Spotify's Sam Bevan - Performance Marketing Through Cultural Connections

Sam (00:00)

I'm Sam Bevan from the Spotify team and you're watching us here with the CPG Guys podcast.

PVSB (00:06)

Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys Podcast. I am your impetuous co-host, PVSB. I also moonlight as head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the Commerce Acceleration Division of Omnicom. We're recording today's episode at La Résidence of the CPG Guys and the FMCG Guys here in Cannes, France. We're here for the International Festival of Creativity. Joining me is my co host, the co founder of Think Blue Consulting, the father of pop stars Rhea Raj and Katseye's Lara Raj.

Their fans, of course, call him Papa Raj, though. Watching him walk around cans all week, I have to say, you're more like Papa Entourage. Because you got your posse going with you. But to me, he's my BFF, my ride or die, the Thelma to my Louise. please help me welcome the man known as Sri. Sri, Day four. How's Cannes going for you this year? What's going on? 

Sri (00:57)

It felt like a month, but a very fulfilling and fruitful month I would say or four days here. We got a few more to go, lots of content, more importantly we've hosted ton of panels, discussions, important topics in the industry, of course retail media being one of them, the role of AI and creative. I also want to take a minute Peter to thank all our sponsors and partners who are here all week long and you know next year bigger better.

PVSB (01:25)

All right, Sri, thank you. Really appreciate this. before we get to our guest, we have three asks of our audience, right? The first one is subscribe to the CPG guys on whatever platform you're listening to right now, whether that's Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Music, wherever, subscribe or follow button and that way you never miss an episode. Second, leave us a rating that's very important to us. It takes 30 seconds, but it makes an enormous difference in helping other CPG and retail professionals.

Find us. We've built this community one listener at a time, and a five star rating is the single best way you can help us keep growing it. Our favorite number is five. When you're having a hamburger, you don't go to four guys, you go to five guys. So just remember that. And third, follow us on LinkedIn between episodes. We publish an enormous amount of thought leadership that helps everyone learn more. It's content from industry analysis.

Analysis and you're not going to find it anywhere else. It's all built for the CPG and retail media community you're already a part of. So search CPG Guys on LinkedIn, hit the follow, click the link in the digital show notes. Just get on board the train, right? Subscribe, rate, follow. Three simple actions that will help us bring you more of the conversation that matters. So let's get to our terrific guest. Sri and I have had the pleasure of speaking with some of the most forward thinking minds in brand and consumer engagement. And today's guest is squarely in that category, Sam Bevan.

Is a senior leader at Spotify where he sits at the intersection of culture, audio, and commerce, helping CPG brands connect with consumers in some of the most intimate, attention rich moments of their day. Whether someone's working out, cooking dinner, commuting to work, Spotify's there. And Sam's work is focused on making that presence meaningful for brands and measurable for marketers. Spotify has been increasingly asserting itself as a serious player in the advertising ecosystem, not just as a music platform.

but is a full funnel media partner with rich first party data, podcast inventory, and deeply engaged global audience that delivers Sam, Welcome to the CPG guys. How are you doing?

Sam (03:33)

Great,

it's day four of Cannes, so apologies, slightly raspy voice. It's got to that stage. think it's been 50 odd meetings back to back in the heat down at obviously the infamous Spotify Beach. But yeah, great to be wrapping things up in a lovely air-conditioned podcast studio. So I appreciate you guys bringing in.

PVSB (03:53)

that's one of the reasons people like us. We have we have the air conditioning, we have restrooms available, we have a charger for all of their devices. Like everyone f when they first got here, they're like, I'm just not leaving. I'm standing here. So you may you may have to call your colleagues and say the char you know, particularly at like four o'clock in the afternoon, yeah when I say to an audience that we had in here, you know, we have a phone charger over there, it's like they all gravitate towards 'cause it's like I need my I need my phone charge so when I call my Uber.

the that yeah we and the rose. We bought we walked into can with sixty bottles of rose. We've consumed the rose. We've consumed the rose.

Sri (04:22)

You're going to forget the still water and ice.

