Speaker 1Word of mouth is an idea in marketing that's more than a hundred years old, but it's always been the one thing we can't control. So what happens in the age of AI when word of mouth, this thing we can't control, becomes the only thing that counts? Hello and welcome to the CMO Show. My name is Mark Jones. Great to have you with us. The CMO Show is, of course, brought to you by Impact Institute in partnership with Adobe. My guest today is Hayley Saddleton. She is the country lead for marketing at Reddit here in Australia. It's the first role of its type at Reddit. And we sat down to talk about all things Reddit in marketing. A couple of things we spoke about, the validation economy. We spoke about the number of marketers on Reddit that are not on LinkedIn, which is interesting, and the number of decision makers that are not on LinkedIn, but they are on Reddit. We also talked about the way the community works and why this brand is so important, why it's really having its moment in the sun, so to speak, because, of course, everybody relies on two main things for their stream of consciousness that comes out of these LLMs. The LLMs are going to Reddit, of course. They're going to YouTube. And these are the main sources of human input that makes our experience with AI as rich as it is. So lots of things to talk about. A really great conversation. Let's get into it. Hayley, thanks for joining us. Hey, of course. Firstly, what's your role? Tell me about your job here.
Speaker 2Yes. So I am the country lead of business marketing for Reddit Australia and New Zealand. I have been here, I want to say, eight or nine months, but it feels a lot longer. My role is the first of its kind in Australia. It's basically to package up the story of Reddit in a way that's going to resonate with our marketers. For businesses. For people. For businesses. And for getting people to believe in the platform, which is why I joined.
Speaker 1So tell me about the difference between the consumer audience and the business audience. And how does that work? Because that's probably what most people are thinking straight away.
Speaker 2100%. Look, well, the reality is, is that they are the same audience. Your consumers are your business decision makers and vice versa. I think it's just the objectives become a little different. I think in the advertising space, the marketing space, are we going to grow their business? Are we going to grow their brand? You know, do we have the credentials, the right products and solutions that are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're actually going to, you know, they can take to their CEO and say, yep, Reddit, Reddit fits the bill. That's my role. But then on the consumer side, it does go hand in hand. So we have to make the platform really palatable, interesting. We do find that when we have advertising leaders and execs who are on Reddit, they just get it more. So my job, yes, is in one side, speaking to the industry around why it deserves, why Reddit deserves a spot in your media plan. But the other side is really getting you familiar with Reddit. It's a big, big challenge, yeah.
Speaker 1So then let's dive into the first big thing that I was keen to chat with you about today, of course, which is LLMs. And I really genuinely feel, and by the way, this is the second time we've had Reddit on the CMO show. So welcome to the club. Yeah, it's very exclusive. The thing about LLMs is that they, of course, as we all know, rely on Reddit and also YouTube. And I'm interested to know from your perspective what that's like, because there's a bit of a gap. There's a bit of pressure that comes with that. There's an editorial community that, in my view, is kind of sacrosanct. It's like we've got to look after these people and we've got to try not to, you know, let them, I'm going to say polluted, but it's probably not the right word. I know what you mean, yeah. But it's the commercial side that could actually sort of upset the vibe. Oh, completely. Yeah, so tell me about that. Completely upset. What's it like with this, I feel like it's a moment in the sun where everyone's like, hey, in a minute, LLMs are training on Reddit.
Speaker 2What's that like? Well, look, the reality is Reddit is actually a 21-year-old business, and 21 years ago, you say LLM to someone, they'd be like, well, what's that, you know? And so we were never, ever built for this LLM world. Yeah. But what's been so fascinating is the value of the information and the value of the conversations on Reddit has just become increasingly, increasingly more valuable. And I think one part of that is obviously AI, but the other part is that we are in the information era. We just have so much information around us. And I think whilst technology and information is really quick to change and evolve, human nature doesn't. And so people always want to go to other people to talk, to validate, to hear and share their lived experience. And so that's why Reddit data has always been really influential for, say, just teaching humans how to human. And now, of course, machines want to get their hands on it. You know, of course, they need that implicit information that they're not getting from any other sources. And so it's a really interesting time for Reddit. Because we were never built for this world, but we are now helping prop it up in a way. But I will say this. I think the Reddit community you feel familiar with, with any of the subreddits, are very - they can smell a brand. They can smell an appetizer. And they can smell if someone is hacking the system to appear in an LLM. And so at the end of the day, anyone who's wanting to explore Reddit and understand how they can influence AI discovery, you just need to create for the human. You cannot forget that people are on Reddit to learn how to navigate life.
