3 Years Later: Catching Up With Brian Rappaport, Founder of Quan Media Group, The Power of Collaboration in the Advertising Industry

00:00 Tim Rowe Welcome to Out of Home Insider, the first podcast for media and marketing executives that connects how offline attention drives conversion. My name is Tim Rowe, and for the past three years, I've been interviewing guests about their unique insights, bridging this misunderstood and undervalued opportunity for brands to create alchemy in the real world. Today's guest is Brian Rappaport, founder and CEO of Quan Media Group. Brian opens up the hood on what it's like working with some of the hottest brands in the world like GoPuff, Zelle, Bombas, and Tubi. We talk about how brands are better positioned today than maybe ever before to stay true to their identity not only as they scale, but at scale, and how to do that by finding the right independent partners to collaborate with. I share a story in the first few minutes of the conversation about how I grabbed a bottle of water the other day and instantly thought to myself, this feels like a brand Quan should be working with. And when I text Brian a picture of the bottle with a note that they seem like a great fit for Quan, his reply was, that's funny, we're actually already working with them. And I want to call that out because it's significant. It's one thing to sell advertising to brands, it's another to be a brand yourself. So that's a big idea I'd like you to consider during this conversation. How are you building your brand? Do people think of you when they pick up a bottle of water? How top of mind are you for the people you want to be top of mind to? What are you doing today to reinforce your brand, what you stand for, and who you serve? Something to think about. And if you want to stay up to date with everything that's on my personal radar, then head on over to ohinsiderdaily.com and subscribe to our daily newsletter. Read what I'm reading, listen to what I'm listening to and watch what I'm watching to stay ahead of the curve. Go to ohinsiderdaily.com, click curated newsfeed for your executive daily battle plan.

01:58 Tim Rowe Without further ado, let's go. Welcome everybody to the Out of Home Insider Show, a podcast like no other, hosted by the

02:07 Intro Music one and only Tim Rowe. Get ready to have some knowledge dropped on you and to be entertained because nothing's more valuable than food for your brain. So sit back, relax.

02:18 Tim Rowe We're about to dive in as the best industry podcast is about to begin. Brian Rappaport, welcome back. We were just catching up in the lead up that the only other person to have ever appeared on the podcast is of course the legend and our friend Andrea Henley. So it's an honor to have you back a third time and we're going to catch up on a lot of things. We're going to catch up on the last three years of what Quan's been up to, highlight some of the brands and campaigns specifically. I want to double click and deep dive into the indie agency collaboration that I know has been a big focus of yours at Quan. Measurement is a big topic of conversation. You have a unique perspective on that.

03:03 Brian Rappaport So I'm excited to dive in and talk about all of these things here, but welcome back. Yeah I'm excited to be back. This is exciting. I kind of feel like you know, the Steve Martins and Alec Baldwin's on SNL is like in the five, six, seven timers club. So it's always good to have them come to hopefully touch on some things that I haven't the previous

03:21 Tim Rowe two times I was on your show. Well I looked back the first time that we connected it was right before COVID. It was like the week that the world was shutting down. And that episode came out March 27th, 2020. So it's crazy to think it's already been three years since we first caught up. For folks that maybe don't know you already or aren't familiar with Quan, give them like the 60 second commercial.

03:44 Brian Rappaport Get them up to speed. Yeah I mean Quan is what we like to call an out of home concierge. We work with brands of all shapes and sizes and all budget levels. We don't care about how big you are, how often you buy out of home, how you buy out of home. If you're only running in the channel once a year, once a week, it doesn't really matter. We are experts in the channel and in the space. We buy and plan across the country and internationally. And we do it all from billboards and bus shelters and subway to 3D projections, painted walls, pop-up shops, integrations of music festivals and work with over 75 brands. A lot of fun ones in there. Everyone ranging from Skims to GoPuff to Casper, so on and so forth. So yeah, it's been a fun three and a half years. It'll be our fourth year in July. We're a team of five spread out across the country, including I would say globally because we do have somebody over in the UK.

04:33 Tim Rowe So that is the elevator pitch on Quan and us. Great elevator pitch and got the opportunity to meet Ashley, the global Quan team in Nashville a couple of weeks back. So very exciting to see the growth again in such a short period of time. I texted you the other day because I was picking up a drink and I reached into the cooler at my convenience store and I pulled it out and I'd never purchased this product before. You were the first person I text because I said, this feels like a Quan brand and it turned out to be one that you were already working with. So I'd love to ask you this question of as the founder of an agency, you're seeing the leading edge of industry growth.

