John, welcome back. I know already. Look at us. Call it a trend.

We're really doing it again

without a big gap back.

Yeah. Well we have a great episode today. Really looking forward to talking to our guests, who I, I feel like a lot of people relate to and want to hear more about. But before we get started on that I wanted to ask you your thoughts on the demise of The Tupperware brand.

Ah, yes. The long tenured Tupperware brand.

Yes. Tupperware has gone bankrupt. And yeah, there's a number of reasons for that. According to what I'm reading one of which is their reliance on, Direct sales up until the last couple of years where they finally started an e commerce program. Yeah, I saw

that. I didn't realize that, I didn't realize they were solely door to door, you know, through, through Tupperware parties and up until like 2019 or something?

2020, yeah. 2020, yeah. Which is Wild crazy. I mean, talk about like, not trying to pivot and just staying with what they got until it goes down. But, fascinating stuff. What really I found interesting is, the conversation around, brands like Tupperware that actually become the names of the categories.

Oh yeah. When they get, genericized. Yeah.

Yeah. And, what are your thoughts on that?

I read an article about that and I thought it was really interesting. They called it out that some of the savvier brands go way out of their way to make sure not to use their words, their brand names as no. Right? Yeah. So it's Kleenex tissue.

Yeah.

It's a Q tip cotton swab. They don't genericize it themselves. And I was amazed to read that both Google and is it Kimberly Clark that owns Kleenex? That they both have actually engaged in legal battles to keep their, their brands out of the dictionary for that very reason.

That's amazing. Good luck with that though. I mean, yeah,

yeah. I

The Q-tip one who calls that anything else other than that?

And who searches on anything besides Google?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I found some really interesting other brand names that have become the category name over the years. So I thought I'd share some and let's hear it. Yeah. So a Ziploc chapstick.

Oh,

people,

people use chapstick generically. I don't think I was aware of that.

Really? What I guess

I don't walk around saying, can you hand me some lip balm? I usually put me. Don't say that.

No, they don't. Bandaid

bandaid, classic

jacuzzi. I guess a lot of people still use hot tub, but there, there's a generalized, yes, we knew about jacuzzi. Crockpot.

Oh, I did not know that. Let me guess, Betty Crocker?

No, crockpot.

But like, who, it's just a standalone brand?

Yeah.

Oh, interesting. I had no idea. I thought that was a generic.

You thought that was the product? Yeah. Aspirin?

I knew that.

Yeah. Not

everywhere.

Yeah.

Not in the U. S., but other places. I did know that.

Bubble wrap.

What?

Yeah. That was a surprise to me. Velcro. Makes sense. Here's an interesting one. Escalator.

Escalator. I knew about escalator. By the way, I love this stuff. So, I know some.

Okay. Escalator is

Otis. That's the elevator company. Yeah. Jetski. Makes sense. Didn't know, but

would have guessed. Laundromat.

Oh, damn! You have my favorite.

Oh, that was yours.

Oh, I love that one. Yeah. Westinghouse owned that for years. I did

not know

that. You know when they stopped? When they abandoned their trademark? Yeah. Yeah.

Now when?

When they stopped making washing machines.

Oh.

They, they created the first, I think, automatic washing machine, maybe the first automatic wall mounted or whatever, but they, the whole coin op thing started with a Westinghouse brand laundromat.

Yeah.

By the way, here's, here's, here's something you probably don't know. There's another name for laundromat. Not very common. I think it's used in Texas. Oh, a washateria

A washateria?.

Surprisingly that didn't take that didn't catch on. The rest of the country. Yeah.

It sounds like it sounds terrible.

Yeah,

I went down a little rattle on some of these and I was really surprised to hear well, not surprised, but, you know, just the fact that these companies, you know, the trademark, they trademark these things and it helps buy them time for all the research and, and time they've put into building these products. But then once they wear off it really just. It opens the door for more fair competition, but the public doesn't really know anything else. A couple more I got and then we'll get to our guests, but thermos didn't know. And Rollerblade. Did no. Oh, you did? Okay. Yeah.

Can I share some of mine with you?

I would love to hear what else you got.

You already used my favorite example of laundromat. You skipped the most obvious in my mind. Xerox.

Xerox is a good one. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, if any of our listeners are under 30, they don't know what we're talking about, but Xerox and a mimeograph, I think I'm not mistaken. What is that? Mimeograph. Do you know what a mimeograph is?

No, I do not.

Oh,

Jesus. All right. Nevermind. I need to know more about that. What is the meaning?

Okay. Before there was Xerox, there was machine and, and I remember schools and offices that made copies. Called a mimeograph machine and paper rolled across this purple ink and it would come out and it would still be a little wet and smeary and it had a very polarizing scent. Some people loved it. Some people were disgusted by it.

Wow. School in the 1870s. Who knew?