Nothing

Sam (04:35)

I you. I hoping for a

glad night. I'm four. I'm rosé now. It's time for the water.

PVSB (04:42)

want to remind our audience, check the digital show notes of this episode. You're gonna find links to Sam's LinkedIn profile, you're gonna find links to Spotify's corporate website where you can learn more about their advertising business as we go on with our conversation. So Sam, Sri and I are gonna take turns. We've prepared some questions for you. we'll ask them, you answer them. That's how this podcast thing works, right? You're probably all familiar, but Sam, you've built a small, medium business and mid-market advertising unit at

At Google, Facebook, Snap before coming to Spotify. What drew you to audio as the next frontier and why now?

Sam (05:19)

I think for me, I've always just been very passionate about ultimately enabling businesses of all shapes and sizes achieve business success. I think one of the really unique things about Spotify when I was kind of having those initial primary phone calls with them, is three years ago now, was when you just looked at this kind of sheer size and scale of Spotify reaching now over 760 million people.

The fact that this was just an untapped media for kind of any entry point advertisers to gain access, it really just felt like just the audience alone, park, the media, the audience alone in that engagement, there's just a huge opportunity for brands. I think, yeah, when I was looking at the opportunity, audio was like a big part of it. I like, okay, can audio be performative for a mid-sized brand, for businesses that maybe

looking for that kind of more mid funnel, lower funnel type activity. And I think the fact of the matter is the medium could but was the tech there. kind of what I've been focused on over the last three years is really partnering with our products and engineering teams on drawing that bridge of how do we just bring the ways that people are used to buying your traditional video display type advertising for the last, let's say 10, 15 years into the audio space. And I think

what gets me really excited is this Cannes, we're in a position where our entire ads business is running across the Spotify proprietary ad server at this point. And we've created kind of two key entry points through both a typical ads manager platform, which people are very used to with a lot of kind of the social platforms and a lot of other kind of key display networks. But also we've really been tapping into how do we enable omnichannel buying? Because I think when you think of audio, it's one of these rare mediums where you can

kind of tell a true story which creates a huge opportunity to again engage with audiences in a way that just not many brands have done in the past.

PVSB (07:27)

Brilliant.

Sri (07:28)

Sam, welcome to the CPG guys. It's a pleasure to have you here, especially live at Cannes amidst what I would argue is one of the busiest schedules of our lives. I'd love to jump into your current remit. You have scale businesses, mid-market, small businesses, customer success, then expanding the global market. If I think about it, that's a massive scope. So how do you think about prioritization of one of those, a couple of those, when everything is

Sam (07:37)

Yeah.

Sri (07:58)

always simultaneously on.

Sam (08:00)

Yeah,

I think for me first of all, I'm very fortunate. I've just got an awesome team. as much as that's my kind of purview, like I really just got amazing leaders supporting me across every aspect. What I'd say though for kind of prioritisation, I think it all really kind of comes down to what I just talked about there around our path towards automation. Like how are we democratising that entry point to our media and medium and how we're just enabling brands

to partner with us in scalable ways. And so when you think about all of my purview there, like there's a lot of similarities. If you think about market expansion, how do we enter new territories? Like the fact of the matter is, yeah, we needed a scalable mechanism in order to do that. And so as much as, yeah, my focus here is kind of running the commercial day to day of a lot of these teams. It really is about how we get in that product feedback loop into the fold to ensure that we're building a product.

which drives success for customers despite their location, despite their size. Because I think often what I love most about my neck of the words is I have a lot of disruptive brands. And typically I often say disruptive brands often paved the way for strategy for some of the larger brands in like two, three years time. And so yeah, very fortunate. I love my role predominantly just due to the fact that I'm dealing with often I say the true hustlers, the true like grove-the-hackers.

in our industry. do some amazing things that become the playbook.

PVSB (09:34)

You know, Sam, in an era of marketplaces where Amazon, Zooplus, Chewy, Dominate Challenger brands in particular have a level playing field. 100%. And so appealing to them as as a community that's in in need of amplification and audience is is a wise strategy.

