Andrew Schneider: Marketing Executive

In this episode of Career Conversations, we sit down with Andrew Schneider, a veteran marketing executive with a diverse background spanning from the early days of the internet to the launch of major streaming platforms. 

Key highlights from our conversation with Andrew:

• His pivotal role in introducing internet strategies to traditional media companies like NBC and Sony Pictures
• Insights into the evolution of marketing from traditional advertising to data-driven, full-funnel approaches
• His experience in building and leading high-performing teams for major projects like the launch of Disney+
• The evolution of his leadership style, emphasizing the importance of being a "player-coach" and tailoring management approaches to individual team members
• Reflections on the importance of specialization and developing niche skills in emerging technologies

Tune in for an episode that bridges the gap between traditional and digital marketing, offering valuable insights on navigating technological disruptions, team leadership, and career development in the rapidly evolving world of digital media and AI-driven marketing. 

Transcript

Chris 0:00

Hey guys, my name is Chris back with another episode of Career Conversations with Chris. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Mr. Andrew Schneider and his son, Sam Schneider, who happens to be my roommate. Mr. Schneider, or senior, I should say. Would you mind giving me a short background on yourself and just how you got to where you are?

Andrew 0:18

Yeah, of course. Happy to. Thanks for having me on your podcast. And you can call me Andy, by the way. Yeah. I went to school in upstate New York for my undergrad, and then I did my graduate degree at NYU in interactive telecommunications. And at the time the internet was brand new, nobody really understood how to use it. But having a computer growing up, I did know a lot of the fundamentals about networking and how to use computer. And I was interning at NBC television network at the time in their news department. And there was some stories coming up about different groups, militia groups, the Unabomber. using the internet to disseminate information and literally nobody knew what the heck that was. And so I volunteered to teach everyone what the internet was, how to use the internet, and ended up being the go to guy for anything internet related at NBC television network. And as part of the news department, it was really about using the internet for information communication but also for human interest stories because people are starting a date on the internet and things like that. But one day I decided to approach the head of marketing at NBC and and propose to him that we create an online Presence on America online, which was the largest online network at the time. And that we should probably also have a website. He had been thinking the same exact kind of things, very forward thinking marketer. And I got my first job in marketing at NBC in their network marketing department being the senior producer of the NBC AOL presence and launching their first website and their first email list. and that's really how I got my start because I saw this opportunity with new technology and could see a bit of where it was going and how to apply it in the context of a television network. And so I did that. And I stayed there for two years and was recruited out to Los Angeles after that to do the same thing for Sony Pictures, the movie studio and television studio. And so I went out to California and did that for eight years and rose up in the ranks at the Movie studio to senior vice president after a period of time and worked on countless television show launches and film launches, including things like Godzilla and Spider Man and TV shows like wheel of fortune and jeopardy and many others. So that's really how I got my start in marketing, always being on the forefront of new technology as it would impact consumer behavior and how that might disrupt traditional media and figuring out instead of trying to ignore it and put your head in the sand, because it might have a business model impact as it did for the music industry for many years. looking for ways to embrace it and change the existing model and disrupt the existing model to create something brand new and and applicable for the future.

Chris 3:21

So there's two things that just stuck out from what you said immediately, which is that you became the internet go to guy and that you were studying internet technologies as the internet was first coming out. So what sparked your initial interest in the internet? how were you so far ahead of everybody in that sense on, the skills and the knowledge of just the internet as it was growing.