Yeah, right? Yeah. We mimeographed right after we finished writing on the back of our shovels. Alright, I got another one for you. Alright, bring it. Teleprompter.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah,

it's become

genericized.

And Post it notes, too.

Well, yeah, that I think, yeah. Alright, good stuff. Alright. Love a genericized brand name. It seems like the ultimate symbol of success, right? You've arrived. Oh my god, everyone calls it Band Aid, but it's actually a little bit of a problem for these brands.

Yeah, I think it's definitely a sign of success when you conquer the market like that, but in the long run, it could, could end up hurting you, but might as well shoot for that in the beginning and then deal with the problem later. I

guess as long as you're susceptible to cheap knockoffs, it's going to happen.

For sure. For sure.

All right. Shall we move on and talk to our guest?

Let's get into it.

All right. I am happy to introduce a savvy marketer and an all around terrific guy, Jinx Joglekar. He leads marketing for both Dish Network and Sling TV, making him responsible for driving growth and engagement for millions of customers who are cutting the cord. He's responsible for all the acquisition, the media, e commerce, including advertising, digital marketing, marketing technology, and digital sales. Before he joined Sling in 2022, he led e commerce for the Xfinity brand under the Comcast NBC Universal umbrella, leading digital sales and merchandising for TV, high speed internet, and mobile. Prior to that, he led an innovation team at JP Morgan Chase, creating unique digital experiences, including the freedom mobile app outside of work. He plays drums in his basement studio. He apparently has learned guitar, piano, bass, and the ukulele for his daughter. He's got great marketing skills. He loves good food. And I think he's falling for his relatively new home state of Colorado. And he has one of the all time best most contagious laughs, please. Welcome, Jinx.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me guys. It's

How about that intro?

It was great.

If we don't make you laugh we've failed because I just said it's the most contagious one.

I mean, it's contagious, but also it's reflexive for me. So yeah, you will, you'll be fine.

So, Brian, you're going to need to be funny, okay?

I'll do my best.

Alright. Alright, first, Jinx, can you explain your role and how you head up marketing for two very different brands, Dish Network and Sling? And then a little bit like, you know, what challenges come with juggling those responsibilities?

Sure. So my role at Echo Star, formerly known as DISH, we had a merger last year with a sister company, Echo Star, that does mobile internet, is I I lead up acquisition marketing for the video services vertical. So that encompasses DISH and Sling as our two main products. And what I'm focused on really is. How we drive high quality subs into our ecosystem of video services. So what does that mean? Well, I own the offer strategy and how we go to market, what those go to market moments are. In the video space I also in the media budgets and, and channel management, I own all of our digital sales flows, our e commerce flows, and then all of our marketing analytics and the, what I call like the last mile from a customer strategy and media to acquisition. So all the things you'd think about when you're thinking about acquiring

And going back real quick for those who don't know subs in this case means subscribers, not sandwiches. Subscribers.

That's right. And if I ever say RGUs then, then John translate

will, we'll flag you on revenue generating units too, which, which customer doesn't want to refer to as an RGU.

It's, it's the most marketing customer centric, friendly way to describe subscribers.

Exactly. Alright, so you're selling video products for, you know, if I'm a consumer, you could be marketing one of two different video services to me, Dish Network and Sling. How's that work?

yeah, so for me, it's actually really, really fun. I started here about two and a half years ago. And was hired when I moved from Comcast where I met you, John over to run the marketing for Sling, which was, you know, the acquisition component, but also the brand and the, and the life cycle retention piece. Once we kind of brought ourselves together as video services, we broke that up with some key marketing leaders could have broke up those functions because they're just such big brands that need that much dedicated focus. And, and so for me, it's, like I said, it's really fun. I get to think about. Really two distinct products, right? You have satellite television with dish, you have linear streaming with Sling and really think about how do I market those products? How do I go to market with those products and how do I acquire customers into those products that have very different experience of the customer, very different jobs to be done with the customer and very different needs states. And so that to me, my, most of my time is thinking about how do I, segment my addressable market for those so that I'm really relevant using the right media, delivering the right offer at the right place at the right time to drive a customer.

You're talking Brian's language. Hmm.

so how are you defining quality for, for both those brands and, you know, where are you having success kind of finding those people

Yeah, I mean, for us, the quality sub it, it's a little, it's a little bit different in, in each one, but, but in the end of the day, it's someone that Loves to watch TV and wants to continue watching TV with our service and and finds value in the, in the great features we have, whether on the dish side, it's the hopper and the ability to aggregate your, your linear feeds with your streaming on the sling side. It's, it's the great video quality ability to watch it on the go. The new product enhancements we've had like rewards and sports scores and things like that. So but, but really quality means. A sub that loves tv is gonna be with us a long time that Likes our product likes our offering and we don't go and and play maybe the game of a couple years ago Which is like all out growth and spend to get as many subscribers as possible.

