CMO Insights: Building Trust and Scaling Profitably with OOH with Zachary Padres, Co-Founder of Black Valley

In this week's episode, Zachary Pardes, co-founder of Black Valley, a modern media collective, and shares his expertise on how out-of-home advertising can be a game changer for brands.

From the power of tangible marketing to the importance of creative and engaging content, Zach breaks down the strategies for cutting thru the clutter with big, bold OOH - how in a world saturated with fake influencers and AI, OOH advertising stands out as a genuine and authentic way to connect with consumers.

🚀 Why Out-of-Home Advertising Matters

Zach emphasizes the tangible and real nature of OOH in a world filled with digital noise. He highlights the unique opportunity out-of-home provides to capture attention and engage with audiences in a meaningful, memorable way.

• 00:02:19-00:02:29 - "OOH is one of those few channels that is tangible. It's still real. And not to mention it's sleek, it's sexy. You throw some killer creative up on a board or on transit, people take note."
• 00:06:18-00:06:29 - "Let's not lose sight of the fact that there is huge value in running BIG, bold, visual creative, that's fun, that's engaging, that's entertaining, and that gets eyeballs on the brand."

📊 Data-Driven Strategies for Success

Discover how Black Valley leverages data to drive successful OOH campaigns. From analyzing customer clusters to creating timely and relevant offers, Zach shares insights on how data plays a crucial role in campaign planning and execution.

• 00:05:47-00:05:58 "I always laugh when execs or senior leadership will come into a room and they'll say, How can you justify this? And it feels so much like you're talking to your pops, like your grandfather back then. "Oh, when I was your age, hot dogs cost a nickel!" And look, yeah, that was true. But we're also not dying of polio, right? So some things have gotten better. Some things have changed. Let's open up our minds a little bit here." 
• 00:09:02-00:09:12 - "I'm sure 2% to 5% of people are like, you know what? I could go for a chicken sandwich. But for the rest of them, it's like, look, you've planted the seed. And the seed is there. And it's going to grow. And you're going to cultivate it."

🌈 Message of the Month: "Chill the F Out!"

In a world filled with hustle and bustle, Zach reminds us to take a moment to relax and enjoy life. Remember, it's all going to be okay. So, take a deep breath, put down your phone, and spread some positivity around you.

• 00:30:57-00:31:07 - "Chill the fuck out. Everyone relax. It's all going to be OK."

Connect with Zachary Padres here 🤝

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zpardes/
• Check out the Black Valley media collective here: https://blkvlly.com/

Mark your calendars! OOH Insider LIVE! NYC on February 11, 2024 - details to follow, stay tuned.

Transcript

Tim Rowe: Four and a half years ago, we started out on a journey to answer the question, how does out-of-home advertising work? We've ultimately discovered that it works in lots of ways, from new users and store visitors to increased conversion rates online and an offline halo effect that makes everything else in the market mix seem to work better because of grassroots trust and credibility that out-of-home creates. And because perception is reality and we're in a world of fake influencers and AI showing up for real is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage. But how do you do that in a way that makes sense? Not just for your brand, but for your bottom line too. How do you continue to predictably and most importantly, profitably scale new channels like Out of Home as a D2C without sacrificing profitability? And why is right now maybe better than ever before to start chess And why is right now, maybe better than ever before, the right time to start testing out of home today. To break that playbook down for us is Zachary Pardes, co-founder of Black Valley, a media collective and a CMO who has helped take two companies public and invested more than $10 million in Q4 last year and out of home for some of the fastest growing brands in the world. Zachary, welcome to the show.
Zachary Pardes: Thanks, Tim. Pleasure to be here. And thanks for that $10 million shout out. I'm sure I'll have every salesperson in the world reaching out to me after this.

Tim Rowe: Every single vendor. But here's the important disclaimer up front. If you're going to reach out to Zach, it better be with screaming good offers. Okay? Don't just blow up his inbox with a bunch of nonsense. Hey, we'd love to get a 15 minute chat. Hey, can I send over my media kit? If you're going to come, bring value. That's my issue.