05:13 Brian Rappaport Where do you see the most growth coming from and what do you see as being the primary driver? I really do see growth coming from brands that either it's one of two things. One they're unfamiliar with out of home as a channel and are just kind of exploring it and are losing faith and trust in other channels, be it they're unhappy with meta. I don't really want to throw other channels into the bus, but they're just not happy with what they're getting, be it a cost situation, a measurement situation, etc. So they want to utilize out of home for the first time. They want to open it up as another channel for them. And then the second part of that are brands that are aware of out of home, but maybe aren't as educated as they should be and don't know how vast the channel is. And they don't know that out of home includes airports or they don't know that out of home includes incredible place based digital or programmatic digital or that it could be having a glass box truck with a pop up showroom, you know, drive around Williamsburg. And when brands start to get educated more on the things that you can do in the out of home space, they start to realize that and they start to allocate additional dollars in budget to all sorts of formats in the out of home space. And that's super exciting. So I think as digital out of home continues to expand, I think as out of home in general, along with measurement and ways to strategically use the channel in a hyperlocal, in a geo targeted way, continue to expand. I think that is where we're seeing growth. And it's an exciting time. I mean, the press is there. The trades have all of that information. And you know, AAA is constantly putting out fantastic pieces on the on the growth of the channel and how we are fully recovered coming out of the pandemic. And, you know, it's not propaganda. It's the truth. And it seems like every other week we're getting four, five, six brands, either legacy brands, brands that have done it before that are coming back after taking some time off from spending an out of home or new brands like the Lemon Perfect of the world that realize the value in out of homes, the channel and they want to spend it. Because it turns out you were working already with Lemon Perfect, I think, when I text you. Yeah, I mean, and they're just a fantastic brand. And, you know, why not out of home for them when, you know, the Philadelphia Eagles are making a Super Bowl run and their main spokesperson is Jalen Hurts and for the great out of home city and, you know, kind of reached out to them and said, hey, guys, like, have you considered utilizing out of home? This is a no brainer. And they they jumped at it. And now it's kind of like a part of their media mix. And they're also signing all sorts of amazing athletes, De'John De'Murray, et cetera, you know, to the brand. And I mean, it's amazing. So, yeah, it's a fun time to be in the out of home space. A lot of great shops, a lot of great agencies out there. And I think that we're all collectively seeing and feeling the growth, which is, you know, obviously, we don't need to get into negativity and like the economic structure. But like, that was our mantra. Vibes only. So it's encouraging based on, you know, where we are or where we think we're.

08:03 Tim Rowe And the education piece, you know, collaboration is a word I've got kind of titled across my screen here as an indicator, as a point for us to align this conversation to. But how is education really morphed into some of the collaboration? You're working with some agencies like Mischief and No Fixed Address. I was somebody that we've talked about in the past, you know, in the past on episodes. But you're doing more work with VaynerMedia and there's so many exciting companies. How have you used education to help enable collaboration?

08:38 Brian Rappaport Well, it's kind of great. I mean, we went up to see a partner last week in Boston and simply kind of gave them not a Quan 101, but like a hybrid Quan out of home 101 and sat in a room, you know, with some really great marketers and some great media buyers that are very well versed in other channels, but self-admittedly not well versed in out of home and took them through, you know, what out of home is and what you can kind of do in the space and, you know, the innovations in the out of home space, as well as like some fun case studies of things that we've done at Quan from Trigger Grill's farm on the side of the road to GoPuff's hand-painted double decker during Art Basel a few years ago. And you just looked around the room and saw from the reactions that it wasn't like I've been in a million luncheon lines. You could tell when people are like, all right, on the phone, on the laptop, like, get me out of here. But like the questions were there, the excitement was there. And then coming out of that meeting, like so many additional emails came, including a few briefs. So I think for us, it's kind of finding we're not, you know, in the business of like just picking and working with like other independent agencies for the sake of like revenue and billing. I think for us, it's kind of finding like-minded partners who have the same types of clients that we do that think the same way that we do that have the same goals as a shop that we do and really finding ways to work with them in whatever way they feel the most comfortable. If they want to use this one time or work with us on one specific project, that is totally fine. And then if they want to make us a part of their regular, you know, media mix with their clients and position us as a partner in whatever way, you know, we're open to that, too. But I think like the fun part is that there are so many really great independent shops out there, both out of home specialists and then, you know, full service agencies. And I think that we need to have more collaboration between agencies and less competition between agencies.

10:20 Tim Rowe Amen. I couldn't agree more. There's enough for everybody to eat out there. Curious. What were some of the hardest questions that were asked in that room? Surely there were lots of ideas and exciting opportunities.

10:32 Brian Rappaport But what were the hard questions? How do we project into the Empire State Building? And, you know, it's a hard question, especially when you see like what Giant Spoon did with Stranger Things, you know, last year, they did it. But like, that's like a specialty case. Like, you know, harder questions like, again, getting into out of home measurement and getting super granular about that and really drilling down and asking, you know, how could we prove effectiveness to, you know, to our brands, which is a whole other conversation. But again, like the harder questions like, you know, can we do something in two days, which we can within reason. Digital out of home. Love you. But yeah, I mean, you know, questions around measurement, around like kind of stunty things that are not realistic. We've had, it wasn't necessarily Wednesday, but we've had brands ask, like, could we potentially wrap or brand the GW bridge? Like a real question. And like, you can't do that. You can do anything in out of home. 90% of the things in out of home are doable. You can't do that. I worked with a fantastic R&D team at Media Hub for many years in my report days. And like some of the concepts that came from them were just incredibly mind

11:39 Brian Rappaport blowing. And maybe like 2% were just like, no, there's like a hard net. But there's a lot. We can't wrap.

11:51 Brian Rappaport Can't wrap the GW bridge. Yeah. Can't project onto the Empire State Building.

11:55 Brian Rappaport Although I guess you can, but like within reason. So, yeah, those types of things.

11:59 Tim Rowe Well, that's exciting. I think that that's promising. We'll talk about measurement a little bit here, but I'd love to kind of get your sense on who has your attention. Who do you think is doing it right? Maybe, you know, give someone their flowers, I think is what the kids say. But who's got your eye on it?

