Robert Brill is the visionary CEO of Brill Media. Known for its ten-time recognition across the Inc. 5000 and the Financial Times 500, Brill Media stands as a testament to Robert's expertise in precision advertising and business growth. Throughout the conversation, Robert unpacks the intricacies of media buying, shedding light on the transformative power of targeted advertising.

Brill's narrative weaves through personal interests like soccer, revealing how passion can intertwine with professional life, enriching both. With a strong emphasis on the fundamentals of advertising and a clear vision for leveraging technology, Robert offers invaluable insights into creating impactful, data-driven marketing strategies that propel businesses forward.

Want to learn more about Robert's work? Check out their website at https://www.brillmedia.co.

Connect with Robert on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertbrill/.

Key Points with Time Stamps

• 00:04:36.10: Robert's newfound passion for soccer and its impact.
• 00:07:19.05: Transition from college to a career in advertising and meeting the Black Eyed Peas.
• 00:11:14.25: The pivotal role of advertising in Robert's career.
• 00:16:00.02: Importance of learning the fundamentals in business.
• 00:19:12.03: Hiring philosophy and the value of hard work.
• 00:22:25.12: Brill Media's focus on media buying and advertising.
• 00:31:31.17: The role and impact of AI in modern advertising.
• 00:37:57.09: Closing remarks and how to connect with Robert.

Transcript

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;33;15
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Robert Brill. He's the CEO of Brill Media and a media buying agency that focuses on precision advertising for business growth. His company has been honored ten times across the Inc. 5000 and the Financial Times 500. Robert is a member of the Forbes Business Council and Fast Company Executive Board, where he writes about improving user experience, business growth strategies, data targeting local advertising and white label media buying.

00;01;33;17 - 00;01;52;13
Craig Andrews
Additionally, he speaks about advertising, marketing, AI and entrepreneurship to business owners across the country. He's a proud father, husband, dog, father, Dodgers fan, and a newly minted. I have no idea what this is, but a newly minted Inter Miami fan?

00;01;52;16 - 00;02;00;14
Robert Brill
Yeah, Inter Miami is, is the football team the soccer team that, Lionel Messi is on in Miami?

00;02;00;17 - 00;02;04;15
Craig Andrews
Wow. But you are not in Miami. You're out in the West Los Angeles.

00;02;04;22 - 00;02;29;01
Robert Brill
I watched the World Cup last year or now, two years ago, at the end of 2022, and it blew my mind watching, Messi for Argentina play against, Mbappé in France. And then I watch Brazil earlier with Neymar Jr. And I found out that Neymar and Bobby and Messi were all on the same team on Paris Saint-Germain.

00;02;29;04 - 00;02;38;03
Robert Brill
I've never watched soccer in my life and I just instantly became such a massive fan. Love it. I'm a big Messi fan.

00;02;38;05 - 00;02;48;05
Craig Andrews
Wow. And I mean, it's interesting. So, you know, obviously you would think, well, there's certainly a soccer team in and you're in LA, right?

00;02;48;06 - 00;02;50;29
Robert Brill
I'm in Los Angeles. Yeah. There's Lafc.

00;02;51;02 - 00;02;53;16
Craig Andrews
And that where Beckham played.

00;02;53;18 - 00;02;57;15
Robert Brill
Quite possibly. And Beckham is actually an owner of Inter Miami.

00;02;57;18 - 00;02;58;16
Craig Andrews
Interesting.

00;02;58;18 - 00;02;59;29
Robert Brill
Yeah.

00;03;00;04 - 00;03;05;15
Craig Andrews
Very interesting. So what was it about, soccer that kind of captivated you?

00;03;05;17 - 00;03;25;11
Robert Brill
You know, my dad was was into soccer, and, you know, he tried to get me involved in it or not involved, but, like, paying attention to it. When the World Cup, the FIFA World Cup came to United States, and I think 94 maybe, and I was moderately interested in it. But at the end of the day, it didn't stick with me.

00;03;25;11 - 00;03;45;04
Robert Brill
And so I've, you know, a lot of people I know, you know, pay attention to soccer. And I was like, okay, I'm going to pay. I'm going to get into it. People. People say I look like Messi, but like the non-athletic version of Messi. so go look him up. Especially when I was, I had, a few pounds down.

00;03;45;07 - 00;04;07;00
Robert Brill
I looked more like him. But anyway, so, so, so as I started hearing his name a lot for the last few years and it was just the World Cup final was absolutely magical. Not. And it's not just me saying that. It's people who are like the commentators, people who are talking about the World Cup because you just had like France would score.