Zachary Pardes: Otherwise, I'm going to have to put the blinders on. I'm going to get myself off of that LinkedIn for a while.

Tim Rowe: That's it. Yeah. We're going to have to send Zach into witness protection after this. But I appreciate you being here because you made a case for out of home about a month ago. Why out of home? Why out of home specifically for DTC? I'd love to ask you that question as a starting place. Why out of home?

Zachary Pardes: Yeah. You know, Tim, I think you kind of touched on it earlier. You said we're living in this world of fake deception and AI and nothing kind of feels real anymore. And I think at a home is one of those few channels that is tangible. It's still real. And not to mention it's sleek, it's sexy. You throw some killer creative up on a board or a transit or head houses, people take note. And I think a lot of that reason is because we have such a love-hate relationship with our devices. And I think it's skewing towards hate for a lot of people right now. I know just since we started this conversation 10 seconds ago, I've got my phone going off. I got my kid on the iPad. the tv's on in the background it's just people are tuned out. And one would hope that driving down a freeway at 80 miles an hour, people aren't FaceTiming and they're not clicking around on their phone. It's one of the few chances of, unless you got kids in the car like you and I, one of the few chances to have some solace and to kind of look around you and see what's going on in the real world. So I think it's a special channel for that reason. It's real and it's a great opportunity to bring some killer, sleek, sexy, creative to the table.

Tim Rowe: How did you, how did you come to, and logically that makes sense. And I love the endorsement. I think that that's something we can all take out into the world and the conversations that we're having and, and share. How did you, like from a mindset standpoint, were you exposed to out of home early on in your marketing career? When did you come to kind of appreciate the, the, the, the magnificence that out of home could bring to a marketing mix?

Zachary Pardes: Yeah. Not particularly. Early on in my career, not particularly. I started my career in marketing and everything was digital, digital, digital. Everything was performance-based. The pendulum was very much swinging in that direction. And I think we took it I'm going to restart that one. I think we went too hard in that direction. So no, out of home wasn't a huge influence at the start of my career. I think where I really started to take note of it was right at the start of the pandemic, maybe a little bit before. And the reason for that is I look for arbitrage opportunities. The whole world is rushing to these performance tactics, these digital tactics. They're going to track, track, track everything. And it's like people have forgotten that advertising and marketing can have this creative and this artistic side that actually is compelling, that can draw people in. So you have the entire world rushing and freaking out. I got to go digital. Everything's got to be tracked. Everything's got to be performance-based. Nobody's leaving their house anymore. And maybe that was true for a little bit, but a large part of the reason is There were deals to be had, and there was opportunity on the table, and you can't pass that stuff up.

Tim Rowe: When you use the word arbitrage, and it's something that we've talked about here before too, underpriced, undervalued, misunderstood nature of out of home, how do you communicate that back to other decision makers? How do you socialize that internally to folks that maybe are resistant? Oh, no, that's old school. It's not measurable. Why would I do a billboard? Again, logically makes sense. A big piece of owned real estate in the real world with your brand creative on it. That's a pretty powerful statement, but how do you maybe overcome some of those internal challenges?

