Check out a special marketing edition of The Buzz, featuring hosts Mary Kate Love, Amanda Luton, and Katherine Hintz of the Supply Chain Now team! Tune in and learn more about the impact of marketing in the supply chain industry.

Listen in as Mary Kate, Amanda, and Katherine discuss various topics including the challenges faced by Starbucks, the surge in sports sponsorship revenue in 2023, and the dark side of fast fashion. They also shared their favorite newsletters, podcasts, and documentaries that provide insights into AI, marketing, and ethical consumption.

Intro/Outro (00:03):

Welcome to Supply Chain. Now the voice of Global Supply Chain Supply chain now focuses on the best in the business for our worldwide audience, the people, the technologies, the best practices, and today’s critical issues, the challenges and opportunities. Stay tuned to hear from Those Making Global Business Happen right here on supply chain now.

May Kate Love (00:31):

Hello everyone. Happy Monday. We are so excited about this. This might look a little bit different than the Buzz Show that you’re previously used to, but we promise this will be super fun because today is going to be our marketing edition of The Buzz. So my name is Mary Kate Love. I’ve joined the show a few times. I work here at Supply Chain now in marketing, and I’m joined by my two colleagues, Amanda and Catherine. Amanda, you want to introduce yourself?

Amanda Luton (00:59):

Sure. Hi everybody. I’m Amanda Luten, the VP of Production at Supply Chain now. So I’m on every buzz, but I’m just always behind the scenes with Catherine, making sure everything works. So it’s fun to be on the other side of the camera today, so I’m super excited.

May Kate Love (01:14):

Exactly right. We kind of know because we have two producers on screen between Amanda and Catherine, almost nothing can go wrong, right? Knock on wood. Knock

Amanda Luton (01:22):

On wood.

May Kate Love (01:24):

Yeah. And Catherine, do you want to introduce yourself?

Katherine Hintz (01:27):

Yeah, absolutely. Hi everybody. I’m Catherine Hints. I’m the creative manager and producer here at Supply Chain now, so it’s very fun to be on the other side of the camera. I sit in on probably 99% of all of the content that we produce from podcast to live streams to webinars. So now I get a little bit of taste of my own medicine, I guess.

May Kate Love (01:48):

Exactly right. Exactly right. And we’re kind of creating this a little bit of a different format, so we love feedback and comments, but what we’ll follow today is we’ll do our traditional news section. So we all scoured the internet, we all subscribed to a million things. So we picked some really awesome articles that we want to talk to you about. And then we’re going to do a new segment called our recommendations. So this is really like what are we listening to, what are we watching, what are we subscribing to? This helps you with those water cooler conversations or if you’re like us, those slack conversations if you work remotely, we’ll test out that segment and we’ll share the latest and greatest there. But before we get started, Amanda, can you tell everyone how to listen, watch and subscribe to us?

Amanda Luton (02:33):

Yes. Go to supply chain now.com/join. You can subscribe on all your favorite podcast platforms on YouTube. Pretty much anywhere on the internet you find content, you can probably find us too.

May Kate Love (02:44):

Exactly right. You can escape us here at Supply chain now, that’s for sure. Okay, a few quick announcements. We have some fun ones starting off with supply chain GAILs. This is a group we previously talked about here at Supply Chain Now, and we thought with three women co-hosts today, we’d love to highlight supply chain. GAILs, you should follow them. Their handle is at supply chain. GAILs on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. I’m personally a fan of seeing them on TikTok because we don’t see a lot of supply chain content on TikTok. So super exciting there. And then US Bank Freight Payment Index is our next announcement. So if you miss last Thursday’s live stream, highlighting the analysis of the 2024 Q1 US Bank freight payment index. Geez, say that three times now. You missed one of the best live sessions. So it was a really great session this quarter. It featured Bobby Holland as usual, the architect of the Freight Payment index and guest Tevin Taylor, SVP with Pegasus Logistics Group. You can check out that live stream on demand and the podcast replay will actually be publishing next week, and you can download the index for free@freight.us bank.com. Kind of switching gears a little bit, Amanda’s got good news.

Amanda Luton (03:56):

So these Cuties, I know them. They’re the board of directors of supply chain now. No, just kidding. They should be. They could be. Yeah, it might as well be. But Scott shared his weekly good news post on Friday. He posted to LinkedIn every Friday, but this week it really focused on surrounding yourself with good people and how powerful the human element could be in our lives during good times and bad. This picture, actually, just for a little bit of background, this was the first time I had gone on a girls’ weekend after all three of the kids had been born. So Scott had the kids all weekend and he had soccer practice and all the lessons and all the meals and you name it, he had to do it. And so this was the picture he sent me on Sunday on my way home. And I cannot tell you guys the biggest hugs of my life that I got when I home. That’s so sweet spot. But surrounding yourself with good people that support you and that are there for you during good times and bad is really the focus of his good news post this week. And the other good thing about the good news post is we’re introducing some of our new co-hosts building a really great roster of supply chain now, and he’s introducing a couple of ’em this week. So follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter, check out his posts and we’ll also link it in the show notes.

