The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast
The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast, where we take a deep dive into geek culture, tech evolution, and the impact of the past on today’s digital world.
The Nostalgic Nerds Podcast
S1E8b - Barnum Would’ve Loved the Bots: The Digital Freakshow (Part 2)
Welcome to the second half of our big-top breakdown, where the circus goes digital, and the clowns have ring lights. Wait...did we just call ourselves clowns?
Marc and Renee dive into the wild world of influencer culture, brand risk, and the not-so-distant future of agentic commerce — where your shopping bot might be negotiating with another bot for the best deal while you sleep.
It’s a world where authenticity is currency, trust is optional, and your favourite influencer might not even be human. (Honestly, Barnum would’ve signed them immediately).
So grab your popcorn and prepare for the algorithmic sideshow. The spectacle hasn’t gone away, it just learned to optimise.
Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.
email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com
All right. So today's marketing is all about creating experience, but it's a digital experience. This is what I think is the hardest part about all this. You went from being like, let's all be in the tent together watching, you know, people trick ride horses to, you know, let's all be in a digital experience like social media. We've all seen the buzzing, colorful ads that catch our attention. But now it's not just flashy posters or TV spots. It's about building a community and creating interactive experiences. Influencers are the new circus performers, except now they don't have to fit in the ring. They can influence millions of people through Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Just like Barnum created spectacle to draw crowds, influencers create spectacle to sell lifestyle status and products. Their followers are emotionally invested, just like the circus goers were in Barnum's time. And then there's the experience marketing, where brands aren't just selling a product, They're creating a whole experience around it. Think about Apple's product launches or how companies are using augmented reality to try to sell before you buy. I mean, that's how they sell nuclear power plants. You walk through it with VR. So they do it. Like, let's walk through your nuclear power plant before you said, bend a billion dollars. Okay. Yeah, that's exactly what happens. It's not just about a transaction anymore. It's about giving people something they'll remember.
Marc:So I totally agree. And there was this woman I met, Eileen Sarah, she ran the affluent card portfolio for Chase. And so Sapphire was their premier product line. And I talked to her about, what are we doing with this product? Like, where are we doing this? And she explained, you know, Sapphire was not about, you know, credit limits or, you know, whatever. It was about enabling premium experiences for their cardholders and, you know, special dinners and, you know, events that you could get better tickets for. You know, it was like, you know, taking a page out of the Amex, right? Whatever the Centurion concierge was, and enabling that at a bigger scale. It was a very interesting discussion, but that experience-driven product, they were trying to build a following, right? And that following is what drove the valuation on the portfolio to some degree. But you see that across Apple right or you know name your favorite your favorite brand right it's like, I, I'm, I, I'm a member of the cult of Mac. I'm not afraid to, I'm not afraid to say it.
Renee:So that's just it, right? Like some brands are super culty and I feel like, you know, they love bomb you. They, they create community around the brand. They have their own language for the stuff that LuLaRoe is a really good example of that. They all spoke their own language. They all look the same. They all sold this stuff. They were all like, it was a community where they really felt like they were helping each other they were stuck in an mlm i swear it was just it was just a bad scene the whole way around but like there's a book called cultish it's written by amanda morale montel i'm sorry montel is that what her last name is i
Marc:Think that's it.
Renee:Yeah monta amanda montel and she wrote a book where she talks about how how brands use cult language to get you to be loyal, right? And get you to buy. And it's very methodical on how this all works. You speak the same language. She talks about in the LuLaRoe documentary, one of them, I think it's the Hulu one. She talks about how language that when you go to church and you speak all together in prayer, it releases endorphins. So like that language and that communal language, When you're doing that in a group, like it creates this dopamine effect where you feel like you're bonding with everybody. And she says, you know, it's why when people go to like MLM events, they feel like they've had this religious experience. Of course they do. Like it's like being in a revival tent. Like, of course you have a religious experience. It's designed that way. And so, yeah, but I think with that comes, I mean, just want to talk about brand risk. With that comes a ton, a ton of risk, right? Once you say to me, I want to tie you to me emotionally as a brand, right? The first time you say that, and then you actually don't deliver on the brand promise You didn't just disappoint me. You broke my heart. Is that what you want?