Andrew 3:42

It wasn't something I was afraid of. And I had a basic knowledge of, cause I had been dialing up to network bulletin boards when I was a kid. So I knew the technology. I knew the fundamentals of the technology, how two computers can speak to each other over a Telephone line. It's as simple as that, I say it's as simple as that. But a lot of other people just didn't understand how that technology would work or what some of the applications would be. And when you think about the very early applications, it was okay. Text, I'm going to send someone else text and it's going to show up on their computer screen. The next evolution was audio and voice. Okay. How do I send audio over the internet? And then you could see, okay, in the future. We're going to have images. We're going to have video. We're going to have video games. We're going to have all this other stuff, but the technology is going to have to catch up to allow those kinds of things to happen. And in the early days, it was very slow. Telephone lines were super slow and then they increasingly got faster and now we've got fiber optic broadband today and 5g wireless networks that all transmit data at very high rates at very high quality. And so it enables all new business models like. Streaming TV shows or downloading movies or playing fortnight with, hundreds of other people in real time. So that, that's where I focused my future looking point of view, which was where's technology going and how will it impact. A consumer. And so look, it may have been in the right place, right time. It may have been, hey, I had, an edge because I had a computer as a kid. A lot of people didn't I played video games as a kid. A lot of people didn't. I may have had a leg up and I went and I pursued that pretty aggressively. And look, I think in today's market, in the past five years, you've seen streaming really happen in a big way. Netflix had been doing it, but then all these other companies started doing it. Subscription models for music, totally disrupted the music industry. And now we're on, social media also disrupted everything from news to entertainment delivery, to the kind of formats that people create entertainment around, right? Short form, highly viral, shareable, snackable. And we're in a world where if you have a pretty good knowledge of artificial intelligence and know how to apply it to certain industries, you would have the same advantage today that perhaps I did. 30 years ago when the internet was first coming out. So I think it's just cyclical and there'll always be that kind of opportunity. You just need to look for it and figure out how does it get applied?

Chris 6:13

Yeah. So something that you touched on was that you made it sound you think that was more of. a cyclical kind of product of your environment rather than an actual specific tangible skill that you had in terms of the foresight with the way that the internet industry was going to go. Is that a sentiment that you would share?

Andrew 6:30

I think it's a combination of things. I knew the fundamentals, right? I had a computer. I understood networking, right? I understood interactive. entertainment because I was a video game player, right? It wasn't just consuming media was interacting with media. So there were some actual fundamental experiences and skills I had, but for me and what I learned getting my master's degree and also just in my professional career is you have to put dots together and figure out where they lead, right? And that's, An entrepreneur's role, right? And that's what I consider myself. Although my focus is on marketing, it's also on new business development new product development. And so if you could see how technology is going to disrupt an industry, if you could see how networking is going to get faster and faster. What comes next right after that? How will that impact people's lives? What kind of opportunities will that give people? What kind of opportunities will that give businesses or industries? And is there a way to navigate through those things and then come up with the right product at the right time? So I think it's a combination of things. It's definitely timing, opportunity, environment, skill expertise, but it's Figuring out where those trends are going to go and creating something of value.

Chris 7:54

Yeah. So I think maybe to translate this into college students since you say this is like a cyclical pattern and you've talked about AI with that as well, where does your foresight point now for people that are just graduating and coming out of college? I guess, where do you think they should be using AI in, the marketing and digital media landscape, where do you see that direction heading?

Andrew 8:18

Okay. let's take a look at AI today. and what most of the creative industry is scared about, right? You've got writers, you've got actors, you've got people who own intellectual property and brands. absolutely terrified of AI, right? Because AI can write, you can create avatars that look fairly human, but not great yet to act. And you can build things without knowing code and that terrifies industries and people in the same way that the music industry was terrified that people would Be able to download a single song and not buy a whole album. And it just breaks all the economics and it puts people out of work. And there is real concern there. And a lot of it's legitimate, but you have to ask yourself. Will it happen? Will creating video avatars look human enough that people can relate to them and make connections so you can use digital actors instead of real actors? Yeah. Will they be able to write in certain voices or tones or even sound like people after, they're deceased and you can create You know, actors who live forever, those things will happen, right? And the companies that are blocking it now will be in a difficult position. The companies that figure out how to harness that and go after it will be the ones who, who win in the long run, but it's not without its issues, it's not without its problems and things to figure out, but if you put your head in the sand. And ignore it, you're dead.

Chris 9:56

what I think that just stood out to me. There was, and then I put together was you were breaking it down to the business model aspect. I think the analogy that you made to the music industry is really interesting because. There's still a new updated business model of the music industry. now, like you're saying, you pay for subscriptions to stream music instead of buying actual individual songs or albums. And so from my understanding it sounds like the industry is going to change because of AI It's more just how do you adjust your business model accordingly so that you're taking advantage of that new technology and using it to keep your footing and your standing but also develop with that technology to obviously you can't ignore it, but I think what made it really make sense to me is how are you talking about shifting the business model to account for that?