May Kate Love (05:09):

And before we get to what that said with Catherine, number one, good news is one of my favorite things to read on the internet, right? Yes. It’s literally good news. It’s straight from Scott, it’s editorial. There’s always a great story, a quote in there, but we forgot to say that Scott is at Gartner Supply Chain Symposium this week in Florida, isn’t it Orlando?

Amanda Luton (05:28):

Orlando, yeah,

May Kate Love (05:29):

Orlando, Florida. I was there last year. I know a lot of people in the industry. This is a really big week. So if you’re down there, say hi to Scott. He’s representing the team down there too. So I see Scott jumped in on the comments. Oh,

Amanda Luton (05:41):

Good.

May Kate Love (05:42):

Remind me to say that too. Catherine, how about with that said?

Katherine Hintz (05:46):

Yeah, so we had a new edition of what that said, published over the weekend. It is our almost weekly LinkedIn newsletter powered by supply chain now. And we touched on a bunch of news stories, a few of our recent episodes, and then some upcoming events that we’re looking forward to. So you can find us with that said newsletter on our LinkedIn page. All you have to do is click to the company page and you’ll see a newsletter button. You can find it and subscribe there. It is really a great rundown of our week, the Business Worlds week and what’s going on in the industry itself. So it’s a really great place to check out everything that’s going on.

May Kate Love (06:21):

Yeah, like we said, so many different news articles coming at your way. We have a lot of different ways to consume our content, those being two examples, two different examples, which is the perfect way to our next section, which is our marketing news. So like we said, we view the three of us here. We probably between us guys, how many podcasts, newsletters, emails do you think we read in a week? It’s probably, that’s not even mentioning all the TikTok we consume or

Amanda Luton (06:50):

Consumers. No. Millions. Yeah.

May Kate Love (06:53):

We think we’re expert consumers specifically on marketing content. So we have three, I think, really different stories to share. And we’re going to be starting off with Amanda who pulled an article from probably one of our favorite subscriptions, which is the Morning Brew. And it’s kind of going through something that I think we all are consumers of, which is Starbucks, right?

Amanda Luton (07:13):

Currently in our house, right? Yes. Yeah. So what Mary Kate said, this is from the Morning Brew. I think this article was also featured in this week’s with that said also, so if you want more information, go check it out there too. But according to this article in Morning Brew, Starbucks is hitting some challenging times. I thought the Luten household was easily keeping them in the black, but evidently not. Sales are declining in the US and in China and leadership is pointing to a variety of different causes from inflation to impatient customers to bad weather. So their name and everything that they can. But Starbucks leadership is rolling out a recovery plan dubbed the triple shot reinvention with two pumps. So it includes, I love that they’re even creative internally with their solutions, but it’s a new pilot program that’s planning on serving customers from 5:00 PM to 5:00 AM which is, I don’t know, many Starbucks that are open 24 hours if there are any that are open 24 hours currently.

(08:11):

And they’re offering a lot of in-app promotions and upgrades to cut down on wait times. So we will be including the links to all of these articles in the show notes since I don’t know if you guys know, but me and Catherine are usually the ones adding all the links to the comments and we’re already multitasking of it today. So we’ll add that if you don’t mind. But what I think is interesting about the story is before I even got to the section about reading about the recovery plan, my first thought went to customer loyalty programs. It went to the app. Inflation is obviously hitting people hard, is really hitting families hard. And actually this article, there’s also another article on YouTube or a video on YouTube that mentions inflation at Starbucks and at McDonald’s. And both locations really hit home for us because when inflation hits families, mom and dad can feel it, they understand it, but kids don’t get it.

(09:02):

They don’t know why. They don’t get to go through the drive through after sports practice or whatever. And in our case, kids don’t understand why they’re $7 iced coffees with sweet cream foam and extra pumps of vanilla coffees. It’s unbelievable. But why? They’re a little bit more painful to order these days, but I’ve become more reliant on apps and notifications to get a buy one, get one on Thursday afternoons at Starbucks or a $25 coupon at Kroger you shop or if you get their gas or whatever. I’m relying more and more on apps, notifications, customer loyalty programs. So I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be worth their while to kind of double down on these right now and make sure that they’re making their customers more loyal. Mary Kate, Catherine put, do you y’all think

May Kate Love (09:50):

I’m nodding along here because I’m also using more and more apps and I used to be someone that’s like, gosh, I don’t want another app on my phone. But now there’s incentives with download this app, you get 15% off it. That kind of stuff does go a long way. And like you said with Starbucks, I feel like it’s the big joke everyone says Millennials, if you just didn’t get Starbucks, you would own a house. And we’re not here to discuss how that’s wrong, but I do feel like incentives to make me feel less guilty for spending that money that continues to increase for me would continue to make me a loyal customer, like you said, Amanda.

