Weekly Marketing and Advertising News: Incentives to get Covid Vaccine; Lil Nas X and Nike; Voltswagen; Chipotle is Giving Away 100K in Bitcoin
Ryan Alford and Riley Clark break down the Nike and Lil Nas X lawsuit, Volkswagen's April Fools rebrand, Chipotle's $100K Bitcoin contest and vaccine
- TheRadcast.com relaunched with a full search function that indexes every topic across roughly 130 episodes, plus highlight clips, full videos and audio in one place.
- Nike sued Lil Nas X and MSCHF because the Satan Shoes made it appear Nike created them, damaging the brand's image; the hosts argue a moral stance may matter as much as the legal one.
- Timing amplifies offense: releasing blood-filled 666 shoes during Easter week put the stunt in front of a majority-religious American audience, which the hosts call beyond free speech.
- Volkswagen's 'Voltswagen' April Fools prank worked because the joke redirected attention to a real business priority: its electric vehicle lineup.
- Chipotle's National Burrito Day puzzle giving away $100,000 in Bitcoin hit its 18-to-34 demo's shared interest while collecting first-party data, which matters more as the industry moves to a cookieless world.
- Contests are a practical first-party data strategy: they let brands build one-to-one customer relationships and capture data directly.
- Krispy Kreme's free-donut vaccine incentive reads as tone deaf because the death rate among obese Americans is reportedly three to six times the average, making sugar a poor reward during a pandemic.
- Better-aligned incentives existed: free gym memberships, three months at Planet Fitness, or a free skinny latte would have matched the health message brands were trying to support.
I say all the time just because you can't, doesn't mean you should.
So, this is tone deaf to me.
Look, another thing is going on here is it's really important when we're moving to a cookie list world to get first-party data.
Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the Radcast this Friday, April 2, 2021, and we're here with our news and marketing update for the week. I'm joined as always on the hardest marketing podcast in the planet with my co-host. That would be Ryde Clark. Yeah, hi, how are you? What's up, Raleigh? You're having a good week. Having a great week. Yeah, we have some big news today. I know. It's big news. I'm going to let you announce this since you've worked really hard on this. Well, we launched our website, but you've definitely put in the legwork on it. Well, I appreciate it now, but we launched our website. So, guys, I'm so excited to show you guys this website. It looks so good and the coolest thing I think
Ryan and I would both agree is the search function. If you have any questions about anything or want to search anything, we have talked about there's a bar and you can search whatever words you want in any episode that it is in. It's going to be there and showing it to you. Yes, so entrepreneur ship, Instagram engagement, Facebook ads, anything and everything. We've cataloged. We've done a hundred and thirty-ish episodes of the Radcast. A lot of knowledge from entrepreneurs, a lot of knowledge from yours truly, a lot of knowledge from our team here with Riley and Josh and everyone at Radical and you can search any of those topics and the great thing is we've aggregated. We produce so much content. Poor Riley, as our lovely producer does
all this content and we do push it out to all these places, but there hasn't really been, we've been using kind of a streamlined website approach. The Radcast.com is not new, but it was kind of a shared site. It didn't aggregate all of our content. We're now aggregating all of the highlight clips, all of the full videos, all of the audio. You can subscribe. You can learn more about us. You can apply to be a guest. You can do everything and anything on the site and the search function is kick ass. So congratulations, Riley on that launch. Yeah, congratulations us. Yes. We did good. We did good. We did good. But it's been a great week here at Radical. We have a lot of new business coming in the door. It's been really exciting. We've signed three
new clients this week. I've got seven meetings today and it's a busy time at Radical. We're really, really excited and appreciative of all of our new clients and wherever and whenever you're listening to this podcast, we really appreciate everything that comes with it. But now we'll just get right straight to it. Here's Riley with the news. Here is the Radcast news. All right. Yeah. We are jumping right in and we, I think, are going to be going off here.
This is soapbox Friday here on the news. I would not say no one right in our looking at the headlines today. We both looked at each other. We're like, okay, well, I want to go off about that one. I want to go off about that one. I want to go off about that. And the first thing is these Satan shoes. Yeah. I mean, I'm laughing because it's like ridiculous to me and it kind of pisses me off like of all times. Okay, here's the deal. I'll say this first and foremost. Anyone and everyone can have whatever artistic expression they want and whatever metaphor they want to create and formulate into a video. You have that right to do that. However, this didn't feel like a metaphor.