And churn is through the roof? Yeah.

yeah, right and and and have have high churn and so you know, I think if you, if you see some of the, the reports we've had lately, you see that, the benefit of that, particularly what we're doing on the dish side, and it's really been great to, to leverage some of the knowledge we've had on that side and bring it to the sling side where, as you know, I mean, you guys see the streaming reports where churn is high and we're, we're starting to buck that trend. So that's kind of cool.

Right.

So when you're on that quest to find quality subscribers for either dish or sling is, do you ever find the circumstance where the brands are competing for the same customers?

Actually, no, we, the beautiful part about having it all in one shop is the ability for us to stratify where we spend our marketing dollar. And as you guys will know, if I'm spending a dollar for each brand competing against each other, both brands are going to be inefficient. And so we do, we spend a lot of time saying, well, here's the segment and the target. That's really the right fit for sling. Here's the right segment and target story for dish. Let's not overlap. Let's, let's not spray and pray and try to get everybody. But again, really have hyper targeted tactics and channel strategies to go acquire them,

How often are you Coming out with new offers.

It's interesting, you know, on the dish side, it's, probably, once every quarter, once every half a year, it's a more static process and that's. You know, again, we go in with a low price that, you know, two year price commitment. There's not a lot of change and that's kind of, but that's actually what the customer wants, right? They want their content at the best price. On the sling side. We're, we're a little more fluid. We're a little more dynamic because a, we have the technology to do it. And B that's what the customer wants, right? In certain. In certain moments, it's about you know, doing a monthly offer because that's what the customer wants in certain moments. It's about doing a prepaid offer like we did for football. Where we've actually got a fixed price that you, you do for the football season. You pay one low price and you get all of that content throughout your season. And then when you're done, you know, we, we want you to stick around. We want you to go and, and. Take another offer and keep keep with us, but if you don't actually what we launched on sling last year is Our fast service free ad supported television, which is called free stream. So even if you don't want to Pay for sling we we still offer a value on sling to the to those customers They give you great free content Give you a reason to watch and then when you're ready to resubscribe make it easy to do that in one click

That's cool. Are you seeing traction with that?

Yeah, we're, we're seeing great traction with folks that are coming into free to discover Sling and understand the UI, understand what's in the product. We also are seeing great traction with people that are Paid subscribers that don't want to pay for content for that time that go into free stream, watch that. It's great content. And then, you know, resubscribe when they're ready when their favorite show comes on or, or a season comes on.

it's interesting, you know, Brian touched on the idea of churn earlier, earlier in the category, you know, there's always been switchers. Take people jumping from one offer to the next. Do you find that a lot of the folks coming in to Sling are coming from other streaming services or are they, are they disconnecting from cable?

Yeah, it's, it's a mix actually. I think you know, I can't share all the, all the facts with you, but I will say, you know, when sling launched, obviously in 2015, there was a mass starting to be a mass access

Mm hmm.

traditional pay TV, cable providers, et cetera. I think what you're seeing now is because That's cord cutting has happened. There's a lot of movement between those services. And what we find is on sling, because we still have the value proposition of being able to pick your pack, you know, not having to buy a full cable replacement and being better on the wallet, you'll see people that are coming from, you know, your YouTube TVs, your Hulu lives that are.

Got it.

Basically a cable replacement

Mm hmm.

coming to us for, for even more content that they want to watch at the price they want.

we always like to talk about how brands position themselves in the world. And hearing you talk, it's, it seems like the, the positioning for Sling is, you know, the, the, the lighter package of content you want for a lower price, right? How do you position DISH? Can you kind of draw the distinction between how you position those two brands?

Yeah, I think. So yeah, I think you're right on saying, and we've done a lot of work on this from from a brand perspective, you know, I, I joke with with, with John, I've joked about is like, you know, I'm the acquisition guy. So there's a thing that I'm, that I'm responsible for, but, you know, Brand and acquisition and performance and all it's, it's meaningless delineations, honestly, because you have to have an awesome brand value statement. That'll drive to awesome channel strategies that will drive to awesome, creative and awesome digital sales experiences. And that's like the virtuous cycle that actually acquires subs. And then quite frankly, retains them and finds the quality ones. So, so we've spent collectively a lot of time thinking about it and, and the way to think about it is. On sling and and you you'll start to see if you haven't already seen some of this creative in market, which is we call it sling lets you do that that's the campaign and it's You know, it's it's it's really great. It's really eye catching and Leverages this repetitive statement of something that you do that, but it's like can I watch the tv? I want Sling lets you do that. Can I watch the tv? I want at the price I want Sling lets you do that, can I cancel when I want Sling lets you do that? Can I cancel I watch free? Stuff so I don't have to pay, can I? Sling lets you do, can I get rewarded? So as you do that, and you can see how that thread goes, and, and it allows us to talk about, you know, quite frankly, a complex concept of like a la carte TV and pulling what you want and getting rewarded for it in a way that, that, that makes sense in this wrapper.