Marc:Yeah.
Renee:Is that really what you want? Because in that moment, I'm going to break up with you. This is divorce. I'm divorcing you. Like, you broke my heart. I'm divorcing you. Like, it is a way bigger deal than, yeah, that's kind of disappointing, but I'm still going to shop there, right? Like, it's a completely different thing. You look at, like, Cargill. Cargill doesn't say, I love you. Cargill deliberately doesn't say they love you. They don't really need to tell you that story. They don't need the backlash of it when they do something terrible, which they're bound to do. Right. I think that's the whole thing. Right. Like that's the whole thing in a nutshell. Like Southwest Airline. Why do you need to say it's all about love? Forget that. It's all about on time and don't crash. That's all it's about. Right. Like stop saying that because once you do that and you leave me stranded on Christmas Eve for the next three days, you broke my heart. Like you this is crazy talk like this idea that you're just going to keep pulling on everyone's you know heartstrings and nostalgia strings and their their needs and their FOMO and their cultiness like once you start doing that I just think you create so much brand risk that if you're not actively monitoring it and managing it you are setting yourself up to be blown up in the middle of the sea I
Marc:Think that's how you know I mean I think I was just talking with here's a hug.
Renee:And a can of chili. Like, it makes no sense to me.
Marc:Yeah, but you and I know this better than most, right? Is that, Even if you identify the risk, right, and you say that you're managing the risk, like a lot of times people will say, we've identified this risk. And just the sheer notion of identifying the risk is like, well, that makes it okay. And then the business, you know, whoever the amorphous quote unquote business is, will say, you know what, we're willing to accept that risk. And and that and it's like wait a minute what did you just do you said you accepted that risk right so so southwest airlines with the big heart logo and saying it's all about love and all that somewhere the ceo says you know what i i get it renee you know we've talked before and i understand you you think that there's brand risk and you're absolutely right there's brand risk but you know we put that in our risk register and we think about it and we're going to accept that risk. You know, that's what happens.
Renee:That's what happens. And it costs them $250 million and a ton of regulation in the end.
Marc:Bingo.
Renee:Right. I mean, that's what it cost them in the end for behaving like that. If they were if they were Spirit Airlines, do you think people would have been so mad at them? Of course not. Spirit Airlines is terrible. Their marketing is terrible. It's like, get to know this person. They're with you for the next three hours. Like they are really just weird about that. Right. Like they don't care. They literally don't care. It's their selling point. Right. That brand experience and that brand promise can't be undone by bad customer service because they sell it as bad customer service, right? It's such a resilient brand. It's almost crazy. That is not true when you're Southwest, right? The brand experience and the brand promise can't ever overlap like that. Every time you make a mistake, you're breaking someone's heart. That's really no way to live, right? Especially if you're something like an airline. Like an airline. fine. They charged me $35 or a bank, right? Like you charged me $35 for a bag that you've never done before. So I just assume that I'm the one paying for the technology debt that you had all these years after you stranded like 4,000 or 10,000 people, right? Like I'm paying for that now because I'm paying for my baggage, right? And so like in a lot of ways, you look at that and you say, you know, Southwest is not as customer friendly as it used to be. They are not as budget-friendly as they used to be. And they certainly don't deserve the loyalty they once had. And that's terrible. I have like 200,000 miles on them, something crazy like that. Something crazy. It's been 10 years of me pretty much flying nothing but Southwest. And I won't do it anymore. I had a better time on Delta the other day. No, I'm not doing it anymore. It's cost the same amount as everything else. There's nothing special about it. And I don't feel like they love me anymore. I think they're trying to get me to pay for the technology debt that they've had for the last 20 years and i'm not doing it so we're done yeah
Marc:Yeah i i think that's a valid that's a valid perspective you broke my heart, But I will say, look, if it's 200,000 miles in 10 years, that's rookie numbers. That's rookie numbers for me.