12:17 Brian Rappaport I mean, I'm going to give flowers again to like, I don't want to say competition, but like friendly competition or friends out there. Like, I don't know. I look at Rick Robinson and Project X and what they've done with Glossier this year. They've done a lot around, you know, retail openings and some just really incredible work, both internationally and over here as well. They wrapped these amazing box trucks with Agile Media who are incredible in that space. And that was kind of like all over the place. You saw them. So they're fantastic. I mean, an incredible campaign that just ran out of milk money. Intermissy with JLo. Like it's all over New York. I can't go anywhere in New York without seeing Sam and his team's work. So, I mean, you know, being a fan of the celebrity brand space and the fashion space, I think, you know, that that's fantastic. I mean, I give props to Rapport. I mean, my old shop, like they won a great award at the Ad Club out of home now event this past December for their work with the NBA last playoffs. I mean, it just seems like every every other week they have some great stuff coming out, whether they're doing work with Lego, et cetera. So, I mean, there's just some really great out of home specialists out there that it's nice because, like you said before, there's more than enough to eat. But it's just really awesome to look around and see some great work coming out of other shops. And then, of course, if you look at other full service agencies, I mean, the work that Mischief and No Fixed Address did with Tinder and like that whole campaign that's out there now is just utterly incredible. I mean, you can't help but but not, you know, not see that. So I always give credit to them. I think they do, you know, a pretty fantastic job. And at the same thing, same time, like our friends at Vayner just around the new fronts now with Tubi and really doing really strong events. So it's a campaign like that. It's great. Yeah. I mean, Tubi wanted to be everywhere in New York City, across the new fronts. And this is like where our digital out of home really like I don't need to like tout it anymore, but like focused on major obviously when you're doing the new front campaign, you want to be in front of every major agency. You want to be where the new fronts are at convene. So like, you know, whether it's dominating Fulton Center and World Trade in the Oculus, whether you are on Firefly Digital Taxi Tops, you know, geo-targeted to the specific agencies and areas where the new fronts are taking place, whether you're utilizing Captivate to be in the elevator screens of the major holdcos. It was a fully comprehensive plan that included so many digital touch points. And those are the most fun out of home plans to work on because A, everyone gets a little bit of the pie. There's no favorites there. And B, you're really building that immersive, like strategic driven out of home campaign. And on top of it, it just goes to show you and shows people who are unfamiliar with out of home that it's not a four week buy. It's not an eight week buy. Like this is a one week strong, smart digital blitz that, you know, that that's the right way in certain instances to utilize out of home. So that was a real fun one. So I think I touched on gave flowers to, to a lot of people, but there's a lot of good work coming out there, both in the out of home side and media side in general.

15:07 Tim Rowe And we'll link to the Tubi campaign because the content I think was so uniquely specific. It wasn't just, you know, a great selection of digital formats. They really leverage some, some cheeky fun content. Can you just give the audience that maybe hasn't seen that?

15:24 Brian Rappaport Yeah. I mean, Miss Jip came up with these amazing, like short films that were like spoofs on like, you know, the media buyers, like trafficking the wrong creative and like being interrogated and things like that. And it was kind of great or like, you know, the RFP that went out late, whatever this case is. And it's such mischief work. They're just so good with things like that. And it's kind of, you know, it was, it was just so awesome. So like there were clips of that playing, you know, on full motion digital out of home. I mean, we got to use the Oculus screen, which is one of my favorite out of home placements in the world. I mean, it is essentially the length of a football field in the Oculus World Trade Center. And like it's just such a show stopping placement that if you ever get a chance to walk through there, it's kind of like, you can't miss it. But, you know, the ability to like run these amazing clips, you know, and great creative that would,

16:11 Tim Rowe that was derived for this campaign was just super fun. Yeah. Yeah. Now I love that campaign. And, and, you know, we'd talked a little bit at the beginning there about Lemon Perfect and how I instantly thought of you. You've done an incredible job of being very intentional about building a brand for Quan in such a short time that my, my gut reflex picking up a product was, wow, this looks like, looks like a brand that Brian will be working with. Who's a brand that you would love to work with that maybe you're not yet?

16:42 Brian Rappaport Yeah, I guess, you know, one that I love, that I just admire for a long time is Fanatics. I just love what Michael Rubin has built there. I think, as they merged the collectible world with obviously sports betting, fantasy sports, like it's just an incredible spaceship. And I mean, Michael Rubin's story in itself, I love self-made, incredible people. And his story is kind of amazing. So yeah, I mean, I would go with Fanatics at the same time. Like, I don't know, maybe they're competitors. I'm not really sure how it shakes out in, in the category, but I've loved DraftKings. I mean, I'm a major sports fan. I would love to get an opportunity to work with them. Yeah. I mean, those are two that I just kind of like, truly admire with respect to whomever they're currently working with, you know, just if you're putting me on the spot, those are two that I truly love.

