Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Navigating Shopper Promiscuity Challenges in Today's Market with Devora Rogers
Tue, 18 Mar 2025
Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential. Resources:Right About Now NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn this episode of Right About Now, host Ryan Alford sits down with Devora Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer at Alter Agents, to explore the ever-evolving world of marketing and consumer behavior. They dive into the challenges brands face in truly understanding their audiences, the transition from traditional focus groups to cutting-edge research methods, and the delicate balance between performance marketing and brand building. Devora introduces the concept of shopper promiscuity, explains how familiarity drives brand loyalty, and examines the rising influence of podcasts in shaping consumer decisions. This insightful conversation highlights the urgency for brands to adapt to shifting consumer preferences and craft compelling value propositions in a competitive marketplace.TAKEAWAYS Understanding the significance of consumer behavior in marketing. The concept of "shopper promiscuity" and its impact on brand loyalty. The transition from traditional focus groups to modern research methods, including virtual formats and mobile ethnographies. The tension between performance marketing and brand building, and the need for long-term consumer relationships. The complexity of modern marketing strategies across various channels. The role of familiarity in fostering brand loyalty among consumers. The challenges of attribution in marketing and the difficulty in determining effective channels. The importance of engaging with real consumers for genuine insights. The potential of podcasts as a growing marketing channel. The necessity for brands to adapt to changing consumer preferences and market dynamics. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE. Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding. Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: How does real human interaction reveal opportunities in marketing?
Nothing reveals opportunities and challenges in the way that talking to humans does. It just doesn't. We feel that brands have to put in the work and ultimately get answers from real people dealing with real challenges that either your company can or cannot solve.
Chapter 2: What makes 'Right About Now' a top business podcast?
This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about what you need to know now in business, even life sometimes. I'll give you some life advice, but I'm probably more the marketing and business guy. And that's why I like to bring the best
the brightest and some of the smartest people in the industry on the show and sometimes we venture back into like the things that i always was kind of had my hands in in the agency world less today with the podcast network but definitely you know keeping a pulse of what's happening in marketing and research and what brands are thinking about and ultimately you know i gotta go to the source that's why we got we've got the research poet
We have the Chief Strategy Officer of Alter Agents. It is Devorah. What's up, Devorah?
Hey, how's it going, Ryan? Good to be with you.
Yes, appreciate you coming on. I don't always get to get my nerdy marketing hat on, but I kind of want to get it on today. Let's do it. In the beautiful LA Santa Monica area, correct? Yeah. Yeah. What is it? Is Alter is Alter agents. I mean, is it is it look, feel, act like an ad agency? I know you're not involved in the marketing campaigns, but in many ways, is my mind in the right place?
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Chapter 3: How does Alter Agents differ from traditional ad agencies?
Yeah, we're a we're a full service research shop. So research shops tend to be a little bit different than ad agencies.
Yeah.
Our offices aren't as cool. We got rid of our office during the pandemic, which has been great. We're fully remote and the team loves it. And it's given us access to amazing talent all over the U.S. But yeah, we have a little I came from that agency world. So we have a little ad agency in us. You know, we give off one day a month just because I feel like that's an ad agency thing.
Yeah, exactly. It also brings me flashbacks of focus groups in New York sitting there talking to people about Test Man and Can You Hear Me Now, which was one of the first campaigns I worked on back in the day for Verizon. If you worked in New York and you didn't work on Verizon at some point, then you just didn't cut your teeth right. But are focus groups still a thing?
Chapter 4: Are focus groups still relevant in market research?
I'm going to give you the German answer, which is jein. Yes and no. Look, if you enjoy traveling and going and having shitty food in a back room while people talk about things for days on end, then you might do focus groups. And some people still do that. But honestly, we have moved to virtual focus groups because you get better respondents. Yeah.
Um, you know, people just don't want to leave their houses right now. So it's like, if we do a focus group in LA, getting people on time in, you know, at four o'clock in the afternoon, traffic's bad. It's just really hard. Um, so we do them, but I would say judiciously and more and more, we're moving to something we call mobile ethnographies.
