Episode 26: Let’s Talk Shoptalk

00:33
Nate Statt
Okay, hello, hello, marketing moves, listeners. I'm Nate Stat, director of web accounts here at Vividfront, and I'm introing a very exciting new type of podcast, breaking down a special event that my CTO, Joe Testa and I attended. In between walking through the smoke covered lobbies of Caesar's palace in Las Vegas, went to shop Talk, an all out three day conference highlighting the latest and greatest business and industry updates in the commerce space. We had a phenomenal time and even more so, made meaningful connections with other businesses and leaders. This event sparked a vivid, front wide desire to go to even more of these engaging conferences. So we hope you enjoy the episode and stay tuned for more event breakdowns in the future. Joe, welcome to the podcast.

01:13
Joseph Testa
Great intro, Nate.

01:14
Nate Statt
Thank you so much for having me practice a lot.

01:16
Joseph Testa
Yeah, it sounds like it, honestly.

01:17
Nate Statt
All right, before we dive into the event, breaking down every part of it, I think it might be important to talk about why we're doing a podcast about the event and what that is.

01:27
Joseph Testa
Yeah, I think like Nate already said, went to our first conference, at least for me and Nate, especially specific to the commerce space. So were really excited to just dip our toes in and figure out what it was all about. I think one big thing we noticed at first, or felt at first, was the overall energy at the space. It kind of matched everything we'd hoped it would be and then some. So whether it would be new entrepreneurs being there with startups, established CPG brands, awesome Technologies, recommending their services and platforms to just great networking opportunities, talking about degenerate activities like gambling and smoking cigarettes.

02:11
Nate Statt
Yeah, we chose this was our first event and it was the largest commerce event, so we really just dove right in.

02:16
Joseph Testa
Yeah, it's definitely, it was a bit of a shock at first, and I almost had like, do I belong here? Sort of feelings around it, but quickly felt like you know, you and I belong there. And I think, like you said, hopefully we can make more of those happen in the future.

02:30
Nate Statt
Yeah, agreed. It was a great time. So we'll break it down. We have it kind of about the different parts of shop talk since there was a lot going on every single day. I think one of the most important parts, at least for us, that were really focused on before we left was the meetups. So, Joe, can you break those down a little bit more? Talk about what worked really well with them and then maybe what didn't work so well.

02:52
Joseph Testa
Yeah. So the meetups, for everyone who's not familiar with Shop Talk's premise, it's speed dating for businesses. So it's almost like before the event, it's. It's Tinder, right? You get on there, you show your profile. I am Joe Testa. I work at Vivifront. It is a digital marketing agency. We do these services and then there's profiles of other people and businesses that do certain things and are looking for certain solutions or services. So you match up with them based on, you know, your target fit, what you're interested in talking to, even networking opportunities. It doesn't necessarily have to mean new business. It could be, I'm interested in this platform, I'm interested in talking to this person because they're interesting, or I think we could help your business grow. So that's the premise, at least at first. The meetups are the follow through.

03:36
Joseph Testa
So essentially shop talks software matches you to those individuals and those companies. You don't really get to choose. There is a hosted meeting options, which we didn't dabble in, but I believe it's sort of like a pay to play sort of option where you can bring entire teams or just yourself and get guaranteed meetings with certain companies, which sounds interesting for the next time we go. But the meetups we participated in were completely matchmaking that Tinder based idea. And what we talked about was everything from new business to new softwares to. There was a person there who had an interesting title that I wanted to talk to, custodian of culture, and I thought it'd be interesting to hear his takes on culture.

04:16
Nate Statt
Right.

04:16
Joseph Testa
So that's how we sort of matched up new business opportunities, new softwares and interesting people. I think that the meetups were my favorite part. Personally, I do think in the future I'd wanna go more on brand to what Vividfront is. We went as marketing moves, but which.

04:35
Nate Statt
Is a great podcast that we all love.

