Is Social Media Being Slept On? | Stephon Jacob

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simplifi.tv. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Stephon Jacob, who is a strategist at the Martin Agency, which has the honor of being recognized as a three-time agency of the year. Stephon works on campaigns for Buffalo Wild Wings, Virginia Tourism, you know that one as Virginia is for Lovers, Santander Bank and more. Stephon graduated from VCU Brandcenter, the number one master's program for advertising and branding in the country, according to Creativity Magazine. He's a sports lover, a people lover, and a technology lover who spends most of his time staying up to date with culture, coming up with ideas, helping brands with strategic plans, and creating content. Stephon, thanks for joining us on Simpli.fi TV. Stephon Jacob: No problem. Thank you David. David McBee: Of course. Thank you for being here. All right. I want to start by asking you what you think is the most effective media in 2023. Stephon Jacob: It depends for what the goal is for the client because some client's goal is just to get it talked about by their internal teams. They don't really care. I've seen some stuff that isn't that interesting, but the clients liked it, so it made them happy. That doesn't mean that it wasn't successful, just because, I mean, if the goal of it is to make the client happy, then that's okay. If they just want a really pretty looking billboard that gets them excited, then that's a win. But for me, I think social media is the biggest opportunity that is just slept on. And I don't understand how, because it's literally right in front of our eyes today. David McBee: But what do you say to the person who says social media is oversaturated? There's so much advertising going on there. People are sick of seeing it. Stephon Jacob: I don't know, because I think more people are on their phones more. I don't think the data says that people are like, there are people that have ad blockers, but I don't think an ad necessarily just needs to be a paid thing. It can be something that, like I mentioned earlier, that is interesting. What are you making that is interesting? I think people are thinking of ad as too executional. We're creating this 60 second. An ad can literally be, if Oreo wants to open a building in the desert because it gets people's attention. That's an ad. It can be whatever it wants to be, but I think social media is still super slept on and it will be until it's not. David McBee: So what is your advice to other agencies who are trying to push more social media or clients that you think are sleeping on it, as you like to say? Stephon Jacob: It's hard because the people that run the business are not native social first. They didn't grow up where social media was in their culture, but that's the problem is who are we making things for? Are we making things for our audience? Are we making things for the people in the building who run the brand? So I think we could have, even Super Bowl commercials. Well, that was a big debate this year. One commercial was like Blue Moon and it was another beer brand and another beer brand, and they're all owned by the same company, like holding company. But regular people wouldn't really get that at first. It's something that the internal team obviously all knows. We own all three of these beers, so we're going to put them all in a commercial. Whereas regular people that have said it's just like, oh, it's just three different beers in an ad. They don't know there's insider baseball that people who are behind the brand expect consumers to understand, but that's not necessarily true. David McBee: Interesting. What innovations in marketing are you most excited about? Stephon Jacob: Anything that helps me create as easy as possible because I think there's a big friction behind creating. Everyone sees there's so much transitions and all these filters and you have to, like everything has to be perfect quote, unquote before people even post anything, and I think whatever helps me post the easiest, whether it's just words, images, if I can edit something in an app quickly, just the easiest way to create I think is kind of interesting to me. David McBee: So are you leveraging this new AI? Stephon Jacob: I'm definitely leveraging AI. That's like huge. David McBee: So run me through an example of how you might use AI. Stephon Jacob: I use AI to type in your company's name and ask it, tell me about this company, like a child would understand it, and then I pretty much talked about my background and what are some conversations we could talk about. So I did do that before this call, like right in this call. David McBee: Oh, you used ChatGPT to check out Simpli.fi and learn a little bit about us. Stephon Jacob: I did. David McBee: All right. And based on our previous conversation before we started recording, how close was ChatGPT to what we do? Stephon Jacob: You guys use advanced targeting technology to display ads to the right people at the right time across various devices, channels, mobile, desktop and more. You help businesses achieve better results with their advertising campaigns by making them more efficient and effective. So that's a check. David McBee: Okay, stop. You're turning this into a Simpli.fi commercial. We don't want that. That's hilarious. Stephon Jacob: So it just helps me understand without reading the whole page in two sentences, I can get a quick, because time is the biggest thing. Anything that can help me do something, that's why people order food to go. It's why there's DoorDash, there's why there's the internet that you can find. The quicker, we're just people of convenience, which is kind of crazy to say. You fly. We used to ride things on horses, but we're not, like things evolve and change so. David McBee: You've had a little bit of a theme as we've talked. You're really into speed and efficiency. Am I understanding that correctly? Stephon Jacob: I think so. I think, I don't know if it's because, maybe it's because I'm an athlete and I like to compete and just, I'm always have this little competitiveness in me. So I'm always looking for the best way to do things. And yeah, it has to be the right way. I'm not going to go the wrong way of doing it. But if there's anything that I can use, whether it's a book, if I'm going to watch anything helpful that's useful to my toolkit, I'm going to add it for sure. Whether it's learning design or taking a new class, getting my masters, whatever it is that I can get ahead, I will try and do that. David McBee: It's interesting that you brought up books because that's usually how I end most of my interviews. So I'll ask you, is there a book that you feel has had a big impact on your success that you'd like to share with our viewers? Stephon Jacob: There's a bunch. Truth Lies and Advertising is probably one that comes up. I think that's a really interesting book when it comes to marketing and advertising. Hey Whipple, Squeeze This is another one. And then Junior: Writing Your Way Ahead in Advertising, which is a copywriting book are the three that I would say. David McBee: That's three I got out of you. That's fantastic. Thank you. Stephon Jacob: No problem. Thank you. David McBee: And thanks for being our guest today on Simpli.fi TV, Stephon. Stephon Jacob: No problem. Thank you David. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching. I'm David McBee. Be awesome. And we'll see you next time.