Renee:Yeah, well, you know what? I wasn't trying to break a record. As a matter of fact, I spent a lot of time trying not to go. Yeah. If I'm being fair. I tried a lot of time.
Marc:I think I could do 200,000 a year. Yeah.
Renee:Well, you were going country to country, and none of them were close. Country to country.
Marc:Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not the same thing. I think, you know, that point about, you know, risk and brand risk. I think it's super valid with regulated industries, right? Yeah. They're regulated for a reason. Right. It's people's money. It's people's lives, you know, health care. It's people's, you know, life, you know, safety, airlines, transportation, like these places.
Renee:Your financial future is banks, right? Like, yeah, you're regulated into a certain kind of way of existence. Well, I also say that it's because you didn't know how to behave in the first place. Like if you knew how to behave in the first place, you would have no recs, right? And you don't know how to behave and you don't self-police. And while I think that, I'm just going to say it, the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association hardly do it, but still, they are professional organizations required for policing themselves. And if you, technology, if you, social media, would like someone other than the government to actually, you know, make sure you're following rules, then create a rule book and follow it. Don't do what you're doing, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Renee:It seems so crazy to me. Okay. Finally, the future. What's next for marketing? Okay, so first of all, we've decided that they haven't done anything different in the last 150 years. Let's see what they're up to in the future. Or is it just going to be more of the last 150 years? Because isn't that what we're figuring out on this podcast? Like, nothing's ever any different. It's just a different technology that gets us to the same place. So what does the future of marketing look like? Well, we're already seeing things like virtual reality and augmented reality become mainstream, which will only increase the level of immersive experience marketers can offer. Just like the circus wants to use bigger than life spectacles, marketers today are pushing the boundaries on how we'll interact with products. Imagine being able to step inside a brand's story through VR or having a holographic ad in the street that you can walk through. The possibilities are endless. Marketers are no longer just telling you about a product. They're showing you the world around it and inviting you to live it.
Marc:You know, I'm both I'm super bullish and super skeptical about AR and VR. And if I've got to wear something, like, you know what happens to dongles, right? Dongles get, you know, excised out of the ecosystem eventually. They'll start, you know, and then they eventually go away. And I saw the reason I think that Meta's glasses will not work, right, is because Mark Zuckerberg sat there explaining how great they were. And wasn't wearing them like.
Renee:Oh snap you're right
Marc:I mean dude if they're so awesome you know and they had such an experience and they do all these things why weren't you sitting there with them on when you're doing this you know what's this interview yeah yeah i mean give me a freaking break and i think you know until until that that dongle you know that you know wearable, that that barrier is worn down a lot more i'm not i'm not so sure i like ar i think that's cool you know you hold your phone up when you see stuff but i mean i don't know it seems novelty and so i think that the use cases for those are going to be quite specific i and i do like the idea of you know holographic ads in the street and that i think that that that does have a future But I don't know. I'm sort of skeptical and bullish. It's in a weird space.
Renee:I think you're right when you say that VR has a place in the world and it's not in, like, everyday advertising, right? Yeah. Although... Gucci has a store in Roblox where you can go buy Gucci stuff in VR, right? So the brands are kind of thinking about it as something they could probably infiltrate because that's all you're trying to do. You're trying to have your brand infiltrate some other world and that other world happens to be virtual. I kind of get that idea, right? But I also think the use cases for VR, especially when it comes to kind of like where would the rubber hit the road, it's in engineering firms, right? You want to build a bridge? Let me show you what it looks like to drive over that bridge. Let's sit here together. We're both going to put on our VR goggles and let's do this. Let's watch it. You're going to build a new roller coaster. Like you're a roller coaster creating company. Like, of course you would use, you know, virtual reality.
