Why Creativity in Marketing Sounds Fun with Alex Gangi

Alex Gangi: With storytelling, you have to know how to speak to the audience. Especially in marketing, you have to be true to your audience. You have to say it with the right voice. You wanna find somebody who can speak the truth to their audience. Not someone who's faking and making it up, but somebody who has that connection to the audience.

Chris Hill: Welcome to We Built This Brand, where we talk to the creators and collaborators behind your favorite brands. Today, I’m picking the brain of Alex Gangi, the Partner, COO, and Head of Production for Sounds Fun. Alex started in film, made the transition to marketing, and has spent his career using new tech and strategies to reach new audiences. Want to know how you can harness the power of emerging technologies like AR? How can you use AI to take your creativity to the next level? Let’s not wait any longer to find out! Here’s my conversation with Alex.

All righty. Well, Alex, welcome to We Built This Brand.

Alex Gangi: Hey Chris. Thanks for having me, man.

Chris Hill: Yeah, it's great to have you here today. I'm excited to talk to you more about Sounds Fun and everything that you've got going on over there.

Where I always love to start these conversations, just getting to know a little bit more about you.

So tell me about your background. Where do you come from, and how'd you get to Sounds Fun?

Alex Gangi: Started off in a way which I actually have brought into the agency life. I always love movies.

When I was growing up, I always would find the movie on the TV. I never really watched TV. TV shows were not a thing for me. I didn't care about that too much. I'd always go to the movie channels right off the bat and on cable and find them, but I never really realized that that could be a career for a very long time.

It was just kind of more of a hobby for me, and it was always the big four I was looking at when I was moving forward. It was medicine, law, engineering, architecture. Those were the ones that were pushed on me. So I went to undergraduate for pre-med and halfway through that I realized that that was not what I wanted to do.

And I took a film class and fell in absolute love and was like, "Oh my God, I can make this actually a career." Now I'm an agency, right? So I'm a little adjacent to that. It's not really film, but that is where I got my start. I got my MFA at SCAT in Savannah, and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles to try my hand at becoming a director.

Chris Hill: Oh, wow.

Alex Gangi: Yeah. Yeah. It's a very difficult way to go, but I found production. Yeah, I found production, and I jumped into that with I got a role at Pretty Bird North America.

I'm sure you might be aware of Pretty Bird as a production company. I think they won number two Ad Age Best Production Companies again this year. They've been on it for like 10 years straight or something like that. One of the top ones. Like really, really lucky to have basically started my career there as a production assistant. Did that for a couple years, and then I went freelance and started to work my way up with some of the best production companies, which I didn't even know at the time. You know, I'm like just doing what? Just doing the things, taking the jobs, and it just kind of be bopped me around between some of these companies.

Like, you know, Pretty Bird, Tool of North America, North Six, London Alley, you know, some of the best music video and commercial production houses out there. I did like music videos, commercials, branded content. I even went into fashion photography for a little bit.

Chris Hill: So I started watching The Studio recently. I don't know if you've seen that on Apple TV or not.

Alex Gangi: I haven't watched it yet. It is on my must watch list.

Chris Hill: It will probably give you that feeling in the pit of your stomach of like, "oh, this is painful to watch. " Because even though I'm not in Hollywood by any means, the situations, the things the, that the main characters get put in, feel like situations I've had in production.

And yeah, I can empathize. So, I didn't know if you've had a chance to see that or not, but that was like my baseline right now when you said, "oh, I went to Hollywood and tried to be a producer." So that's really neat that you've had that background, 'cause storytelling is intrinsic to marketing, right? We wouldn't be where we were if we didn't have the ability to tell those stories, and it sounds like you kind of came up through that, and used that to leverage into your early career.

Alex Gangi: It's true. I mean, you have to, with storytelling, you have to know how to speak to the audience with everything you make, especially, and especially in marketing, you have to be true to your audience.

You have to say it with the right voice, and a lot of that, both in directing if you're doing it yourself, you know, you wanna speak something that's true to yourself, and if you're producing, you wanna find somebody who can speak the truth to their audience. And not someone who's faking and making it up, but somebody who has that already has that connection to the audience.

It's so much of what we do now is finding the correct, you know, as the head of production, right now, it's so much of finding the correct partners to actually execute against the creative's vision while speaking to the audience that we're targeting. That's such a big part about it, and you can get that wrong, and when you get that wrong, the product, it's never what it's meant to be. Even if it, like, looks maybe amazing, it doesn't speak correctly all the time. So that's my number one check mark normally.