Sam (09:54)

100 % and I just think so often if I just look at kind of gosh my favorite example of this as an industry is I look at the mattress walls when all of these male to home mattresses

PVSB (10:05)

my god. I have one in my house.

Sam (10:08)

But they redefined how people go on that buying journey. yeah. They redefined like you don't necessarily need to have brick and mortar in order to sell this product. You can actually tell stories, get that message of quality across in different means. I think again you now look at fast forward to today, a lot of the strategy that these guys were disrupting the market with five years ago is now just the baseline strategy for that entire category.

PVSB (10:35)

Sam,

fast moving consumer good group brands have been historically heavy TV and display spenders. What's the honest conversation you have with a chief marketing officer who still sees audio as a nice to have rather than a core channel in their overall marketing portfolio?

Sam (10:52)

Yeah, I

think this is one of the common misconceptions that I often just kind of discuss like where does Spotify sit? I think actually if you look at our platform, we're evolving drastically and what we offer our core consumer base, even hopefully many of you watching this on Spotify, we're a huge video platform as well. actually earlier this year, we relaunched our free tier where what we did is we basically brought a lot of the amazing things from our premium

service into free to do a better value exchange for our customer base which drove a very different behavior on our platform where now more than ever people are kind of dual screening with Spotify and we call it kind of those screenless moments but also in view moments and so I often think about when people classify Spotify as audio even that is the first bit one might well we're really exactly

PVSB (11:46)

Actually you're doing more than audio.

Sam (11:58)

Exactly.

then I do think just audio though, as a whole, the big stat that I always love to kind of home in on is if you look at where average users are spending their time, where they're consuming content, it's something crazy. Like upwards of 20 % of time is being spent through audio as a medium. That's not just us across all audio, but it still captures less than 2 % of marketing dollars. And so there is this massive disconnect there.

of highly engaged, in-audience space, you're just missing out on.

PVSB (12:32)

You know, when Sri and I launched our podcast six years ago, we actually launched as a YouTube channel. And after about five episodes, we came to a an absolutely intelligent conclusion on that, which was the following. most of our audience wants to consume passively. They have other things they need to do. They're not gonna sit there in front of a video screen and necessarily watch the entire episode. Yeah. But if we move to podcast format, they could

consume as they go. They can they can do it on the move, they can do it in bits and drabs. and that was in t that was it in from our perspective, it was game changing in our ability to expand out our platform. So yeah, absolutely.

Sam (13:15)

Yeah, and

I think I just often talk about what I love most about podcasts as a medium is giving users the choice. And let's be honest, there's components of podcasts that, yeah, it makes more sense to be in view for that section. But then a lot of the broader conversation, yeah, you can be kind of multitasking doing other things. think the things of listening, it's just something which, let's just be honest, is a very uninterrupted experience. And you really have that full attention of the user.

PVSB (13:42)

Yeah, for for us as well, the the issue's been we often get asked by other people, who do you who do you compete with in this space? And I said, we don't talk about competition. We're trying to foster a community of people who think of podcasting as a mechanism to be educated and entertained in our industry. Because we're entertainment. We have to promote other podcasts. We don't have to think of them as competition because at the end of the day it's

It's not about owning 100% a share of stomach. It's about getting people to consume podcasts. And if they do, having us be one of them in their rotation is very important. And that will get the habit going.

Sam (14:23)

I think the reason people just love them podcast is it's far more authentic. There's less that polish or honest conversations and I think let's just be honest in this day and age what people are craving for is authentic and it's just I think that's why this medium just continues to just see such tremendous growth.

PVSB (14:41)

Yeah.

Sri (14:43)

So Spotify has kind of said that audio ads on the platform are two times more effective than display ads for both purchase intent, information intent. And then Peter and I just came off a pretty heavy conversation on ROAS, attribution, incrementality, things of that nature. So how does that data that you have land with CPG performance marketers who, like I said, their metrics are pretty straightforward. That's what they measure.

Sam (15:08)

I think it's, I think first and foremost I'll kind of bring back to what I was saying earlier, the whole investment we've been making over the last two to three years is standardizing our offering to how people are used to buying media.