00;04;07;00 - 00;04;36;10
Robert Brill
And then Argentina scored and France and then Argentina and then it was a tie. Then you go into overtime. That's in Argentina, France and Argentina. Then you go to a kick out, a shootout and it, you know, it was just a magical, a magical moment in soccer history that people are saying was one of the best or the best World Cup to the World Cup finals, to the point where people are saying, if this is your first time watching soccer and a World Cup final, it never gets better than this.

00;04;36;13 - 00;04;38;08
Robert Brill
Like, okay, this is the best.

00;04;38;10 - 00;05;06;02
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, it's it's neat to see top athletes performing in any sport, but that's, it's such a demanding sport. Yeah. Why. Yeah. You know I this goes back a few years, but I used to work with this, Colombian named Diana, and it was World Cup time. And this was far enough back that wasn't assumed that the U.S. would be a contender in the World Cup.

00;05;06;02 - 00;05;34;10
Craig Andrews
The US wasn't really recognized, as, you know, being able to field a decent team. And Colombia didn't make the cup. And so Diana walks by my office one day. I say, Diana, I've been watching the World Cup. I keep looking for Colombia, where are they? And she she looks at me and she's like, I hate you. And. And so, Diana, if you would quit shooting your soccer players, maybe you'd make it to the cup.

00;05;34;15 - 00;05;37;05
Robert Brill
Oh, geez, that's hardcore.

00;05;37;08 - 00;05;58;11
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Because what happened was a year or two earlier, one of the Colombian players accidentally kicked the ball into the goal, scored on themselves, and lost the cup. That was the reference. And her response was, that was an act, you know, about him being killed. She was like, that was an accident. I'm like, what a trip and fallen a bullet.

00;05;58;13 - 00;06;02;20
Robert Brill
Yeah. fell out a window. Yeah, yeah, I got yeah.

00;06;02;22 - 00;06;14;18
Craig Andrews
Now, he was legit shot in the street. And, so that's hardcore that you want to talk about. Hardcore is when you live in the country that when you lose the World Cup, not only are you ashamed, but you're shot in the street.

00;06;14;20 - 00;06;38;29
Robert Brill
Well, I mean, look, I think if you know, that's that's, you know, we're America is very America centric. But like for the world that's the world's game. Yeah. Like hands down some baseball. It's not NBA, it's not NFL, it's soccer. And it's really fascinating to be part of to to to watch that. Like it was really cool to watch.

00;06;39;01 - 00;07;02;02
Robert Brill
I think it was us versus maybe Iran during the World Cup. Both of them ended up losing because the finals were Argentina and France. But you know, there's like the really big like there's this, there's this heaviness to to these games about pride and and success and, and and competition. And I think it's really interesting.

00;07;02;05 - 00;07;19;03
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well so let's shift a little bit. Talk about what you do. You have a little bit of a storied career. I mean, you, you graduate college, you get kind of a dream job in advertising. And through that you meet the Black Eyed Peas.

00;07;19;05 - 00;07;45;08
Robert Brill
Yeah. So, so, rewind about a year while still in college, right? I took out. So I was working at Washington Mutual, which then became Chase. But I was working at the call centers in Washington, at Washington Mutual. And, you know, just the, the, the call bank teller or whatever. And, I, I, my parents paid my way through college, but, there wasn't any excess money.

00;07;45;08 - 00;07;59;27
Robert Brill
So I had to work and I went to my mom and I was like, look, I'm going to have to take out a loan because I need to get some other work experience that's more related to what I want to do. And she was like, I don't know if you should do it. Hemming and hawing, but we all agreed that I should do this.

00;07;59;27 - 00;08;37;08
Robert Brill
I quit my job at Washington Mutual, and I got an internship at Universal Music, and I went like 5000 in debt to do that. and basically, just really great job where it was called work. It was called guerrilla marketing, but now it would be called social media marketing, where you just post in forums and you create a fake persona and you tell them about the albums you're working on, like The Killers or Method Man or Hoobastank, with the reason that album that came out, you just you're supposed to market the business and then and then create reports about what you're doing through that job.

00;08;37;08 - 00;08;56;05
Robert Brill
I met a lot of talented people from, you know, so I'm in Los Angeles. I went to Cal State Northridge, but I met people from USC, from Occidental, from UCLA, really talented people, and we just had the time of our life. It was the best nine months from a party and fun perspective that I had in college, I think, or very different experience.