Speaker 1They must be pretty sticky if they've been around for 20 years because the new go-to is obviously an LLM. It used to be you'd go to Google. And, of course, that's Google's existential challenge. We can deal with that another time. But the issue is that people would still go to Reddit as their first or second port of call for information. So how do you maintain that?
Speaker 2Well, we're actually seeing some new research out of a company in the States called Profound, which actually shows that when people are given an LLM response or an output, they still do go to places like Reddit to validate it. And so I think as long as those spaces are still rich and humming and there's enough incentive for people to keep using them, it will forever be a point of call, a sense check, a reality check for people making all different kinds of decisions, whether they are commercial or whether they are personal or what have you.
Speaker 1And what about on the business side? So a lot of our audience are also in enterprise or B2B. Yes. So complicated things. Is that okay?
Speaker 2Yes. Of course. So we actually ran a recent piece of research with HubSpot. It was titled, you know, "The Hidden B2B Journey." You know, what are the decisions that are actually being made? Yeah. We actually found that 60% of Reddit users who have a business or they're a business leader, they actually don't go to other platforms. That I cannot say. But it rhymes with inked win. They're not on those platforms, which is really interesting, right? And so we unpacked that further. We were like, why do we have all these key decision makers in B2B space? Hiding in Reddit. Hiding in Reddit. It's because, okay, you can say a certain CRM platforms, you know, worth the investment. What was the after sales support like? And so at the end of the day, marketing budgets, marketing leaders, they're under constant scrutiny. Why wouldn't you want to go to an underground? Why wouldn't you want to go to an unfiltered community to actually ask, are the decisions you're making going to make you look stupid or not? And so I think that's why spaces like Reddit and the B2B sense are becoming a little bit more, I guess, valuable because it is unfiltered. Of course they are. It's not performative. It's not identity driven, which is inked win and other platforms as well.
Speaker 1Yes. Inked win. I did get it, by the way. I know. Okay. So how do you preserve the integrity of your content? How do you preserve the integrity of that community given how valuable it is and make a buck?
Speaker 2Great question. Reddit has a really interesting checks and balances system where we've got these things called Reddit moderators where they're genuine people. Actually, when I joined, I was like, this isn't a real role. But no, they're real people. Are they volunteers? They're volunteers. They dedicate their time because they're just so passionate about certain topics. Like Wikipedia. Literally like a Wikipedia live. Yeah. And they interact with Reddit moderators to understand, okay, what kind of topics or themes can I bring to this community? Because they really are the gatekeepers of making sure things stay on topic. Yes. For example, this is really simple, but if you have like a subreddit on cats, you know, dogs aren't allowed, that kind of thing. You know, you need to keep it on topic. And, of course, we've got brand safety and suitability teams in the background making sure things are safe and, you know, welcoming for everybody on the platform. But there are so many different layers to Reddit community. And there's, I guess, how you can show up that are different from other platforms. Yes, okay. So your Reddit moderators is one part. There's all this upvoting and downvoting mechanic that we've got, which I think a lot of marketers that I've spoken to since joining Reddit have said, look, is that like like and dislike? It actually isn't. It's not like for like on a Facebook like versus a Reddit like or upvote. Well, it's a measure of authenticity, right?
Speaker 1Exactly. It's a measure of authenticity.
Speaker 2Or accuracy. Accuracy. Authenticity, relevancy. It gives you a marker of how people are feeling. Now, downvotes are just as valuable as upvotes. Just as valuable. In what way? Because you can understand. So say if someone's saying, look, if something's off topic or if someone says something that's not factual, it's a really good indicator to go, okay, right. You know, as a brand, we can't stay in this space. Or as a consumer, you know, maybe I need to look elsewhere. But also that content actually doesn't get surfaced. So the more upvotes is where you get more content.
Speaker 1Do you reckon enough marketers do research on the downvotes?
