Little Talks 8-14-24
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Brenda
Welcome to another episode of Little Talks, your weekly dose of marketing news and insights from Littlefield Agency.
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Sam
Welcome back to another episode of Little Talks. A little field day. Just the same little field with me is a group of NBC Nightly News.
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Sam
Ruben, I don't know if it's NBC or CBS or ABC cloud. Anything. Yeah, but I know exactly what that was like. That was like dinnertime news back in the day, you know, just brings back some memories. Anyway, excited to have you back. it is Monday. You're going to get this will go live on a Wednesday.
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Sam
group give everyone. Rupe just rolled into the agency about 20 minutes ago. It is 1040 in the morning. Why did you roll in so late? Room?
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Roop
Well, I, I was at the. I got home late because I had to drive to and from Oklahoma City for the, kickoff of the Childish Gambino tour.
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Sam
That's pretty sick.
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Roop
Cause I know this.
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Sam
Woman. She's. She's looking at it. She's not feeling great.
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Roop
So. Yeah, but that's not why I was out. We got there, you know. Yeah. Parked the car at a super charging station. Okay.
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Sam
Tesla owner.
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Roop
We walked over to, a nearby Wendy's, which was a little sketchy because Oklahoma City.
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Sam
There's some hit or miss pockets.
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Roop
Yeah, I was in a weird pocket. I ordered the Pretzel Baconator as a single because nobody needs two pieces of that meat. When I showed up, I had two pieces I think that got my stomach the last week. Well, I was in trouble this morning.
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Sam
Oh, boy.
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Roop
It's, Boy, I'm here.
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Sam
It's a Monday. It's it, it's okay. Hey, you made it in. I'm glad you guys are going to be stuck with me. And I'm glad you're not just stuck with me. However, I am driving most of this, today, which is going to be great because I have a good topic. it is Julie Evans five year anniversary here at the agency, five years at Littlefield.
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Sam
Super, super happy to have her here. She's our head of air and finance. if you don't know that name, that's a good thing, because you're not on her air list. So, you ever been called on the air office.
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Roop
By, no, not for anything. Yeah. I think if I did with Marilee.
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Sam
Oh, I'm sure you did. Probably. Marilee drove a tight ship. you didn't want to. You don't want to cross her. And then. Hey, I head to the beach tomorrow. I am super excited. It's kind of just a, one quick last vacay, a couple of days with the family. there will be pictures of Matthew, of course.
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Sam
You know, merman in the sand doing all things sand castles. I'm hoping it's going to be pretty decent in the sense of back to school time. not super busy, so we'll see it, but we're excited. It's just to go to have a little R&R. And then, dude, we hit the ground running. I mean, we're a month away from inbound.
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Roop
We are, back to your vacation. How's the weather in Florida right now?
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Sam
Fantastic. Hurricanes done. 90 degrees and sunny.
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Roop
I haven't I hadn't heard any news.
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Sam
It's going to be wonderful. No, it's from what I hear now it is early, so we'll see. There's no there's not even thunderstorms projected on over there. I know, that's crazy. Okay, so today we have one and only topic for you cloud.
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Roop
Oh yeah, she's on me.
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Sam
But it's a Monday. It's okay. But very, very excited to talk about this topic. like I said I'm going to drive most of it. So I take our new business calls at the agency. and there's some great themes. Last week's episode was a great one in the sense of, you know, closing the attribution loop and all that fun stuff.
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Sam
this week we look at what does it look like for you as a B2B brand marketing. And in an election year, obviously, we know that November is going to be here before we know it. it's going to be quite the showdown here, given the circumstances politically. for both sides and what I come across a lot.
00:04:03:23 - 00:04:26:03
Sam
And this isn't just now as we're gearing up for the fall. This was late. Early to late spring is oh, you know, it's it's an election year. we have some budget cuts. We have budget constraints is another term that I hear a lot of times I hear, we're being cautious with our cash. Understandably so. and that's all.
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Sam
That's all. Fair enough. But we come with you today with great stats, and we're not forcing you to spend your marketing dollars.
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Roop
This is why we started with,
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Sam
This is World Nightly. We're giving you a, stock market update. Here's the other thing. And it's a great point. Rip last Monday and Tuesday what happened? You didn't want to look at your stocks, right? A nice little blip in the radar.
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Roop
I didn't panic at all.
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Sam
Well, that's great. We're playing the long game, baby.
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Roop
I've had money to buy I know.
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Sam
Right. That's that's what I always say too. So, so this topic here is, you've got political ad spending. That is really I mean, it's really starting to take off now. I'm seeing a lot of commercials. this is we're talking to a B2B audience here on our podcast. So we understand most of you are not running TV commercials, so that's plays to your favor.