00;08;56;05 - 00;09;15;13
Robert Brill
And through that, we got someone new, someone, and our job was to go down to San Diego to, I think it was called the Coors Amphitheater and sell merchandise for a group called Evan and Jared. Well, we got there late, so we didn't even get to do the thing we were there for. But we were there. We could go backstage.

00;09;15;13 - 00;09;32;26
Robert Brill
And so we ended up having dinner with the Black Eyed Peas, which was absolutely the best. I was such a bad a, a big Black Eyed Peas fan. So just hanging out with Apple, the app and will.i.am and their basis and taboo and all those people. And Fergie was there too, but she was off doing something else.

00;09;32;28 - 00;09;49;26
Robert Brill
I, I can't tell you what she was doing, but it wasn't hanging out with the stars, I'll tell you that. Hanging out with the with the fans. so we're Black Eyed Peas. We were having dinner with the Black Eyed Peas. Start them like a month and a half later at Pepsi Smash. Again just hanging out, which was a thing that Pepsi put on.

00;09;49;28 - 00;10;12;24
Robert Brill
Then once I got this job at universal, McCann at the agency, somehow I connected with a woman. Who was this, this woman who was the the girlfriend of taboo, which is one of the members of the Black Eyed Peas. And somehow I got invited to go to the press conference of for one of their new songs, which I'm not in the press like.

00;10;12;24 - 00;10;47;05
Robert Brill
I'm just a guy who those people. And so like over the course of like 4 or 5 months, I had these three really cool interactions for the absolute biggest band that I was just absolutely raving mad over. and this was in like late 2003 into 2004. It was just like some of the coolest experiences I've had. But, you know, professionally, the best experience I had is, is staying in in, in advertising and marketing and, you know, working at universal McCann.

00;10;47;05 - 00;11;14;25
Robert Brill
They let me go early that day so I could go hang out with the Black Eyed Peas. The craziest thing, but like the reason why I work in advertising and not the music business is because it was the people at universal McCann who created this really safe, inclusive environment for us to learn, to get to understand the advertising business and to use our creativity to create really fun and interesting advertising campaigns.

00;11;14;27 - 00;11;18;21
Robert Brill
So music is cool. Advertising is better in my opinion.

00;11;18;23 - 00;11;47;28
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, it's one of the interesting things about LA. I used to, before I was doing, I used to market chips for mobile phones and I'd fly through LA all the time on my way to Asia, and it was fine. There's something about the vibe there where you just you you run into people, I mean, and for me, I'm too stupid to realize who I was, you know, running into and, you know, like, one time I was, you know, I just flown in from Asia.

00;11;47;28 - 00;12;07;14
Craig Andrews
I'm in the club at LAX myself. And I get out of the shower, go up to the bar to get a Coke, and there's this scrawny little tattooed guy standing next to me. Has, like, a chain as wallets on chain. I'm just like, how did he get in here? And I go sit down. I hear somebody whispering, and I hear the name Tommy Lee.

00;12;07;14 - 00;12;08;16
Craig Andrews
I'm like.

00;12;08;19 - 00;12;09;05
Robert Brill
Oh yeah.

00;12;09;12 - 00;12;19;14
Craig Andrews
Is that Tommy Lee? They're like, yeah. I was literally like two feet away from them. And I look back over and I see this ginormous dude standing off to the side watching him. And, this.

00;12;19;14 - 00;12;20;28
Robert Brill
Is bouncer or what?

00;12;21;00 - 00;12;45;00
Craig Andrews
yeah, that was security. And, but, you know, that's and, you know, I have other stories of passing through L.A. Where you just, you just rub shoulders with, with these people that they're icons and. Yeah. Is that I mean, does that feel normal? Is that ever feel does that ever feel boring?

00;12;45;03 - 00;13;12;14
Robert Brill
you know, it's not boring, but it's it's common, but it's cool. Like, I, you know, you know, Matthew Perry who? You know, I saw him once at a movie theater just catching a movie. and it's one of those things where it's like we'd go to parties, and I met, the actor who played hero in, hero in that one darn it show.

00;13;12;17 - 00;13;34;26
Robert Brill
save the cheerleader, save the world. This was, like, again, 2004, 2005. I forgot the name of the show. Now it's a superhero show. And, I met him once at a party. I was like, what's up? What have you been up to? And I was like, I have nothing to say that these people. So, like, I don't really say much and I feel like it's so at some point, what how many times can you say, I'm your biggest fan?