Marc:And they do.
Renee:Yeah, right? Of course you would. It's an experience. You're trying to get them to have the experience before you ever build the roller coaster. It's a brilliant way to use that stuff. But do I think there's room in that to advertise for me? You know what? I would be mad. I would be mad. So I got my VR on. I'm pretending to jump off of a cliff so I can, like, pretend that I'm, you know, squirrel suit flying because that's the only way I would be good at it. And then all of a sudden I'm flying past a billboard. Like, no, no, no. I don't want anything to do with that.
Marc:Okay. So two movies, neither of which are that great. But, you know, just, you know, I think these two movies kind of personify what you're talking about there. That movie Free Guy, did you see that with Ryan Reynolds? No. Okay. It's not a great movie, but it's really interesting. You know, the character guy, Ryan Reynolds, is in a video game and he becomes aware, right? He becomes aware of, you know, the environment. It's kind of like a, I don't know, you know, Grand Theft Auto sort of thing. Okay, okay. And he becomes aware. And there's pop-ups and, you know, and all that sort of stuff. And it's there and it's real. And then the other is Ready Player One. Again, not a great movie.
Renee:But everybody loves talking about Ready Player One.
Marc:Yeah, exactly. The virtual world that the kid is in has advertising and all of that stuff. So you slap the VR goggles on. And guess what? He absolutely gets hit with targeted ads, right? And I think that this is not so far off. I don't think this is so far-fetched, right? If you think about some of the capabilities of the goofy glasses that Zuckerberg did not wear, If you think about some of those capabilities that are on there, the one that scares me the most is facial recognition. Facial recognition. Like, this is really, I mean, we should go into privacy tech at some point. But, like, this is, I see it as a big problem. Because you're wearing the glasses. Your glasses are seeing me. I did not consent to be part of your, you know, algorithm.
Renee:AI experience.
Marc:Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Right. And then all of a sudden, you know, if we're not careful about the frameworks that we put in place, you know, Renee's glasses see Mark, Mark's going to get a buzz on his cell phone that says, Hey, you just walked by a Domino's. Would you like to buy a pizza for, you know, five, five bucks off or whatever? Like, because it recognizes who I am and then it has a record, you know, that's hooked to my Facebook account that then texts me. Like, that's the stuff that I'm really scared about. You know, that's targeting in a non-consensual way, you know? And I think that's.
Renee:That's like- I would be more concerned with, like, I walk past you, I look at you, I have my things on for facial recognition. It doesn't, it tells me you're Mark Masser. It tells me where you're from, because it's pulling it all from some profile somewhere, a public profile, right? And I can do that with every single person I look at. Like, that's not, that's bullshit. I'm just gonna put it out there. That's not okay. That's just not okay. And I think that's where, when you have a normal FTC or FCC, that they should step in with regulation and say, no one gave you consent for that. You can't do it. No one says, if you want to do that, then everybody you look at has to give you consent. You think you can pull that off? You can't. So no, that's not. And on top of everything else, facial recognition technology comes with everything else, false positives, bias, you know, all that other crap. And, you know, you using it for anything, anything is not I mean, how long before cops are walking around with them just looking at you, finding out if you have a warrant against you? Like, that's not okay. None of that is okay. None of that is okay.
Marc:The observation state is about to become like a billion times worse. You know, we should talk about this, you know, in another episode. Yeah, you know what?
Renee:We'll get a privacy person to sit down with us because there's a ton of people out there that get just righteously angry about this stuff and they're good to listen to.