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Sam
but even with that being said, it's just people are flooded. people are cautious and we want to just walk you through some interesting stats and things to keep in mind as we do approach these, these coming months. We're in the middle of August, and November is going to be here soon. What does it look like right before November?
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Sam
What does it look like during November? And most importantly, what does it look like after we have
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Sam
our new president in office come January. So I'm going to hold up a couple things. If you are listening in your car, I'm going to I'm going to walk you through this. if you're looking on this video, you're not really going to see it very well because, I came across some really proprietary, information and I can't name my sources, but it's really, really interesting.
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Sam
And he's a financial expert who is a close friend of the agency. He's calling this, particular he the actual stats themselves. It's called seasonality. And election year. And I'm referencing this graph here. Let me kind of hold it there steady. So, this side right here shows you a history from 1928 to 2020. And it is called stock market returns during presidential election year over from 90 for almost 100 years.
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Sam
Right here we are in 2024, 19, 28 per year. You have four total dips 1932 the Great Depression, okay, 1940 World War two.
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Roop
That was a big deal.
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Sam
2000 dot.com bust. In 2008, we were in a true global financial crisis. The 2008 number is wild. It was a -38.5%. No return, no bueno. Not good. Very, very, very scary time in 2008. Rupe, you surely remember that it was a it was a scary few months, but I don't want to focus on the negative because that is four times over almost a 100 year history.
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Sam
I want to go to 2020. The return that year was 16.3%, and we were in a global pandemic and a presidential election year. there's other key stats across this way. What I want to show you here with my second graph holding up here, it reads the S&P 500 historical Average Performance since 1960. Now the cool thing is it starts from January leading to the election in November and then post.
00:07:43:04 - 00:08:03:13
Sam
And what you'll see is kind of a trending up. You get into mid July. It continues to trend. And then right before the election mid and October you see a nice little down blip, which by the way save your cash rate. Go to the that that's that's your next in kind of end of October. And then what you'll see is literally right after the election.
00:08:03:13 - 00:08:23:23
Sam
It just continues to take off. and then usually that next year has been pretty fruitful. So, we share this with you not to anyway, say, hey, just go and blow all your marketing money. But for those that are being cautious with cash and I get it, everyone's bottom line driven. You got to make money. At the end of the day, we we totally respect and understand that.
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Sam
But what you have to think of too is what is your strategy over the next six months. And let's call it 6 to 12 months, right. as we approach the election after the election, one thing that we're telling our clients, and we've had some clients that have cut some budget this year and that is totally fine. Nothing crazy, just I mean, really the normal stuff.
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Sam
Yeah, life happens is staying on people during the pandemic that I talked to wanted to go dark, and those that stayed on really reaped the benefits of that. we're talking this, we say pulling back advertising spend during these weird times. I've been calling this these last few months. Limbo. It can hinder your growth as a brand.
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Sam
It's really, really interesting. we're not going to get into it today, but there's a whole other chart out there of, brands during tough times that actually have established core values and a brand purpose outperform traditionally, all others that don't have, you know, what kind of drives them and gets them out of bed every morning, which I think is interesting.
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Sam
Not the topic we're going to cover today. but the thing is, Ruben, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Consumers, whether it's and you as a B2B brand, you're selling to that human at the end of the day, making a decision on behalf of a business, during these different times and difficult times and challenging times.
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Roop
or times.
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Sam
Or times of change, times of change. I like the I love that that's the optimistic way to go. they are more attuned to you as an overall brand. Yes. You got to keep pushing product, etc.. but brand values, branding in general is in no way a bad thing over these next six months.
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Roop
Yeah. So that's kind of the thing I was saying about this driving in this morning. the concept that, you know, well, you know, I gotta stop sending or I need to stop being present because of something that has nothing to do with me or my brands is kind of a fallacy, because some folks think that your opportunity is to take advantage of that.
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Roop
Yes. Competitors that have that mindset, you're only going.
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Sam
To go to town.
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Roop
You're actually only going to grow your you're whatever your goals are, by continuing to spend and participate, in that time frame, I had a couple of my own stats.
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Sam
Please. I'd love to.
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Roop
It might be a little different than Sam's, but, I don't know what it is this year. It has to be higher, but political ad spending in 2020 was 8.5 billion.
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Sam
And that's just political that those are literally the presidential.
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Roop
Yeah, probably some, Senate races and things like that. But that's all a lot of money. And the thing I always hear about with folks are like kind of being cautious. I think Kelly even talks about this sometimes about, you know, how do you bid for an audience when you really have some crossover with, with political ads as well?
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Roop
That's going to drive my cost up a little bit.
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Sam
And that's true CPMs 100%.
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Roop
But that doesn't mean you don't do it. The analogy I gave you last week, if I could remember it in whole now, was, if you have a really hot day, 100 days, 100 degrees out, right. you've had your air conditioner on all this. This is me. I'm talking about.