This felt a little too literal. And in a way, I would even say a little offensive. Say a lot of things. Yeah. The logic here, there's human blood in the shoes. You have six, six, six on the shoes as well as a Bible verse on these shoes. And it's just disrespectful. Like, no matter what what your belief is, we have coins. We have a constitution in God we trust. We have a belief system, no matter what it is that's in the it's it's based in some form of religion, whether you're Catholic, Muslim, Christian, whatever it is, there is a belief system here that's channeled around spirituality, whatever you want to call it. And anything that just again, you can have your own beliefs, you can have metaphors, you can do what you want. But when you do
something the week of Easter with with let's call it 80% of America, 75% of America having beliefs around this. And you throw it right in the face. It's beyond your free speech. It's offensive. And I was just appalled by this. And you know, I say all the time just because you can't, doesn't mean you should. And you know, again, I will fight, you know, tell my last breath for the freedom of speech and all those things. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take a stand when something just feels completely wrong. And this just felt wrong on all levels. You know, attention is important. And we can do things to get attention. And there's gimmicks and there's stuff that you do. But this is just crossed the line in all levels for me.
No, I agree. It's it's difficult because, you know, again, like I'm not trying to hate on anyone's ability to express themselves. You do that. But it just it felt very the way the way it was gone about. Because now Nike is obviously filing a lawsuit because Lil Nas X and Miss Jeff, the company or the, I don't know if they're even a company as much as just a designer that created these shoes. It appeared to be very weird. It appeared to be that Nike was the one creating these shoes, which obviously Nike is like, this is hurting our brand. This is affecting our image. And so naturally they filed a lawsuit. And I totally understand why they did that. It was just misleading on all levels. You know, I, you know, part of me like sitting
you're talking about it like and giving it even more life, you know, through our own audience. Like I actually go, should we even put this on here? But, but I think it's important though to like just call out things for good better and different. And this is just bad on all levels. And so, you know, I, you know, I'd like to see Nike even take a harder stand than they had. I know they've, they've, they've, they're, I guess, lawsuits is a hard stand. But, but like, I don't know, but I haven't seen, and maybe it's out there. So I'll admit this, but it hadn't like hit my radar or the exact stance they're taking on it other than a lawsuit. You know, are they taking any kind of moral stance on this? Are they just taking illegal stance? Yeah, I mean, it's a
good point. It's a good point. But I'm definitely curious to see where it goes. And again, like no hate on, you know, who Lil Nasak says is a person, but it's, it just, it felt, come on guys, we can be better than this. We can be better and more attentive to what's going on. And you know, in complete opposite of that, we're going to kind of switch gears a little bit. In April, Fools Day, which would have been yesterday, this was, I thought, really brilliant of Volkswagen. Volkswagen, like it's so smart because they brought this attention to electric vehicles. And it's like, you know, yes, they've been trying to go this direction. And here they are, prank little rebrand. And now they're like, oh, we were kidding. But by the way, we want to let
you all know that we're really pushing hard on these electric vehicles. Yeah. I mean, everyone's pushing hard on electric vehicles. We talked, we talked about whether it was Ford, I think we've had a couple of different brands like GMs rebranding, which is kind of in the, in the notion of that, you know, out every commercial, every other audio commercial I see now is has been, e-cars, electric cars, like Audi, I've seen sports cars, Maki, the Mustang, the Mustang. So electric's out there. But this was hilarious. I saw it this morning and I was like, okay, I didn't really get over me, but I just thought it's clever more than anything else. Oh, yeah. No, I love that. I loved it. Super smart, super smart. Next on our list is for
National Breed Today, which also would have been yesterday. But this is interesting. We've talked a lot about Bitcoin on here, but I just think it further shows the implication that it's having for brands as well. Chipotle essentially created this, I would call it a puzzle, essentially. You have to basically think what the six-digit combination would be. Essentially, you're either winning 100,000, $100,000 of Bitcoin or more burritos. It's something kind of interesting like that. But it's clever and it's cute and it's totally culturally relevant. This is very appropriate to what's going on right now. Yeah, it was for natural, national burrito day. And so good contests, bringing, you know, you've got all that shared interest with Bitcoin out there, the increase, it's over $50,000 of Coin now, which I was going to cry into my microphone. I thought I was
really getting ahead of the market at 10 grand when I sold mine. But anyway, nonetheless, the smart play. Look, another thing is going on here is it's really important when we're moving to a cookie list world to get first-party data. So these contests that allow you to collect the data, the customers to have that relationship with them one-to-one is really important. And so you're bringing in the shared interest in the, and really for their demographic, you know, being that call it 18 to 34-year-old. I don't know this. I haven't studied their exact analytics, but I had a guess. I had a guess that's probably like their number one demo. Bitcoin is like all the rage with that demo. And so you bring in that interest. Holy cow,
I can get 100,000 in Bitcoin. And they see, well, that $100,000 is going to be worth $500,000 in three months. Everyone called it sick yesterday. They're like, I have to figure out the six days you're coming. Yes, the past guy. It's really clever with, you know, the intrigue and mystery of the game. And, you know, all around well-executed marketing player. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I loved it, loved it. And then, honestly, we really kind of zoomed through this. I didn't even really mean to do that too much, but here we go. Stopping for it today. We're keeping it short and sweet for you guys.