00;13;34;26 - 00;13;56;26
Robert Brill
I love your work. Like, there's just so such a non valuable thing to say. So where I do think it's that where I do get excited is being in bigger rooms with more interesting people. So if I'm in the same position, but I'm there because I, it's business. Like I went to a conference once and I got this really great photo with with Busta Rhymes.

00;13;56;29 - 00;14;22;19
Robert Brill
Like I straight sorry, trying to rap his music, which I couldn't like, pull out of my brain in time. And I'm a big fan of Busta Rhymes, big dude, massive human being. But like, that was cool cause I was there on business and I ran into Busta Rhymes at a music studio. Anyway, it was fun. So I get I get excited and thrilled when when they're when I'm there for a professional reason and I meet someone that I can be more on their level because I'm there for work.

00;14;22;22 - 00;14;49;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now I get that. That makes that makes a lot of sense. So if we start carrying the timeline forward. So obviously you got a job in advertising and, an environment where, where you learned a lot, which is incredibly valuable. You know, it's, you know, I think a lot of people I think it's hard when you get that first job.

00;14;49;16 - 00;14;57;23
Craig Andrews
I think it's hard to sometimes appreciate what that job is doing, the springboard it's creating for the rest of your career.

00;14;57;25 - 00;15;20;10
Robert Brill
There's a few things there, but I'm sorry you didn't ask a question of I have so many ideas that I out the first, you know. The common trend in advertising is you work at the big agencies. You're not going to get paid a lot, but you'll learn a lot. And then and then you'll recoup that money when you get more senior positions at smaller agencies.

00;15;20;13 - 00;15;42;21
Robert Brill
Right. And there's a lot of people who I've worked with who were very anxious to get out of universal my account. I was like, dude, you're getting like, we we called it the MBA. Like I was learning things that I, you know, on the job experience that I would have never gotten had I worked at another agency because it was such a great environment and my bosses were just incredible.

00;15;42;27 - 00;16;00;02
Robert Brill
My peers were incredible. And I mean, for the first six months, I had no idea what was going on. They're literally paying me just to learn and not to screw up. They don't add anything, just don't take anything away. That was the goal. So I was like, okay, I got to learn really quickly to get up to speed here.

00;16;00;04 - 00;16;36;02
Robert Brill
But not all businesses are good for people out of college. There's plenty of places I've been where people out of college don't succeed, but it's not because the people out of college are bad at their job. It's because the business isn't set up to, set the junior person up for success. And that's a big part of, you know, if a junior person is listening, they're just out of college and they're not having success at the place that they're working, chances are it's the businesses fault for not setting up, setting you up for success.

00;16;36;05 - 00;16;59;06
Robert Brill
And I think that's a very important part. And that's important to recognize as a business owner or as management of any level that, you know, you may not be in the right position to hire people who have very little experience. But for the places you can get that experience of big companies where you just do one task repeatedly learning, putting in those reps.

00;16;59;08 - 00;17;23;19
Robert Brill
The common theme throughout my career is, is this idea that you got to put in your reps, whatever you're doing. You know, what I put in my reps on was ad servers and learning how to traffic out Add so that, you know, you upload the ad once and then 20 different publications get the ad. So learning that that work, which is completely redundant at this point now probably in many cases.

00;17;23;21 - 00;17;46;24
Robert Brill
But learning that work is so important because you end up becoming, an expert on the fundamentals and the fundamentals. Even to this day, I'm 42 years old. I have a business. All we sell are the fundamentals. We're going to do the fundamentals for you effectively. And that's what's so important about business learning about the fundamentals and getting a chance, an opportunity to learn that.

00;17;46;24 - 00;17;50;09
Robert Brill
And you're not going to learn that stuff in school.

00;17;50;11 - 00;18;21;18
Craig Andrews
You know what's really interesting? Something that I see, in marketing but just more broadly in life is, you know, the latest shiny object comes along and, you know, people are looking for this, you know, kung fu triple flick, backspin, you know, marketing tactic that's going to just make you successful. And what I find is if you consistently master the fundamentals, you will beat most people in the game.

00;18;21;20 - 00;18;52;18
Robert Brill
100%. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You just got to work hard. Yeah, I'm not the smartest person. most people will ever contact like, talk to. I just understand what I do, and I work hard, and those are the types of people I'm looking for to work with us in. The types of clients that I'm looking for, the people who will work hard to achieve their goals, and at the end of the day, like smarts isn't always the path to success.

