From AI Search Engines to Steve Madden: Trends That Matter

Speakers: Katie Flynn, Heather Riexinger

welcome back to The Flynn Effect. Thanks for having me again. Second time. We have some fun stuff to talk through today. We’re actually gonna do a little bit of a different format. We have three marketing current event sort of stories that we’re going to all do like a little summary on and then we’ll go through it and provide comments. All the stuff that’s easy for us to just chit chat. But one thing I also wanted to call out is we have some people here behind the camera, some students from Edison Tech helping us today. So we’ll put an acknowledgement in the episode and a description of what was going on today. But thank you guys for being here. You don’t have to talk. I know Craig will yell at you.

Okay, awesome. Well, let’s get started. You sent me a story. I’ve got two others because it’s been sort of a big week, if you will, particularly as it relates to Google. You know, there was the big Google conference last week and there were a few new announcements. So our first story today is Google expands access to VO3, its viral new video model through the Gemini app. And so this is image to video transformation. The model enables users to generate high quality videos from simple text or image prompts, incorporating realistic motion, synchronized audio and coherent narratives. Have you seen some of these videos going around? No, VO has been around this, obviously the third generation, but it’s like crazy good.

It’s crazy good. I know you sent me a video for a faux pharmacy brand that you would have thought if you didn’t look closely that all of the scenes were shot. Performing, I think. Yes, and it was hysterical.

But I know our team here has also been messing around. It’s fun because you can add whatever you might want to do. I’ve seen them add people to scenes that didn’t exist. And I think it’s going to be really great for budgets as well as timelines. So there’s ability to test things without having to have, you know, a large shoot. We can get an idea out and not to say that we might not want to shoot that live action later in the future, but it can get it within the audience and show a client even what we’re thinking. Yeah,

that’s a really good point. You know, I think when I first saw it, I was a little bit like in the oh my gosh, what’s going to happen in our industry to us and you know, all these things. But in terms of ways to sell in ideas, it’s probably a really strong one. And I think we’re going to have to consider things too, right? Like, you know, the the peppermint commercial that was made by somebody who worked in advertising. They used to have 500 K pharma budgets and they did that video with five hundred dollars in VO three credits in about a day, which is amazing. And it’s it’s so interesting to see as somebody who’s been on the other side of the big productions, right? But it also to me is a little scary, like even seeing how realistic some of the stuff looks. I think it’s going to become more and more difficult to parse out what’s real and what’s not. And I do wonder how consumers are going to feel about that. I think there’s some folks who are really, really interested in it, especially people who work in creative fields and work in marketing. And, you know, video is one of if not the most effective tactics out there. Right. So there’s always going to be use cases for things like that.

But I don’t know. Like, do you have a sense? Do you think that the trust will be there for consumers? I feel like in pharma. No. You know, that was just a silly example.

But pharma is tough because it’s been testimonials are tough. So that was more of a testimonial style video. Right. And if consumers they want authenticity. So even if it’s, you know, words that were said by a human but shown as a.i., the trust isn’t going to be there. They’re going to want to see the true consumers within that. Right. But I think

it is really interesting to me is that you still need that creative behind it. So the peppermint that you mentioned. Right. The reason that that ad is so good is because an advertising professional wrote it and gave the prompts. Yeah. So there’s still going to be a lot of garbage, you know, garbage in garbage out with a.i. So you still need that strong creative team behind it. Even if you’re not shooting a production. Yeah. It’s still going to need that thought or everything’s going to feel exactly the same. They’re going to lose authenticity. You still need the brand within it. So what’s the brand voice that needs to be pulled in. So there’s still a lot of high touch. Yeah. It’s needed to make strong. A.I. video.

Yeah. No, I think that’s a completely fair point. And I think also we’ve seen people say those who are really strong with prompts are going to do the best with these types of tools. And so if you are a professional who actually understands the technical elements, right? Like the types of cameras and the focus and the light balance and all the things you can give a lot more detailed instructions that are going to get you a higher quality output. Yes.

But yeah, I mean, I think with all things A.I. it’s going to be one of those things where we all have to embrace it and just figure out how to incorporate it into our workflows. But it’s just wild to see how even in the last two years things have progressed.

Yeah. And I think the scariest thing for the creative teams is the account team because now it’s like I’m dangerous.

Yeah.