04:36
Joseph Testa
Listen to it. Hopefully you're listening to it, or I don't know how you're hearing this, but next time, if we go as vivify, I think it'll be more fruitful in terms of productivity. But even the conversations we had under the marketing moves name were amazing. So big perk for the tinder speed dating type of idea. It's no b's. It's all good conversations and interesting people. I think one con was, it's not guaranteed.

05:00
Nate Statt
Right?

05:00
Joseph Testa
I know Nate had a no show. I had a no show. So that's not my favorite thing in the world, that people can kind of just no show, but you do get to mark them as no show, so maybe in a future shop talk event, they're kind of docked for it.

05:13
Nate Statt
Excommunicated.

05:14
Joseph Testa
Right? Excommunicated from the event.

05:15
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah.

05:16
Nate Statt
I really enjoyed them too. I think for us being our first time going there, the paid meetings were a huge risk, kind of to pay thousands of dollars to meet, like, executives. Maybe we would have had no shows there. Maybe the conversations wouldn't have been productive. So this was a nice compromise. It felt like to still have that matchmaking experience, but not have that big financial risk of paying so much for these meetings.

05:39
Joseph Testa
Definitely, yeah. I mean, shop talks, it looks to be not that cheap, but I think all, like, things considered, especially if you get in, like, early bird deals, I think early offers for some of the tickets are around, at least for this event, were like 25 to 3000. I think that's worthwhile for even what we just discussed. But, yeah, I think hosted meetings, you'd have to kind of make sure that it makes sense for your business and the type of people you might meet with there.

06:04
Nate Statt
Yeah, that is one quick recommendation. I'd say, if you know that you want to go to this, and we'd probably at the end say we recommend it, just book now, because the prices will double by the time we get closer to shop talk.

06:15
Joseph Testa
Exactly.

06:15
Nate Statt
The next thing I wanted to talk about was the booths. I think one of the first things we noticed when we walked in is that it was almost a labyrinthian city of different booths from all of these different commerce brands in the space we walked in, and then it just kept going. And even on day two, end of our time there, were still kind of getting lost going around. So one of the booths, for example, was Doordash. Doordash had an entire experience where people could go in and shop five items. And for these huge brands with massive awareness budgets, I think it's a great play at shop talk to just do something that gets people coming to your booth. Don't hand out candy, don't hand out badges or anything like that, like, get them to stay in the space.

06:59
Nate Statt
And usually those brands were the ones that had the most amount of traffic and intrigue, I would say at the event.

07:04
Joseph Testa
Yeah, it was incredible. Like I said, first event. So to see Doordash there in their presence. I know TikTok had an awesome booth, but it's totally different. You can tell the different sizes of companies, right? They had them from the TikTok's doordashes of the world, but even down to the startup. So there were different booth sizes as well. But it was, I think I had 20,000 steps on the second day. Lots of walking, lots of moving, lots of different approaches, the money boosts, different ways to get people into their booths. Overwhelming, but interesting to see the kind of depth of the differences within those booths.

07:38
Nate Statt
Yeah, were trying to find one of our partners, Storyblock, and that took about like 20 minutes there just because there were so many. So I think even going there, that's one of the coolest parts of the event. Even if you don't have a ton of meetups like me, you'll end up being able to go around, meet a ton of cool companies and people at these booths.

07:54
Joseph Testa
Yeah, definitely.

07:55
Nate Statt
So next, I wanted to just ask you about networking. I know that is not the sole intention of shop talk, for sure, but it's definitely a huge draw for businesses and people who want to kind of grow their brand and also meet a lot of other vendors or companies who can help them. What did you think of the networking experience at shop talk? Would you say it's worthwhile, and what did they kind of do to facilitate that?