Chris Hill: Yeah. How do you go about identifying and tracking, you know, who will meet the mark for a client? Because you can't have the same person on every project.

They're not always gonna fit the right theme or the right vibe for the client. So how do you even approach that?

Alex Gangi: Yeah, for sure. I always have some of my go-tos, of course who know my work, know my creatives work, know how we like to execute, and they always deliver stellar results.

But that also being said, I think the way we work is very different than a lot of other agencies. Sounds Fun, we really try to bring in a element of not only cultural capital, because that is such a big part of our messaging, but innovation to everything we do. We don't just generally do the linear, we're gonna do a linear spot that we're gonna do, you know, a couple of social pieces.

We're gonna do web banners, you know, it's like they basically have a package and you're like, we're gonna do the same thing, rinse and repeat. We never do that. We always build the creative around the client and around the client's needs. And we go where a lot of people don't go. So

I'm always constantly finding new partners to actually execute things that have never been done before, or if they've, if they've ever been done, they've been done in such, they haven't been done in this way.

You always need people who are kind of on the edge of innovation to executing against that stuff. Now it's all supported by, you know, standard, traditional media stuff. But, you know, it's important to look around and find outside the box and it's, I'm always doing research on people, reading up on things that have been done, being introduced to new people.

It's a constant, it's a constant game to keep it up. Yeah.

Chris Hill: Absolutely. I mean, especially because what you all are doing is a lot of emerging technologies, emerging ideas, emerging concepts, and yeah. You just never know when that, where that great idea is gonna come from. And those leaders in the innovation are gonna be, I mean, they might be on YouTube right now, they might be on Reddit, they might be on, you know, some other platform I can't even pronounce somewhere in the world. I don't know. But yeah, hunting that down and tracking that I'm sure is a lot of work.

So tell me about Sounds Fun itself. So you've got this background in production, and then I think you mentioned about a year, year and a half ago, you all started, probably even longer, started Sounds Fun. So how did that come about?

Alex Gangi: Yeah. So we all met at our previous agency and we worked together for about two years doing, like, probably one of the, until recently, one of the most incredible work streams I've ever been a part of, which was Coca-Cola Creations. I assuming you might have heard of it, maybe? If you haven't basically what it is, it was a bunch of limited time offer products dropped by Coca-Cola and marketed to Gen Z. We started off with Starlight back in 2021, 2022, which was my first job working with the team and the first Coca-Cola creation, and it kept us going for two years afterwards.

The last one just basically launched about a little over a year ago. I had left a little earlier, but I had set up and delivered all the stuff and then left, and then a few months later we started Sounds Fun. But while I was doing that project you know, that's kind of where we met.

That's where we all met, and we got to do some incredible out of the box thinking for one of the most amazing marketing brands in the world. So I can't ask for more than that.

Chris Hill: Coca-Cola, such famous brand. I mean, I've grown up in the southeast, and so it's had a even a huge commercial impact on our region.

So I definitely understand the value that they bring. And I mean, literally you've grown up with it, so that's fascinating. So, you all were making products, you said, for Gen Z? I'm actually not that familiar with this product line, so I'm curious about this.

Alex Gangi: Yes, it was wild. We actually did we basically created new limited time offer products and then we had to market them in really interesting ways. So the first one was Coca-Cola Starlight, where the first time Coca-Cola has ever changed the color of the product. It was, it had a red hue versus it's that standard caramel.

And then it also had a a flavor profile where it kind of gave like kind of a minty taste on the back end after you swallowed it. And then we created this whole campaign around the first Coke in space and we shot a, oh God, what did we do? We did such amazing things. We did incredible product with the product floating in space.

We did several online teasers. We did a, oh, the big one was we worked with popstar Ava Max to create an augmented reality concert on a can where you would scan your Coca-Cola can, and she would walk out and perform one of her three hit songs. At the time, AR was only being used for about like 15 seconds worth of content. We created three, three and a half minute like pieces that were bespoke that you could watch on your desk, that you could watch anywhere in the world. And this was like, you know, this was at the very cutting edge of it. Like, the team we brought on to do it basically had to break everything and rebuild it to figure out how to actually do this.

It had never been done before, and it was an incredible, still to this day. One of my favorite things I've ever made was that one. And then we just kept innovating and doing new things. After that, we worked with we worked with Epic Games, and we did a launch in.

Chris Hill: Fortnite?

Alex Gangi: Fortnite, thank you.