Now I’ve got the power that I can say this is what I’m thinking. And, you know, they’re they’re still going to roll their eyes a little bit. But, you know, that’s where I think people who aren’t technical by trade are going to be able to come up with ideas. And that’s where you’re still going to need the technical team to execute it in the way that you’re looking for. But I think it’ll be really interesting. And I think it’ll be really interesting for client input as well. Yeah. Because if clients have that ability, a lot of times where we go back and forth is with, you know,

people not being able to easily voice what they’re looking for. And with A.I. it’ll be a little bit easier for even clients to say, this is kind of what I’m thinking. Right. Do something with this rather than some of that feedback that we might go two or three rounds before we get to what they’re looking for. This will allow them even to start something or get an idea to us in a more clear fashion. Yeah, totally.

All right. Moving on, but staying on A.I. Yes. All right. So we were talking about this last week because we were on a client call or a prospective client call and they asked about this. And

I had actually already heard about it because we are part of a what is it called an agency network called magnet. They’re fabulous. They’re the best agencies and the best people. But part of the benefit of that is we get the collective experience of all of these principles from these agencies. And there’s been a lot of conversation around GEO, GXO, which is generative experience optimization. I don’t think anybody’s totally bought in on what the acronym is yet. We’ll have to see sort of what survives.

But GEO refers to the use of generative A.I. models to automatically create, adapt and refine digital experiences such as website content, ad copy, UX design elements and interactions in real time or near real time to optimize for engagement conversion or other business objectives. What I think is interesting is this is sort of this definition was sort of referring to the way that you can use it, you know, on your own properties. But there’s a big piece of this that is going to be very similar to SEO. Right. Like what can brands, websites, people be doing to make sure that they are showing up not only in search results like on the Google page, but in the search results that are generated by the A.I. models like Google’s Gemini, for example.

it seems like it’s going to be something that takes off rather quickly that I’m sure we’re going to start getting a lot of questions about as people are wondering what’s the right balance here. But so I wanted to call out a couple of things because actually Google Search Central put out some documentation with guidance just yesterday.

And it’s interesting because they basically said specific optimization isn’t required for A.I. interviews and A.I. mode. All of the existing SEO fundamentals will continue to be worthwhile. So the things like making sure that your texts and your websites are crawlable, making your content easy to find through links on your website, that internal linking capability, providing a great page experience for users so that you can get those high quality scores, making sure that important content is available in textual form. So that’s things like even with this podcast, making sure that we upload a transcript or that captions are generated,

making sure that your structured data matches the visible text on the page. And that’s, of course, the technical piece of it. And then checking your merchant center and business profile information is up to date so that your quality scores are high. So I find it really interesting. You know, I’ve read some articles that say in addition to all of these like standard SEO things, which you would want to be doing anyways, that the way to really get into these like generative summaries is just content, content, content. But what was interesting in the article I read is it was saying that even the A.I. models are going to score A.I. generated content as lower quality than human generated content. Yeah. It feels like slightly backwards somehow. But at the same time, I think that’s that bodes well for brands who are wanting to put out really authentic stuff. But it’s not just quantity. The quality has to be considered, too.

And it has to be readable via text. So what I was reading is, you know, you got to put out audio, you got to put out video, you got to put out articles, all of the things, but that you also have to make them crawlable.

I’m interested to hear where this one goes. It feels like it’s like a just emerging thing and people are going to figure out how to game the system.

Yeah, I’ve read a lot of the same that you’re reading that quality and quantity are still king. You know, you need both that A.I. is preferring human written content over A.I. content. And I think

lot of it is we’ve said forever the A.I. you know, for it to get smarter, it needs to be fed. So it needs that new fresh content or we’re all just going to be talking about the same things over and over because A.I. can only pull from what exists. So we need we still need that human content. So it’ll be interesting to see how the models evolve, though. And, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if a month from now it’s quantities winning or quality wins and then, you know, they adjust and it’s the other. So it’s, you know, it’ll be like social and everything else that is constantly changing week to week and you need to beat the algorithm.

Yeah, totally. We’re going to keep a really close eye on it here. Yeah. And, you know, I’m sure we’ll be having conversations with our clients. But the key takeaway right now is stay up with your SEO strategies. Like, do not abandon that because

seems counterintuitive with all of these, you know,

new ways of searching for things coming about. But actually, Google uses on the rise continues to be on the rise. So you’ve got to make sure you’ve got that really strong foundation. Yeah.