Zachary Pardes: Yeah, I always laugh when execs or senior leadership will come into a room and they'll say, How can you justify this? And it feels so much like you're talking to your pops, like your grandfather back then. Oh, when I was your age, hot dogs cost a nickel. And look, yeah, that was true. But we're also not dying of polio, right? So some things have gotten better. Some things have changed. Let's open up our minds a little bit here. So how do I explain it? Yeah, of course, there's the money conversation. And what I like to say is, look, we're gonna look at this thing directionally at the bottom of the funnel. We're gonna look at things like, you know, win rate, our conversion rate, our speed to close. We're gonna look and see what kind of uplift we get in those areas while these campaigns are running, of course. But like, let's not lose sight of the fact that there is huge value in running big, bold, visual, creative, that's fun, that's engaging, that's entertaining, and that gets eyeballs on the brand. And I look at it as a gateway drug. Like a lot of these, A lot of people who don't value out of home, they don't understand that… I'm going to start that one over. Let me think about where I wanted my thoughts to go here. A lot of people will look at out-of-home media and they'll say, well, okay, I've got this apple. How do I make it an orange? How do I take this channel, this big brand-led channel, and how do I turn it into a performance tactic? And it's like, you're missing the point. You've got this beautiful, shiny apple in front of you. Make it a fucking apple. Use it, eat it like an apple. And that's the conversation that I tend to have. So yes, of course, We'll always try to work in some tangible tracking and analytics to our out-of-home campaigns. But I really very much think that out-of-home is this gateway drug, and it's how we get people hooked on certain brands, engaged in certain brands, even those that aren't in a buying cycle right now. That's okay, because we need to be top of mind down the line. And if you're ignoring people who aren't ready to buy right now, right this very instant, you're short-sighted and you're hooked on the revenue drug right now. And eventually, you're going to tap out, right? There's only so much low-hanging fruit available to you on programmatic and performance social. So that's how I view out of home. That's how I have those conversations with leadership.

Tim Rowe: Such a great point of the, the now buyer, depending on what you sell, maybe it's two to 5% of the available market is in the market for the thing that you sell right now versus. The other 95 to 98% that will be in the market for your thing at some point in the future, the opportunity to get people hooked on a brand, that's such a powerful concept or an idea. Can you maybe give us some examples or brand specifics that you've worked on and kind of seen this effect take hold?

Zachary Pardes: Yeah. I mean, you know where my mind always goes to, it's like Chick-fil-A runs these awesome out-of-home boards, right? And you've all seen them driving down the highway and it's like, you know, the big cow, eat more chicken. It's like, eat more chicken. No one is driving their car down the road and sees a sign that says, eat more chicken. Yeah, you know what? I really should adjust my diet. And I think I'll try to intake some more poultry. Yeah, sure. I'm sure 2% to 5% of people are like, you know what? I could go for a chicken sandwich. But for the rest of them, it's like, look, you've planted the seed. And the seed is there. And it's going to grow. And you're going to cultivate it. And then the next time, maybe they're not going to McDonald's. Maybe they're going to stop off at Chick-fil-A for one of those chicken sandwiches. And here's the beautiful part about Chick-fil-A's advertising. It's fun, but it's not necessarily mind blowing, right? You've got a cow and it's saying to eat more chicken, but it's memorable. And that stuff sticks with people.

Tim Rowe: And they've done it for so long.

Zachary Pardes: I mean, over a decade of that same creative, right?

Tim Rowe: Right. We, we, we all, even if we haven't been to a Chick-fil-A or don't have a Chick-fil-A near us, we've probably seen that creative. And I'm thinking back to an episode with my friend Lane Cox, who was really pivotal in the slice and kind of seamless in New York city grub hub, uh, acquisition stages. And she talks specifically about buying national TV. buying broadcast national TV and using kind of the Sonic playbook. We've all seen the Sonic slushy guys before, but have we been to a Sonic? I don't know. I've, I've been to a Sonic maybe once or twice when I lived in North Carolina, but we all know those commercials. Why? Because they have been repeated to us over and over.

Zachary Pardes: I'll tell you a story about, about Sonic, right? I I'm a New Yorker. I didn't even know what. Sonic was. Is there a Sonic in our area? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it's like a Southeast thing.

Tim Rowe: I think it's a Southern thing.

Zachary Pardes: Yeah. So, you know, I met my wife 10 years ago and her family's from Florida and I've been exposed to Sonic commercials like my entire life. We're driving, we're driving down, you know, I got her mom in the car and, you know, she's clucking at me and her dad saying something and they're fighting about who's driving and how, how dangerous it is. And I see a Sonic. I'm like, we got to stop. We got to stop. I don't know anything about it. I don't know if the food's good, but like that special thing that they advertise, like I gotta, I gotta experience that even if it's just once. So I think you've hit the nail on the head. There's, there's something to it.

Tim Rowe: On the, on the bottom of funnel measurement, you mentioned some, some interesting metrics to track or that you've tracked the win rate, conversion rate, accelerating the sales cycle. What are some of those indicators that you look for and what have you seen as an effect of adding out of home?