Wow. That was the tip of my tongue. So we did a launch on Fortnite in the next one, and then we built the first Coca-Cola from Dreams. Then we did the first Coca-Cola made with AI. That was Y3000, launched in the summer of 2023. We did a partnership with League of Legend, and we got three emojis from Coca-Cola Ultimate, which was a really fun product, which was crazy. It was the first of its kind where anyone in the world could basically get on their cell phone, scan your face, and be put into a film and get your own bespoke version of this, like basically an homage to video game film that we had created, and you're the hero.

And then we leveled that up again with K-Wave, which was a K-pop Coke where we worked with groups like ITZY, NMIXX, and then Stray Kids. We created this crazy, we went to Korea, we shot this amazing music video with them, and then anyone in the world could log in, create their own avatar, which would then be placed inside the music video.

Your voice would also be auto-tuned, and you'd sing along with this, with the track, which is incredible, and then your name would be, would show up in lights, literally in lights, all throughout the video, and you get your own bespoke music video at end of and a lot of other fun cool collectible content that you could share.

That one was super fun too. So, you know, taking something that might have been like a traditional thing where like, "okay, we created a music video," to being like, "oh no, you can be a part of it." It's immersing the audience in the branding as, and they can be part of it instead of just being a passive viewer.

It's an active integration of it.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Puts them in the place of the, you know, with the brand and with everything else you're trying to do and reach out to. So what was Coke's, like, ultimate strategy there? I mean, obviously reaching Gen Z is a part of it, but I mean, these are very niche engagements, very targeted things that you're doing. So what was kind of their goal there?

Alex Gangi: I'm sure, I don't know if you've been aware, but like sugary drinks and things like that have kind of been on the downfall. You know, a lot of Gen Z was, you know, they're not really drinking alcohol. They're not really drinking sugary drinks. They're going to water or like alternative drinks. There's also like a huge amount of product growth within that market as well. Like, you now can get, you know, like PRIME Energy, and like a bunch of other different products that you would, that have like come up from influencers and things that you,

that it used to be a much more concentrated market. And then, so they're trying to grab more eyes, grab more lips, I guess, to to actually drink their products, right? And they're trying to reintroduce Cokes to Gen Z to Coca-Cola as a beverage, and something that you can have all the time.

And by that, we basically made hype drops of you know, think about shoes, right? Like we basically created hype drops, like, or like something like Supreme. And we created these limited time offers that people wanted to get their hands on. I mean, like we, when Starlight came out, there were people selling after it went out, there were people selling Starlight online for like $200 a bottle. Like, this is a Coca-Cola, this cost $2.50 at your local QT or your corner mart, you know? Like it was pretty awesome what we were able to accomplish with it. Yeah, it was totally different. It'd never been, not, never done in that way, at least.

Chris Hill: And that definitely drives a lot of engagement with the product.

So that's really neat.

So then your team, your group of friends, and everybody who left that, founded Sounds Fun. Where did the name come from, by the way? I'm really curious.

Alex Gangi: We had thought about names for, we were working on that for days and days, maybe a month, maybe a month and a half.

And we even came up with one name for a little bit, and it was very innovative and techy. And we're like, "alright, this is cool." And then we're like, and then we found out that there was another product that we didn't really wanna be associated with that had a very similar name, almost exactly the same.

And we're like and one of us just said, "That sounds fun," and we stopped, and we were like, yeah, and it's great too, because whenever clients or, and we tell anybody our name's Sounds Fun, everyone's like, they always have to drop Sounds Fun somewhere in our conversation. It's always on their lips. It's very memorable, and it also helps us add a little bit of everything we do should sound fun to us.

You know, it's like we're not doing stuff just to build a business just to make money. Like, we wanna do stuff that's fun and engaging to our consumers as well.

Chris Hill: Yeah, that's exciting.

So as you all get together, start this business, start getting it going, everybody has those moments where I call like, the moment of validation.

You're starting a business, you're never a hundred percent sure until you get to the point where something's, you know, something actually happens. You're never a hundred percent sure whether that business is really gonna actually move forward beyond the concept, right? So. What is that moment of validation for you all, or what was that moment of validation for?

Sounds Fun.

Alex Gangi: Oh, that was our first really big client bringing us in to lead a cultural campaign for them, a thought leadership, and that was Lenovo. They brought us in, our amazing friend and marketer, Lex, she found us with help through her team too, and we were brought in to start a thought leadership program, and we ended up calling it Make Space, and we built that all last year, and we finally launched it in February of this year with a culmination of a, basically it was a musical event where people could test the product, but we also like had Rebecca Black headlining and stuff like that in Bushwick, New York.