Amanda Luton (10:28):

Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree.

Katherine Hintz (10:30):

I completely agree with that. I mean, I got just a plain drip coffee over the weekend, no cold foam, no specialty syrups, and it was almost $6. And I can’t believe that just what used to be something that was totally palatable to do a couple times a week to be like, oh, I’ll just grab my coffee while I’m walking my dog. We can’t really do it without more incentivization. So I find myself using the app all the time, and especially with Starbucks, between the happy hour deals and the little stars you can collect, I even find myself paying just through reloading gift cards within the app because you get double stars. Double stars. Yes. I did the same thing.

May Kate Love (11:10):

Well, and how about the gift cards? Just on that note alone, they’re so easy to send. I’ve sent friends who are going through a hard time just like, Hey, coffee on us this morning. That’s so easy. All done through the app too. That makes it incredibly easy as a customer.

Katherine Hintz (11:25):

But Starbucks has been doing this for a while now. Do you remember back, I mean this was years ago, Starbucks, you used to be able to go into the store and get these cards and you would get a free iTunes song download. Oh my gosh.

May Kate Love (11:38):

Even remember that.

Katherine Hintz (11:39):

Oh my gosh is, I mean when there used to be free songs of the week on iTunes and everything was like 99 cents. So I’d be like Starbucks has been on top of incentivizing their customers for a long time.

Amanda Luton (11:51):

That’s very true. This is nothing to them. Their apps has been pretty comprehensive for a long time, but I know that the buy one get one is such a deal for us that makes my coffee order like $15 instead of 21 with my two girls. That’s very true. I think it’s making super loyal customers out of a lot of people. And if Mary Kate like you, I used to not want store apps. I was not interested. Amazon might’ve been the only one I have. Now, if I shop there on a regular basis, I probably have their app because a lot of places are only offering discounts through their app now, and I’m not going to miss the deal. No,

May Kate Love (12:31):

I’m never going to miss a deal, but especially not now. When we were just, some of my friends and I were talking about, it’s like everything feels like it’s a hundred dollars now every new item of clothing. And I think the deals are more and more important as people become a little bit tighter on their spendings. It’s just what brands need to do. And I think it kind of segues to our next story, actually the one that I chose a little bit because my next story talks a little bit about how brands are getting even more creative with some of the deals that they’re doing and how they’re reaching their customers. So I’m going to be talking about what I think is a really cool story that brings in a few things is this sports sponsorship revenue surged in 2023 and Coca-Cola led the way. This is also from Marketing Brew, which is a subset of the Morning Brew. Another one of my favorite subscriptions. I guess this is a little bit of a free commercial for them too,

(13:24):

(13:24):

A few things to call out in that article that I’d be curious to see your thoughts on is team sponsorship revenue for major US men’s professional leagues increased by over 17% with women’s leagues seeing a notable 35% increase. Coca-Cola is leading the way. So Coca-Cola dominated sports sponsorships in 2023, securing 938 deals with global sports properties. Merely double that of its closest competitor Pepsi obviously. So the other traditional brands that we always see in sports still are very much key players. Adidas, Nike, Puma, even automakers, we see a lot, right? Toyota, Ford, beer brands, seltzers. I think we all see those typically. But what’s interesting too is that there’s going to be more and more influencer type deals. So this article says Coca-Cola is also the leader in the influencer deals and partnerships with musicians, celebrities in totaling 41 for the year, which I’m like, wow, that’s a lot of different deals and different personalities to manage under one brand.

Katherine Hintz (14:26):

Yeah, that’s a lot.

May Kate Love (14:28):

It’s a lot. It’s a lot. And we know that that space, while it’s not brand new, it’s still hard to get direct metrics sometimes and you have to kind of work through that as a marketer. So very cool to see Coca-Cola leading that and seeing all this and seeing what’s happening leads me to some of the predictions that I think we will see, which is more things like this amazing really cool Prada deal with Caitlyn Clark, right? Hey, you saw Prada dress, Caitlyn Clark at the WNBA draft, and this was truly Mary World’s colliding sports and stuff. Wow. I was always a girl on the softball field with a pink helmet, but I was still going to play hard.

Katherine Hintz (15:11):

Not

May Kate Love (15:11):

That I’m like, finally these brands get it that there’s a lot of us, and this wasn’t just for women either, right? Men are tuning into these women’s sports more and more, which is exciting on so many levels, but these brand deals seeing, hey, this Caitlyn Clark story, it’s not just about the WNBA, right? We’re going to lean into her as a person. We’re going to dress her. And then she got that huge Nike deal, which is great. I think we have the numbers somewhere. I forget it was something like

Amanda Luton (15:38):

$28 million,

May Kate Love (15:40):

Which is great to see. And I think we’re going to see some more of these story driven campaign and these brands that are aligning with Caitlyn Clark, because I mean, what a cool story. How can’t you get behind Caitlyn Clark and some of the we’ve played against this year? So if the WNBA draft becomes a fashion show, I mean,

Katherine Hintz (15:59):

I’m here for it.