17:29 Tim Rowe Well, I appreciate you being willing to be put on the spot and answering it so freefully. I think that those would be two brands I would look at and go, Oh, yeah, I think that Brian's probably working with them. Some of those hard questions in the, in the room in Boston that you spoke about one that you touched on there was, was measurement. And when we were catching up kind of in advance for this conversation, there is so much focus, even, even obviously for myself, I developed a lot of content around measurement, around attribution, but you said something that I scribbled across the page and I said, gosh, we need to just talk about that more. And it was on delight. Being a measure of success. Give us, give us that thesis. What,

18:10 Brian Rappaport what does that mean? I mean, I just think that like, I think we're getting there. I just, I feel like everyone says the same thing over and over again, that we need just like one universal system of measurement. I mean, I love what Geopath is doing and what they've done and I appreciate it and respect it. And I know we've spoken about like opportunity to see in the past and Ana and her team, you know, are doing a lot around that. But I just think that there needs to be a little bit more of a refined way to measure the impact of out of home. Having said that, there are some great ways to tell the story of if out of home is working. And when you work collaboratively with a brand, if a brand internally is doing their own thing, whether they have vanity URLs, whether, you know, they're, they're, they're tracking sales lift. Like that's great in tandem with what, you know, we all could be doing on the buy side. I mean, there are great companies out there. You have M4 for amazing brand lift studies. You have reveal for, for additional measurement. I mean, there, there's so many, obviously blue, by and quorum on the mobile retargeting side. So there's so many different things that you can kind of offer up, you know, brands that you work with. And they, I think for us, one thing that we've done a lot of, which is kind of cool is cause a lift analysis where we take historical sales data from a brand that we're working with and kind of measure or form a hypothesis of how adding out of home into their media mix led to whatever those KPIs are that you're trying to understand, whether it's an increase in site visitations, store traffic, et cetera. And, you know, it's kind of nice cause it does tell a story. It works for early stage growth brands. It works for later stage brands, but it's a nice way to kind of understand with a layer of statistical significance, like if out of home worked, I mean, for larger brands that spend a lot, it's kind of great to do the web attribution dash and pixeling different sites and understand offline to online conversion and Hey, did you know, how many people walked by my link kiosks, you know, in the East village versus how many people walk by and converted my dedicated wild postings all throughout Williamsburg and understanding what, what, you know, tactics are performing better than others. And then optimizing later campaigns to kind of double down on what you've seen success. And, and, you know, brand live studies as well. I mean, very top of the funnel, but if you're running a multi-market campaign and if there is a brand that's spending pretty heavily and out of home, like it's important to understand intent and awareness and, you know, competitors and so on and so forth. And to be able to get a really in-depth, uh, deep look at brand awareness throughout the course of like our very robust out of home campaign, you know, tells you something. So, I mean, and that's not even getting into like, kind of like, you know, I said blue by and mobile retargeting this flow code that does these incredible vanity URL codes. Yeah. Like flow code. I love like, they're fantastic. I mean, sure. There's no true way to measure gorilla wild postings. Everyone in the group in the out of home world loves gorilla wild postings. You have everyone from, you know, coach to the hottest DBC brands, but like, let's be honest, they're moving weekly and not in the same place. It's kind of hard to understand the fact that this like, you've got a flow code designed. If you're a brand and you have them on your gorilla wild postings and like, to a degree, you could understand if people are engaging with them, if they are actually taking action and going to a site. Um, and that's kind of awesome. So I do think that like from 10 years ago, we have come so far as an industry in terms of out of home measurement, ROI, et cetera. Um, the job to be done is just, I think having one universal like everyone on the same page. This is how we are measuring out of home. This is the process that we are taking. This is how often we are coming out with new data or, you know, new numbers, et cetera. Um, yeah. And I mean, just kind of going from there, but I think we're getting in the right direction. Um, and I'm excited about it.

21:38 Tim Rowe And on the other end of the spectrum, you have just, Hey, you made the brand's life easier. You helped them do some pretty cool shit and they're happy.

21:47 Brian Rappaport And that's the measure of success is they had a good experience. I mean, awareness campaigns are the best thing in the world, by the way. Like I'm not going to sit here like seven out of 10, but then there's that three. But like when you, when, when you make a brand happy, when there's a brand out there right now and like that, that out of home just makes them happy, but also is just accomplishing the goal they have as a brand. And it's kind of like not to go off on a tangent, but we just worked with bombas. It's in ad week. So it just launched this week on a really strong campaign. They're a hun, they donate socks for every pair of bought. And for their a hundred, I think it's a hundred million, their a hundred million, you know, sock donation. They, they launched this campaign across New York city with facts around the stigma of homelessness and different people going through homelessness. Like they ran basically a brand campaign, but not a brand campaign. It was more like celebrating or not celebrating, but bringing awareness to this very important social cause through out of home, because there's no better visual medium out there than out of home. And if you walk down and know how so how Williamsburg Bushwick, you're in the subway, like you should be seeing these messages for the next four weeks. But like going into mama's office this past week and chatting with the team and kind of celebrating the launch of this pretty, pretty monumental campaign for them and seeing how happy they were and how excited they were. I don't know. It just, there's not enough of that in out of home, I don't think. And you can't tell a client to celebrate successes and happiness. But like, when you, when you have a client like that and a brand like that, that truly like makes you feel special for like helping them launch such an important campaign. Everyone wants to be complimented at some point. So like making brands happy and seeing how in love they are with out of home, like that was, that was pretty sick.

23:28 Tim Rowe And I think that that's a takeaway that we can all apply to lots of parts of our life. So thank you for sharing that. No, of course. In recent years, especially coming out of COVID non-traditional experiential activations have gained a lot of traction. What, what are some of the key factors that you're seeing contributing to the growth specifically of the non-traditional out of home?