Marc:Yeah. It's really tuned me up here. But I think, you know, AR and VR are cool. I think there's some, you know, neat stuff there. There are some, you know, issues. But the one that's like, I think it's right about on the cusp of happening is agentic commerce. And, you know, like with e-commerce before, right, you wouldn't have advertising in digital space without the buying and selling of things in the digital space. Right. And so if everybody's talking about agents buying and selling things, well, guess what? We're going to have agents that are trading in advertising, right? Bots talking to other bots, bots trying to influence the way that my bot, you know, ranks a certain product or a service and then buys that product or service. I think that that's, I think that's, that's, that's coming. Do you want it? You know, you think about, do I want it?
Renee:I hate personally. So for it's like for a month, I walked around my kitchen because I have an Alexa, which was my first mistake. And I only use it as a timer. Alexa set a timer for 10 minutes and it's like, give it a name. I'm like, no, I'm not telling you what I'm timing for. I'm just telling you, give me 10 minutes. Right. I would walk around and I would say to Sam from now on, when we talk about the dogs, let's call them eggplant. Right. So, OK, so this is that we say that like we say it in front of Alexa so she can't hear us. And then we start calling the dog eggplant. So we're like, hey, did eggplant eat this morning? So eggplant is the word that we're using in the space of the dog. And then Christmas time comes around. So it's like four months later. And I see on my Amazon page, Christmas is coming. Get eggplant a sweater. I'm like, you know what? That's it. I'm done. It figured out eggplant was my dog just by the context of the conversations, which means it's listening way too much because I didn't ask it anything. I just talked about my dog. And that's what I unplugged it and stuck it.
Marc:I, yeah, I'm so because I'm sort of a privacy rights person and, you know, worked on identity stuff and sovereign identity and stuff like that. I, I don't want to be targeted. I'm not comfortable with targeting. I'd like to think that I know what I want, even though I like. So we're all algorithms and I've proven with teams mathematically that actually you don't know what you want. you're, free will and free choice are not the same thing. And, you know, a lot of times humans don't have choice. They have will maybe, but not choice. And, you know, we're utterly predictable. So the algorithm, you know, there's a, there's an algorithm that describes me and we can eventually learn that algorithm. But, you know, that, that off to the side, I, I personally, I don't want But if I have a shopping agent, right, and that shopping agent is assigned to get me the best energy prices, you know, month to month. Right, then I think I'm okay with having some level of targeting where some energy companies bots are trying to influence my bot that buys the, you know, energy to do that. I'm okay with that. I think I want it to do that, right? Because I want it to learn my habits, my preferences, my persona, right? Then we think about agentic commerce as less about robot doing a menial task and more like a digital persona, a manifestation of my, you know, jobs, wants, and needs. Then that digital persona is likely to have opinions, even if the opinions are mathematical and derived through, you know, an algorithm. But those opinions, I think, should reflect my own personal opinions. And, you know, that could be things like ecological impact of a brand, right? Political views or preferences of a particular brand and that brand trust. And I think that it's okay for the agent to be able to negotiate that. And it's more sophisticated than... Do you remember the iPhone 4 came out, right? I want the white one. It's more than just I want the white one, but it's I want the one that has the best option that balances price, satisfaction, sustainability. Like that, I think, is what I'm looking for.
Renee:Okay. I don't hate that idea. I don't hate the idea that my – because the purchasing environment is so big and there's so many products. And I don't know who the originate – like who owns it? Like, what do they do? Are they bad people? Like, I don't know. And maybe an agent that can do that. And maybe I get to say, you know what, this for the next quarter, I only care about punishing people who do bad things. So, hey, agent, go out there and reorganize my shopping cart and Amazon to take out all the people that I think are bad and put in other put in the same thing, but from a company that's good. And let me go buy from that. Right. And I think like when you speak about it like that, that's awesome. But then I also think about just like, what have we learned? The second something awesome happens, we weaponize it, right? And so there comes the idea that you're ultimately going to use this against me. That's what you're going to do with it. You're going to use it against me. It's going to be deceptive practices. We're going to, you know, FTC is going to end up regulating you. Like, we're headed that way. I hope we're more responsible than that, but we almost never are.