08:19
Joseph Testa
Yeah, I think so. Outside of just the normal shop talk, eight to five, I think that's the average time of the actual conference, exhibit hall meetups, all of that. There were various events from, especially retailers. Algolia had a private dinner, you know, other ship station had private stuff going on where you go up, meet for drinks, network with individual businesses. So I think that if you knew your target audience like we had, we do a lot of work with Algolia. I think it would be a fruitful thing to probably go to that networking event, see if there's any customers there looking for implementation partners, things like that. And those are events kind of posted about throughout the shop talk ecosystem on LinkedIn and things of that nature. But there's also a method of being invited through shop talks platform as well.

09:08
Joseph Testa
So there's a couple different ways to go to those kind of extracurriculars. Obviously, the big one is the beach party. No spoilers, but I wouldn't call that a networking event. I mean, we'll talk about it in a little bit, but there's other options too. You're invited to. I do think that, like I said before, if went under the Vivifront name, we might have had a few more networking opportunities that were invited to, rather than just the marketing Moves podcast.

09:32
Nate Statt
Yeah, I think there were a lot of great post event networking opportunities, but even within shop talk, I think the brands that did it best were the ones who facilitated the networking. So some of these booths would have different tables where people would just go and sit there and just be nearby these brands. And I know you also networked right after one of these one one meetups over beers, like brands that created a casual environment within this very professional space. I think did a great job doing that.

09:59
Joseph Testa
Yeah, and I think that's way more on brand with the type of audience that's there too. People don't want infinite swag, a hoodie for a random company. They want genuine connection. So I think that's the unique selling point of shop talk, in my opinion. I think the energy that existed at shop talk was people looking for genuine connection, whether it is new business, new opportunities, new networking, selling their own platforms, whatever it was, I think, genuine energy around that, and they were seeking that connection. So I think food beers were the ultimate way to that. Obviously, Doordash giving away, I don't know how much they gave away in product, but I got a lot of that product. Ten thousands and probably tens of thousands of dollars of product helps.

10:44
Joseph Testa
But Doordash is already established, so I think smaller brands, smaller platforms would do better in the genuine connection space.

10:51
Nate Statt
Yeah, agreed. So the other large part of this conference were the speakers. So alongside a lot of meetups happening, a lot of booth talk, there were many morning and then afternoon speakers and different keynote presentations that Joe and I were able to attend. So I wanted to break them down a little bit more. So on day one, we saw three different speakers. The first was a conference about organizational agility and resilience, led by executives from Nestle, Purina, ADT, and then David Yurman. These were all really great speakers, I thought, and it was engaging, I think for us as people a little bit higher up in an organization, to hear how they're encouraging cross departmental conversation. What do you think?

11:34
Joseph Testa
Yeah, that was probably my favorite one. I know it was more so about organizational structure rather than tech or new platforms. AI, buzzword stuff. I really enjoyed that one, though. It's interesting, like you said, to see how these executives are working through organizational structures and change. So it's awesome that Shoptalk has a wide array of knowledge that they're speaking on. It's not all just driving sales or implementing new technologies, it's organizational related things as well. So I enjoyed that one a lot.

12:06
Nate Statt
Yeah. And then the next two were a quick pivot because it was all about consumer experience. So the first was led by a target executive, and I really like the practical application that she showed, which is something I'm going to take away just going into any type of conference moving forward. She gave an example of how she reimagined the target rewards program through the lens of what consumers expect. And then that segued nicely into the next talk about how to match consumers expectations on price. So I found day ones really compelling and really strong that we attended and seems like you agree.

12:41
Joseph Testa
Yeah, I think overall, I think day one was great. I was sitting through the target one a little bit, and I was like, is this an ad? But even if it was a really well done ad, and it's actually a valuable work session through how she progressed through those ideas. So I'm really interested in the target rewards program as the ad made me. But I think it was a valuable lesson and how she worked through it.

13:06
Nate Statt
It was an ad, but it had little nuggets that you could take out of it. She talked about color choices that she did with the brand, what we'd expect to see consumers perception of target before and after. It's definitely addy, and I'm curious about that placement cost there, but I thought it was great.