PVSB (15:22)

smart, right? Like it makes it easier for sdoption.

Sam (15:26)

Exactly.

And so rather than us trying to reinvent the wheel of how you measure something, actually how do we meet the advertising community in the middle and be like, methodologies, the ways that you're measuring your kind of at a home, your video, whatever medium it is, we're going to play ball, we're going to compete because we're confident in the medium that we can perform. And then I think in terms of performance, I think one of the big things that I often talk a lot about with audio

is really making sure that you have a good understanding of like a multi-touch attribution model. Because I think the fact of the matter is, again, lot of advertisers still are over-indexing on last click. And I think the fact of the matter is, actually, if you think about where people are being inspired discovering new brands, it's very rarely on that last visual prompt that they saw somewhere on the internet. And I think this is where audio, the reason I think it's doing so well for brand uplift

ad recall, all these like upper funnel metrics is it's a very uncluttered environment. If you think about how many visual display ads you get exposed to on a given day

It would be in the hundreds if not thousands versus in an audio ecosystem. It's to be quite frankly nowhere near the level of exposure. And then the second thing that I always like to say on this is people are in a very different state of mind when they're on Spotify versus I hate to name names but like the doom scrolling of social media.

PVSB (17:02)

Yeah.

Sam (17:03)

Like the fact of the matter is,

if you come onto Spotify, you very rarely if ever hear someone saying, yeah.

Sri (17:10)

Doom scroll.

PVSB (17:11)

Yeah, it's really a lot of fun.

Sam (17:12)

It's

literally the opposite. one of the things that we've talked a lot about at our activation this year is this concept of fandom. Like people are coming to Spotify. it's where you're engaging with your favorite artists, your favorite creators. And we often say like it uplifts moods. And I think like you actually mentioned in the opening there about the idea of like, when you're cleaning your house, when you're driving to work, like Spotify boosts your mood. It puts you in a better state of mind because yeah, it's helping that hour fly.

by quicker, it's helping you stay in the zone, whatever it may be. And so when I think about why we're seeing such effective performance, and especially the metrics you mentioned there, is because I just think people are entering Spotify in a very different state of mind.

PVSB (17:58)

and understanding that mindset is what's going to enable you to create experiences for brand advertisers that win.

Sam (18:05)

100 % and I think because they are in a better state of mind, there's so many studies that show when you're in a better state of mind, you're more receptive to messaging. Therefore, actually it's probably where you are going to absorb a full story or a full, I'd say like, this is what I love about audio is allowing creative advertisers to tell stories again.

PVSB (18:24)

Sorry at the end of the day, advertising success is based and predicated on storytelling.

Sam (18:30)

100%

PVSB (18:31)

So retail media has exploded as a category primarily because of the purchase signal data, right? and the ability to close loop on measurement. To a degree, Spotify sits outside of the transactional data loop. How do you make the case, or do you even make the case that listening behavior is a proxy for buying behavior? How do you how do you when you go to advertisers that are so squarely focused on performance marketing metrics in a closed loop system, what's your what's your angle to to get them to say, no, I want to include this?

Sam (19:00)

Yeah, so I think again, one of the great things about what we've been doing with our tech evolution over the last two to three years is one, just utilising the fact that Spotify has logged in users. By default, therefore have a very great way of mapping both audience and marked measurement capabilities. And so actually does allow us to start tapping into actually options around what could we do in the retail media space? Actually, can we do some form of data path? The functionality

optionality for us to do a lot in that space really now is at our disposal because of the fact that we've opened up our own ad server to build

PVSB (19:38)

for

this? Listen, the largest retail in the world, half of their in-store retail sales are not household attributable because they're paid with cash. So you've got a hundred percent user identification through your platform.