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Sam
Oh, this is personal experience. It's very relevant to right now,
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Roop
Struggling to keep up. Like, I could see I had it set for 73, and I'd go and see the house in 78. By late afternoon, it was just struggling. but if I had turn the air conditioning off and just said, I'm giving up, I'm just going to wait till this is over, it would have taken forever.
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Sam
And very expensive. Yeah.
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Roop
So, like, even though no one's really at home during the day, I couldn't just say, well, you know, it's not working. I got to turn it off and then I get all turned back on with that. I had been fighting against nine.
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Sam
Totally.
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Roop
Then you can't give up. You have to you have to. You can't see the ground. You kind of have to maintain a presence, in marketing and an air conditioning, you have to have, oh, I love it. You'll come out of it, you know, the outside temperature goes down and it can't it back up. But, yeah, the idea that you would just disappear or completely evaporate from from your marketing efforts really doing more damage to you.
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Sam
Yep.
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Sam
it's a great way to put it. And he shared that with me last week because I was like, you know what? You really should share that on the podcast.
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Sam
But that's another, another point that we want to bring up be strategic with timing and placement. that's, that's a huge one. And like, we even if you want to go dark for a week during the election, that's totally fine, right. Like it's going to be don't don't go, don't launch a new product or in the election week, you know, it's I avoid that.
00:12:52:21 - 00:13:11:00
Sam
I'd say stay on and be just be present. but you just kind of you got to think through going into the end of October, which everyone's mind that of course, it's the it'll be the election that week after, but then afterwards. Right. Thinking of the holidays, thinking about as you geared through 2025, a lot of our clients at that point are, you know, planning and all things budget.
00:13:11:00 - 00:13:37:07
Sam
And just from a content standpoint, what are we going to do as we think through, you know, trade show strategies, product launches, etc.? But it's, timing and placement is everything. And and again, placement being you're, you're out there, you're there and your customers can hear from you. and it's okay if you're not selling again, going back to that brand message, it's not a bad it's not a bad time to re secure, you know, your current customer relationships.
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Sam
And then for prospective customers gearing up for your new year, because at the end of the day, they got to keep driving their business and, they're going to need your product.
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Roop
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I lost a thought.
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Sam
I would say you had a thought. Are you.
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Roop
Okay? Yeah. I don't know if I.
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Sam
Don't don't edit that out because I just need I need that for leverage.
00:13:59:10 - 00:14:00:10
Sam
guys. Oh,
00:14:00:10 - 00:14:02:15
Sam
you remember what you're saying now? Yeah. Please.
00:14:02:17 - 00:14:11:11
Roop
I was going to say, like, last week, there's two days of panic, and then we bounce right back, right in the stock market. There's always some light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, along with the column.
00:14:11:13 - 00:14:15:16
Sam
Totally. And and your brand is playing the long game. We're playing the long game.
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Roop
So you'll get through it. It'll happen. It'll be fine. There's always that moment of panic. And so some folks kind of kneejerk react back to that, I think, and that was kind of a very calm about it and stay the course the three benefits.
00:14:27:21 - 00:14:44:01
Sam
So for those that were listening today, I love that group. if you would like to see this information that I presented, whether you're listening or that you saw it, I'm happy to chat further because it is it's really interesting stuff. and the beauty of it, it's historical stats and facts. we're not we're not making this up.
00:14:44:03 - 00:15:00:19
Sam
I mean, yeah, literally 90 for six years worth. Holy smokes. That's a lot of years. So, we share that with you. We'd be happy to chat further about it. And just. I mean, I keep telling our team here, guys are going to put our heads down on a grind it through the next few months. We're going to take off in 2025.
00:15:00:21 - 00:15:18:14
Sam
And, and I just think is, as you all are planning, because everyone is gearing up for budgeting and for 2025, it's just something that you got to think through. So, we'll leave you with that Rupani of thoughts. I'm glad to have you at the go. Yeah. Go vote. Yeah. That's great thing. Yeah, yeah. No.
00:15:18:14 - 00:15:35:00
Sam
No voting message. Go vote. and anyway, I'm glad you guys weren't just stuck with me today. I love having you here. I'm glad you're doing better. Don't get that double next time, okay? And if it does come with the double, just take a patty off your patty off, okay? That's what we have for you. You all have a wonderful week.
00:15:35:00 - 00:15:43:22
Sam
We will be back next week with the latest and greatest things in all things AI and marketing. Thank you, John Marsh. We will see you then. Thank you all.
00:15:43:22 - 00:15:56:05
Brenda
And that's a wrap. We hope you've enjoyed our little chat and found ways to grow your own marketing strategies. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on social media at Littlefield Agency.