Zachary Pardes: Yeah, I'm going to go, I'm going to go B2B on you for a second. Let's do it.

Tim Rowe: Yeah, I like that. So there's a lot of B2B use cases here.

Zachary Pardes: there are a ton of B2B use cases and it's so underutilized. So you've got, especially these SaaS companies and they think very much, maybe a sweeping generalization, but I think a lot of them think in terms of performance marketing, they're looking at the sale here and now, what's right in front of them. But when you're selling software, anywhere from 10,000 a seat to a subscription for 50, 60, 70, 100K a year, there are very few people that you're going to get on the phone with and have a conversation, and then within six weeks, close that deal, right? So I'll look at, especially on the SaaS side, I'll look at a benchmark study of like, what does our speed to close look like in an average quarter or an average two quarters? And if that cycle is six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks, more realistically, it's usually like six months, eight months. And then I'll study that against how does that number change once we start aggressively targeting with all kinds of media, but sure, out of home as well. And I just think it's so underutilized, especially on the B2B side. You have a pretty good idea of who your buyers are. and where they're located physically. And you can create, we've done this before, create heat maps, pockets of account-based marketing clusters. Where are they located? Are there areas where there's a higher density of those customers? And if the answer is yes, we'll put up boards right across the street from their office. You know, we'll put, we'll put captivate ads right inside the elevators they're building. Like these are the things that you need to think about. And then you go back and you look at your speed to close and your win rate, and you will see directionally. Sure. You can point to a hundred different things that happened between Q1 and Q4. But my argument is the CEO, CRO, they're not necessarily going to care if you can't say, here's the smoking gun, right? What they wanna see is they wanna see that hockey stick. They wanna see that uplift and they want their BDRs closing in four months rather than eight. And I think linear, I think out of home, above line brand tactics can contribute a lot to that equation.

Tim Rowe: What are some of the other tactics, not out of home? Yeah, what does some of that, marketing toolkit look like when you're thinking about maybe building a B2B full funnel approach? You mentioned a few tactics there, linear television, the captivate screens inside of elevators, but how do you, how do you maybe go through that planning? Is it looking at geographically? Hey, what's available in the market? Is it a turnkey playbook regardless? How do you think about that?

Zachary Pardes: Yeah, I don't think there's ever going to be a turnkey playbook. I think each business and how they handle commercial operations, it's going to differ company to company, brand to brand. So I think I think what it really amounts to is like, you got to start and take a look at what is the problem you're trying to solve. And that's so cliche. Everyone says, oh, what's the problem? What's the goal that I'm trying to hit? But you'd be surprised how many people don't do that. If I had $10 for every CEO that came to me, it's like, we need to be on TikTok, or why aren't we running boards? And I'm like, well, what's your reason for doing that? Why do you want to be? You sell software. Why do you want to be on TikTok and using influencers that do makeup tutorials? It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So a lot of times I think we're distracted by the shiny object. So I'm trying to say is it's got to be a custom approach. You got to start with, what am I trying to solve? And when you look at, I'll go back to B2B again, since that's what we're talking about. When you look at a B2B audience for let's just say a SaaS product, a lot of times you've got people who your customers are on year-long buying cycles. They might not be ready to upgrade that software or to change vendors until October, November, December for the following year. So what are you going to do? You're going to pound them with programmatic media? You're going to pound them with ads on G2 and Capterra? You're going to run analyst relations for a year and try to do paid studies with Gartner? Sure. Yeah, you can do those things, but Realistically, like you've got to make sure that you're, you're top of mind so that when they are in that buying cycle, your name's on the short list. Um, so I don't know if that answers your question, but I really do think it's, it's a difficult one to, to, to conquer. You know, it really depends on the, on the situation of, of the brand and the business.

Tim Rowe: What advice would you give to someone who's maybe listening to this conversation? They're convinced you've convinced them. What is that first next step to getting started? Is it an agency? Is it trying to do it yourself? Where do you recommend folks start?