Speaker 2No, I don't think they do. Yeah. I think it's because on the surface it could seem scary, right? Like you don't want to, it's almost like.
Speaker 1But it's the gap, isn't it? It's showing you the gap between what people like and don't like. 100%. It's the relevance.
Speaker 2it's honestly a gap that i think marketers can't ignore so historically word of mouth has been the most influential channel when it comes to decisions being made you know products being chosen right whereas now reddit represents that digital modern evolution of word of mouth at scale and at scale and you've got brands that are like leaning right in so we've got scoda who uh it's one of my most favorite favorite things to come out of reddit the campaign was called scoda octavia my lord and savior or our lord and savior and that was actually a nickname given from the reddit community to this scoda model because they they it was like popping off in the car it was popping off in car talk uk right so good and so that was a brand that's gone okay i'm listening to the community i'm actually going to call and title my new campaign um based off comments from the reddit community i'm actually going to let the reddit community test drive the car for the reddit community so it's a really interesting so you've got brands that are like leaning right in but then you've got brands that are like you know what comments off i i don't want to i don't want to hear the conversation or it's not that they don't want to hear it is maybe they can't afford to
Speaker 1listen to it just yet how do you deal with brands that want to treat the platform as an advertising tick box right tick the box to put some money in here's a bucket of money and we're going to put it in there and we're going to drive them all to our website that's sort of very and i'm using that as a simplistic thinking kind of idea how do you deal with that because i think it's a really good idea because that's obviously what you're dealing with you told me that you you know people have been sliding into your linkedin linkedin dms yeah
Speaker 2100 because it's similar to my time at tiktok where it's like the new kid on the block people need to understand but it's almost like it's a new channel it's competing with your say a marketer's time is media is what five percent you know it we have to make it easy for advertisers to advertise we have to make it easy for people to understand the platform so we've been slowly but surely putting out a new channel and we've been putting out a new channel and we're putting the right platforms and solutions in place to ensure that advertisers can get a really good sense check of the community before activating
Speaker 1is it easy to buy ads for
Speaker 2it it is easy to buy ads i'd say where the challenge is for marketers is leaning into the insights from conversation you just need to be sympathetic to the medium like any other platform you know you wouldn't put a television ad on outdoor it's understanding that it's a new channel yes but it's a complementary channel that can add add value to your media do
Speaker 1you think media buyers media agencies would just find that a bit complex like you know oh that means it's nuanced oh is that going to be hard we've got to tweak our campaign in too many different ways like how does that work
Speaker 2i would argue uh coming from media agencies myself
Speaker 1yes which is partly
Speaker 2why yeah i would argue that as an eight from an from an agency background you shouldn't be ignoring things that you do that can bring new value to your clients i personally think it is easy because any good agency strategist or planner or investment lead would understand that it's a new channel and it's going to add value to it and then it's going to add value to your content and then it's going to add value to your content there's laws of physics there's laws of marketing there is a rule book that you need to adhere to when when building your media plan like you wouldn't send your soccer players on the field without knowing the rules of the game yeah that's the same with any channel and one of those big guiding principles is being sympathetic to the medium and so as long as you know how to drive value in each of these channels reddit is just another one of those channels where you understand okay is it some of the language that i need to use uh in the editorial piece or is it do i dial up video or do i dial up text given the nature of the platform like for example i've just come from tiktok um where a lot of it was about that first three seconds it's like okay let's create the most captivating ad for you possible because attention is scarce and fleeting yes reddit is the antithesis because people come to the platform to read one of our top performing ad formats is actually a free format which is 40 000 characters long and i i can be honest i when i first heard about this redditors redditors the average dwell time of a recent kia case study that we have with freeform was a minute and a half can you imagine that's an eternity online 100 but because it was adding value so i'll talk through what kia did they basically listened to the community it was a new model that they were releasing like a it was a tasman instead of like doing that big polished tbc where you know it's predictable but they do have a role and they still um the big beautiful tbc of the winding roads and you know it's a it's a mute for tradies so we're going into some puddles we're in the outback instead of doing that they listened to the communities on reddit understood the conversations and the debates and discussions that tradies were having around vehicles but also the adjacent categories and created and basically answered all of their questions in a free format saying hey we hear you and it's one of our best performing free formats we've ever had they're just answering people's genuine genuine questions and i think that's really interesting and that's so that's creating for the platform now yes is it something new that say creatives and agency folk have to learn yes but it's just like any other platform you know tv wasn't always around radio wasn't always around you're learning it's the same process and it will happen again with with more platforms that come in
