.280 --> 00:32:58.440 and we're going to guarantee that it works on every major AR platform we started with social because 420 00:32:58.440 --> 00:33:03.800 that's where their where consumers were in the camera every day we're now on in web so we can 421 00:33:03.800 --> 00:33:08.840 support your e-commerce site we can do SMS marketing we can do email marketing pretty much anywhere 422 00:33:08.840 --> 00:33:16.120 that you want to invoke a web page we can run for us the future really starts to look at both 423 00:33:16.120 --> 00:33:22.600 next generation hardware as well as virtual environment so while we're extremely passionate 424 00:33:22.600 --> 00:33:29.560 on a personal level coming from a camera first world so AR world for us VR is just AR with the lights 425 00:33:29.560 --> 00:33:35.960 out and so what you'll see from us over the next 12 to 18 months is starting to think about again 426 00:33:35.960 --> 00:33:44.040 next generation hardware as well as the ability to distribute into virtual environments and really 427 00:33:44.120 --> 00:33:50.520 focused on how do we become the best tool for creating scaling and managing these experiences 428 00:33:50.520 --> 00:33:55.480 where do you get inspiration is it just naturally like intrinsically in you like I'm just 429 00:33:56.040 --> 00:34:01.880 driven I'm inspired as a person the thing now that I get most inspiration from is like I love 430 00:34:01.880 --> 00:34:08.600 building tools there is nothing more exciting for me than seeing one of our customers and you know 431 00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:14.760 whether it's a social media marketer at a brand or a graphic designer who's you know using 432 00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:21.640 proficient in the Adobe Creative Cloud having that aha moment of like holy shit I can create an AR 433 00:34:21.640 --> 00:34:29.560 experience and it was joyful and fun and I didn't spend hours trying to watch YouTube videos you 434 00:34:29.560 --> 00:34:35.320 know our customers say we're like the Canva of AR if you're familiar with Canva that for me that 435 00:34:35.320 --> 00:34:40.920 democratization of technology is what I get out of bed every day for is wanting to invite more 436 00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:48.040 people to participate to listen or watch full episodes visit us on the web at theradcast.com 437 00:34:48.040 --> 00:34:57.480 or follow us on social media at our instagram account d.rad.cast or at ryanolford stay radical