Zachary Pardes: I think it's… I think you gotta start with… I wouldn't think about out of home. I wouldn't think about linear. I wouldn't think about programmatic. You're wasting your time if you're thinking… thinking about channel. What you need to be thinking about is what is the goal here? What is the desired outcome of a campaign that I'm running? And then if out of home can support it, if it has a role to play, then okay, hit it. If it doesn't, then it doesn't. I would argue that a lot of times though, companies, D to C brands, B to B brands, and they spend all this time on the middle and bottom of funnel. It's, you know, all their efforts go into, okay, this person already has intent, or, you know, this person's already in the consideration cycle, but they ignore the 90% who have never even heard of the brand. And I think, you know, if you want to get started, you need to look at above line brand level channels, out of home, linear broadcast. I mean, even, even social can play a role. you're gonna wanna get started on what is my goal, what am I trying to achieve, and then what channels can support it. Now, in terms of how do I get started working with vendors and stuff like that, Here's my take. I think I'm going to get crucified for this. Do it. A lot of vendors. People will love you for it. Y'all are offering the same thing, right? There's no secret sauce. Oh, I have this inventory and I have that bonus spot. Like, dude, you guys are all selling the same thing. So what do I look for in a vendor? And what do I recommend? You know, someone who's just trying to get started out, you know, diving into the world of out of home. Look for someone who understands. what your commercial goal is, what your desired outcome of this campaign is, because they're not going to compete on price. It's going to be a race to the bottom. They're not going to compete on bonus time or bonus cycles. They're not going to compete on inventory. It's all the same, right? For by and large, everyone's offering the same product. So find that person or people who truly understand your business and what you're trying to achieve and work with that guy or work with that girl because they're the ones who are going to ultimately pick the right spots for you. They're going to work with you on how to integrate that into your other tactics and the rest of your campaign. That would be my recommendation.

Tim Rowe: It's a great recommendation. We've got a couple of questions from DTC Twitter. You ready for some Twitter questions? Let's do it. How important is channel diversification for you? And how do you think about cross channel attribution that from Corey Dobbin, CEO of Shoelace? How do I think about channel diversification and cross channel attribution?

Zachary Pardes: I think every channel has a role to play based on the buying cycle or the stage that the prospect is in. I'm not going to probably target… Never say never, but I'm probably not going to use out of home for a point of sale offer or someone who's very, very much down the bottom of the funnel. Chances are they're familiar with the brand. So how do I think about it? I look at it as I guess I look at it as each channel has a part to play, how much of that budget and how much of that effort and attention needs to go into that channel based on what I'm trying to accomplish. So if I'm a, if I'm a no-name brand, I'm a new D2C face, no one's ever heard of the product, right? What am I trying to accomplish? You know who did this well? And I'm going to probably mispronounce the name, but Vori, that- Oh yeah, Viori.

Tim Rowe: Viori. Like, yeah, RVCA style, the, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll come back and edit this out, but yeah, they, sorry. Yeah, I'll jump back in. Viori nailed it.

Zachary Pardes: They nailed it. Like, look, look. I don't want to write on anyone's parade. I'm sure it's a great product. They're selling athleisure, they're selling pants, they're selling tops. There's 500,000 other companies doing the same exact thing. So what they started with was brand awareness. And what they built to was affinity for the brand. Yes, they had a great product, but having a great product is often not enough if no one has any idea about it. So they made a strategic decision to say, all right, we're in a very competitive space. We got to get people to know who we are. They happen to use an influencer or series of influencers to help bolster that goal. They did it well. Otherwise, you're competing against every other maker and seller of leggings and tops and t-shirts and look, there's no shortage, right? I can open my drawer right now, I got a drawer full of gym clothes that I wear and a lot that I don't. And the brands that I constantly wear, the ones that I've just, you know, I've become to, I've begun to understand and know and trust. So they did it well. I think the second part of your question was- Cross-channel attribution. Cross-channel attribution. Yeah, that's a tough one with out of home. It's like, Look, back in the day, back in the day.

Tim Rowe: Back in the day.