Speaker 1the future what's hayley's top five if you will tips for marketers looking to have their cake and eat it they want to they want to be in llms but they want to use reddit in in a sort of current relevant way because yeah i think as we've touched on before we press go on the cameras was um the the need for authenticity is at an all-time high but our attention spans are pretty much zero
Speaker 2oh my gosh yeah it's completely zapped i think okay for brands in this day and age we need to be adding value i say we as obviously i represent reddit as a brand as well of course you need to be adding value there needs to be an exchange i think 20 25 years ago the internet was a place where internet was all about okay how can we give you information now it's hey internet help me trust this information there's too much of it and so brands almost like the role of brands is to simplify but also add value back be helpful be useful be entertaining yeah um there was recent amazing research that was uh released by amplified uh and omnicom here locally around the cost of down under and they were saying there was 80 percent of spend is going to go towards dull ads like there's this big gap in between and so i genuinely look i don't want to oversimplify it but i genuinely believe it's because we're not adding value we're not understanding the consumer enough and that relevancy gap between brand yeah and consumer because of the information error is just getting bigger ringer bigger
Speaker 1yeah i also think we're not brave enough we're too scared you know the risks are too high sort of culturally speaking we think we're you know laissez-faire but we're actually you know and that we're sort of out there but most brands don't want to do crazy stuff or funny stuff and you
Speaker 2know what that's really interesting and i think that perfectly illustrates the relevancy gap point that i just made is australia has one of the highest usage rates of reddit users now why do
Speaker 1you think globally because we're so conservative
Speaker 2i think we love yapping i think we love i generally think we love yarn i generally think we love solving problems for each other okay and i think it's just because we are so vastly spread out on this big island of ours we want to feel connected but you know our advertising they're still that disconnect you know so for me it's there's a massive untapped resource for marketers to be like okay what australians actually think what are their actual experiences and how can i use that to make my ads better to make them more valuable i think it really is this nucleus of insight that marketers aren't tapping
Speaker 1enough that unmentioned but we're going to mention it again um company linkedin one of the differences between that platform and yours is the anonymous yes thing right yeah is there a future where reddit might be uh what's the opposite of anonymous identity identity identity
Speaker 2well i can't answer that entirely but i didn't from my perspective no i can't see it i think like when i first joined reddit i just thought what a beautiful contradiction it being anonymous is because on one side you know coming from i still come from an era whilst i'm not that old i definitely was around when brands were so scared of ugc so scared of user generated content to the platforms like reddit would not be considered um but now we're in an era where you know ideas from the community are so valuable that they're informing super bowl ads they're informing brands like skoda and how they release new car models um and i think the anonymous nature of reddit has been uh has allowed people to not perform or broadcast but to genuinely share their opinion and share an unfiltered opinion now unfiltered can be a you know a red flag for some but for those who learn from it and lean into it i think it could be an amazing piece of toolkit tell me
Speaker 1about this other economy you wanted to talk
Speaker 2about yes okay so something i'm very excited about which is the validation economy because we're living in an era where there's so much so much explicit information available available to us at all times you've got your llms giving you zero click experience um information abundance but that abundance hasn't necessarily created confidence in fact i think it's done the complete opposite because when decisions really matter you want to go and validate with someone else whether that's hey is bali worth going to at this time of year or hey i want to buy this pram will it fit in my honda civic i don't know why honda civic is top of mind um but just these little lived experience moments which are becoming a hell of a lot more important okay and i think validation not just in a consumer like a consumer purchase perspective but just in general so we see people coming to reddit all the time being like is this film worth watching is this um you know i haven't seen brad pitt lately has anyone got any you know intel like it's it's validation in a more broader sense as well
Speaker 1so from the marketing funnel perspective that's the consideration stage so what's different so i would