Sam (19:51)

Yeah, and this is where I get very excited by things like we just launched our conversions API, which is allowing you to bring offline, online information together to really start to, again, weigh up the performance. And I think one of the great examples of this is always audio. of the tellers all just times ways to attribute it as people were saying in the middle of a podcast or in the middle of a show, use coupon XYZ. It was always hard to traditionally kind of then link that back to

the audience. I'm okay but in this new world of yet through the conversion API which is enabling people to do offline online traffic together so again we've started to dip our toe into ways that we can partner in the retail media space definitely with our ad exchange in the programmatic world as well but yeah we're definitely going to be looking into more optionalities.

PVSB (20:22)

It's promo code, right?

Sri (20:44)

So on this show, as he's alluded to, we talk a lot about the commerce moment. The point where brand intent actually converts downstream into actual purchase intent and then through to the checkout process. How is Spotify thinking about bridging the gap between the audio impression and our Industries obsession with point of sale?

Sam (21:05)

you

Yeah, I think it goes back to this whole concept of us standardizing our tech to meet everyone in the middle of how they're doing this across their core mediums today. And so I think the headline that I often say with audio now is we've really brought it into the 21st century, brought it into the exact same playing field for how you're doing this across video, how you're doing this across display, across all of your other digital properties. And it comes into both the way that we're delivering ads.

So the ability to ensure that it's being served to the right person through the right audience and at the right stage of the customer journey. But then closing the loop by using measurement methodologies, which people have been leaning into across various other mediums for many years at this stage.

PVSB (21:51)

I want to remind our audience that Sri and I today are talking with Sam Bevan from Spotify. So, Sam, you joined Spotify from Snapchat where you led SMB sales, having also done that at Facebook and Google. What's the universal truth about selling advertising to scale the and emerging businesses, regardless of the platform? What's your big insight there?

Sam (22:17)

Yeah, think the fact is the smaller a brand is, the more sensitive the dollar. And I think also you're typically dealing now directly with sometimes the CEO, sometimes the CMO at the very kind of least. And I think as a result, I actually think one of the big things is it's not a question of like kind of showing performance over time. It's out of the gate, really aligning on what success

PVSB (22:32)

Yeah.

Sam (22:47)

needs for that brand. think one of reasons I just love this space so much is I do think...

Again, it pays the foundation for what bigger brands and things should be thinking about later down the line. And so I think when you're dealing with this cohort, you just need to remember that every dollar is far more important to them. That dollar is either going to be spent on marketing or payroll potentially. And it's on us to ensure that for this cohort, they see that return on ad spend out of the gates. They don't necessarily have the luxury to do some of the big brandy flashy test things. They need to have performance.

out of the game.

PVSB (23:26)

They as as it goes along. I need this to perform so I can turn around and have enough to invest in the next one. Exact and that's gotta go. And it's kind of like this step process as opposed to yeah, I can just I've allocated my budget for the whole year and I can you know sit back and let my let my agency figure out how to make this all work.

Sam (23:45)

Exactly, we're

not doing these annual deals or anything like that with this cohort. really is. by the drink. Almost, yeah. Day to day optimizing, tweaking. And I always use the word performance pretty liberally because performance for different verticals, for different brands can mean completely different things. And I think what's really important when you service this cohort is understanding actually what does it mean for their bottom line? What do they care about? it has to be out of the gate how you support this.

PVSB (24:14)

Talk

Sam (24:14)

business.

PVSB (24:14)

about it.

Sri (24:16)

You've kind of talked about publicly ad manager and ads exchange and you mentioned that they're having rapid adoption. For those that haven't really seen it, aren't curious, what's the message you've given?

Sam (24:29)

you

Yeah, I think we've democratised and made it easier than ever to utilise the Spotify audience to grow your business. And I think we've intentionally done a bit of a dual-pronged strategy because, if you want to go all in on driving performing media, Ads Manager is the best entry point. You can do objective-based buying now. So even CPG companies are looking to collect leads. CPG companies are looking to do away. You tell us what you're trying to achieve up front and then we guide you through the relevant bookings.

flow and then on the ad exchange front it's an awesome way to dip your toes into understanding the omnichannel impact that audio could have for you and so yeah my biggest probably ask is like it's easy than ever we're here to support and by not being on Spotify I truly do believe you're missing out on incremental reach

PVSB (25:23)

We agree.