Zachary Pardes: Those nickel hotdogs. Those nickel hotdogs. Yes. I mean, you had companies using device fingerprinting and things like that. And you can still do it. We can have a whole conversation about ethics and whether or not you should. But the fact of the matter is you can still do it. You can throw the QR code up there. You can throw a vanity landing page or vanity phone number. And yes, you can tangibly one-to-one track that stuff. Should you? I don't know. It depends on the campaign, right? It goes back to my point earlier. Why are you trying to make an apple into an orange? Look at how it supports the larger campaign as a whole. And you might find that it's unnecessary to have those very bottom of funnel analytics attached to a big transit campaign, for example.

Tim Rowe: If you're one 800 flowers, you should definitely put your phone number on it. I would say if you're not, if it's not a part of the brand, yeah. Why are we trying to distract folks? And there's, there's a, there's a mix, right? There is a right place and a right time for some of those elements. But consider all of those things. And that kind of segues into the second question here from Mr. Mark Donatelli. He's the managing partner of Simply Limited, their consulting firm. What was the primary data strategy? approach when it came to choosing the locations. Did you use data or was it just as simple as, hey, there's a billboard across the street from these guys, let's go do that or mix?

Zachary Pardes: Yeah, no, a lot of it actually was the data-driven part of my out-of-home strategy usually happens at the onset of the campaign. Not so much in the tracking, although you can. We talked about attribution models and whatnot. Sure. Of course, there are ways that you can tangibly track out-of-home performance. But a lot of what I do is I use the data at the start of the campaign to figure out where I'm going to buy, what I'm going to buy, and why I'm buying. So, what I do is I'll look for both in-house data that a brand has and third-party data that will hoover up from various sources. And we'll look at… And I think I mentioned earlier, they call it heat maps. Where are the clusters of my volume buyers, my repeat customers? Where are the people who… psychographically are showing the behaviors that my actual buyers now also share. So I'll look for like-minded people that hopefully are geographically clustered in certain areas, and then that's where I tend to buy. That's one example. But here's another example, and it's not super data-driven on the front end, but it is on the back end. We've been experimenting with digital boards on main hubs through cities, arteries, highways, things like that. And we'll actually swap in creative that has a very tangible limited time offer. at a certain time. So I'll give you an example. Let's say you've got, and I'll leave the brand out of it, but let's say you've got the after school rush, right? It's three o'clock, maybe mom's going to pick up their kids and she's got to pass, she's got to take I-95 or whatever it may be to go pick up the kids at school. you know, what does every mom have in common? At three o'clock, you've got, you've got, you know, I should say, what does every parent have in common? Right. Cause I go and pick up my kid all the time. I probably pick up my kid more often than I, than I'd like to, but like, what do we all have in common as parents? It's three o'clock. Your kid is screaming in the back. Like they're fried from a day of school and they're super tired or screaming. And it's like, man, it would be awesome to throw some creative up. And we do. And it says something along the lines of, you know, What does, you know, French fries, not just a problem that, or let me restart that, Tim. The creative will say something like, I had this jotted down because I was working on it earlier. It was like, you know, how was it worded? Give me one second here. I'm just looking through my notes. It was like, you know… Fries, the ultimate tool for keeping the backseat peanut gallery quiet for a few minutes. And it's legendary. And you can throw an offer right there on the spot for that one hour. And that's the beauty of digital out of home. You can throw an offer right there for one hour, that after school rush. And you can say, stop in now for free fries with any purchase of a meal, whatever it may be. But you're hitting someone in the moment at a particular time where emotions are running high, you can make a very bottom of funnel offer and then wipe it off the map when five o'clock rolls around and that offer no longer applies. So there's a lot of different ways that you can use data and based on those traffic patterns and And like I said, those psychographics, what's happening in a specific area? Is school getting let out at that time? Is there a big sporting event? Is there a big shopping rush during the holiday season? This has got great foot traffic. These are all things that you can take into consideration when you're looking at what inventory should I go after.