23:52 Brian Rappaport I mean, we're back. Like we are back with respect to the pandemic and, and anything horrible that people went through with that. Like we're back and events are back and whether it's a Lollapalooza or Coachella or, you know, Governor's bowl or at the same time, South by Art Basel, all of these amazing events, like we have a brand that's, that's running something in Cannes, which is going to be kind of sick to see in person in, in, you know, month, but like these events are back. And I think that, that year and a half that, that either things were completely shut down or at half capacity, like brands realize like the true way coming out of this to really reach consumers, like in an uncluttered environment, in a one to one contactful way is, is by having these immersive, incredible, engaging activations and whether that means you're holding, opening a brick and mortar store in Soho. So you do a branded food truck that's parked outside there for the weekend, you know, opening, or you are at Gugball in New York and you're a brand new beverage brand and you decide to build a giant tent and give out free branded sunglasses and swag while also giving out free, free, like beverages. There's no better way to connect with consumers. And that's the real fun part of out of home, you know, and getting to work with really great partners in the experience, in the experiential space, like a city of mentions, like to help bring some of these brand ideas to life, like it's, it's the best. So I do think that like, you know, this is a segment of out of home that we should be paying more attention to. I'm hoping that we'll talk more about it. Oh, AAA next year. But like the experiential non-traditional space is super fun. There's a lot of great stuff coming out of it. Um, you know, and, and I'm excited to, you know, see kind of what's next. Again, you go to a music festival and sure, it's great to hear the artists perform, but like if you're in the out of home world or in the advertising world, you kind of want to walk around and see what brands have like pop-up activations and what they got going on there. If anything, you kind of get good ideas for your brands and then you get exposed to brands you may have never heard of before.

25:44 Tim Rowe Yeah, I love that. And, and I'm sure there's potentially even ways to do it that aren't necessarily going to break the bank that could be scrappy and, and still very engaging.

25:55 Brian Rappaport Oh, I mean, we did a coffee card for a brand opening up a brick and mortar location in New York city in October. It was a one weekend coffee card. And it was, you know, not to give away costs, but it was below 25 K for like a weekend and branded looked great. You know, cappuccinos, espressos, all that good stuff. But it was kind of like, it really adds a little bit more to what you're doing. And like, yeah, the bottom line is that you don't need to spend a million dollars on an activation. Like sure you can and go wild. And I think it was like four or five years ago that like literally HBO created a real life West world at South by, and apparently the price tag on that was like insane as it should be. So you can go to that end of the medium and go wild, but you know, you could do something that really just people like free stuff. So if you leave running, it's very, you know, shout outs to like also something as simple as the circuit wraps that that are out in the Hamptons Montauk and LA and et cetera, like they weave sampling in, they weave chartered rides in like that is considered an activation and something that's pretty cool. So this is the time of year where like, Hey, you want to reach people out in the Hamptons and Montauk where there's really no out of home other than, you know, there's a few great vehicular options, but like go ahead and like wrap circuits and sample some products and do some

27:07 Tim Rowe cool things. So. Maybe there's somebody listening that is interested in kind of wants to explore this. How do you, how do you recommend approaching and kind of managing the moving parts to ensure a seamless activation?

27:20 Brian Rappaport Yeah, you have to have, there are a bunch of good partners in the experiential space. You know, everyone from I said city of Hentons, but to be fair, like other ones from like, you know, be the machine. There are like other really great partners out there that you can work with. You know, not, not to be put on the spot, like I, there's a handful of others, but like you find the right partner. And like when we sit down, I'll use city because we do work with them a lot. I'm like, you bring to them what, what your client is looking to do and it really is, is up to the brand, how involved they want to get. They can go ahead and handle everything soup to nuts, getting a permit, brand ambassadors, building, whatever needs to be built, et cetera. And, and that's it. Or a brand can be very involved and they could bring their own brand ambassadors, provide product, be there on site, like get involved. And like city will take a step back and just weave themselves in, in whatever way the brand feels most comfortable. So we've done things from literally building farms in the sides of the road to having coffee carts to, you know, um, hosting, you know, movie nights in parks in San Diego for a brand where, you know, there's photo opportunities and free popcorn, et cetera. And like, it's so many different layers and levels of like experiential and how involved the brand has gotten, but like the best part is when you have a great partner, like they're going to make your life very easy because experiential can be a very convoluted and full of layers type of, uh, you know, type of deal. Another good partner, now that I remembered is also roaming or roaming hunger. They're based out in LA, but they specialize as you would expect in food trucks and things like that. They're awesome to work with too. So, um, just trying to give flowers to everyone as you would say today.

28:51 Tim Rowe That's what this is for, right? This, this is a platform built for enabling obviously an amazing global community that's just as passionate about these things as we are. So, I appreciate you being so generous with that. Maybe, uh, stepping into some of the, the little, the hairier topics. And this is, it's funny because I guess maybe let me take a step back and I'll give the, I'll give the audience a story here. So it's 2020. I've just stepped into a role as business development director, uh, for a region of the Adams outdoor plant in Eastern Pennsylvania. And I've got a little podcast. I'm figuring it out, right? And I, I have a conversation with, uh, someone who's now become a friend, but, uh, at the time I just knew Brian Rappaport as the founder of Quan and he was coming from rapport worldwide. And honestly, I was like, does this last name have to do with report? Like, is this, who is Brian Rappaport? Uh, and obviously we've come to, to, to know each other pretty well now, but the, the ongoing debate about going brand direct, right? We had this opportunity to connect, to connect in a moment of time where I was in that seat. I was being encouraged by sales leadership to go brand direct. But at the same time I'm coming off of a great conversation with someone who I just met, who's the founder of an agency. And I'm thinking, I want to work with Brian. I want to be collaborative. I, I see more opportunity by being an engaged partner and helping bring him great ideas and his brand's great ideas. Can we talk about this? Can we talk about the very taboo going brand direct conversation?