Marc:Yeah, I think this is like we talked about the eternal catalog, right? And, you know, this time I think it's not the eternal catalog. I think it's the eternal directory, right? You know, how does my agent find the right match, right? And right now we use Google, right? And other things, but Google's the directory, even though it doesn't, it's not really a directory, right? It's the search engine and there isn't a directory, right? And I think that, you know, there's going to be a directory of agents and you'll be, you know, use, you're instructing your agent to use the directory to find the thing that you want.
Renee:I'm telling my agent to go to the Yellow Pages and get me what I'm looking for from a vendor I'm okay with. Like, that's it. We're recreating the Yellow. Okay, so those of you who don't know, the Yellow Pages, you got two phone books at your door every year for the phone that was attached to the wall. One was the White Pages, which is all the people. So, you know, A. Franklin, you want to dial that guy? You can. Here's his number. You can dial him up. Yeah, just dial him up. Here's his number. You could pay money to stay out of that book, which some people did and some people didn't bother. That was the white pages. The yellow pages was a much smaller book, but it was all the businesses. So you wanted to know where to find a plumber? Bigger. Sometimes it was bigger. Ours was usually smaller. Pittsburgh, it was usually smaller.
Marc:California is huge.
Renee:It would be bigger, yeah. But that's what you – and it would be by neighborhood. So, you know, L.A. would have their yellow pages and Corona would have their yellow pages. And then, you know, I guess Stevenson's Ranch would have its own. So everybody had their own yellow pages, and it was pretty local to what you were. But it's where you went to find, I need a plumber. Okay, well, let's go look here. I need to rent a car. Let's go here. That's where you went for that stuff. You went and found the yellow pages. And occasionally you used it as a booster seat if you had a kid coming who needed to sit higher in a chair. That's what it did, right? And it was written on super flimsy paper that you could take camping and use it for toilet paper. Like it definitely was directory advertising. And it was an entire advertising like firms around this. I worked at one, Ketchum Directory Advertising. You literally sold advertising for companies in the yellow pages. So if Midas, muffler company, wanted to run ads in all the yellow pages around the country, you called an ad agency. They said, here's how much it'll cost. We'll place all those ads for you. We'll do it for a year. We'll renew next year. And then that's what you did. And it was their job to get that all done for you. Like it was, you're right. I can't believe we're going back to the Yellow Pages. We're going back to Yellow Pages.
Marc:See, you think about what is the problem that we're about to have, right? I have a magical automated AI system that can do things for me, right? Okay, that's not the problem yet. The problem then becomes, well, how does the agent act like me on my behalf, right? How does it go and find the things that I want, whether it's a product or a service or an experience? And today, you would rely on sort of brute force web search, right? And the thing that has the highest mathematical probability as a token would then be the thing that the AI would say, ah, this seems like the likely thing. But I don't think that that's, like, I don't think that's very efficient, number one, you know, just technology-wise. And number two, you know, how do we influence, right? How do we shape, right? Because we're going to weaponize agentic commerce. How does that get weaponized? Well, it gets weaponized when we can control the results of that search, right? I want to find a plumber. But do you think that all the plumbers in the world are going to have, you know, the wherewithal to build a website and to create a digital persona and have a social media presence and all of these things? Like, no, it doesn't happen. We know that it doesn't happen. They'll have, you know.
Renee:They'll have parts and bits and pieces of that. Phone number on the side of their truck, right? Yeah.
Marc:Like some of them are very sophisticated and they're more expensive and some of them are less sophisticated and they're, you know, cheaper. That's the way it is. How do I find the reliable, cheaper guy, right? You know what? Maybe it's as simple as advertising in a directory. I think that that's like, that's the weaponization here. I think that that's the weaponization. Yeah, we're going right back to the yellow pages. That's right. How much is Amazon going to pay, right? How much does Amazon pay today for search engine optimization, right? If you're going and searching for something today, and, you know, that's big money on SEO. Well, how do you influence an agent, which is not going to use the web in the traditional manner, right? How do you influence an agent to come to Amazon to then buy? And I think that there's something there. I think that there will be that structure. And it may not be a formalized structure, but it might be, you know, a set of tags that you put on your website, right, that say, ah, I'm open for agentic, you know. Yeah.