Yeah. You know Rebecca Black, and it was wildly successful. And we're now starting our iterative R two, round two, year two, with them right now to hope to build it and keep it growing. So basically the whole program was about bringing, you know, how with something like Coca-Cola, I like to say with something like Coca-Cola, we brought Innovate, we brought, Coca-Cola's already culture. It really is. I mean, it's like a marketing behemoth. They already, so we brought innovation to culture in this one. We brought culture to innovation. We kind of flipped it on its edge 'cause, you know, Lenovo's already known for being a very innovative product.

Anyone who knows anything about Lenovo as a brand knows if you go to CES and stuff like that, knows that they always have some of the best techy products out there. Like, they're always bringing something new, and what we're doing is we were, we are building the culture around that brand. It's like, hey, it's not just a technical product, it's also a fun, cool technical product where you can create something. We call it Make Space because what it's about is about the white space, the messy in-between of, between your idea and the final product. So what we like to show off is we're showing off creators and artists and musicians making their work in progress. So much more than just showing off the final thing, like, "oh, look what you can do on this thing." It's like, "no, look how you can screw up," but how it helps you remedy it and also you find it using this product.

It's not just, it's your tool. It's your tool to discover and invent.

Chris Hill: Yeah. And when I think of laptops, especially some of the stuff that Lenovo has done, I think the yoga line is what we were talking about here with this space, and like with that, like, there's a lot of innovation they've done with it, right?

And so, you know, a creative like me, who needs to brainstorm, who needs to think through things, who needs to work on projects from time to time that require space to mess up, like, I could see why marketing a laptop in that way makes a lot of sense. So that's really cool. That's really fascinating. There's also, you know, it also fits with like the, I think kind of like the mindfulness movement a little bit too. Thinking about making space for things and all of that as well. I'm sure that played into your project as well.

Alex Gangi: Yeah, it did in a few places. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you have to to think of what you're gonna create before you actually create it, right? It's not just like messing up and calling it a day. It's like, you have to believe it. Yeah. For sure.

Chris Hill: As someone who relies on a tablet or a laptop at all times, it feels like I could definitely see the value in that marketing approach.

Alex Gangi: Well, that's just so interesting. Some of the people we even worked with, like they, you know, like a lot of the younger generation, some of them don't even have laptops. They don't have things like that.

It's like, it's another of that piece of getting a piece of hardware in their hands, and so they're learning new ways to create. Like some of them create on their phone, some of them create on their, and we're not talking about content creators who create for like money and stuff, we're talking about people who like to create because they're compelled to. You know, people who actually create interesting new works, and they basically build a following around them for what their innovative thinking and their, just their creativity. They're not just trying to sell a product or anything like that. So actually, one of our creators had never owned a laptop, and he's like, I did everything on my, like my phone and this tablet. And he's like, this is incredible. And he actually like really gushed about the product, which was awesome to hear.

And he is like, it actually sped up my workflow and you know, all the things. And you're just like, well, I'm not even marketing anymore. We're actually talking to the right people here. Like, this is great. You know, we found the person that we wanted to talk to.

Chris Hill: That's always great when you can do that.

Alex Gangi: When you can find truth, leaving it back to the directing and the filmmaking.

It's like, you gotta find the people who can actually bring the truth, and you're not trying to just force feed concepts.

Chris Hill: Yeah. Which is one of the fun things about being on these more emerging technologies is you get to play around with things and experiment with things before they're ever, you know, really a risk to doing them because you're trying it for the first time.

Alex Gangi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you're allowed to make mess up, and honestly, you're allowed to break stuff. I mean, so many times, things are gonna fall apart somewhere in the process. Especially, you know, as being a producer, being in production, like, and working on these emergent things and doing stuff that's never been done before.

Like, I can't tell you how many times things break before you get it right. You just have to build that into your workflow and understand that like, hey, it's probably gonna break and then keep your cool when it does. Just get it fixed as soon as you fast possibly can because it's just part of it.

But no one really holds it against you because, you know, if it works, when it works, and if it works right and it does the thing it needs to do, and it works correctly for generally, most of the time everyone's usually happy because it blows minds and no one's seen it before, and it really gets the conversations going.

So it's really fun to do.

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Chris Hill: So speaking of some of those technologies, what are some things right now that you're seeing that you're like really excited about within this space? 'cause I'm sure we could talk ad nauseum about some of this stuff.