30:33 Brian Rappaport Yeah. I posted something on LinkedIn the other week and like, I don't think I've ever had like a controversial post. It's usually pretty, pretty straightforward and nice or a real personal anecdotal story. But I got a little backlash because I used to get very possessive when I worked in the holding company world, you know, when a media partner would go brand direct or go agency direct, like let's say I'm working with media hub and we're the out of home partner for media hub. Like we're working collaboratively on a client, but then a media partner would call a planning team at media hub and kind of cut us out. And then, you know, the planning team at media hub would come back to us and be like, well, why is this media partner reaching out to us? Shouldn't you be handling that relationship? And it would just get, get annoying. And I do feel like the one thing that we can do better on the buy side is responding to media partner emails, acknowledging receipt, level setting with where they are with campaigns. And if they don't make a campaign, here's why. And if you, you know, et cetera, like I think that like, if someone takes the time to put together an RFP, you owe them that answer, whether it's something they want to hear or they don't, um, you know, so on and so forth. So I do feel that, like, I do feel that ultimately, you know, you should be working. If you know that there is a brand coming out of an agency or out of a shop, you should be working with that agency or shop. If you have a great idea for them, be, be aggressive, reach out to that buyer, reach out to the CEO. If the buyer doesn't get back to you, then go higher, go to their AMD, go to their supervisor. But yeah, I think that what I learned from my post a few weeks ago and looking, taking a step back and thinking in hindsight is like, you know, I, everyone wants business and everyone's pushing, but like you should be working more with the agency partner than, than trying to like go for those, those dollars. I think there's better, better chance of success that way than like going brand direct. Now it's a little bit different when you get on the specialist side, because I think when you're in the hold call, like everyone has their AORs and like these are your clients, like, you know, these are the clients. Like there, I'll be very upfront. Like we have some brands that we work with that, that do their out of home buying in unique ways. Some, you know, the majority will use us and like where they're out of home partner. There are some that do some in-house, they have direct relationships with an out front, they have direct relationships with the JC Deco and they want to keep that, but they want us to work with all other media partners. We don't ask any questions. We're totally fine. Then there are other, other clients that we've worked with that, you know, have done some of their buying with one shop and some of us, we actually split it with another shop and we're fine with that too. What really frustrates, I think in the cases where like the buying is done a little bit in-house, a little bit with a partner, if a media partner wants to go and reach out to that, that client, I get it. Like we don't own that relationship solely. And like I have to play devil's advocate and be fair. What bothers me, and I think anyone on my side of the business would say this is if we have one or we are constantly working with a brand that maybe somebody at a media partner worked with directly three, four years ago, and we've clearly been working with that brand for, I don't know, one, two, three years, done multiple campaigns. And that person who initiated the conversation or initiated the relationship continues to send the options and ideas to that client over and over again, when clearly like the relationship has been moved over to us where they're out of home partner, they've either gotten bigger, they needed a partner, they need guidance. And we obviously have a national AE. And I think that, you know, that is where, and to be fair, some media partners have done a great job of this and others still have not figured it out where the media partner and the higher ups need to figure out internally how best to solve that. That's not on our, on our end as a buyer. And on the agency side, nobody here on the agency side wants to take away anyone's business. Like we are, when I went a piece of business that was being bought locally, my first thought is like, yeah, I feel bad for like the local AE who was on that business if they're going to get, you know, supplemented by my AE. But in fairness, at the same time, that's not my issue to solve. That is the media partner's issue to solve in regards to commission and how it's handled. And I said this a long time ago. I said this to a media partner when I first started bringing in direct business to rapport, I, I, as I was kind of learning the tricks of the trade and understanding there were some unhappy AEs out there, you know, who were, who were on the local side, I said to one of the higher ups at a company, I said, if you want to give me 20 different reps for 20 different brands that I'm bringing in, I will gladly do that because I don't want to take anyone's business away or their commission away. I said, but I can't worry about how you guys are figuring that out internally. So that's a very long-winded answer. I think the short answer is like work with your agency partners, work with your specialists, don't go brand direct unless of course, that brand is buying their out of home in a hybrid way. Or if like you have a personal relationship with a client, if like, you know, your cousin's over there working at Roman and like you call up Roman, I'm not going to get upset and be like, are you kidding? And you're like, well, my cousin's there. He like wanted me to come in and meet like, I'm confident enough in our relationship with Roman as a client. Like all good. I totally get it. It's a relationship driven industry. Go take your meeting. Let me know how it goes. Um, and we'll kind of go from there. So I'll answer any questions very bluntly how I feel about this, but hopefully that touched on like every potential scenario in the going direct

35:31 Tim Rowe non-going direct working with the agency world that that it kind of could be. Let me ask a follow-up question to that piece right there. And I'm sure results may vary, right? The Brian Rappaport is probably going to handle it different than somebody else at the next agency. So this may not always be the case, but let's say I have a cousin at Roman and I do want to do want to go have that conversation. Do you, do I have to, should I let you know? Do you, like, does it depend kind of on our relationship? Like how do you, that that's a good question. Let's pretend it's me. I would appreciate it.