And I think where it can be used for a lot of this content can be helpful so that you can keep up is generating ideas or helping you find a hypothesis that you can then dive into on your own. So it still can be used to understand what people are talking about and what the hot topics are that your audiences want to talk about and then adding your own perspective. Yeah. Yeah.

And it’s still keyword based. So, you know, yeah, got to say that that term, however many times, five times.

A.I. A.I.

Exactly. OK, final story, which is one that you sent to me, which I had not actually seen surprisingly, but I was just explaining to the room that I was on a tick tock break last week. So that’s probably why. And I’m chronically online. Yes, this we know. So there was a Steve Madden interview. He was on the cutting room floor, which is a popular show that clips and puts on tick tock. And he was talking about tariffs and he was not shy at all about how he feels about them. And so far, at least from the content I was consuming, it seems like there’s a very positive reaction to at least the folks who were commenting on the cutting room floors page. But what were you what were you saying?

Yeah, I think it’s been so interesting because he did an interview and nobody, you know, Steve Madden was popular. Oh, gosh, 30 years ago when I was a kid and Steve Manon’s kind of stayed around forever as a brand. And I think a lot of it’s the authenticity. So coming out of that interview, you know, he talked about how he was in prison. He talked about how he knocks off designer shoes. And that’s what everyone was just going crazy over is everyone’s known forever that Steve Madden looks at a popular trend and they put their own spin on the shoe. And you see it a couple of months later, whatever Chanel was doing or Mazz, you know, it’s out in Steve Madden version. And they did a fun little game with him and showed him a bunch of designers, a bunch of his shoes and asked him which designer he knocked off and he rattled them off. So quick. And I

men on TikTok. There’s black men on TikTok talking about this interview right now and talking about how they just want to go buy some Steve Madden shoes.

And I think what I found most fascinating about the interview is his authenticity. But what people are grasping is he talks about his consumers and calls them his girls. And so he’s like, my girls and my girls don’t like or my girls want. And instead of just saying my audience or women 20 to 35, he calls them my girls and he’s gotten to know them so well. And I’ll be really interested because there’s a lot of people on TikTok right now talking about the sales lift he’s going to see from this. And it’ll be really interesting to see where Steve Madden goes in the next six months now that people know the face behind it and they like the face behind it.

I’ve actually always been a Steve Madden consumer because I just think that they’re like, you know, kind of like a mid-level shoe. It’s decent quality. But like, again, it has a higher end look.

But it was really interesting. I don’t think I had ever put a face to a name. And I think what we’re talking about with the authenticity is a lot of times people are looking for brands that align with their beliefs and, you know, especially younger generations. I saw a ton of people in the comments being like, my shoes are on their way. I’m getting my delivery on Tuesday. I bought these three pairs of shoes. You know, they also own Dolce Vita. So if you’re looking for more buying options, which Dolce Vita is an awesome shoe brand. But yeah, I totally agree. And I think putting out there your thoughts, like, you know, I mentioned specifically the tariffs and he was being really hard on them. And I tend to agree totally agree with him. But,

you know, a lot of people and a lot of brands would be really scared to do that. He was like, no holds barred. Just go in for it.

I think people just appreciate that. And sometimes people appreciate it, even if they don’t agree, they just appreciate someone who says something with their whole chest.

And I think that that was it is he was talking, like I said, he talked about his time in prison and didn’t try to hold back on that. And he’s been an advocate for prison reform for years. He’s been leading a lot of that conversation and how people can turn their lives around. And I think that that’s what people really resonate with now is people who are not apologetic about who they are and real and but trying to move the world forward. Right. But still be humans. Still be humans. And I think that that’s that’s what he’s he’s doing. And it’s going to reflect for the brand very, very well, hopefully. Yeah.

Well, hopefully they don’t get absolutely crushed by terrorists.

We’ll probably see Cosco up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. They did. I did just read an article this morning, too, that said consumer sentiment is up in May for the first time in five months or so. So it seems like people are starting to feel

a little more. So I’m coming out. It’s just our seasonal depression. Yeah.

People are ready to spend again. It’s summer. They want to write. You get the shoppies.

Yeah. Totally. Well, awesome. I think