Sri (25:24)

And who do they ping, reach out to, get more curious?

Sam (25:28)

I think our teams are open if you're obviously partnering with your DSPs. We have direct relationships there or if people are just wanting to go straight in into our ads manager platform we have a whole dedicated build-out team to support so yeah ads.spotify.com sign up there and then it's very easy to find someone to speak to to really guard you on your journey.

PVSB (25:52)

The audience make sure you check the digital show notes of this podcast again because it's going to have a direct link to the ad section of Spotify. So agentic AI and programmatic buying are fundamentally reshaping how media gets planned and purchased. What does Spotify's ad exchange strategy look like in a world where agents may soon be making most of the media buys?

Sam (26:14)

you

I think we're staying very open minded to how this technology is going to disrupt and evolve things. And yeah, could put you in contact with our product team and give you a far more thoughtful, comprehensive discussion on this. think as soon you say the word AI to a product guy, you probably need this to be not a podcast. There'll be like a whole catalogue of discussion that you could go down. I think the very high level of where we're starting to kind of dip our toes into agentic work streams is first how we're easing the buying

flow. So how are we making sure that a customer sets themselves up in the best way, not necessarily needing depending on another human to tell them how do we send prompts to them, notifications to them so they are set up in the right way out of the gates. And then our big thing is creative. I think to your point Ali, you made it clear audio isn't necessarily a medium that people have on their plans. Main thing that we have to do is create that bridge.

of how do you actually create this creative. And so we just launched last year the ability to make an end-to-end audio asset where you can literally within two to three minutes put in a prompt, tell us the type of vibe, type of voice you want.

PVSB (27:31)

You've got a creator studio built into the platform. Yeah.

Wow, that is incredible.

Sam (27:36)

Free

to use, free entry point. And the best thing about this is we've actually trained the models based on the best practices. So we're not leaving you to cold start, figure out I'm a new disruptor CPG brand, like when should I put my call to action? When should I do this? When should I do that? We've taught the agentic workstream there to actually take all of our best practices over the last 10 years and ensure that advertisers out the gates are getting help. And I think it's an interesting strategy.

where we're seeing some lean straight in and then just deploying that out and then others are using it for AP testing before maybe then creating more polished human touch version.

PVSB (28:17)

What's been the reaction from your SMB clients? This has got to be like groundbreaking for them.

Sam (28:22)

Yeah, to

be honest, it's one of those, I'd say, hockey stick moment changes for the business. I think, yeah, the proof of concept was very quickly shown. I think we've had over 20,000 ads and advertisers testing it out of the gates. definitely a product market fit there. But I think what's been interesting, hasn't necessarily just been SMBs leaning in. This has actually been large enterprise.

PVSB (28:46)

Really? That's so fascinating. Figuring that out intuitively I think well they've got an agency and their model is to you know, charge a lot of money for for that service and here you come along and you're helping them save because you've just built it into you use our platform and you have access to this tool.

Sam (29:03)

Yeah, think it's for agencies that enables them to do AP testing at scale, allows them to do iterative testing and all those things. There are so many reasons to why even the large brands are kind leaning in out of the gate.

PVSB (29:07)

okay.

Very good.

Sri (29:16)

You know when I think of Spotify and the platform you just talked about creators, all the artists that are on Spotify, podcasts that are on Spotify, I think it's safe for me to say that you're at the intersection of culture, creativity and commerce at the same time. How do you feel about Spotify's role in helping CPG brands show up more culturally versus commercially?

Sam (29:41)

Yeah, I think when we think of our ways that brands can partner with us, we are very high level bucket into two ways. We have ways in which you can surround yourself with culture. We call it fandom. And then there's ways that you can create fandom. And so I think the create fandom is where we create really bespoke opportunities to do things like host reads, host read ads, really have that host read that maybe you're, so that host of a

that your community love, be the voice of your brand. We allow you to do custom integrations with events. We allow you to really be at that intersection of where these moments are being created. And then on our scalable media offerings, this is where we say, culture happens on Spotify, to your point. This is your ability to insert yourself into the conversation.