13:22
Joseph Testa
Yeah.

13:23
Nate Statt
And then day two, we started really promising with a great presentation on AI. AI, unsurprisingly, was like the talk of the town at the event. I think every single booth had AI incorporated into it in some way, but this one was all about mitigating risk for the consumers and how we are positioning AI. And so it was cool to hear from someone from Walmart who's already using AI in a million ways to try and improve efficiency, but also trying to not stigmatize it as something that's going to be altogether dangerous. But I thought it was great and that they did lay out some of the drawbacks that are coming our way or already here as something that's inevitable that we just have to prepare for.

14:06
Joseph Testa
Yeah. So, and she was a legal representative from Walmart. So I think that's one of the things that AI has always talked about in is like, what kind of rights do we have to, especially generative AI, whatever content it produces or whatever results it produces, and essentially the end was, just go for it. Your company policy has to dictate. You're sorry. Your company core values has to dictate policy, because policy never keeps up with technology, which is true even outside of AI. So you got to move quick and then figure out how it works as it goes.

14:39
Nate Statt
Yeah. And then we get to the not so successful, I think the afternoon conferences or interviews that they had with executives from, like, Canada Goose and then Kohl's missed the mark for what were probably looking for at an event like this, because they really lacked insight and depth into anything actionable. So the interview was great in that we got to hear more from these really top executives. However, it was like, what product lines are most popular, but not a lot of information on how you made those product lines more popular. Anything deep that would get us thinking a little bit afterward, I felt like we. We both walked away a little bit disappointed in those. So maybe in the future, one way to improve that would be adding more guests.

15:23
Nate Statt
I think the more guests combination worked really well for these panels versus one one interviews, because if you've got a poor speaker or someone who's getting a little stage fright, it can really not be worthwhile to miss out on 45 minutes of meetups or walking around the booths.

15:39
Joseph Testa
Yeah, definitely. And I think one piece of context there is that those were keynotes. So it was on the big stage. The stage was huge. And going back to that, I think shop talk did a really good job overall of setting the stage. And the vibes, we'll call it, with their lighting, their video. They had this huge video in the background. It was super cool. All their lighting throughout the venue was immersive and experiential, so just walking through and even walking through and sitting in that stage area was cool in its own right. But like Nate said, it was not the best conversation. And if there were any ads, those would've been the ads. So I take back my statement on target, although it was still a little bit addy, it was actually useful.

16:22
Joseph Testa
These weren't useful, which was unfortunate, especially because they ran almost an hour long. Like Nate said, we could have been doing other things outside of those, but it's hard to get up in the middle of a keynote and walk out. I mean, you can, but I'm not that guy.

16:34
Nate Statt
So, yeah, agreed. But all in all, I thought the keynotes were pretty good. Had some compelling topics there, too. And the great news was that you could choose. So it wasn't that they had one keynote happening at a time. You actually had different tracks that you could choose between. So Joe and I were kind of interested in the same ones, at least on the tech, the website, and some of the great marketing ones. So we ended up choosing our lanes pretty easily. But the good news is they had a nice little smorgasbord for all of the people there.

17:02
Joseph Testa
Yeah, ton of different topics. Not just tech, not just marketing initiatives. Organizational change. There was a lot around organizational change and structure and things like that, which I thought was nice. And surprisingly, I think I've been reading up a little bit about shop talk, and I think they're trying to have more of a, a, d, two c, e commerce experience. It is a retail event, but there was plenty, I would say d, two c sort of technologies, brands, and talks about e commerce in general.

17:30
Nate Statt
And now we get to the finale, the Whiteout beach party. The networking event, quote, unquote, to end all networking events. So this was at the end of day two for us there at Shop Talk. It was a nighttime whiteout beach party. Everyone wears white, goes to the beach. There's not a beach in Las Vegas. This was curated at Mandalay Bay, but we saw Ludacris. Ludacris was the big ender. Just a great professional way to end the experience. Any highlights there, Joe? Joe at one point did say Ludacris was his 10th, then third, then first favorite rapper as the concert continued. So I know he has some roots with you.