Amanda Luton (16:01):

I love it. I love it too. And that was the first time Prada had ever dressed anybody, men or women, so that I didn’t know that that was a big deal for Prada to dress her

May Kate Love (16:11):

In these other women that looked amazing. And it’s kind of like playing on this inclusivity and diversity because naturally women who play sports are diverse and they’re like all different sizes. And that’s what we see in the world. We don’t always see models every day. And they all looked beautiful. And it was just really cool to see both the brands lean into this and the women themselves too. And amazing that I didn’t know that fact, that Prada, that was their first time dressing anyone male or women.

Amanda Luton (16:40):

I think that’s so fascinating, and I love what you said, Mary Kate, about being on the softball field and wearing a pink helmet. It doesn’t have to be either you’re an athlete or you’re an early girl. It can be both. I love seeing brands doubling down on female athletes, female spokespeople. They’re recognizing the purchasing power of young women of females. They’re noticing that Taylor Swift and the Swifties, according to sporting news.com, brought over 330 million to the Kansas City Chiefs into the nfl. Wow.

May Kate Love (17:11):

Incredible.

Amanda Luton (17:11):

And other brands are coming to life from viral social campaigns that are directed at teenagers, teenage girls. They’re recognizing this power and they’re adjusting their marketing to take advantage of it. And I also think too, that they’re recognizing that representation is important. Girls need to see other girls, they need to see other female athletes, spokespeople. If they see it, they can be it somebody, I can’t remember the guest on one of our shows that said that, but also come on, brands know that if they can see it, they will buy it too.

May Kate Love (17:42):

Exactly, yes.

Amanda Luton (17:43):

It’s a great business case both ways.

May Kate Love (17:45):

Yeah, I think when you’re talking, I’m thinking, gosh, you can’t ignore in sports. And I don’t just mean the women who play sports. I mean women’s participation in watching sports and getting involved. I mean, I’ve noticed a surge, and it was corroborated by this article of even some of the pop culture podcasts that I listened to that are on the target market, a millennial woman, they’re starting to talk about sports more and more too. I listen to the toast and they speak about sports. They joke and call themselves a sports podcast now, right? Because more and more people want to be involved in that. And when it was previously maybe targeted at just men, we’re seeing a shift in marketing strategies that’s really keeping up with the time and driving more revenue, quite frankly, as you said.

Katherine Hintz (18:29):

Yeah. The sports marketers have to realize that. I mean, according to Capital One, shopping, women directly or indirectly make up for 70 to 80% of all purchasing decisions. Oh my gosh. So they’re missing out on their bag if they’re not marketing. I tell

May Kate Love (18:44):

Myself, the chief procurement officer of our home, I really am. I believe that

Katherine Hintz (18:52):

Whether it’s Stanley Cups or sweatshirts or tote bags, anything, I just think that sports and sponsorships go hand in hand. And if you’re not marketing towards women, whether it’s those participating or those consuming, you’re really missing out. And I agree with what both of you guys are saying. To be able to see these strong, capable, competent women that don’t have to choose, they can be the best athletes, they can be excellent role models, and they can also wear product, and they can also share the more feminine, vulnerable sides of themselves. It’s so refreshing to see, realize you don’t have to be just one thing. You can be whatever you want to be.

May Kate Love (19:33):

I think that’s well said. And I think that’s the most powerful message that you can send young females is you can be whatever you want and you don’t need to fit in one category. And that’s really what we all have just wanted all along. And that’s I think finally catching up. But we are definitely going to keep track of this because I know that WNBA had a sold out game last night. I just saw for Caitlyn Clarks. Really? Yeah, here in Chicago, we have Reese, I’m forgetting her last name, but she’s a force. And some of my friends and I are texting about going to a game. I mean, to be honest, I probably went to one or two games my whole life, and I definitely want to get back there and even bring my kids too. I’m sorry, angel Reese. I’m

Amanda Luton (20:14):

Like,

May Kate Love (20:15):

This isn’t sounding right. It just kidding. Do you ever do that where you’re like, oh my God, combining names. But yes, she’s awesome and we’re so excited about her being here in Chicago. I mean, people are buzzing, including my male friends too, which is exciting to see.

Amanda Luton (20:30):

I loved after the, I don’t remember which game it was, where Kaitlyn Clark was playing, but there was a picture in a lot of news outlets of a lot of little boys asking for

May Kate Love (20:40):

Photograph. She’s

Amanda Luton (20:41):

Not just like a female celebrity, just I thought that was great. And I loved that the news outlets were pointing that out. She’s not just for the girls, she’s for everybody.