Andrew 10:41

Yeah. And look, it takes a long time. It took the music industry 20 years to find its footing after their entire world was disrupted. And so it may take a long time and the first generation chances will not be the right way to go and it will take. a lot of failures and iterations until it finally works. And that's exactly what happened in the music industry. And when you were able to then deliver video over the internet at high quality, it happened to the film industry and it's happening to the TV industry. That's why you see cable companies struggling to keep their subscriber bases because everybody's cutting the cord and signing up for Netflix and Max and Disney plus. So those are disruptive business models, but they tend to take a long time. But along the way, an entrepreneurial person who understands the technology can build applications that could be useful to furthering what will be inevitable in that kind of industry. And even if you're not an engineer, even if you understand how a large language model works and you can, figure out how to leverage chat GPT for in a really robust way, how that can be applied to different kinds. of applications that are useful. Not too long ago, I went to a marketing summit held by a prominent venture capital firm. And they were just creating very simple things, right? Being able to translate news articles on a website to audio with an AI voice. Very simple, not complex underlying technology is one of the large language models, but they built it and they wrapped it up. So someone like a CNN or a Fox news or an NBC news can now apply that to their website. And so instead of reading the article, you're listening to the article. And it's really inexpensive because you're not paying the talent. The machine is reading it all. There's still a human who has to approve it, but once you launch it on your site. It's like brand new way to consume the media that also happens to be favorable to Google search algorithm. And so if you do that, the engagement rate for the article goes up and that article gets higher placement in Google search, which benefits. The news outlet and organization because they're looking for more clicks so they could sell more advertising. So it's a very small example on how AI can really impact a business. Maybe not in a huge way, but in a very small way. The same thing could be said for AI generated virtual assistants that look human or sort of human. And all of a sudden you're on the other end of a customer support call, cause you're having an issue or a video chat and you see an AI helping you in a pretty convincing way, not entirely. It's not ready yet, but that's yet another way. And then, once. That kind of industry nails AI based customer support that will roll out across all industries and creates a massive opportunity. Now, if you're the person who is developing that, if you see that as the opportunity, if you can get ahead of the curve, or even slightly behind the curve and create a challenger brand, that's going to be a huge industry. It's going to completely change the way customer service works. So those are the kind of opportunities that say, okay, there's new technology. Where's that technology in three years. what applications can be applied to it to the benefit of consumers and which industries will then benefit by offering it to their customers. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing that's driven, driven my career.

Chris 14:21

Okay. Wow. So When I initially think of marketing, I think of advertising. So how, big really is the umbrella of marketing? And what would be like a typical kind of like day to day for the work that you do?

Andrew 14:35

Oh, the world of marketing has changed a lot. When you think, when you thought about marketing, back in the golden age of advertising, you'd had big ad agencies and marketing. People were super creative. They were writing commercial copy and jingles and creating fun commercials, right? Yeah. That's one skill set. Another skill set says, okay, I have the commercial. Where am I going to put the commercial to reach the largest amount of people?

Speaker 15:01

Yeah.

Andrew 15:01

And for a long time, that meant buying television commercials, buying radio commercials, buying billboards buying magazine and print ads translated to buying online ads. The marketing world has changed fundamentally due to the internet and due to the fact that most people are getting their content through a digital source and not through an analog or linear source. Yeah. And so when I'm, when I am looking at. Marketing today. what the industry calls it is a full funnel marketing. And so if you think about a funnel, there's a lot of stuff that goes on at the top, right? You might buy a TV ad during an NFL game. That's going to reach tens of millions of people. Maybe, maybe less, maybe more depends on the game. You're going to get a message out there. People are going to see that message. They're going to see it multiple times. They're going to start remembering it. But now. They go online, right? now I can target you with another ad that says, Hey, try my product for free, right? Have a free sample, sign up for free, right? Now that all of a sudden moves the customer down the funnel from awareness to intent. And then I can capture more information and start building a relationship with them until they actually purchase something once they purchase something, right? That's the ultimate goal. But hey, they may leave my product. So I want to get an email address or a phone number and send you text messages. And so the whole world of marketing looks at the life cycle of the consumer as they're going through this funnel. And that's what my job has been for the past. 10 years is figuring out how is that funnel work and how do I optimize that funnel through data and analytics every step of the way until I have a deeper relationship with that consumer and I can increase the lifetime value of that consumer.

Speaker 16:58

Yeah.

Andrew 16:59

And that is extremely applicable to things like some of the work I've done in sports betting, some of the work I've done in video games, as well as in, streaming projects like Disney plus and ESPN plus to gain subscribers. And that is the methodology for modern marketing.