Alex Gangi: There are so many. We talk Gaussian Splatting all the time internally. I mean like creating a 4D, basically a 3D-4D world out of, like, a picture.

I am personally, I was seeing something that was popping up the other day, and now this really doesn't have a ton, it's more of like, it's not really a super interesting marketing thing, I guess, but what I do love about it is, there is a platform that you can now do, it's basically dubbing, but it uses AI to change the mouth movement of the actor while they basically dub their own lines. Like you can maybe, say they're doing a Spanish language film, and then they wanna release it in America. And they wanna do it in English, and they speak all their lines in English, and they use AI to change the lip movement.

So it's their performance, both their voice, their voice, their performance and everything, but it's completely changed in the North American audience wouldn't know the difference. And I think that's incredible, and I think that could definitely be spread too 'cause so many of these products we work on are global, and so much of the stuff we shoot is global.

I feel like that is something that we could definitely implement into some of our structure. So you're actually speeding in the, speaking in the native tongue. So much of this global work that we've done, we do silent for that reason because it's a lot easier to move into different markets if there's no one talking. But now you don't have to do that anymore, and you don't have to record it four times. If you're going to four different markets, you can record it once, and you just do this, and it saves you a ton of money. And just, it's so incredible.

Chris Hill: Yeah. I've noticed that with like children's shows a lot of times where they've got like a narrator that tells everything.

Like there's this one kid show that my kids are watching, and I found out, oh, it's actually a Spanish show originally, but they've redubbed everything with an English narrator, and he is a professional. It sounds great, but there's a lot of that type of stuff in lip syncing, man. Like you talk about an area that's, like, in animation, in video, and everything that just feels so phony if you get it wrong. It's so painful if you get it wrong, at least for the producers of the house, you know, it's just like, oh, cringe-worthy even, that, to hear there's a technology that can make that work naturally, is fascinating to me.

Alex Gangi: Yeah. I mean, so many people like avoid foreign language shows and films and content just because of that one thing where you're like, you don't like to read. I don't know why we don't like to read. I love, like, everything I watch is basically foreign. Like, I love foreign content because honestly I've almost kind of run through the US-based stuff and going like, ah, it's all kind of the same, coming out all over.

But no, but it's great. No, but that thing blows my mind, and other technologies that are really, I really like combining tech too. Now, I work with my creatives to bring the best execution to stuff sometimes. You know, and it's like we have, I have my CIO who really looks at the innovation and the forefront of stuff, but a lot of times it's not, we don't just bring technology into, at least I don't, I don't just use technology because it's new and it's innovative, and it's like, oh, it's a new thing. That's doing a disservice to actually the work.

You use technology to reach a greater audience. You use a technology to speak to more people. You use a technology to make them active participants versus passive ones. Those are the places where I think the technology that's coming out, especially with AI and AR, like these two areas where I have a lot of experience in now, coming to the forefront is where it's that you can personalize experiences for people, and that's so valuable to brands.

I think tapping into that, but tapping into it correctly. And that's why we have the cultural aspect as well, because when we bring those technologies, we wanna make sure we're talking the truth to people at the same time. It's a lot of different thinking go out circles, but you gotta stay on top of those messages or else you're gonna miss the boat.

Chris Hill: Yeah, because there's a certain level of maturity that some of these technologies have to get to as well. I mean, especially with AI, a lot of it, you know, I'd say two years ago it was a lot of guess in check, and even where we're at right now, it's still guess in check to a degree, but it's way more precise.

It's way better. It's really improved, at least from my perspective.

Alex Gangi: I mean, six months ago it was guess in check. I mean, I was like two years ago. Two years ago. It was, it was like.

Chris Hill: Pray it would work.

Alex Gangi: Well, yeah, but there was so much fun stuff you could do with it even two years ago, because it was in this area, which has, it was creating this content that you have never seen before.

It was weird, but it had a wonder to it at the same time. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't just always, it wasn't perfect, but it was perfect in its imperfection because there was some really fun stuff you could do, which, it's now gone almost, you know. Especially if we're just talking about video generative content, which I think is like one small aspect of AI, and honestly not even the most interesting aspect, you know. It's, that's just like, oh, we can make stuff for cheaper, and more people can do it. Okay, cool. That's what, that's been happening for years and years and years with like film cameras turning to digital cameras, turning to like, oh, now I can basically shoot a film on my cell phone. And now it's like, oh, now I can just imagine a film and type it into a thing, and it comes out with a film.

You know, it's like, and then cut it together. And you still need to have some basic skills to do it, but.

Chris Hill: Of course.