May Kate Love (20:52):

Exactly. Yeah. I think the phrase has become, everybody watches women’s sports love, and I’ve seen some teachers and we love that so much. But we probably need to shift gears because Catherine’s got a really cool story to share. And this is not a news article, but it’s something a little bit different. It’s a documentary. So if you want to tell us a little bit about the documentary you viewed in some of your notes.

Katherine Hintz (21:14):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, this kind of ties in everything that we’ve been talking about from consumption to women’s roles to retail, and ultimately supply chain too. Don’t worry guys. We’re going to talk about supply chain a little bit today. I wanted to talk about HBO’s new documentary, Brandy Ville, the Cult of Fast Fashion. This film shines a light on the darker sides of the popular fast fashion brand, Brandy Melville. And from its inception in the 2010s, Brandy Melville has captured the hearts of teenagers, young adults, anywhere from kind of late elementary school into people in their twenties are still buying these items from the store. And they’re known for it being beachy and feminine and fun, kind of think free people or Asian vibe. But underneath the surface of all of it is some troubling issues. And some of it has to do with extremely limiting sizes. All of their products are one size fits all, and their one size is about as small to extra small.

May Kate Love (22:19):

Talk

Katherine Hintz (22:20):

About lack of inclusivity. You’re highlighting that. But also in the documentary, they highlight allegations of racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and exploiting underage workers in some capacity. The documentary does not hold back. It talks about a lot of these things. It takes us through the stores revealing the consequences of letting trends dictate company practices, which is something that is really important to consider in business where your ethics lie, whether they’re with trends or with your ultimate decision-making as an organization. And it shows us the butterfly effect of these impacts right in our home and across the global supply chain. And I know that I can’t be the only one that has felt victimized by the inconsistent sizing practices of these fast fashion

May Kate Love (23:03):

Places. I just remember

Katherine Hintz (23:05):

Shopping to go back to school as a kid and feeling like I was just blind and not knowing what was going to fit, what was going to be cool to wear. So I resonated a lot with this documentary. But when they say fast fashion, what Investopedia says is that fast fashion describes a low price, but stylish clothing that moves quickly from design to retail stores to meet trends with new collections being introduced continuously. So traditionally, there are season, so the fashion industry releases things with the weather. You have a spring line, a fall line, a winter line, a summer line, but brands like Brandy Melville, h and m, she and they churn out these designs on a weekly basis, if not daily at times. So there’s no way to really sustainably do any of this. And looking at that, what does the rapid production mean for our society and for the global world?

(23:54):

So for supply chain, the appeal is undeniable because it means that you’re going to be able to keep making more and keep selling more. But the speed has a dark side as well, whether it’s the impact on humanity or the environmental costs. A lot of developing countries where these clothes are made, the manufacturers do not uphold fair labor practices, especially to keep the prices as low as they are. And then you end up with places like Ghana where the streets and landfills are filled with secondhand closed from the western world to the point that the ocean floor could be covered with our leftovers, for lack of a better way to say it. And if this is something that’s interesting to you, there is a documentary called Dead White Man’s Clothing, and it will do a much better job than I will to kind of describe a deep impact and how serious this is. When we look at our consumption rates, when we look at how damaging it is to our environment, our workplaces manufacturing, but ultimately, what can we do about it? So it starts with us, the consumers being mindful of our buying habits. I recently gave up Amazon for Lent, which was

May Kate Love (25:01):

That’s awesome.

Katherine Hintz (25:02):

So hard.

May Kate Love (25:03):

Yes,

Katherine Hintz (25:04):

Especially if you have kids or if you have pets and you rely on those subscriptions, you can just get something sent to you every three weeks. It can be a lifesaver. But being aware of how much those buying practices impact other people and going to websites like good on you, using different resources to try to find sustainable options, whether it’s thrifting, being aware of how much water goes into the denim that we make. I started buying my jeans at Madewell because they do a really great job of marketing. Are they a hundred percent sustainable? No, but it’s better to everybody make a small movement towards sustainability that one person do it perfectly. So that was a lot of information, but Amanda and Mary, Kate, what do you guys have to say?

May Kate Love (25:43):

I love this because I mean, a lot of the people that come on our show, the people that listen to our show are talking about this as it pertains to supply chain in terms of this is something their customers expect to know. They expect to understand your supply chain at a high level. Not all of the details that would take forever, but consumers are asking brands to report on this, and what sustainability efforts are you taking as a brand? And like you said, Catherine, we’re not asking anyone to be perfect, but I do think twice about buying from a brand, especially these ones that honestly, that get these documentaries or articles written on ’em, where you really start to see, oh my gosh, there’s something wrong with this and I shouldn’t buy that shirt for $10. Because quite frankly, that shirt doesn’t even last more than one or two wears. But I think all of our listeners and the people that come on our show, they’re constantly talking about this being more and more important, and it’s not going away. It’s something that consumers are probably going to demand more and more transparency around, quite frankly.