36:06 Brian Rappaport A text Brian, what's up? My, my cousin's at Roman on the growth team. Um, he got me a meeting. I'm not talking about rates or anything, but I'm going to go in there and just kind of tell them what I do. Wanted to give you a heads up. I read right back all good things. So much for the heads up. I appreciate it. They're good people. That's literally how I would respond. That's happened before where there's been brands that we work with where like someone has a friend there. Um, you know, one of my good friends when he was at intersection and I'll shout him out because he'll, he should be shouted out like Rob Levine used to do this all time. He would always think first for our brands. I would always think like what made the most sense for our brands when I was at rapport, when I was at Quan and he's very outgoing and friendly. So he would strike up relationships with some of these brands, whether he met them at outings, et cetera, and would give me a heads up and always would say like, Hey Brian, you know, I'm going to go and have a conversation, you know, with so and so we're not discussing rates, but this is a great idea. You can join if you want. Here's the time of the meeting, but I'll also recap on an email afterwards, what we discussed coming out of it and any next steps, like we can grow this business together. And I always appreciated that. And nine times out of 10, I didn't join the call. I trusted him. I was like, go for it. Like, let me know how it goes. And like, if there's a way for us to grow this business together, let's do that. And when media partners go that route, it just gives me the utmost respect, you know, more so than if, you know, you're kind of doing things the other way and taking the back channels. Like everyone wants that business, but there's like the right way to kind of get it, get it done. And it's why the buy side and the sale side need to be a little bit more unified in that approach when possible.

37:36 Tim Rowe And obviously every situation is going to vary, like, like you said, but yeah. Yeah. Shout out, Rob. That's bad ass because I think that's kind of what we're all looking for is, is, is partners who can help give us scale. You give a partner like Rob scale and access to brands that would otherwise be real. Right. And, and, and, and that's again, back to the theme of this conversation, collaboration. There are ways for us to work together that are win, win, win. It's a win for the brand. It's a win for you personally and your company. It's a win for the agency of off to win, win, win. I love those situations.

38:10 Brian Rappaport Yeah. I mean, I think that there are ways also on the specialist side and the agency side where like brands right now, collaboration is the name of the game. There's a lot of good shops out there and a lot of smart people out there. And why should you buy your out of home just to one person or do your planning through one person and give you business to one agency? There are certain brands out there now and it's not all the time in common. I'll be honest, but there are some brands that we work with that I've said earlier that split their out of home buying and planning with us and with another shop. And they give us clear directives as to what they want from us. And they give the other shop clear directives, what they want from them and they get a little bit of something that's like going to a buffet from everyone. And I'm not going to be greedy and say, I want you to do all of your out of home, buying and planning through us because I'm excited to work with said brand. But like, you know, that I think there's something to be said about that. Like I'm not out here trying to propose the brands that work with us to kind of split their out of home buying and planning. But like, you know, I think it kind of extends outside of the world of out of home where, I don't know, I'd love to see, I saw today in the trades that Uber is putting their business up for review. It'd be very interesting for Uber and I don't know that world of how those big pitches go to like bring in a few independents that work collaboratively together. And maybe they get certain channels from, you know, a great shop X, but they get out of home from a great shop B and they get creative from a great shop C. And then all of a sudden, like, you know, the holding companies are fantastic and there are amazing smart people there, but it's a unique way. And that's like one thing I would love to see in the future. And I don't know, it's a larger conversation and it's me going off on a tangent, but I think there is something to be said about finding two or three independent shops that work very well and collaboratively together and having them universally pitch, you know, for, for one of those major brands that normally would go to, you know, WPP, Omnicom, IPG, et cetera.

39:58 Tim Rowe Yeah. I love, I know Quan is the un-agency. I love the idea of the unhold co and it, I think it reflects that like it's how we buy stuff. It's how we, how we are is behave as consumers, right? We no longer just buy, you know, once upon a time I bought Sears t-shirts and Sears socks, right? Like, no, now I buy Bombas and I buy different brands and this is how I, this is how my life is assembled. Yeah. Why can't we work that way professionally as well? I love that. I agree. It's a lot out there. So, speaking of a lot out there, where do you stay plugged in? How do you stay kind of up to speed on things, you know, maybe outside of the industry trades, like what is on your radar and how do you stay in the know?

40:43 Brian Rappaport There is some, some really good newsletters out there. I mean, I'll just shout out, I don't know the names of every newsletter. So I'll shout out the people behind it. Cause if you Google them, common newsletter, you'll get it. Obviously my boy, Nick Sharma, love him fantastic growth marketing newsletter. And these are newsletters that don't skew to out of home only. So it's kind of good from an educational standpoint because all connected, holistic will help you. But Nick Sharma, Cody Plowker who is over at Jones road beauty puts out a great newsletter along with Eli Weiss who also is over there. He does a great job. Nate Rosen, it puts out a fantastic newsletter on CPG and packaged goods. So like brands are getting funding. If there's new, you know, brands coming out, like it's, it's an awesome read. And then celebrity packaged goods is another fantastic website. And Drew over there puts out an insane newsletter. That's like any celebrity brand collab every week highlighting everything that's kind of going on in that world. So, so those are a lot of really great newsletters. It'll end up filling up your inbox, but like it's a really good kind of like mix of non out of home specific information, information in addition to like your ad,

41:48 Tim Rowe we said ages, glossies, et cetera. It's kind of like that, that, that buffet, uh, that you were describing there, right? Like, yeah, take a little bit from this, a little bit from that, and get back to the thing. We got a nice full plate of, uh, a yummy things to eat. What predictions do you have next 12, 18 months? What do you see coming?