Got it.

On the Dish side, we have a little bit of a different thing where Dish is a known quantity, right? We, they know what the Dish brand is and, and there's a, there's a, a conception of it, right? Where, hey, it's satellite, it's some, you know, it's on my house, it rains, and then I lose service, and, and so and those are misconceptions, right? We've, we've done a tremendous amount of work to update our Hopper platform to ingest multiple Streaming providers so you can watch what you want when you want to watch it. We have signal protector, which you know if there's an issue with the signal we actually divert you to digital signal and so it's it's Really great. And so that campaign and that branding is all about Well, how do we reinforce the stability of our product? The stability of our pricing, right? I talked about the two year price guarantee in the beginning and the stability of the offering we have cause that customer wants consistency. They don't want a whole lot of complexity. They really want it to be easy and consistent. That's where the branding on, on that side is more there's more to dish. Right. Cause. We already have that brand in people's mind. We want to tell them the misconceptions they have are incorrect and, and how do we correct.

hmm. It is, yeah, that's, it's hard to change deeply held consumer perceptions about things like the satellite goes out when it's cloudy or rainy, but are you seeing movement there? Are you seeing the people kind of, those old perceptions are starting to get a little bit, Smaller and easier to overcome

yeah, I, I, I mean, I, I think especially because you know, in a former life we did this on, on the cable side, like there, there's less of a focus on the, on the television product, right? Things have moved to internet. It's very much about the internet product. The the focus isn't there. So what we're able to do is say, we've actually, we actually care about this consumer. We want to create a high quality experience and that's what we're innovating. So we're seeing some receptiveness to that. And then particularly we've got some of our ads in social and we're seeing a lot of. Traction with that message, particularly around signal protector and two year price guarantee, et cetera, about how consistent stable we are. So really you know, early stages on, on that brand work for there's more to dish, but, but really good traction so far.

how would you describe the current state of streaming overall? You know, it's been a while I guess ten years at this point, you know, where where do where do you see the the landscape right now?

Yeah, I mean, so it's really interesting. We kind of talked about it, I think. And Sling was a little bit ahead. Like when we, when I came in two and a half years ago, we were already starting to think like this. But there's a shift from, I just want to acquire every subscriber I can. So I want to find the subscribers that really want my service. And and then map that with there's a proliferation of options. So what wasn't around Say well, nothing was around in 2015, but what wasn't around two years ago was fast services in mass, right? Pluto and to be in those weren't around. Now they are. And then, and honestly go on any smart device or smart TV and you will see Roku free channels. You'll see Samsung free channels, right? Like

or smart TV will just start playing something.

Yeah, let's just start playing stuff and and so it's you know So the way you have to think about it is and and that's why we launched freestream on Sling is We want to be there for the customer where they are and how they want to watch right? And we want to we we you know from from a revenue metric, right? Of course, we want paid subscribers I mean, that's that's what That's that piece but but from a customer experience and just a brand And just, you know, having an awesome product, we create, want to create something where we have what's right for you in the moment. And that's really what we're focused on and how, what differentiates us. And that's why we launched a fast service which we're the first paid and fast service to be able to go back and forth between we launched rewards, which we were the first. To provider to streaming provider to give you actual rewards incentive to watch. And, and so that's, that's the lens we view things in, and that's what you'll continue to see from sling at moving forward.

Tell us a little about the rewards that you're talking about.

Yeah. So you can go on sling. com rewards, shameless plug and check it out. But basically the, the nature of it is. When you watch, as you watch, the more you watch, you earn entries to win cash, so just literally straight cash that we give away every month prizes from, you know, our partners. So we gave away a trip to the U. S. Open, we're giving a trip for the Walking Dead premiere, you know, all of that's included and you, basically, the more you watch, the more entries You get to win. The really cool part for the customer and for us is you don't have to be a paid subscriber to earn. You can be paid, you can be free, and you still have the same amount of chances to earn as long as you keep watching.

So so so wait a minute a couple things there one You're trying to turn us into an even bigger nation of couch potatoes by incentivizing just leaving your tv on all the time. Okay two you're putting the burden on internet providers Who are kind of providing that that streaming in the background right

I would say it a different way, but yeah, sure, you

There's another word than burden.

And meanwhile you know, you guys get a lot of engagement and your, your consumers get rewarded. So

that's right. Yeah. And, and, and for me personally, you know you, you mentioned the upfront, like I used to work on loyalty innovation at JPMorgan Chase, and it was all about different ways to use your points and, and earn points. And so when I, when I came here you know, we were, we were all kind of thinking about it and it just aligned in a beautiful way to say, you know, what's. What we said we actually had this at Chase we did in a brief We said when we're doing rewards were like get the things you love for free, right? And basically because you're paying with your points, so I was like, what do you love more than watching TV? So it's like get get paid to watch TV get paid to do the thing you love get paid to

mean, yeah, when we were kids, you'd say that all the time, right? That's what I want my job to be.