00;18;52;18 - 00;19;12;03
Robert Brill
It's it's the work. It's the grit. It's a determination. It's the ability to get through things when times are tough. That's what drives success. And the people I bet on. We just hired for a search engine optimization specialist and the person I hired, I met a lot of interesting people, a lot of people who have worked for companies.

00;19;12;03 - 00;19;36;01
Robert Brill
The one the. And out of all those people that I hired, I hire the one who spent the last seven years on on Upwork. Being a freelancer, because he understands how to work hard. He's got that entrepreneurial spirit, and he can probably be more, have more determination to figure things out than the people who just work for other companies.

00;19;36;05 - 00;19;56;27
Robert Brill
There's nothing wrong with spending your entire career working for other people. There's nothing wrong with that. But in this situation that, you know, when I was hiring, I saw the best talent than the person who had, you know, had done it for himself and understood how how you can succeed when you partner with people and be a little bit entrepreneurial.

00;19;56;29 - 00;20;20;03
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and I like that the. You know, I think obviously I'm saying, you know, stating the obvious here, but hiring is probably the one of the most important skills. It's not the most important skill to being a business owner. Yeah. If you want to be a business owner, that's more than just yourself. I don't know what's your take on that?

00;20;20;05 - 00;20;38;08
Robert Brill
I mean, is it a skill? You just you just, you know, I'm, I'm of the opinion that higher you got gotta you got to do your due diligence. Due diligence when you're hiring. But fire fast. Like if you hire the wrong person, you fire if you found the wrong person, it's not good for them. It's not good for us.

00;20;38;10 - 00;20;58;04
Robert Brill
I've had people that I've hired who were so out of their realm, I just made a bad call. They're so out of their realm, and we have to let go of those people fast, because it's not. They are 100% not happy in the job. I know it, they know it. It's not working. You got to let go. But for the people you know.

00;20;58;10 - 00;21;18;21
Robert Brill
So. So is it a skill to hire? Yes. Am I very good at it? I'm probably just as average as everyone else. I think I have a framework. I get excited about people. And, you know, I see opportunities in people like I hire people. I'm like, man, this could be our next, you know, you know, they're going to ascend to like, big levels in our organization.

00;21;18;21 - 00;21;47;07
Robert Brill
And you know, it. The proof is in the pudding. And you either do good work or you don't do good work. And it's okay. It's okay when you get hired in. The company is not the right fit. And it's it's as much the company's fault as it is, you know, yours. It's it's shared responsibility. The situation may not be right, but I think when we do hit it right off, we get some amazing talent inside our business that have stayed with us for a long time.

00;21;47;09 - 00;22;12;26
Robert Brill
The other part of success of hiring is, is the systems and structure that you use to get people to stay, and you get people to stay in the business by number one. Standard operating procedure. This helps them understand when people are when when your responsibility starts and stops redundancy, so that even if there are mistakes, other people can catch it before it becomes a problem.

00;22;12;28 - 00;22;25;12
Robert Brill
And then of course, you know, we hire people with lots of experience to do our work because our system, our organization has not had lots of success hiring people out of college.

00;22;25;15 - 00;22;35;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. Well, the and I guess the thing that kind of triggered me to say that was when I was listening to what you said about hiring the SEO specialist.

00;22;35;20 - 00;22;36;03
Robert Brill
Yeah.

00;22;36;06 - 00;23;03;14
Craig Andrews
You know who you saw? Put it in the wraps on Upwork, and, you know, it reveals something about the person. I've got somebody that works for me that I hired about a decade ago. And then she left about five years ago, and then, came back, a couple years ago. And when I first saw her resume, I saw something that I'm kind of in the same way that you saw something.

00;23;03;14 - 00;23;36;10
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You saw that Upwork experience, and you saw that as valuable. The thing that I saw was, she was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. moved to California when she was 13. Yeah. And you know, the little bit that I know about, you know, raising, young, you know, young girls is, 13 is probably absolutely the worst age to take a girl and change her country, change her school, change her friends, change her language, change everything.

00;23;36;17 - 00;23;46;28
Craig Andrews
Yeah. In her life, every form of stability in her life except for her parents was taken away at 13, and she was able to figure out life.

00;23;47;01 - 00;23;48;16
Robert Brill
Yeah.

00;23;48;18 - 00;24;02;02
Craig Andrews
And I thought, I need that skill. I need somebody in my life that I can lob things at and say, Elena, can you figure this out? And she does brilliantly well.