I know Ryan, you have a lot of thoughts about this. People that have companies and brands that have incentivized the COVID vaccine. Now, here's a deal. Before we really break this down, I understand. And we also, we understand this is a, you know, didn't incentivize a vaccine like this just for the, bring awareness of COVID and everything like that. I totally understand that. But... Big butt. Big butt. To give donuts as the incentive to get a COVID vaccine. Like, you have to show proof of your vaccine. Now, Arizona, to me, this is funny. You get a cannabis edible Michigan. You get a pre-road joint places in Cincinnati. You're doing 10-cent beer. I think somewhere else in Philly, they're doing popcorn. Okay, I get it. That's all fun and good.
I don't know why the donuts are what's sticking out to you and I, but you have thoughts to go off. Well, okay. Let me start with, I'll start with the good or the indifferent or whatever you call it. We live in a free economy somewhat free. It seems like that changes daily, but I'm going to get on that soapbox. But, you know, capitalistic people own companies. They're selling products. They need to make money. Have added. Krispy Kreme, no different. I have no problem with Krispy Kreme as a brand until this that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. But all this comes off, at least for, I'm going to start with Krispy Kreme. We've been in a pandemic. A lot of people have died.
The death rate amongst obese is somewhere between three to six X, the average American. So, obesity plays a big role in the morbid, morbid, I'm going to say that wrong, but the death rate, let's call that. And so, you know, Americans haven't had a problem giving themselves treats. They've treated themselves a little too much. We were overindulgent with sugar and sodas and all these things. We are, we have a obesity challenge in America. And so, does that mean that Krispy Kreme can't be a business and they sell donuts and there's fast food and there's all these things. I'm not here to judge that as a business, but the problem is though in the middle of pandemic, we're going to incentivize Americans that for the most part are some percent obese already.
We're going to incentivize them to get the vaccine with a donut. So, this is tone deaf to me. Yeah, I think on the surface, everybody's like, that is so awesome. You know, like the brand like really, you know, giving people a treat because it's so important we get vaccines. And in theory, yes. In theory, yes. But again, with the relationship of obesity and America to the pandemic and the tragedy of what it's done with the American population. This is just in left field to me. We're incentivizing. We've shut down gyms. We've shut down physical activity. We've shut down people from getting together and incentivizing them to do things and prove their health. But some of it necessary, some of it not in my opinion, leave that for another day. But now,
we're going to give away donuts if you get a vaccine. You're probably a good percentage already overweight. You need to be losing weight so that if you were to get stricken with the COVID, you have a good chance of killing it off with your health. So, I just have a real problem with this. The way we're incentivizing with weed, donuts and popcorn and candy. You know, so in theory, it makes sense. How about free gym membership? I mean, for real, I want to plan a fitness step up and give three months of free gyms. I mean, you say that and it's really interesting because why wouldn't the thought have been you got proof of your vaccine? Now you can come to our gym. Now you can come back to how about a skinny latte at Krispy Kreme? Yeah, free skinny latte
with every. You know, I know their core products are delicious. I love me some Krispy Kreme. But again, it's just since the wrong message to me. And yes, I think on the surface, 60 to 70% of people this registered as a positive thing. But for me, it just rubbed me wrong just because I see, you know, I put physical fitness really important in my hierarchy. It's really important in my life. But I think it's just, it's one of the real problems in America today, which where it falls in the priority list. And so incentivization for something that is important that gets done around a treat just, I don't know, just really sent me wrong. And it might just be my personal standards on this and some people make, oh, lighten up. You know, it's just a free donut. They're
just trying to do good and they give away something and what good for the brand. And I just think there's another level here with, with again, the obesity and what impact that has had on the death rate. Yeah. Which is, is proven to be significant. Yeah. I know. You're right. You're right. I'm with you on the. Yeah. Anyway, all of the news to be kind of soapbox negative. It's not negative. It's just perspective. Yeah. I've never liked just get on our soap boxes. You pay for our perspective on this podcast. So here we go. Good money. Yeah. But hey, honestly, give us your opinion on this. Like after you've, after you've heard this episode, like comment on Ryan's Instagram, like comment on the rat. Like here, let us hear what you have on these opinions,
because obviously we went a little hard today. So, you know, let us know too, because obviously that's what this is for, right? A bigger conversation. So reach out to us and let us know like your opinions on this. It'd be awesome. And check out the website. Have to check out the website. Yeah. So hopefully you didn't get any April Fools tricks played on you yesterday. But if you did, then hopefully you're recovering. But it is April. Warm weather's around the corner. Vaccines are out there. It's going to be a wonderful summer. We are really excited about the Radcast.com. So go check that out. Yes. You can find us wherever you Google the Radcast and we're at the.rad.cast on Instagram. And of course, you know, where to find me at Ryan Offord. And as always,
thank you, Riley. Yeah. Thank you. We'll see you next time. Have a good weekend.
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