Chris 17:17

So how different would that be now? analogy would be maybe you're changing the size and the shape of the funnel in what you've been currently doing. Taking it back to your first job, how different would the work be? if you're just now starting out in marketing, say somebody just became an intern or. Is fresh out of college. having their first job in the marketing industry, how different would those responsibilities be?

Andrew 17:42

the goal would be the same. The tools would be different.

Chris 17:45

Okay.

Andrew 17:46

So at the end of the day, you want to create a relationship with the brand.

Chris 17:49

Yeah,

Andrew 17:50

right. You want to drive a sale. It's as simple as that. The tools are totally different. So someone coming out of school today should focus on the things that they're most familiar with social media. How do I grow my Instagram account, my Tik TOK account? How do I create a meaningful relationship through content, through messaging, right? All that stuff we talked about before commercial advertising, what's the right video with the right language with the right length. What's the cadence of publishing that content? And am I getting more followers or not? Are people leaving or not? And if they are leaving, I have the input, the data and the analytics to say, why do I think they're leaving? And how do I change my strategy? Or how do I Do more of what is working. And that is a fundamental difference because now everything is being tracked. The data is available. And so you're constantly making data driven decisions, not just creative decisions. In fact one of the core techniques of any marketing these days is just constant testing. So I might put out Different backgrounds to an image, different words to an image, different people on images. And programmatically the computer will create 40 different ads, serve them up to thousands of people. And we'll see which one actually converts. We'll see which one click is clicked on more than the others. And then we'll start promoting the ones that win and stop using the ones that lose. And so even the creative process has gone through a revolution when it comes to certain types of marketing, you'll never, get away from this big brand marketing, right? These big commercials that you see at the Super Bowl, but you will interact differently with online marketing, website marketing, social media marketing in a much different way. That's tailored and personalized to you and is optimized for what's working with you and other people just like you.

Chris 19:50

what I think is really interesting about that is that it almost sounds like you guys are partly doing the role of AI in that you're picking out the winners, how an AI would train itself, picking out the winners of these different promotional advertisements and then dropping the rest and just keep iterating on that until you find something that Does super well.

Andrew 20:10

AI will drive that. This technology is existed before AI, but AI will disrupt that part of the marketing stack, if you will.

Chris 20:18

Yeah. Maybe if we transition here, one thing that I want to touch on is some of the projects that you've done over your career. So maybe, do you have a favorite project that you've worked on? And I Would like to dive into that and maybe have you be able to reminisce a little bit on a favorite project that you've done over your professional career?

Andrew 20:36

Yeah, the thing I'm most proud of is launching Disney plus that was a pretty unique and once in a lifetime kind of opportunity. The largest media company in the entire world was about to disrupt itself by launching a streaming service and put all of its resources behind doing that. Not only You know, buying back rights from broadcasters where, the content may have lived to in order to put it onto the service, but investing a tremendous amount of money in technology and a tremendous amount of money and product design as well as marketing. And so that was a special project to be working on. And I was there from the very beginning creating the go to market strategy with a lot of partners, a lot of different partners, right? I had folks at Marvel and Star Wars and National Geographics and a Disney who all were contributing as well as really talented film and television marketers who were working on the brand side. And I was responsible for customer acquisition. So people who are going to pay money to subscribe to the service every single month. And so I needed to build a team of people who really understood acquisition marketing. And I built it from scratch. Basically I built it to launch ESPN plus, and then I expanded the team to also handle. Disney plus.

Chris 21:53

Okay.

Andrew 21:53

And there weren't a lot of people in entertainment who had that kind of skill set. And so I looked at financial services and other areas like credit card acquisition and, insurance industries and figured out who are the best people in that industry, where I could transfer their skill into what I needed. And and building that team out was one of the best most exciting things that I've done. And those people are incredible and they picked it up real fast. Cause they're all data driven marketers and it builds something that Disney really did not have in their arsenal when it came to marketing.