Amanda Luton (26:44):

Yeah, definitely. I just realized I never popped this up.

May Kate Love (26:49):

And there we go.

Amanda Luton (26:51):

The documentary is on Max. I actually, I watched it last night in preparation for today’s buzz, and it hit home for me for sure. I’m an avid shopper, avid Amazon shopper.

May Kate Love (27:04):

Yeah, me

Amanda Luton (27:05):

Too. And with young kids, I mean, actually, my kids aren’t so young anymore, but we’re buying a lot of stuff all the time. And number one at the top of our list, I mean it kind of ties in with inflation is the price of stuff, and especially knowing they’re growing so quickly. But this documentary, I mean, it slaps you in the face if you do any type of apparel shopping. But one of our hosts, Kim Reuter, was on the Buzz a couple of weeks ago, and she had a great quote about fast fashion that I thought of right away as soon as I started watching the documentary. And she said, if you want cheap clothing, cheap clothing requires cheap supply chains. And cheap supply chains are rarely beautiful. It’s so true. And if you watch this and you see these supply chains, it’s definitely not beautiful at all.

(27:47):

And I love documentaries. We watch a lot of documentaries in our house because if you can’t see a dangerous dirty supply chain like this, you don’t know what’s behind the curtain. You almost pretend that it doesn’t exist. And here this, as far as this stuff goes, but once you see it and you see the impact that fast fashion has on the people that we literally just celebrated last week, it makes it impossible to look away. And a couple of things that really stuck out to me were some of the guests on the documentary, and I’ll need to look up their names. I, I was literally typing notes up like I’ll never remember I got to write this down. But one of the guests said, if you buy an item that costs very little coming in a way that’s too easy and it seems too good to be true, then there is someone in the supply chain that is not getting paid and that is not getting respected. That’s painful. Because a lot of the people in the supply chain that are not getting paid and that are not respected are women. They’re women of color in third world countries that don’t have a lot of other options. And that’s difficult for me to see a woman whose neck is being contracted because she’s carrying 150 pounds of leftover clothes. Another guest said from the beginning of the supply chain to the very end, we’re all being exploited by the same system. And then another one said, a hundred pairs of hands touch a garment before it reaches you, if only there were visibility and provenance into the garment workers and the retail workers. And if they could get respect, our relationship with clothes would be fundamentally different. And I believe that for sure. And I suppose really the only other thing, I mean, this company has done so many things bad,

Katherine Hintz (29:28):

so we haven’t even scratched the surface. I recommend everybody watch this because it could be an entire episode of a podcast to cover this.

Amanda Luton (29:37):

The effect that fast fashion and that exclusivity of a size and representation has on young girls really hit home for me. I have currently one teenager and one soon to be teenager as of less than two weeks from now. And of course, I was a teenage girl way back 150 years ago. I worked 15 years in retail. So everything that was in the documentary I’ve seen, I’ve been there, I’ve lived that and that feeling and the effect and Brandy Melville being so prevalent and growing so quickly on social media. We all know how impactful social media can be on teenage girls, what a terrible impact, what a terrible effect they’re having on this generation of girls that I thought was super body positive and really, really making up for what the nineties and the early two thousands did to us. It’s very discouraging to

May Kate Love (30:30):

Still there. Yeah,

Amanda Luton (30:31):

It really reminds me a lot of Abercrombie in the early two thousands, they would hire people, pretty girls that were shopping with their friends and stuff, but I hope that Brandy Melville can turn it around, can kind of have a resurgence like Abercrombie has in the last couple years. They’ve really turned things around. But I do think too, like Catherine said earlier, one of the biggest problems is that people are just buying so quickly the rigs so fast fashion doesn’t allow for anybody to feel like they have enough or, okay, I’ve bought this season’s worth of clothes. I’ll wait till the fall or whatever. It’s constant and we just have to buy less. That’s a simple solution, but it’s hard once you’ve been trained.

Katherine Hintz (31:12):

I saw a girl on TikTok this weekend, and she was talking about a lot of similar themes to this, and she said that what she does, she opens up her notes app and she pays links to everything she wants to buy, whether it’s skincare or clothing or a new sauce to make dinner with or whatever, things that are not necessities. And she puts them all on the list and she buys everything on the 30th of the month. So if she still wants it by the end of the month, then she can get within reason, of course. But I was like, wow, how many times do I just give into my impulses? And I’m like, oh, well that looked cute and I can return it. It’ll be fine. But that’s getting into the damages of all the returns we’re doing too. We could just go on and on. But Mary Kate, what do you think?