PVSB (30:35)

Brilliant. So Sam, here's your opportunity to kind of speak to our audience of brand marketers and help them understand most often where where are they missing the mark in terms of audio fitting into their portfolio and how can they correct that.

Sam (30:53)

I often think...

We over boil things in our industry. We love to make things more complicated. Of course, that may need to be. Um, and I do think sometimes the main thing that I still see people tripping up on is getting out of that mindset of testing and iterating. That to me is the best way for brands to both growth hack to kind of understand what's resonating best, what's not kind of learning. But I just think not enough brands use things like

A-B testing tools and it's something we built into our platform, Aldergates, and it's one of those ones where again, when we talk to brands about it, they get it, they lean in they do it. But I just say to brands whether it's that or just any form of having a test and learning gender, it's just critical for brands to see success.

Sri (31:47)

as I think through it, if he gave you a magic wand and we said, to CMOs, VPs of marketing, SVPs of marketing, essentially brand stewards of CPG, what's that one big message you'd leave him with?

PVSB (31:53)

The Harry Potter one.

Sam (32:06)

I think it goes back to what I was saying in the very beginning of the podcast of think about where people are spending their time and are you capturing them?

Sri (32:15)

You're very well said. It's actually a very powerful question you're asking the industry and Peter and I, the CPG guys, we're convinced they're not. So what do do, Sam? How do we change that?

Sam (32:27)

I think at the end of the day, it's constant iterative education awareness training. then I think it's conversations like this where we don't make it seem as if it's this daunting, I'm going to to do this, do that. you're just trying to make it clear that it's actually not as complicated to utilize where people are spending their time. And then the other bit, which I love to always double click on, and this is me not doing digs or anything like this, but it's also

aware people are spending their time in of consumption, but what state of mind?

PVSB (33:02)

It's meeting the shopper the and the consumer where they are, both physically and mentally. Yeah. Sri, we've had in the past conversations on audio as it pertains to in-store retail media. This is our first conversation about audio, and more at we'll call it audio plus because it's more than just audio, in an an in an off-site world. What are your what's your big takeaway from our conversation with Sam?

Sam (33:07)

Exactly. Couldn't sell it better.

Sri (33:31)

It's how,

while I can go in 50 different directions, I'm gonna go to how Sam closed the episode out. I think the industry and marketers need to ask themselves a question, really introspect and really deep dive and ask themselves a big question. Are you truly present where the consumer is today? And Spotify is one of those platforms that present. are you there? Are you taking advantage of it? If that's where the consumer's attention is going, shouldn't you be there?

present in an economy which is now a war for attention. know, Gary Vaynerchuk writes a book about it, The Attention Economy.

PVSB (34:06)

I've I've I'm familiar with that one, but that's good. Thank you, Sri. Yeah, for me the big takeaway is that Spotify is a platform that engages fans. And that's a different mindset and brands need to attune themselves to exactly what that is and contextually make themselves relevant to that audience. So it it requires a different approach. But Sam, thanks for taking time out of a very busy Cannes schedule to sit down in our makeshift podcast studio here and speak

with the CPG guys. We really appreciate it. Thanks.

Sam (34:38)

Thanks

for having me and again, the aircon. Fantastic.

PVSB (34:42)

Thank you, which we aim to deliver. To our listeners at the over 45,000 followers on LinkedIn, thank you for doing what you do every day, whether you're building brands, driving retail partnerships, deploying technology, or shaping the future of commerce, you are the industry we cover, and this podcast exists because of you. If today's conversation sparked something for you, a new idea, maybe a fresh perspective, I hope there was a lot of fresh perspective today. Certainly was for Sri and me. Maybe it's just a reminder.

Of why this industry is worth showing up for every day. Share it, tag us, tell a colleague. The more voices we bring into this community, the sharper all of us get. Until next time, keep pushing the conversation forward. I'm PVSB on behalf of my co-host Papa Raj. This has been the CPG Guys Podcast. Goodbye.