Chris 22:26

Yeah I think that's funny. I was using Disney plus last night We were watching some star wars attack of the clones and it's cool to hear that you're part of the reason that like we're able to even use that service and access those titles you made it sound like a big part of that role was headhunting or just crafting a team How do you bring all sorts of different people together and then provide one sort of unifying or motivating like I'd call it like juice or sauce, maybe to get everybody to work. Yeah, it's the most

Andrew 22:56

important thing when it comes to management is, what kind of leader are you? And how do you build a high performing team? And, it really starts with your own perspective on things. And, when people ask me what type of manager are you? What type of leader are you? I tend to be a player coach, so I don't mind. And in fact, I like to get my hands dirty. But I've also learned that different people need different kinds of support. So not every employee is going to be able to do the job that they're in. Some people are going to need more handholding or mentorship. Or shown by example, other people, may pick it up and, they're doing great. And then you manage them differently. You manage them by a deliverable. Okay. I need you to get me a thousand subscribers by the end of the day, or I need you to deliver this creative in two weeks. And I don't talk to them until they come to me and say, okay, I did this, or I did that. and if it worked great, if it didn't work, we troubleshoot and figure out why it didn't. And what are we going to do better next time? And so leadership is the most important thing and figuring out where your team stands, who's good at what, and sometimes you got to move people around, just because you have one job and you ended up in this job. And you're okay at it, but you would be amazing at a different job. You've got to identify those strengths and weaknesses and maybe move them over and let them flourish and try to get the best out of your team. It's like any athletic team in the same way. Yeah. So that's really important. And you also want to give a North star. So what does success look like? I, all right, we're going to take that mountain, right? We're going to get to the top. We're going to do it in lots of different ways, but that's where we're going. And that's really important too as a team leader is establishing that North star and defining what success actually looks like. So there's no ambiguity and no second guessing. Cause that will damage a team if they don't know it.

Chris 24:59

Yeah, I think that's something that's really relevant to me right now that I'm trying to figure out as well through my senior design class. I'm the project manager of my team right now. And we're in that space where we're trying to create our North Star and, figure out the team roles and team expectations. And I can tell that it's going to be an interesting challenge, getting everybody to be doing things on the same kind of timeframe, especially like you're saying, depending on how differently people are motivated and how differently people need to be guided or led.

Andrew 25:29

The first thing I do when I get into a new project organization or something's going to happen is to find what the vision is. Write it down to find what the mission is, write it down, and get everybody to agree, ask questions about it, debate it, but ultimately create consensus around it. And that's a process, that you have to go through and then you figure out, okay, what are my strategies to get there? And then what are the tactics that I need to implement in each strategy? To actually make that happen. And there's also good to set quantifiable goals against. What are your KPIs?

Speaker 26:12

Yeah.

Andrew 26:13

Did we get to the top of the summit in two weeks or not? Why do we think two weeks was reasonable? Because other people have done it in two weeks. Okay. That sounds reasonable. How are we going to get up there? What's the strategy to get up there? We're going to climb the North face. Okay. Great. Okay. What are the tactics? We're going to get a bunch of ropes and we're going to come out to pick axes and we're going to, have teams of four and we're all going to

Speaker 26:35

That's

Andrew 26:36

tactic. So you break it down. I call it peeling the onion. So you start with your vision, your mission, your strategies, your tactics, and then define your goals.

Chris 26:46

Yeah, that sounds like that could be a really interesting framework that I might be able to what I'm doing right now actually. So when I graduate, I'm not quite sure where I'm going to go or what I'm gonna do yet and that's part of the reason of this whole podcast. But one area in particular that I've looked at potentially moving to is New York and New York City. So I know that you have lived there for a long time. I guess what would be just some general advice you have on living and working in New York? Cause that would be a pretty, pretty drastic change from me coming. the suburbs of Denver. So I'm just curious on your thoughts on that.

Andrew 27:20

Yeah. Look, there's huge opportunities for you in New York is definitely a different style of living. I would suggest coming to visit, you can crash with us, see how much you like it. Yeah. Before you do it, but it's it's a great place to start a career. And look, New York is known for certain industries like finance and advertising, right? and technology now California is known for other things, right? Especially Northern California for venture capital and entrepreneurship. If those are areas that Are interesting. Sometimes the location that you pick is defined by what industry you want to be in, right? Packaged goods in the Midwest, auto in the Midwest. So there's different hot beds. But with that said, New York's a huge market. You could find engineering, you could find manufacturing, you could find all sorts of stuff here.

Chris 28:11

Yeah. No, I think that's interesting. Maybe. How did you end up in New York? Because I'm assuming you're I was born here from there. Okay. So you've never left.