May Kate Love (31:59):

I love the 30th of the month. I don’t know why. I was like, well, what did she do in February? That’s how bad it is. Seriously, the impulse buying is way too easy. I love the shop app. You don’t even have to put in your credit card. It’s pretty much just type in a number and you’re good. But man, sometimes I wonder, should I just go back to all cash and then I would start thinking differently about my purchases and I wouldn’t be able to scroll the internet. But this is hard, right? Because we all fall into it. But the more and more aware that we are of some of these practices, and quite frankly, the more you think about things like capsule wardrobes, that makes sense to me and buying quality to have for multiple years, I feel like the more you learn to buy like that, the less you spend, even though you spend way more per piece. I mean, we all know that, right? You buy a quality piece, it lasts. So I love that

Amanda Luton (32:52):

You said you have to learn to buy like that. We have taught ourselves that we can buy things whenever we want to. It gets here in some cases, same day. Same day. You have to relearn that. It’s okay to make a list of what I do. I do a five by five every season. And so I have five categories. There’s five items, so five tops, five dresses, five accessories, whatever. And that’s how I try to shop. I try and shop, yeah,

May Kate Love (33:18):

That’s Smart.

Amanda Luton (33:19):

What I really want that season. Of course, do I stick to it? No. I mean, I do my best. I’m trying here. Okay. But you have to reteach yourself that these are not just expendable commodities. That’s what fast fashion has taught us is that you can buy it as quickly as you discard it, that it turns around really quickly and it’s just trash. It’s no big deal. You can donate it, you donate it, feel better about yourself, and then you see it washing up on the beaches of Ghana. It’s terrible. We have to teach ourselves what’s really important and how those purchases and those choices that we make really affect supply chain around the world.

May Kate Love (33:59):

Okay, we’re going to 180 and we’re going to go into our new segment that we’re testing out called our recommendations. We should probably come up with a better name. Well,

Katherine Hintz (34:06):

Good. Definitely next time we’ll have a clever,

May Kate Love (34:11):

But this is really our section of like, Hey, we read the internet so you don’t have to, and here’s some of our favorites that are coming through that we want you to know about. And again, this is a lot around kind of some marketing tactics, but it also poses in general business and sometimes supply chain is our focus. So I’m going to kick us off first with one of my favorite newsletters that I’ve recently subscribed to probably about six or seven months ago. It’s called Superhuman ai, and really what it is is just simply a newsletter that teaches you how to use AI better. It also gives me the latest in AI news, and I find that intriguing, but I probably use it most for figuring out new ways to use ai. So I pay for chat, GBT, I’m a chat GBT user. I think there was a stat in here that said roughly 20% of Americans say they’re using chat GBT at work.

(34:57):

We know that’s only going to go up, right? It already keeps going up. But an example of something I love in this newsletter is this section called Prompt of the Day. And so I read this section every day, and it gives me a different way to prompt really any ai. It doesn’t have to be chat, GBT, it can be any AI tool that you’re using, and it just allows you to think a little bit differently in how you prompt the tool. So one of these that I loved, if you’re out there and you’re in sales, is this prompt that says, okay, give me content to start a conversation with a new connection on LinkedIn by sharing recent industry news articles or asking about their latest professional achievement. Start the dialogue on a positive and engaging note. Keep the tone conversational and limit the words to 100.

(35:38):

So I have never thought about, I do those types of outreaches all the time, and I had never thought about using AI to help the conversation’s still mine, but I’m using AI to cut down my research time, quite frankly, to reach out to that person. So I love that prompt. It’s just an example, something that you can find in superhuman ai. And they always outline other AI like add-on tools. There’s one that helps you review resumes based on the criteria you wrote. There’s always ones with turning data into charts, and there’s always different tools for that too. So one of my favorite newsletters definitely suggest subscribing to that one. I think next we have, Amanda has a recommendation on a podcast. Yes. In addition to supply chain. Now,

Amanda Luton (36:25):

I know obviously, yeah, probably comes as no surprise that I listen to a lot of podcasts. I’ve replaced music in my car with podcasts

May Kate Love (36:35):

Podcast.

Amanda Luton (36:36):

Yeah, I love it. It’s the way that I love to consume content. But if you want to listen to a great marketing podcast, marketing millennials is one of my favorite. There are a million marketing podcasts, but this one strikes such a good balance between having some fun and not taking yourself too seriously, but also really actionable advice, really great ideas, really good guests and information that they’re sharing. They’ve been podcasting since 2020 and are on episode 2 53, I think, which Scott always says, nobody cares at all about how many podcasts you produced unless you’re the person producing feel. In my bones. I feel every 1,270 supply chain now podcasting. But they interview a lot of marketing leaders. They just recently had a two episode series, I guess, with the director of marketing at Meta Allbirds, HubSpot, Ali Pop. There’s a lot of household names, and they’re interviewing their marketers, unpacking lessons learned marketing solutions. And their episodes are not terribly long, all less than an hour, most of them, probably about 45 minutes to an hour. But I just think they’re really great. A couple of really good ones to look out for. Why does everybody want a Stanley Toler about it? Also, the king of Hot Sauce, the Mastermind behind Sriracha’s 5 billion Empire. So just some really interesting topics that, yes, you’re listening to a business podcast, but it doesn’t sound like you’re listening to a presentation. Yeah,

May Kate Love (38:03):

There’s a lot of stories in there. Right, right. Love that. I’m also a consumer of many podcasts, so I’m always trying out new ones. Did we have any other recommendations?