42:04 Brian Rappaport I think that like we're, we're positive here. I think the economy is going to get better. Um, that's not my prediction in out of home related, but with that, I think out of homes growth continues on an upward trajectory. And I think, I don't know, 10, 12%, like low double digit growth year over year, which is great. Um, I think we see a heavy recovery and we've already seen the heavy recovery in airport. Airport is back. I'm so, I've been bullish. Everyone should be buying airports. If you're a brand and you're buying a market airport should be immediately included. I think with that mass transit's going to come back, like it's already back for the most part, but I think we're going to start to really see it back to like being an instantaneous part of those big mess transit cities, the San Frans, DCs, New York, Chicago's that we saw before the pandemic. Um, you know, I think programatics again, are going to continue to trend upwards and take another tick tick up there. I think that we're going to see many more brands dive in. Um, and we're also going to see, you know, continued evolution, I think of, uh, smarter and digital cities. And by that, I mean, you see, you know, the conversion to a lot of digital shelters. J.C. Deco has their digital pillars coming in San Francisco. You look at like what Outfront's done with the transit system in New York with, you know, digital brand trans and digital car cards for Metro North and Long Island railroad. And, you know, I think it's so visually stunning and offers the ability for brands to be quick and truly connected. So, um, yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see a lot more of that. Infrastructures of cities kind of play to out of home strengths, but also obviously make cities a lot more appealing. So a lot of like short little bursts, I do think that like, we're going to see kind of a lot more dollars flowing to out of home. Um, I'm not supposed to say that cause cause that's what we do. But I just think that brands are going to get tired with other channels. And I just think it's going to like, it's going to be kind of like a breakthrough where all of a sudden everyone's going to be like, oh my God, like kind of coming out of the pandemic, we didn't expect things to be this good. And here we are again. So I think it's a good year per se for, for, for everyone, for the most part this year within the industry. But I think it's going, like I think the best is still yet to come.

44:06 Tim Rowe I see that iconic Apple 1984 commercial in my head, as you described that marketers who've been confined to this little, you know, box in our pockets, being able to free themselves into the real world and take advantage of the ultimate canvas.

44:24 Brian Rappaport Yeah. And I think a better universal measurement system within the next two years, I think that we have too many smart people between GeoPath, OAAA, and our industry as a whole, um, comb, et cetera. And I just think like universal out of home measurement that really like takes our channel and everyone's like, okay, like I think people already say, this is a legitimate great channel more than just awareness, but people really say like, wow, like they, they are here. So I'll put that one like 12, 12 to 24 months just to be realistic. But you know,

44:53 Tim Rowe I like it. I like it. I I'm 100% taking this last closing question from another great podcast called invest like the best. I heard the host ask it and I thought, wow, that might be the best closing question for a podcast that I've ever heard. What's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

45:15 Brian Rappaport The, this is, it's really good because it kind of comes before mother's day, but to tell this very quickly and be cognizant of time, I was walking on the street back in 2017 by my apartment and saw an old college friend who asked me if I was single. And I told her I was, and she said, I'm setting you up with my friend. Who's a matchmaker. Um, and I was like, I'm not paying for a matchmaking service. She's like, you don't have to, she's going to take care of you. Um, and it turns out that this woman, Lori Zaslow, who runs the matchmaking company project soulmate, which is somewhat famous, met with me and was an amazing person. And it's a good friend of mine now. And basically told me that she wanted to set me up on a bunch of dates and not, not charge me whatever her service charges for free. Um, and introduced me to a bunch of, you know, bunch, bunch of different people. And ultimately the fourth of four dates in one week introduced me to my wife, um, and set me up on a date with, with, with my wife. Um, when I've been looking for someone for a really long time and, um, you know, it's not really about the free it's, it's about more so like, she took the time to sit and have breakfast with me for an hour and let me explain to her what I was looking for in somebody to spend the rest of my life with. And, um, really like even the ones that didn't work out, like, she caught the type of person that I was and ultimately put me with the type of person that I was looking for. So I would say that, you know, um, that random friend who, who saw me on the street, she's not a good friend, but she's someone I see here and there. Um, and then Lori, who, who is, you know, a friend as well, like nicest things that, uh, people has ever, or that people ever did, um, you know, did for me. So yeah, hopefully that's a good answer. Not too sappy or cheesy.

46:52 Tim Rowe No, I think it's beautiful. It's pure. It's honest. Happy mother's day to all the mothers out there. Brian, this has been an incredible catch up. We won't wait nearly as long to do it next time. Again, we've got some predictions in here that we're going to have to come back and check. So I can't thank you enough for, for being here. Where do folks find you? How do they get in touch? Give them the Latin long on.

47:13 Brian Rappaport Yeah. Um, you can find me at be rappy 55 on Twitter. Fair warning, a lot of Yankees tweets, a lot of Nick's tweets, but I do mix them. Get out of home insights and marketing insights. So if you could deal with the rants, like definitely follow me there. Um, you know, quanmediagroup.com, all of our stuff is there. Same thing with Instagram. Brian at quanmediagroup.com. You shoot me an email. You'll hear back in two minutes. Um, unless I'm playing pickup, basketball or sleeping. Um, and that's really it. Um, but maybe next time, Tim, we're going to bring a client. Uh, we mixed this up next time and we, we have, or brand, I should say, um, and we have a fun conversation about why they love out of home.

47:48 Tim Rowe So we'll have to chat about that. Let's do that. We've got lots of folks hanging on bated breath. But the next one, if you found this to be helpful, please share it with somebody who could benefit as always. Make sure to smash that subscribe button. Brian, thank you again for being here.

48:02 Brian Rappaport Thanks again. Great to see you as always. You're the best.

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