They've also been called selfnographies, which is really freaking cool.
Yeah. We the agency research, we always go with the best names of shit. It's like it just sounds important, but it is important. And that's why I was so thrilled, you know, when your people reached out and it's. For our audience, it's important for people to kind of know what the sentiment of today is. What's motivating shoppers and consumers? How does one learn what's doing those things?
What are the techniques today? What should we list? And sometimes when I have brilliant people like you on the show, it's like, almost what you don't do and what you don't listen to sometimes, because I feel like the inputs can be so confusing now because the channels are at, that's the thing that just blows my mind with you doing what you do.
I think about what I did 12 years ago, then the inputs felt complex, but they weren't, you know, now it's just like so many, how do you balance all of it?
Yeah. No, I mean, I feel like that I have that same feeling that you have when I look at my clients who handle, let's say, CPG brand marketing in a space where you've got to compete on Amazon. You've got to figure out TikTok. You've got I mean, like to me, that's now brain science.
And so we actually literally do brain science to understand because the amount of channels that people can be in, the importance of being offline, online, you know, a mix of both, you know, dealing with private label, like it is rough.
And so it's our job to help clients focus on what's really going to matter for them, you know, when they bring something new to market or when they're trying to compete with their, you know, competitors.
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Chapter 5: What is 'shopper promiscuity' and how does it affect brand loyalty?
But have we just completely lost our mind that we still have to build somewhere along the way the awareness and the consideration? Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. I'll start with the bad news for brands. The bad news for brands is that consumers have more options than ever before. We call it shopper promiscuity. Think about it. Like if, you know, I'm married, I don't know about you, but you know, if, if I had like four amazing suitors outside every single day, standing outside my house being like, you know what though? Like I'm pretty great.
Like I'm an amazing chef. Like I'm really, you know, I'm really good in bed. Like, It'd be hard to stay loyal. Let's just be honest, right? And that's what brands are facing. Consumers have so many choices. They could go anywhere. They could at any time of day. And so that access, the choice that they have creates this promiscuity.
And so the difficult news is that brands continue to be brands and what brands often do as brands, both in marketing and in research, is they do something we call brand narcissism. And a lot of research is built on this idea that if you just track people's relationship to your brand, then you'll know enough and then you'll know what to do. It's called brand tracking.
It underpins all of research and marketing and many people hate it.
including the people that use it because you know things don't shift that much it's hard to really make sense out of it doesn't and again it's it's narcissistic it's like do you i mean imagine imagine ryan if you and i went out let's just say for like a little friend hang yeah and the whole time i was like hey ryan what do you think what do you think about my hair what do you think about my cashmere sweater what do you what do you think about my friends did you look at my friends do you think that they're am i more innovative than my friend you'd be like get out of here
you wouldn't want to talk to me. And that's what brands do with their precious research. So we have really drawn a line in the sand. Our CEO, Rebecca Brooks wrote, um, in our, in our book shopper promiscuity, sorry, we didn't end up getting to name it that because we had a British editor and they didn't want the word. I know it's too bad. It ended up being influencing shopper behavior.
The original name was shopper. I know the Brits. Sorry. She was like, oh, let's not, we can't. But in a chapter in that book, she wrote what I call her Jerry Maguire letter basically to the research and marketing industry saying, we're missing the boat here. Like brand tracking isn't delivering the answers that you want. And to add to that insult to injury, and then I'll tell you the good part.
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Chapter 6: How do brands balance performance marketing with brand building?
The challenge is that when we survey shoppers by generation, brand loyalty basically stair steps down. So if you're, you know, a boomer, then, you know, you're pretty likely to keep buying, you know, let's say 60% of boomers are going to keep buying products that they've been buying. By the time you get to, you know, millennials and Gen Z, it's like 17% of them express that same brand loyalty.
So that's the bad news.
Yikes.
But I would agree with you that performance marketing has shown us that the answer is not just the race to the bottom. Yeah, you can get people to buy things if you, you know, do enough coupons and promotions and whatever. Yeah, you can. But you may not have a lasting voice or presence in the space that ultimately means that brands still do have to do the hard work.