All right. So, so I'm hearing a couple of things. If I switch to sling, you will pay me. I think it's what I'm hearing. The second thing is Can you promise me that when I turn on Sling, I won't have to watch Dateline? Because that's what happens when I turn my TV on now, and I don't know how to make that stop.

I promise you, you will not watch the Dateline

thanks. I'm switching.

yeah, I promise that, but, and we spend a lot of time, honestly, thinking about how we personalize and curate the experience, based on what you come in on, and this goes back to the thing I said before, it's like, Well, it's gotta be great creative. It's gotta be a great channel strategy. It's gotta be great, buy flow and, and, and sales process. But then once you hit that, it's gotta be, Hey, I wanted to watch this thing. I wanna watch Yellowstone. That's gonna be the first thing you're seeing, right? And that should be the thing that that gets you in. And then how do we recommend things to keep you engaged? And, and you know, you know, my boss has a great phrase, which is, product's gotta match the promise. Right. And so, and that's like literally like emblazoned in our heads, like, I'm in the market promising something. How do we have the product, the sales experience, the product, et cetera, to match that. So that's kind of an ethos we have here.

that's great. Yeah. If, if anything falls down, the whole stool collapses. So in terms of your segments, especially for streaming you know, with. Streaming and being an on demand world. But you know, sports is just such a big I'm sure it's such a big, you know, the NFL season right now, it's probably such a big thing for your campaigns. Can you talk a little bit about you know, just building a program around, you know, NFL users or sports, sports watchers, you know, how does that make up kind of your, I guess your seasonal play here?

Yeah, I mean, it's a big moment. I mean, honestly, like, it's a big moment for everybody. Right? Because that, this is when the eyeballs turn to TV. So, yes, it's a big moment as a TV provider, but even, you know, advertisers in general, this is when they spend, you know, etc. So, the way we think about it is a couple things. One, football means different things to different people, right? We've got, you have NFL watchers, you have, but you have equally as passionate college football watchers. Those programs actually live in different places, You know, one's college on ESPN, NFL, on a variety of platforms, right? And, you know, one might argue too many, but that's a different story. And so, so how do we hit those different segments, right? That care about different affinities. And then to hit the second point about the, the stratification of where you can watch, like that's been a big focus of ours to say. You know, whether it's particularly on dish where you can aggregate a lot of content, but even on sling where we can make up a sizable chunk of that it's. It's how do you show the value of what these services enable for you while this landscape has become more complex than ever, right? And so, so that's really important to us. And lastly is, you know, like I said a little bit ago, like prepaid offers, for example, on Sling, and we do similar things on Dish to focus on offers for these customers. How do we have the right offer? To hit these customers. So we've got a value proposition in the market that's tailored messaging is tailored to their affinity You know, whether it's team whether it's league, whatever how do we then have a value proposition that fits into that affinity to drive more of that content? And then what's that offer strategy and then and then channel strategy to actually say? Well, Hey, we can actually give you a price point that you care about. And so you can get all your content, right?

So Jinx, you've talked about sort of pulling different levers to get customers, you know, Messages, different messages, working to different, different audiences, different offers different product features that make it sticky. What about different media levers? Do you feel like now that you're running a pretty sophisticated acquisition marketing machine, do you think, you know, which channels are working best where you should be spending more money to get in front of those prospects? Or is that still a little bit of a black art?

Well, you know, the, the famous quote is right. I, and half my money is working. I just don't know which half, right? I think, I think we're better than that now, but, but I do think there's well, we spend a lot of time on to be totally serious is, is incrementality. So I don't know if you've, had the pleasure of reading a guy named Avinash Kaushik. He's really fantastic. Digital marketing guy, ex Google. But, he has a philosophy that I'm really in tune to and I really like, which is. It's all about how to drive incrementality in the channel because we've spent a lot of money on Sling And then it's and to just say hey paid search strobe this many activations is a discredit to everything that's come before you and everything else So so what so what we've focused on, is really how do we do three things? Which is how do we think about? channel level incrementality to, to, to know where to spend, right? And so that's kind of in isolation. So, hey, is this channel driving more sales than without it? Then we think about, you know, within a channel, you've got kind of subgroups of, of things. So for example, you know, on Meta, Meta's, One thing that's got Facebook, it's got Instagram, it's got WhatsApp or whatever. How do you break those down into clusters? Right. And then, and beyond that, then how do you full portfolio kind of incrementality view, and that could be match market, or that could be, Pulling out spend and then bringing it back. Right. All of those things are tools that we've done to evaluate where should we spend? Why should we spend? And then how that impacts our media mix. I will say the biggest difficulty on that is. These are point in time views. TV business is a seasonal business. So how do we spread that across? And that's like, that's the fun of it. Like that's the that's the challenge. And you know, I feel like you're listening to don't be lying. If I said, I figured it all out, but

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

the framework we use to evaluate.