Katherine Hintz (38:13):

Yeah, I have two. One of them is the Spotify playlist Daily Drive. So if you don’t have Spotify, I’m so sorry. But this my Go-to, they created it, I guess with a commuter in mind as someone that works fully remotely. I kind of use it as my slow entry way to the workday. I guess the whole playlist is normally anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours and 15 minutes, but it takes all of your top playing songs and that it’ll also add in an episode of the Daily, an episode of CNN’s Five Things. So you can kind of catch up on what’s going on with the world around you, but also be able to listen to your favorite music and drink your coffee and be like, okay, I’m ready to work. I’m getting into it.

Amanda Luton (39:02):

I got to write this down. I love this. I listen to it.

Katherine Hintz (39:06):

Like I said, probably every morning especially, I think it’s very important to stay on top of the news, but I cannot just sit and listen to hours of the news on end. So the fact that it’s three fun songs and then a short episode, and they’ll put in a pop culture podcast or an NPRs music podcast, so that’s really helpful. And then unrelated.

May Kate Love (39:27):

I love that.

Katherine Hintz (39:28):

I really like it, and it’s a great kind of way to get a holistic view of what’s going on, whether it’s global conflict or something going on with licensing, with branding, just everything. And then we have a user that’s asking for the marketing podcast. It’s called The Marketing Millennial, along with Giving up Amazon. I gave up TikTok earlier in the year and very brave,

May Kate Love (39:53):

Very brave,

Katherine Hintz (39:55):

It was a learning opportunity. I will say. I found a loophole and was watching a lot of Instagram reels

May Kate Love (40:01):

Reel feel

Katherine Hintz (40:02):

As cool, though I didn’t feel as cool,

(40:05):

But I feel like sometimes my brain is just rotting away with all of the content that I consume, whether it’s on TikTok or reality tv. So I started listening to this podcast called Philosophize This, and if you’re someone who really likes philosophy or psychology or ethics, and that more, not abstract thinking, but if you really want something to engage your mind in a deeper way, especially if you start at the very beginning, it’s an entry-level podcast. So I don’t know anything about philosophy, but it definitely is kind of, I’m someone that at times will miss being in school, and I think a lot about whether I want to go and get another master’s degree or get a certificate. So this kind of feeds my academic hunger for being able to contemplate something bigger than myself while I’m on a walk or while I’m driving somewhere. So it’s a very interesting podcast, and it’s not hard to understand if you’re not a pro at philosophy. I

May Kate Love (41:00):

Not, I love that scratching, that itch that you have for that kind of way to think differently and step out of your day to day.

Amanda Luton (41:08):

I love that. I totally can relate to the brain rot too.

May Kate Love (41:12):

Brain rot.

Amanda Luton (41:13):

I read a lot of books and I’ll read a lot on my Kindle, and that’s after kind of a beachy read or something trashy. I’m like, okay, I got to pull up something.

May Kate Love (41:21):

I do the same. I missed it.

Amanda Luton (41:23):

The literature.

May Kate Love (41:25):

Yeah, I think that’s the right way to do it.

Katherine Hintz (41:28):

You have to have your vegetables and your dessert. Totally.

May Kate Love (41:32):

Well balance. Well, this was a super fun format, I think. So we went through the latest marketing news, and then we did our new section called Our Recommendation. So we’d love to hear from you what you thought of the show of our first annual marketing edition, and we will wrap it up from here. I don’t know Amanda or Catherine, do you have any final words?

Amanda Luton (41:55):

This was a lot of fun. Thanks for leading us, Mary Kate. I know being in the driver’s seat is not easy, so wow,

May Kate Love (42:03):

Scott. I’ve got a larger appreciation for what you do.

Amanda Luton (42:07):

Yeah. Doesn’t everybody,

Katherine Hintz (42:09):

the three, that picture of your kids waiting for you to come home, except for Scott coming back from Gardner, we’re like,

May Kate Love (42:15):

Yes. Yeah, we’re the three kids now. That’s right. We took their spot. That’s so funny.

Amanda Luton (42:20):

No, you’re giving him a run for his money. Mary Kay, you great

May Kate Love (42:23):

Job. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, this was so much fun with you all. Thanks again to everyone for listening to The Marketing Buzz this week, and we hope to see you again soon.

Amanda Luton (42:32):

Bye everyone.

Intro/Outro (42:35):

Thanks for being a part of our supply chain now community. Check out all of our programming@supplychainnow.com and make sure you subscribe to Supply Chain now, anywhere you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time on Supply Chain. Now.