18:09
Joseph Testa
Yeah. Recency bias. I think I get hyped on just about anything, but especially Ludacris. The event, though itself was, I think, awesome. It was, you know, you walked in here, it's this fake beach in the middle of Vegas. It's a great way to wrap up. All of, you know, conferences are exhausting in a way. I think networking is always exhausting. It just takes a lot of mental capacity to gear your brain toward another conversation with a different industry, with a different stakeholder, over and over again. It's super exciting, but also tiring. So when you get to this beach party, it's really a fun release of that built up energy and anxiety and whatever else around sort of those meetups and the walks that you had. But we got in there, it was a big beach.

18:55
Joseph Testa
They had some various bars to grab an adult beverage, if you're interested in that. But what I thought was so funny is there was even light networking happening there in the most stress free way. I know Nate met with someone who worked at, I believe, Mozilla and was chatting them up. She was a little bit on the shorter side. So she was standing above us on some sort of a stool or table. I don't know what it was, but even in that was cool. And then I was standing around there with Nate and his new friend, and I had someone. I'm from a city of 15,000. Talmadge. Yeah, that was crazy. And someone I went to high school with came out of nowhere. And it's like, this is a vent of.

19:36
Joseph Testa
I think there's about 10,000 people that go to shop talk of the city that I came from, of 15,000. Someone I knew pretty closely came up out of nowhere. And it was just. It was good to see them, even. And then. And then some previous meetups I had. I also saw them at the event and just, you know, we hung out a little bit and had a good time. But even in that big space, is what I'm getting at, is that there's all this energy all over the place. Great energy, but also meaningful connections still being made or rehashed from high school, even.

20:04
Nate Statt
Yeah, it was great. No notes. I'm just curious who they're going to have next year, because it feels like they're topping it each year. So, shop talk. I am going to send you a list of my preferred artists that I think can get the excitement even higher, but it will be hard.

20:16
Joseph Testa
What'd you think of Ludacris? Because I know you're not a guy. First singer.

20:20
Nate Statt
I'm not a huge Luda fan. Usually male art is not my thing, but he was great. He had great energy. And even if he lied to us and said were the best audience of all time, which, come on, you just played the Super bowl. It was awesome. I recognized a lot of his songs and was jamming along.

20:36
Joseph Testa
Yeah, he's top five. And I will scream. Get back to anyone who wants me to hear it. If you want me to do it at the end of the podcast and we'll send it out as an add on, I will do that. I love that song.

20:45
Nate Statt
Yeah. All right, I think that's about enough. But I did want to just recap overall experience here. I can start and say I thought shop Talk was totally worth the money. Like, if you're a brand, even a startup brand or an established brand, I think going to this at least once and seeing all of the networking opportunities, but also all of the insights that you can get from leaders globally, I think is what makes it so compelling and worthwhile. And in terms of the city of Vegas, we didn't get a huge chance to explore it. I know it was both of ours first time, but yeah, I had a great time.

21:19
Nate Statt
It's a wild place in terms of just, it's basically a city of hotels, but I'd go to that city of hotels again probably after this, but maybe just for longer and more than just professional events.

21:30
Joseph Testa
Yeah, I think shop talk is totally worth it. You know, whether it was the startups we talked to in the femtech space, to the established CPG brands with an awesome CEO custodian culture, or even established d two C brands that left a war torn Ukraine to build their business and build it back even stronger. There's so many interesting individuals, so much energy, and great opportunity all around for a company like ours who can service a lot of that, but also learning from the various talks and having fun at all at the same time. Yeah.

22:06
Nate Statt
Well, it was great to travel with you, Joe. Great to record a podcast with you as always. So thanks a lot and thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you at the next one.

22:13
Joseph Testa
Thank you, Nate.