But at least, at least you have that framework. You have a process and, and, and to your point. Yeah. Not only is TV a seasonal business, but we just talked about the NFL, like where you find that varies this fall versus next fall

That's right. The fun part about being in this industry is just the dynamism, right? And, and you know, you're exactly right. Like this football season is different than last, right? There's a, there's a game on Netflix, you know, and that didn't happen.

Right.

we, how do we respond to that? And, and I think there's a real opportunity, quite frankly, particularly on the dish side, as this gets more complicated. I talked about that customer being So much, so much wanting ease and stability and clarity. Like, Hey, we have it for you. It's all there.

Yeah.

and your own record is saying you thinking you think figuring all this out is fun. So, all right. Is that keeping you up?

yeah, well, I mean, I say this all the time. Like if it's not fun, why are you doing it? Right. So you gotta, you gotta love it. You gotta love the challenge of it. You gotta love the defense of it. And you gotta love you know, digging in the numbers every day. Right. You know, like I, I, I have a weird, unique thing where. I run marketing and, and, but I also run a, run a channel, right? I'm running a digital channel and that's, I've done that. at Comcast have done that here. And, you know, in marketing, you know, it's, let's put something out. Let's test, let's, learn. Let's go on the sales side. It's every day I started zero. Every day I have zero sales and I got to make a number every day. Right. Maybe I'm special, but you have, you have to find it fun to do that. You know, like if you don't find it fun, then, you should go into accounting, I guess. I don't know.

Where would be what would surprise people in terms of where you're finding some subs for streaming, for example, you know, there any, Really fascinating channels that people wouldn't even think that you're finding subs.

No, I mean, honestly, the biggest thing for us is, is what's amazing is people just love to watch TV. So they'll come in from all different angles. When people ask me what's our media mix, I say, basically every channel we can, we can advertise on that has, you know, that positive ROI for us. What's interesting about streaming to put in context of your listeners is, our channels are analogous to others, but, but different. So, so for example, in, in the retail environment, you have an end cap, right? And you spend a lot of time thinking about your end cap and thinking about what you're merchandising on your end cap. For me, that end cap is the what's on next on your Roku, right? Similarly, like when we're merchandising on site. Or in our digital flows, right? We're, we're, we're working with our partners to have the highest impact things that we can talk about and highest impact shows or highest impact players or teams. So we, so we can leverage that. And so, when you asked me about FreeStream, I think what's really cool, what we've seen a lot of traction with is When people are in the free stream product and then we can, we can know what they're watching and, and and then surface, relevant content, you know, you're watching the sports free show and Oh, now March madness is on making a connection and using that creative, having that very seamless buying experience has been great for us from a acquisition perspective.

all right. Can we go back a little further in your, in your career? Cause apparently according to LinkedIn, you have a patent, which I don't think a lot of marketers can claim, but you can, can you tell us about that? What, what, what kind of sexy technology is out there with your name on it? Oh,

Yeah. So I, yeah, so I have a couple of patents mainly for my days, a couple, couple, I just want to correct you. I don't want you to.

Brian, how many patents do you have?

seven

Seven. Oh, okay.

Okay. So Brian's better than me. Brian wins.

rear with

I have no pen. I have no pen.

I think I

but between us, but between us, Jinx, we have zero.

Okay. Well, you know, I had the good fortune of working for JP Morgan Chase and running an innovation team and at JP Morgan Chase, the lawyers would literally seek me out and be like, what are you thinking about? I'm going to help you write. A patent with your brilliant ideas. Yeah, it was great. So so I get the all the benefit of having my name on one none of the credit because jp morgan owns all the actual ip on that so That's one thing but I but i'll say The patent, the one that I'm the lead inventor on, that I'm the most proud of, was what we did for the what became the Freedom Mobile app, which was, how do you pay with your points at the point of sale? And so, we basically, so we launched Amazon Pay with Points, which, for those that don't know or don't use Amazon, you could when you, when you link your credit card to Amazon, then we immediately show your points bank, and you can deduct from them.

It's awesome.