What's interesting, though, I think, and I think where the opportunity for brands is, is that brands have this idea that it's either all or nothing. I'm going to put my brand out there, show you my brand logo again and again and again. I'm going to have my billboards up that you won't even know what my website is or what I'm selling. I get so mad at those.
I love those. They think they're, like, fooling somebody. Like, they think they can do something, like, because we're just so wrecked. It's just so distinguished, you know, that people will get there.
I get mad. My husband has to listen to me for 20 minutes being like, who did that? He's like, okay, calm down.
The ivory tower of the creative department.
Right. Or they say, okay, so either we're going to go the all in, it's just our brand name, brand recognition, build brand, or we're going to go all the way to the bottom and give you all these little details. But actually the center space is where we really see the opportunity for brands. Tell them about your products.
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Chapter 7: Why is familiarity crucial in building brand loyalty?
So more sources than ever before, more knowledge than ever before. And I'm going to put, I think, implied words in your mouth. They know they're being marketed to. A hundred percent.
And they're okay with it too. Like that's the thing too, is that brands don't have to pretend like they're not. We've actually seen an increase in people accepting advertisement as a useful source of information. They get the exchange.
Yeah. But do better.
Tell me more.
I have one of the few people I would call mentor, Christopher Lockhead in marketing. I don't know if you know Chris. He's a category pirates is his brand. He doesn't believe in brands. He just believes in category creation to where you carve out exactly what you are. You market the problem and you become the solution.
I think that's a little bit of what you're saying with telling people about what you are. I agree with about 75% of it. I choose to believe that brand isn't dead. Yeah.
Yeah, I would agree with you. At the end of the day, the way our brains work, right? So we do neuroscience, right? And I don't know if you know this, but it turns out half the reason we like our spouses is because we see their face every day.
Familiarity.
It's a brain thing. So the next time you get in a fight with your spouse, just be like, am I with you just because I see you every day?
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Chapter 8: How are consumer preferences shifting in traditional categories like milk?
My father-in-law is like that. Doesn't care. You know, maybe if there's like a flavor, he might splurge, but otherwise it's just like yellow mustard is sufficient. And then there are mustard aficionados like, you know, mustard sommeliers. And they're going to know every little thing. They're going to do little tastings. Right. Right. So there are in every category mustered aficionados.
You may not be an aficionado in one category in your life, but randomly in another, you might be. And even among people who consistently choose value over – I'm somebody that chooses like – I'm like, oh, is there a more expensive price that I can pay? I'll do that.
It's great. It's great. Devorah, you are that person, right? Do you want to charge me more or do you mind? Do you want to charge me more? Please.
Yeah, please do. But there are people that are the opposite who are – and it doesn't matter if they're wealthy or not, right? That they're going to consistently choose the value option. Yeah. We tend to leave out a lot of the people that are choosing the value option in our research because they tend to not be very interesting.
But I guarantee you, whoever they are, one thing in their life, most likely, unless they're just like a total weirdo, they have something that they really want to be higher quality premium. And for that, they're willing to do the research. They're willing to do the looking and they might be harder or easier to move. So that's the other thing. Yeah. Yeah.
People become obsessed early on and they're the explorers. They're the ones finding new things. They're evangelizing. And they are the ones that you can lose very easily. So you kind of have to know at every stage of building your business. Because the idea that you could just have loyal people that'll stay with you and that's everyone is just no longer true.
So you have to sort of plan for, okay, I'm going to have these people that are going to come in. They might help me build my brand early on, but then they're going to defect because that's what they do. And then I've got to get the other people... You know, to to to fill up the back. Right. So that we don't, you know, completely lose when the explorers and promiscuous folks go away.
You have a lot of job security because, you know, you know what I just heard? Devorah is and it's very true that the it depends word.
is it it's so unique to every different brand and every different category and i know this instinctively but i almost forget it too because i think we all like to paint with broad brushes and make statements like tv is dead or facebook is dead you know i've been hearing facebook's been i've written those trends i've written those trends reports by the way But the truth is, but it depends.
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