Speaker 2argue that there's validation layers all through the funnel okay where to go on holiday okay i've landed on a place um is it good for kids middle funnel and through to purchase is it worth the money so like i we're starting to prove this out internally at reddit at the moment but there's validation questions to be answered all through the funnel because reddit is a full funnel platform we've had brands that have seen such success uh upper funnel lower funnel and now as we're growing more in australia we're getting a hell of a lot more appetite for full funnel pieces and so i originally when i started at reddit i was like you know what i think consideration is where obviously there's a hell of a lot of discussion online which gives us the signal of consideration but we're going and looking deeper now and finding that it's through all facets because any topic or any decision that gets made there's usually something that needs to be validated
Speaker 1beforehand connect the dots for me then how what's the economy part of the validation economy bit in other words how do you make money out
Speaker 2of this where is it
Speaker 1where is it useful to marketers it's
Speaker 2a complementary channel because what we're seeing is people will discover yes say in a tiktok or another platform yes they will validate with reddit and so it has to be a complementary medium where it's basically covering explicit and implicit and i think advertising doesn't do this enough where too often we get caught up in the explicit so these are the facts and features this is the price but we all know price is a feeling so you need to you need to dovetail that with implicit spaces how hard is
Speaker 1it to measure the validation economy
Speaker 2well hey that's the age old question well um we're really lucky to you know be operating on par with some of our competitors in terms of marketing science okay um but we also are learning through our advertisers and partners that you know whether through its mm or whether it's through you know even just your simple brand lift studies and conversion lift um it just depends on what your objective is in your in your campaign but no we we see that reddit performs really well all through the funnel now you said
Speaker 1you're pretty new here but you have been traveling a bit yeah um i would normally ask a question of to say what's the next 20 years at reddit look like you can't speak to all of that but can you give us any juicy insights well
Speaker 2i think from from my perspective at least from a local perspective in australia whilst the brand is 21 years old yeah and i think it's just building literacy with the platform so actually what is reddit because we ask so many some of my friends my parents included and they're like i think i know what it is and so there's a lot more education more generally with the consumer that we need to be doing especially on a local level um but look the future is bright i can't say too much around what our what our big rocks are but there's some interesting things in
Speaker 1the world come on are there people like you in other countries then it's just sort of a global
Speaker 2thing yes yeah i'm the last uh i guess country lead to be to be hired so australia do you and
Speaker 1your country leads have a
Speaker 2private reddit thread or yeah you do yeah we do we do actually there was an event we ran uh this week that ended up on reddit we had like a um snoo which is our mascot which you can see behind me just out on the street and of course the redditors were just like what the hell is happening on russell street in melbourne and so yeah we're kind of our our b2b world is blurring with the consumer world which is really fun hayley
Speaker 1thank you so much for being our guest on the show we're going to leave it there but i really appreciate all of the insights you brought to us today thank you so much for being here and we'll see you next time to the literal table thank you no worries
Speaker 2thank you so much for having me it's been awesome one of the interesting
Speaker 1things that stood out to me from my conversation with hayley is this idea brands that come to the party that is the reddit party they jump into these communities and if we think about the party metaphor they haven't brought any champagne they haven't brought gifts in other words they haven't sought to become part of the community first it's a truism we know in our normal social lives is to get to know the people around you but sometimes the buyer mindset that we can have in marketers when we go looking for assets and audiences we can buy actually gets in the way of the authenticity that's necessary in a place like reddit of course you can extend this idea into many other parts of your work when it comes to community building understanding your audiences it's something that's very simple but in some cases can be hard to do if you're in a programmatic buyer mindset so a good idea there to think about as you move forward in your programs and your campaigns so that's it for this episode of the cmo show my name is mark jones thank you so much for joining us we'll see you next time the cmo show is produced by impact institute in partnership with adobe impact institute is a professional services firm for purpose-led organizations our unique blend of impact institute and adobe is a professional services firm for purpose-led organizations impact consulting brand storytelling and event services help our clients create meaningful change this episode of the cmo show was brought to you by your host mark jones that's me and our producers niall hughes and kirsten babels and our amazing engineer ed chang now adobe is turning ai promise into marketing reality and we here at the cmo show are all about that this is a reality where personalization feels more human automation feels authentic and customers feel more connected to your brand from ai frenzy to roi it starts with adobe
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