And it's awesome, right? Yeah. I can buy some of Amazon and I can, and I can buy it to the penny, right? I can $25 and 23 cents for that really cool head set of headphones or whatever. I can do that. Some of my points, it's free, right? And, and and this got us, we're marketers. I ran an innovation team, we're marketers. We said, what's better than getting the things you love for free? Right. And what's the hurdle to that? Well, we want to do that in the real world because Amazon's great, but like. I don't, maybe don't love my subscribe and save Tide Pods, but I love a Starbucks coffee every morning, right? Or whatever it is. And so that was, so we kind of thought about it in three ways, right? We thought about it in the, the customer need, right? I love that thing, right? so, so that's customer need. We thought about it in the business value because, if you do a gift card redemptions versus cashback redemptions, that's actually more beneficial to the. The financial provider because they negotiate a big rate with Starbucks to get a bunch of gift cards. So it's less pennies on the dollar. So that's the business value. Hey, if I can move people to gift card from cashback, that's a, that's a benefit to the business and it's a customer value that they like. So it's a win win. Then the last, the third leg of the story, I guess, is like the technology. Like, does it exist? Like, can we actually do that? And so we looked to Starbucks and we spent a bunch of time with them. Their app basically does that. It hacks a gift card. Every time you pre load 20 gift card that they're serving up for you in the end. So we're like, wait a minute, there's a technology solution to a customer need and a business. Need. So the intersection of that was what we did with the, what it became the freedom mobile app now. And then it rolled into the chase app and chase pay and all the, all the stuff they've done since. But and it was just that it was, Hey, look, I'm going to go to Starbucks. I'm going to buy something for 5 and 83 cents. I can pull up this app. I can punch in 5. 83 in real time immediately, delivers a gift card via barcode. Customer doesn't know that. They just think it's a barcode. Scan it. Boom. Get my coffee. I'm out.

That's awesome. Very cool. Well, I'm jealous, not just because you have a patent, but because you had lawyers chasing you down for, you know, things that are beneficial. I just had lawyers chasing me down to add more disclaimers to things.

That's right. Well, I have that too. You know, exactly. So, we can all commiserate on that one.

I

yeah, no, it was a fun time. Well, pharma, so apologies to all the pharma listeners.

Fair enough.

My favorite, if you want to talk about innovation, my favorite innovation, if you haven't seen it is. Now display ads have scroll bars just to get through all of the flamers on a, on a display ad. So, I mean, if our click through rate wasn't bad enough, like, come on.

Jinx it'd be great to hear our listeners to hear just a little bit more about how you've kind of worked your way through the marketing industry and e commerce and how you got to where you're at now.

Yeah. No, I'm happy. I'm happy to talk about that. I think you guys have led big teams and all that kind of stuff. I think when you have, when you have a big team and an organization that looks you for leadership, like it's. It behooves you to spend the time with them to, to, to mentor them and talk to them. And, and so I talked to my team a lot about this actually have throughout my organization, have one on ones with everyone on the team at least once a quarter. You know, my directs and stuff regularly, et cetera, but, but literally just to focus on career for, especially for some of the junior folks that, you know, like think about us. Yeah, help them navigate. We just, we were just figuring it out, right? So if there's anything I can do to give them a nudge or give them the purview of connecting the dots for them I'd love to do that. So,

Have you always had that across your career? Has someone done that for you or did you kind of learn this by not having it?

You know, it's interesting. I think I was actually reflecting on this, like, I don't think I've had a boss that's done this, and maybe it's kind of insane to dab one on ones with everybody, but I still think it's important. But at like Chase, for example, the the CEO of Card at the time said, My door's open. You, anyone can schedule. And I, and I never took advantage of that with her and, and I had a, like a big regret, you know, and I, I got to meet her and, and we worked together and it was, it was fine. And then it'd be fine. But like, I always had this big regret because I was like, no, I'm not important enough to talk to her. I don't have enough to talk about, et cetera. So, you know, for me, forcing the issue, quite frankly, and telling the people that come to my office, like, this is your time. I will, if you want to talk about, Okay. You know, music for half an hour or whatever for, I'll do that. But I think the best use of your time in mind is to talk about your career and how I can help you and how you know, I can answer questions for you, et cetera. And so that's, that's sort of where that was born from.

That's terrific. They're, they're lucky to have you. That's great. You take that proactive stance. And I remember same thing, Brian, I'm guessing you do too. It was always intimidating to kind of be the initiator with the senior person to ask about your career. So it's great that you're, you're being the initiator.