00;24;02;04 - 00;24;13;24
Robert Brill
Yeah, absolutely. And and it that's you hire people for who they are and the skills can come later. Yeah. That's who you are intrinsically that matters.

00;24;13;26 - 00;24;27;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So so your agency you know it's been around for a while and how many how big is it. And, and all agencies for those that don't know or a combination of w-2s and freelancers.

00;24;27;16 - 00;24;51;02
Robert Brill
Yeah. So we're we're 20 people. We're full timers. and, you know, our job is to buy advertising. So it's when you think about advertising, you think there's people who do the creative work. So if you think about Mad Men, that whole show is about people who do creative work to make the images, shoot the commercials. Right. The the copy that inspires people.

00;24;51;04 - 00;25;00;23
Robert Brill
Our job is to take that creative work and make sure it gets seen by the right people, in the right environments, at the right time to generate a lead or a sale.

00;25;00;26 - 00;25;22;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And you know, I heard you on another podcast, friend of mine, William Attaway, and he, one of the things you said in that is to be successful, you have to be able to simplify and make things clear. And I love the way that you just took that you you took what's a mysterious system for some.

00;25;22;25 - 00;25;31;26
Craig Andrews
And you just made it amazingly clear. So you guys, someone else is doing the creative. You're taking that and you're making sure it gets in front of the right people.

00;25;31;29 - 00;25;50;08
Robert Brill
Yeah, I mean, I, I've been on podcasts where at the end of the show they're like, wait, what is media buying? I'm like, oh no, the whole audience probably have no idea what I'm talking about. So I tried to interject, with some very simple definition of what I do, because it's actually far more familiar to most people than they realize.

00;25;50;08 - 00;25;55;27
Robert Brill
But, you know, we like to spice things up with jargony terms that no one's heard of.

00;25;56;00 - 00;26;27;05
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, well, I know and, you know, and, I have a mentor that his primary medium is, is radio. and apparently that's a extremely complex media buy to do. Yeah. And the, you know, the people that do it well do it exceptionally well, and the, and they take a cut. And so that's, you know, if you're doing marketing at some point you have a media buyer.

00;26;27;07 - 00;26;40;00
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And in the equation now maybe, maybe they're blended into another job and maybe they're blended in. It's a little less clear. But at the point at some point there's somebody who is playing the role of media buyer. And it's an important role.

00;26;40;03 - 00;27;07;00
Robert Brill
Yeah. And you know it's it's important. And it's also. Surprisingly sophisticated of of a job that a lot of companies and a lot of individuals think is very easy. And the analogy for me is, look, when, when, when you're a business or an individual and you're running Facebook ads, the question is how much experience you have running Facebook ads or Google ads.

00;27;07;00 - 00;27;26;04
Robert Brill
Like, I know you have a lot of experience browsing and scrolling, but how how would you see if you actually have buying advertising? So it's like, no, you just press a button, you boost it and you're running ads and they don't even realize that's advertising, but it's ads. or they understand the back end of Facebook business manager and they're buying advertising space.

00;27;26;04 - 00;27;55;08
Robert Brill
And so I. Are you sure you're actually spending advertising money to grow your business? Because it sounds a lot like you're spending advertising money to learn how to advertise to two very different things. Yeah. So the people are spending their own money running ads on on Meta and Google and wherever else are often spending their money in ways that are less than desirable, that will yield very little or no results.

00;27;55;10 - 00;28;18;09
Robert Brill
And they keep spending the money, and they don't even realize it because they think they're going to. There's ads running right now on TikTok, which is promoting TikTok, saying, hey, if you don't have if you don't have views on your videos, are you stuck at 300 views? Run ads on TikTok to get more views. And I'm sure they're getting a lot of solopreneurs or small businesses running running ads on TikTok.

00;28;18;11 - 00;28;43;01
Robert Brill
And the fundamental premise right there is completely wrong. Likes, comments and shares and video views don't pay the bills. Sales do. Yeah. So by running an ad with the goal of generating a sale of a video view or a like, or a comment or a share, you've already lost the game before you spent your first dollar because your expectations are wrong.

00;28;43;03 - 00;28;44;07
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;28;44;10 - 00;28;56;10
Robert Brill
So and that's just the start of it. Like everything, everything that you all the time and effort and creative development that you're doing all of that work is being amplified in the exact wrong direction.

00;28;56;12 - 00;28;57;14
Craig Andrews
Yep.