Tim Rowe: They're cool opportunities. I live in kind of Western New Jersey and sold billboards in Eastern Pennsylvania. And there were some. Great auto dealers that they would just sponsor the local sports tours. They would turn the digital billboards into, um, basically scoreboards for the Friday night football game, the Saturday afternoon basketball game. And they were broadcasting the sports scores via the digital billboards to the community. and taking advantage of that as a branding opportunity. Again, grassroots credibility, there's these little ways that don't always have to tie back to an offer, but can be timely, can be relevant, can be community driven. And being able to be dynamic on digital is such an opportunity.

Zachary Pardes: Here's what's nice about that. It's repetition, right? Like the same people are taking that same road twice a day, every day, Monday through Friday. You ever seen those ads on your local news, time and temperature brought to you by? Sure. Yeah. I couldn't tell you tomorrow what the time and temperature is going to be, but I know who runs those ads. That's such a great point. Every 10 minutes, it's in front of my face when I got the TV on in the background while I'm cooking dinner. So it does work. It is effective.

Tim Rowe: Zach, I can't thank you enough for being here. Tell us about Black Valley Media Collective. What are you guys up to there? What are you working on? Give us some of the download behind the scenes.

Zachary Pardes: Yeah. So Black Valley is our fun little side passion project. It's essentially… It's a cooperative of the best of the best in the industry. And we got people who do PR, people who do media planning and buying, people who do brand strategy. And we have… Yes, yes. We have people that do the performance, marketing, bottom of funnel. And it's nice. It's flexible. Our clients can pull the pieces that they need when they need it. And then when they don't, they can offload them again. So we just like to do really fun, really hard hitting work that makes impacts on brands. And right now we're working with a killer new jewelry company out in LA. We also, I can't really disclose the name yet, but we're working with a very, very large DTC brand. And we have a campaign that'll be coming out in about 30 days or so. So pretty exciting stuff. Can't wait to share it with you guys.

Tim Rowe: excited to share with the community. Give us the Latin long. Where do we get in touch? Where do we follow you? Where are you most active on the socials?

Zachary Pardes: Oh, yeah. I would say I'm more active these days on on LinkedIn. I'm not really a big Facebook or Twitter guy. X, I guess they can say I'm definitely not a tick tock guy to be called X. That's how we know you're a boomer.

Tim Rowe: Yeah, right.

Zachary Pardes: Uh, no, I'd say LinkedIn is the best. You can always email me Zack at Black Valley dot com. Um, that's B.L.K. V.L.L.Y. Let me double check that. Make sure that is my email address. Um, I can never really remember. Isn't that crazy?

Tim Rowe: Yeah.

Zachary Pardes: Zack at Black Valley. B.L.K. V.L.L.Y. Dot. Excellent.

Tim Rowe: We'll link to all that in the show notes so that it's easy to get in touch. I'm stealing this question from Tim Ferriss. It's really a question that's meant for this podcast specifically. If you could put any message on the world… Let me run that back. I'm stealing this question from Tim Ferriss, and really it's a question meant for this podcast specifically. If you could put any message on a billboard, what would it be?

Zachary Pardes: Oh man, that's a brutal question to ask me at the end of this.

Tim Rowe: Fucking brutal question. I know. Any message in the world? Any message in the world.

Zachary Pardes: Chill the fuck out. Everyone relax. It's all going to be OK. All right. I know life is stressful, but like guys and it's enjoy life for a second. I just maybe it's just me and like what I experienced in the Northeast day to day. But the rat race is real. Everyone's got to just relax and look your phone for ten seconds, say hello to someone. It's really, it does a world of good. And maybe I wouldn't phrase it like that, but I think that is the central message.

Tim Rowe: I think you would be effective creative. Chill the fuck out. Chill the fuck out. Zach, thanks again for being here, thanks for sharing as much as you have.

Zachary Pardes: Alright, thanks Tim, pleasure.

Tim Rowe: Absolutely. The pleasure is all mine. And if you found this episode to be helpful, please share it with someone who could benefit as always, make sure to smash that subscribe button and wherever you're listening, leave the podcast review. It's how you help us grow and we'll see y'all next time. And we're out.