Andrew 28:20

I did for eight years. I lived in Los Angeles.

Chris 28:22

Okay. And that was through school.

Andrew 28:25

I lived in Los Angeles after I graduated college and did my graduate degree and moved out for my job at Sony pictures.

Chris 28:33

Okay. Awesome. so I have visited before and I thought it was interesting. It's just a totally different lifestyle and lifestyle is something that I've been thinking a lot about in how to choose a career and how to choose what to do for a job coming out of college. So that's where my head is at about thinking about New York. you're saying all the potential opportunities there. I just don't have a lot of experience with waking up in the morning and hopping on the subway at 7 30 and getting to work that way. And I just know that it's expensive to tell the pace.

Andrew 29:03

Yeah. And it's fast moving. Yeah. But it offers a lot, and it's super social and obviously there's a ton of things to do. You can get out of the city If it grinds you down too much, to the suburbs or to upstate New York. I think it's important for people graduating college to be around their peers and their mentors in real life and not just be virtual on a zoom, especially in those, first five years out of college.

Chris 29:31

Yeah, that's something that I've had a lot of other professionals mentioned as well, that people going directly into remote jobs out of college or missing out on a lot. And a lot of potential connections and mentorship opportunities by working remotely we touched on this a little bit, but what would be your strategy? Let's say you're graduating college this year, in the spring. And you have to start your career all over again. What would be your strategy to get back into the digital media industry? what things would you be doing to set yourself apart from other people in an entry level role? And then what specific skills would you be developing so that you could move up early? Along through that industry.

Andrew 30:06

Yeah. I would find a niche and specialize in it. That also presupposes that you want to be in a certain industry, right? You might not know, and that's perfectly fine. And you might end up getting a job in one area and deciding you don't like it, but trying a different area or moving around. Just, keep that in mind It's not always going to be as easy as saying, Okay, I'm going to focus on this one thing and then get a job and go, life tends to take you in lots of different directions. And sometimes a good opportunity comes along and you're like, Okay, I'll give it a shot. I never thought I'd want to do this, but I'm going to give it a shot. And, that happens a lot, right? And having broad experience, transferable skills just good communication skills, interpersonal skills, that all goes a long way, no matter what you're looking for. If I was going to go into media right now, I would specialize though. If I knew I'm going to go into media, I'm going to specialize in something, right? I am going to, Understand social media marketing like nobody else. I'm going to understand the algorithms of every single major platform, how the algorithms are changing, how to optimize and actually how to do the hands on work. Then, things get specialized. So there will be a social media manager job or a social media coordinator job, or something like that open. And then you have. The knowledge, the skills, the experience to go into that. And you can build things on your own right now, like you're doing with your podcast in order to show that you've got those skills, right? Demonstrable. Hey, look, I did this already. I know how to do this. So that's one way to go. Another way to go is. Like we were talking about before, which is saying, okay, I'm going to get really great at doing large language model querying, right on chat, GPT, or, any of the other big models figure out, okay, I can do, this is a hard skill and it's on the cutting edge. And I know a lot of companies are going to want this. And here are a couple of thoughts on how to apply it to a particular industry. Then you go in with a huge advantage because you have skills that not a lot of people have right now. You're future proofing yourself a little bit and you're becoming a valuable commodity. So especially if, engineering student coming out of college, understanding how to apply large language models to a particular industry and showing a couple of examples would be a huge benefit.

Chris 32:32

Yeah, totally. I think that's really interesting. And that you touch base on like actually having some hard skill. What I guess I wouldn't necessarily think of that you brought up was not like specializing and finding your niche, but getting into the technical side of it and understanding how. The actual algorithms for these different platforms work and that's definitely something that I wouldn't expect coming from the the digital media industry or that's not really something that I would expect would be in the curriculum for marketing or digital media either. So that's a huge part of it.

Andrew 33:06

It's a huge part of it, especially given, such a huge part of building customer relationships is done through social or through, app stores. Yeah. And all it takes is for. Google to change their algorithm on how they discover news content to impact the entire news industry. The entire marketing industry has been in a transition because Apple now doesn't allow cookies, right? So now I can't target you as well as I used to. Because they decided, okay, we're not going to allow this technology anymore due to privacy concerns. And that was somewhat driven through regulation in California and other places. Yeah. Now I can't target you. And so I need to find other ways to get to know who you are. And when I say you, it's, you plus a million other people.