00;28;57;16 - 00;29;22;29
Robert Brill
And when you have a when you have a problem with your hand and you there's something wrong, you go to a doctor because they're the expert. When there's something wrong with your car, you go to a mechanic. When there's something wrong and you don't know how to grow your business with advertising or just general marketing, you should not do it yourself because chances are you have higher value work to do, and the lower value work can come to the experts like us that are dedicated to that.

00;29;22;29 - 00;29;24;28
Robert Brill
So talk to an expert.

00;29;25;00 - 00;29;47;15
Craig Andrews
Well, and one thing I think happens is somebody, especially if you're spending any amount of money, you know, Facebook or Google will have a rep reach out to you and say, hey, I'm an expert on Google ads and Facebook ads. I'm going to make sure you, maximize your ad spend. I literally know no one who has gotten anything useful out of these these reps.

00;29;47;15 - 00;30;06;20
Craig Andrews
They've told them, you know, I think at Google, a lot of times, you know, they would hire somebody, you know, just graduated Stanford summa cum laude, and they wanted to work at Google. And their first job at Google was telling somebody who's been writing ads for five years how they how they should run their ads, right?

00;30;06;23 - 00;30;08;22
Robert Brill
And they're, they're on a script.

00;30;08;25 - 00;30;10;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;30;10;11 - 00;30;40;09
Robert Brill
And and, you know, it's they know something. But the challenge with Facebook, the reason our business exists and prior businesses like mine where I've, where I've worked at other agencies, the reason why we're, we have a value is because Facebook still doesn't properly communicate anything that's going on, anything of any value that's going on to their platform. Like when they make changes, they just make changes.

00;30;40;11 - 00;31;00;08
Robert Brill
And like consumers, marketers, business owners just kind of like have to figure it out after the fact. I mean, this is going back to like 2010, 2011 when I was running Facebook ads and buying Facebook. And it's like, well, we have this new feature called the newsfeed. What is it? I'm like, oh, shoot, Google what's going on in the newsfeed?

00;31;00;10 - 00;31;23;28
Robert Brill
How should customer how should marketers use this? There's no there's no communication unless you're spending probably tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Those big advertisers, they get communication and they get salespeople who are highly experienced salespeople. The best of the best, you know, that are that are giving you those big brands the insights that they need.

00;31;23;28 - 00;31;31;15
Robert Brill
But for everyone else, you're on your own. Which is why we have a place in this ecosystem to provide that value and bridge the gap.

00;31;31;17 - 00;31;42;20
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And so just to kind of hammer this point home, you guys are expert ad buyers. People bring you the creative, you make sure it gets in front of the right eyes.

00;31;42;23 - 00;31;48;22
Robert Brill
Yeah. I mean I'd say about 1% of our revenue is creative and 99% of it is media buying.

00;31;48;24 - 00;32;06;27
Craig Andrews
Okay. So I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you about something. I'm just interested in your perspective because, you know, the the hot buzz phrase of this time is I, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for Starbucks to introduce I brewed coffee, you know.

00;32;06;29 - 00;32;08;19
Robert Brill
so you mean the replicator?

00;32;08;21 - 00;32;10;02
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;32;10;05 - 00;32;12;01
Robert Brill
Star Trek?

00;32;12;03 - 00;32;13;15
Craig Andrews
Yes. Yeah, exactly.

00;32;13;22 - 00;32;18;26
Robert Brill
That would be right. 3D printed maybe. Anyway, sorry. Digress.

00;32;18;29 - 00;32;41;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And, but I look at it and I'm just like, I, I'm interested in your perspective before I throw out my perspective. Yeah. The the thing I'm saying is everybody is celebrating. They're like, oh, we finally have someone to write our blog articles for us. It's called I. So we're going to flood the zone with AI generated content.

00;32;41;26 - 00;32;50;23
Craig Andrews
It's a matter of fact, we're going to figure out how to hook it up to our customer service chat and get AI to ring customer service as well. Right. What's your take?

00;32;50;26 - 00;33;24;18
Robert Brill
Look, I think AI is exceptionally valuable when we talk about running ads on meta. I'll get to the more everyday accessible component. But let me first address AI for meta. What we're doing right now. The best practice to run ads on meta is to train Meta's artificial intelligence to find your best customers. So what used to happen with meta was you target keywords or interest, lookalike targets or retargeting, and you serve up ads and you could very granular and create a lot of a lot of different targeting segments.

00;33;24;18 - 00;33;51;12
Robert Brill
It's a never ending treadmill. What we're doing now is we are giving the targeting broad advertising targets. Age 25 plus gender, men and women location across the United States. And it's finding for us, the agency owners. So we're targeting 140 million people, but we can only really talk to about 40 to 80,000 people. How is it even possible that we we spend money and generate leads that are profitable?