Yeah. I think, you know, what I tell them a lot too, is like, you asked me more specifically, how did I get to where I got to, which might be boring for your listeners, but, but, but I'll say I, I graduated from the university of Pittsburgh with a. with a degree in physics and music, which means I was prepared for nothing. That's literally, I was prepared to be a graduate student and I didn't want to be a graduate student. I was fortunate to get some roles and then, and then skilled to take those roles. and make the most of them. And that's sort of how I landed in the innovation role. That's sort of how I got to Comcast where I had the great fortune of meeting John. That's how I got to lead e commerce for Comcast and report to the CMO. And that's how I, I got to be here. And the thing I always say to the people that come to my office that asked for that advice, or how did I get here or whatever, Is a couple of things. One, when, when you were in college, when you were in high school, right? Like you practiced, like, what did you play to sport? You play an instrument, whatever you practice far more than you played. Right. You would, I mean, I was a drummer and I practice eight hours a day and I play a two hour gig and then I would go and I'm practicing, you know, when we get in the workforce, we start at nine, we end at five, we come in at nine and we expect to let change the world until five and then leave. Like, that's not how it works. Like you have to put in the time, like you have to treat it like, yeah, like you're, you're craft, right? That's why you know, I joke, but it's like, if you look, if you don't love it, why, why are you doing it? Cause you, you have to give it that much, right. If you want to succeed. And so that's the thing I talk about and, and, and practice means something different in the workforce. Like. Practice means networking. Practice means talking to the finance guy and understanding the P& L. Practice means spending time with the presentation and then road showing it so when you finally take it to the senior leader, you're polished, right? Like, it means something different, but it's the same concept. and then the other thing I talk about is I really haven't said no to anything. You know, like, you know, when stuff comes at me, I just, I don't, I don't say no. I was a physics and music teacher. I, you know my first job actually was selling stuff door to door. Cause I, I, I responded to an ad for a marketer. Cause I, first of all, I wasn't prepared for anything. So I was like, I can do marketing. I, I was painting out flyers for my band. I must do it. Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, we get a bad track here, but, but seriously, I was like, you know, I hadn't handed out flyers for my band. So I, Oh, can you mark, okay. Marketer. Needed marketer must wear comfortable shoes. So, so also advice. If it ever says comfortable shoes, that means you're going door to door. And so so yeah, I did it and, and it was horrible. Like it was terrible like that. But what it allowed me to do was a, it was a, I had a piece of conversation that for my next job, which was more of like a startup, and I, and I kind of knew the owner of this company. And he was a mentor of mine. I like had a sit down with him and I was talking about how bad this stuff is. Like, why don't you come work for me? And I was like, wait, I never thought that was a thing. Like, I don't, I'm not prepared to do anything. He's like, would you do this, this, this? I was like, yep. He's like, go. Right. And, and it's funny too, because I still think about that sales role every time I'm trying to pump up a sales team. Cause I, that's the one thing I did learn in that role. And so, you know, you track that all the way to. Hey, do you, you know, do you want to be in this rotational program at Chase? Sure. Yes. Oh, Hey, actually, there's this other cool job. Do you want to do that? Yes. Oh, do you want to, you want to work in, in digital advertising at Comcast? Well, I never did that before. Yes. Do you want to work in e commerce? I never did that before. Yes. And like, it, it just compounds in itself. And, and you know, Steve Jobs has a great quote, right? Like the, the dots connect themselves in hindsight. That's really the way, the way I feel. And I think I'm jealous of the people like doctors and stuff that are like, I know exactly, Oh, I want to be that. And I'm going to do that. And, but, but, but that wasn't me. And so, but for me, it's, you got to put the work in and just, you know, don't say yes to stuff that, that puts you out of your value system, but, but otherwise say yes.

Love that. Love that.

Yeah. Love it. Well, Jinx, you've been so generous with your time and covered a lot of territory. We're really grateful for your time with us. Brian, anything you you need to ask Jinx before we let him, let him free?

no, just thank you for Thanks for taking the time. And it was great hearing about what you're doing with, with those two brands. And we love this industry. We want to see where it goes the next couple of years and how, you know, consumers may change constantly and, and, you know, how you guys react to that. So thanks again.

No, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I love the work you guys do. I love being on here. I love talking about this stuff. I obviously could talk about it all day because I do, but but it's been really great.

All right. Well, maybe we'll do a follow up episode that just follows you around for eight hours and see if anyone listens.

That's right. We'll see. We'll see.

All right, Jinx, thank you so much. You be well. Good luck with everything you're doing.

All right. Have a great time guys. And good luck to all your listeners and keep following these guys. They're doing great stuff.

Ah, thanks, man.

Thank you.

Brian, that was Jinx. Good dude, huh?

Yeah. He's awesome.

Yeah. He's a neat guy. Really smart. Yeah. I think he makes some, he, he made a lot of really complicated things. Sound simple. And I tell you, one of the things I really appreciated was he said a few times you know, you gotta love what you do.

Yeah.

Yeah. Nice. And I just wanted to say, Brian, I love podcasting with you. How about that?

I do as well.

How about that for a tender moment here on Snap Decisions.

Intimate, tender moment. Thank you, John. I love podcasting with you as well.

Nice. Let's keep doing it then. We'll take, we'll use, we'll take Jinx's advice and we will continue doing what we love.

All right. All right. I'm in.

All right. Well, let's continue it into our next episode coming soon.

All right. I'll talk to you later.

All right, man. Bye.

Bye.