Speaker 33:58

Yeah.

Andrew 33:58

So it's all programmatic. But those kind of changes have huge impacts in large industries. And there are people at big agencies, digital media agencies and traditional agencies. At big media companies and entertainment companies all looking at that stuff and getting really smart at what those changes are going to look like And figuring out new solutions and sometimes figuring out new solutions opens up new opportunity

Speaker 34:25

Yeah

Andrew 34:26

for an entrepreneur to come in and create a solution that they can then sell to the industry

Chris 34:31

Yeah, totally. I just i'm starting to put together the web of everything that you're saying in my head and making a little Cool like mental model of it. It's definitely a lot more complex than I would imagine. And I kind of just now realizing how much policy would be able to change all the different business models that you would have in your industry.

Andrew 34:52

Yeah. Big changes. It's all technology impacting. Industries, consumer lives, sometimes it's regulation. California passed really strict privacy policies. Europe has had those same strict privacy policies for a long time. And so now other states adopted it and, things just change.

Chris 35:12

And so

Andrew 35:12

you have to adapt with it. And again, if you don't adapt, you're going to get buried.

Chris 35:17

Yep, head in the sand. I always do at the end of my podcast some rapid fire questions So I always ask my guests these three same questions And just have them answer them in a sentence or two kind of whatever comes off the top of their head But before that I'm just gonna extend the opportunity to you if there's anything that you want to ask me as a representative of You a future graduating college student now about to be off in the working world just extending the opportunity for you. If there's anything that you want to ask me, if not, we'll just hop right into those rapid fire questions.

Andrew 35:46

Yeah. The big question is, what excites you most about the next phase of your life?

Chris 35:52

I would say the autonomy to choose and have more of a say in the direction of where I want to go and what things I want to continue to do in my life. But that also brings up a lot of anxiety in the sense of then when I'm the captain of my own fate, I have to know where to go. And I'm responsible for what happens next then. So I think it's like a double edged sword or like both sides of the same coin, which is I'm super excited to be able to get to go where I want. But also if I like end up choosing somewhere where maybe I don't necessarily like it as much, I have to pay those repercussions. And yeah, that's a normal

Andrew 36:28

part of your journey though.

Chris 36:30

Yeah.

Andrew 36:30

You, things will not be right. Things will have to change. You will have to deal with that stuff. But, you will try things and you're going to, hit a home run and you're also going to strike out and you're going to have to, pull yourself up after that happens, but you know what, if you don't take any risks you're never going to, I don't think, at least for me, if I didn't take any risks, I would, I'd be pretty upset with myself. And they all have not worked out.

Chris 36:57

No, totally. I'm on the same side of both. Yeah. Cool. I guess we'll just jump right into these rapid fire questions here. So like I said, just one or two sentences off the top of your head. The first one is what does success look like to you?

Andrew 37:10

Success changes. It depends on the context. But in general, you have to be able to get up every morning, be satisfied with what you're doing like what you're doing. Surround yourself with good people working on projects that you're interested in.

Chris 37:25

What would be your last meal?

Andrew 37:28

Sushi.

Chris 37:30

Fire. And then, stuck on a deserted island, what are the five things that you're bringing?

Andrew 37:39

A boat. Bring me. Sam. Charlie. Yeah. let's talk about the things I really need the most. If I'm really stuck, food, water, shelter, then counts

Chris 37:52

as food.

Andrew 37:54

messed up island. Dude,

Chris 37:56

Yeah. Wrong island. Wrong island.

Andrew 37:58

Yeah. The things you absolutely need to survive are the things that I would grab first.

Chris 38:03

Yeah, that's probably smart.

Andrew 38:05

Yeah.

Chris 38:06

I

Andrew 38:08

would probably bring a, fishing tools.

Chris 38:11

Yeah. Yeah. I just like asking that question because it has crazy different answers to it. So it's just however you interpret the question.

Andrew 38:18

Yeah.

Chris 38:19

I think I'll just wrap it up here. Thank you so much for giving me your time and like your insight and everything in the industry that you represent. I really appreciate just being able to sit down with you and pick your brain about. All the things that you do and have done in your career and industry. So yeah, just Chris,

Andrew 38:36

you did a great job on the podcast interviews. Thanks for having me.

Chris 38:38

Thank you so much.