00;33;51;16 - 00;34;15;01
Robert Brill
We do that because we are actively training the machine learning algorithm to find your best customers. So that's massive. That's how every mom and pop shop should be using meta to to to grow their business. They're not because they don't want to pay any money for the inside. But that's the insight. Now how are we using and how are other business using AI?

00;34;15;02 - 00;34;43;12
Robert Brill
Look, I think I look at I think the best use case for AI is to be an accelerant. It gives you back 20 to 60 minutes of your time on any given project, need to edit an already written text to make it more grammatically correct or more, more, more approachable AI so you're writing it. You let AI or Grammarly or someone, make the text easier to read.

00;34;43;15 - 00;35;08;23
Robert Brill
That's a great use of AI because the content originates from you. we write SEO articles, right? You write an article, you have it rank for certain keywords, and then when people are looking for hyper local advertising agency, our page comes up. We do the research on AI, I mean, on ChatGPT. Now do I need to do the research?

00;35;08;26 - 00;35;31;16
Robert Brill
I know the information. I know the the five top benefits of retargeting ads for for businesses, I can tell you that. But what I need to do is spend 20 to 40 minutes thinking about how I'm going to structure the article, what I'm going to talk about. And by the way, there's two other points of, you know, of the total of seven that I can that would I just wouldn't even think of.

00;35;31;18 - 00;35;50;29
Robert Brill
So I instead of doing research for 20 to 60 minutes, I go into ChatGPT and I say, what are the top benefits for a business to use? Retargeting a bunch of different points. I get an outline, then I take that outline and I write my own ideas to support each heading. And that's the page that gets published to our website.

00;35;51;02 - 00;36;22;12
Robert Brill
It is never a good idea in my opinion, to have unadulterated AI content go on to the marketplace when it's written content. Never. Google, I believe, will eventually penalize websites that that push out AI driven content. So we will never write fully AI content. We will never write partially AI content that we edit. We will write our own ideas ourselves and use AI for research.

00;36;22;15 - 00;36;38;24
Robert Brill
I think it's valuable for the, the, the development of imagery. Holy cows on Midjourney on Sunday, the amount of the the the beauty of the of the images that were created astounded me.

00;36;38;27 - 00;36;39;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;36;39;16 - 00;37;04;18
Robert Brill
Especially I have been off Midjourney for maybe three months. I go back and these images are just glorious. So the reason I to me is important is because it's getting smarter, where while we are ultimately going to decline as we get older, cognitive abilities decline. As it gets older, AI becomes very smart, exponentially.

00;37;04;20 - 00;37;05;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;37;05;27 - 00;37;09;16
Robert Brill
So that's where we are with AI, in my opinion.

00;37;09;18 - 00;37;37;05
Craig Andrews
No, no, I like that and I, I agree with that. You know, I published two books last year and I don't think I could have written either book. I really don't, you know, and there are parts there's a lot of parts of the books where I would literally spend if I were to try to have I write it, I would literally spend probably twice as much time writing the prompts as it would take just to write it myself, right?

00;37;37;05 - 00;37;43;24
Robert Brill
I mean, I have never going to replace an expert. What I was going to do is make experts more valuable.

00;37;43;26 - 00;37;57;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, Robert, this is an amazing conversation. We've gone longer than we normally have, but that's just because you're sharing such powerful insights. I wish we could go longer.

00;37;57;12 - 00;38;06;21
Robert Brill
That's very nice of you, Craig. What I would say is, if my wife were to say the same thing, she would say, Robert, you talk a lot.

00;38;06;23 - 00;38;21;08
Craig Andrews
no, this has been good. This has been good. I, it's been very insightful. appreciate you coming on. Leaders and legacies. If if, if somebody wants to reach you and I hope they reach out to you. How did they contact you?

00;38;21;10 - 00;38;41;17
Robert Brill
Yeah, our website is Brill Media. Echo Baez and boy Riley media.co. My email is Robert at Brill Media echo. And when you go to our website click on the Start now and share your information and set a time to talk with me. And we'll talk about your marketing strategy.

00;38;41;20 - 00;38;44;06
Craig Andrews
Excellent.

00;38;44;08 - 00;38;45;11
Robert Brill
Thanks, Craig.

00;38;45;13 - 00;38;47;08
Craig Andrews
Thank you.