Renee:Hashtags, right? Like, come to me. Yeah.
Marc:I don't know about hashtags, but yes, a set of, you know, systems or APIs that say, you know, I, you have an agent, I have an agent that supports, you know, Google's AP2, right? It just came out, right? Here's, here's, you know, here's my, my set of interactions, your interactions, you know, we can now collaborate and talk. I think that's like, that's going to be an interesting sort of transition. How do you, how do you know how to find the other agents to talk to? And, you know, and you're right. And then what's the weaponization?
Renee:The yellow pages. And that was the thing about the yellow pages. Unless you beat me to death with it, you couldn't really weaponize it. Right. There's no way to weaponize the yellow pages. But there is a way to weaponize this stuff. And so that's what always has me worried. Like, I always think like technology is not benign. And if we don't think about the downside.
Marc:So a couple of things on the size of agentic. Okay. Market size on agentic, a multi-hundred billion dollar market by 2030. Gartner. Okay. Now. Yeah. So now I always take these with a grain of salt. You're an analyst. You know this. But Gartner is estimating that by 2028, 15% of online transactions will be initiated by AI agents. That's like 15% by 2028. It's only a few years out. I don't believe that number.
Renee:I don't. I think that's probably twice as much as it should be.
Marc:Yeah.
Renee:Yeah.
Marc:But still, we're talking lots here.
Renee:Look how fast digital advertising happened in the 1990s, right? It's going to be even quicker now. So we're not going to have a couple years. Yeah.
Marc:Yeah. So we're talking about Gen Z and millennials. Surveys show over 60% of Gen Z and millennials are open to letting AI agents handle at least part of their shopping or price comparison activities.
Renee:They're digital natives, dude. That's why. That's right. They're digital natives. They were born with an iPhone in their hand.
Marc:Of course they would. Trust increases when the agent is framed as working for me, not the brand. And I think this is why – we talked about influence. We talked about that stuff. I think this is why there will be this bot to bot, you know, process where bots are trying to influence other bots. And I think that's that's the hook right there. Like that's the that's the statistic, right? Sixty percent of Gen Z and millennials. Yeah.
Renee:Yeah. That's why old people don't want things to change. I'm finally at that age where I'm like, oh, come on, you guys. Let's not.
Marc:Yeah. But think about we talk a lot about scale and reach and how technology shifts. It doesn't change the behaviors. Right. It just shifts how they happen.
Renee:Yeah. How we do it.
Marc:You think about, OK, like, OK, we started with Barnum. it goes posters in the town square double click has cookies across websites agentic commerce is going to be bots advertising to bots and it's going to be negotiating in milliseconds like same same human instincts but at machine speed like you think about you know the interactions it absolutely will be happening this way right it'll happen at at machine speed rather than at human speed?
Renee:Well, everyone, I enjoyed the circus. I enjoy the circus of it all. That's what I'll say. Everything's a spectacle. It's just going to be more. So from the American circus to DoubleClick to today's social media campaigns and tomorrow's agentic commerce, marketing's come a long way. But one thing remains the same. It's all about creating that emotional connection and getting people to engage. So I hope we did that for you guys. I hope we tugged your heartstrings and you stayed engaged. So here's, thanks for tuning into today's episodes of the Nostalgic Nerds podcast. Be sure to subscribe, share, and let us know what you think. How do you see the circus influencing today's marketing world? Hit us up on social media and let's chat.
Marc:All right. Catch you later, nerds.
Renee:Catch you later, nerds.