Alex Gangi: That's just the direction that all this, that content has been heading in. So none of that is, it's intriguing. I love seeing AI films, and I don't love the ones that replace the artist, you know, necessarily, but like it's a tool. It's another tool to create content basically in my mind. Artificial Intelligence can really bring a different, it can speed up your workflow a lot, I think is another, is another great part of it where it.

Chris Hill: It can allow you to do a lot of creative things. Like, I mean, for instance, I had a project, and this was almost two years ago now, about a year and a half, well, about a year and a half at this point, and I suck at drawing. Like, well, lemme rephrase that, I'm not bad at drawing when I put time into it, but if I'm storyboarding for a client, I don't want to spend all my time drawing out characters and stuff 'cause that's not my specialty, but I could just put it into generative AI and get my storyboards set up for a client and help them visualize the product we were trying to do with them right away.

And that stuff is just hugely helpful just on the creative end, and then, you know, you go out and execute on it and try to make it as close to that as you can. And that's where it's a lot of, a lot of really powerful tools, a lot of really useful things for just Individuals. There's another guy that I follow on social media, and I'll just name drop this guy, and his YouTube account is Neural Viz.

Highly recommend him if you like, really weird hilarious content. It's kind of got that odd sense of like, he does basically these like, "Unanswered Mysteries" types of things, but instead it is like, "Unanswered Oddities" is what the name of it is, but it's from this perspective of this alien race that has evolved probably from what I can tell, evolved from humans into you know, into living in America and living in the world the planet Earth.

And it's their perspective on everything. They're just short series, but he is creating a whole world out of it, and the cool thing is he also shows his work. He says, this is how I made all this. These are the tools that I used, and if you sponsor him, he'll even go deeper and talk through his creative process.

And it's been fascinating to see how somebody can go from like what might have taken a studio to do years ago. This guy can produce on his own, and I don't think that's indicative of, that's always the way it's gonna be, and now we don't need studios, we just need individuals. But that power allows you to do a lot with it because he has a great idea, but it needs to be fleshed out into an actual, you know, if you wanted it to be TV made for TV or something like that.

So, yeah, it's got a lot of power.

Alex Gangi: I think you touched on a really great place where AI comes in handy for a lot of the individuals, is it's in the brainstorming process. It's in that part of the storyboarding. It's in the part of visualizing. It's in the part of thinking about what you wanna create.

You can even just, honestly, just talking to a chat bot sometimes can get you a lot closer to, and I'm even talking about text. I'm not even going into visuals can get you closer to an idea of what you're trying to sound out now. You know what it's right? I mean, like, there was a thing when I was an English major, right?

And when we were doing writing, a teacher always told, said to me, you know someone can tell you what's wrong, but they can't tell you how to fix it. And I think AI's the same way. You know, even if you're working with AI, you know, you can get to a point where you know, you're like, okay, where, what is the answer?

The answer is the answer that you come up with. It's not the answer that AI's gonna come up with if the AI's spitting it out, it's not the right answer for you, probably.

Chris Hill: Probably shouldn't go with that first recommendation, should we?

Alex Gangi: Probably not. No. You gotta work with it a little bit. And same with the iterative of, of the GenAI stuff, which is so cool.

Chris Hill: Mm-hmm.

Alex Gangi: But then it's also blending these technologies, right? It's AR and AI, which I haven't, we haven't done a ton in AR in a while, but I feel like there is still something there that should really be tapped into. We do a lot of digital experiences, we do a lot of live experiences, and in these experiences we love getting the user to put themself in a place, and that's what I think AR is really great at doing, especially in the digital experience to me, where you could reach a greater breadth of audience for a much more cost effective activation than having a live experience.

it basically does that, it puts you in the space for, you know, which, what a live experience would do at the same time. Now, we did a lot of this stuff over COVID, so obviously AR was a lot easier to do than live experiences at the time of the years that shall not be named, but you know, but I still think there's a place for it.

Chris Hill: Yeah. I think AR is making a comeback too. I feel like, from what I've seen of it seems like Google just came out and basically said, we're reviving the Google Glass. You know, there's all these little things that are happening. I think Apple's probably learning the error of their ways with that VR headset, and will probably reduce, this is just my personal theory, is that they'll probably reduce it down into something way simpler for the individual, and I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of opportunities there. I think the challenge I've always had with AR is, you know, if it's on your phone, then you've got to pick up the phone, download the app, do whatever it is to engage with that, and the simpler we can make that engagement, I think more people are gonna want to do it. I think it's getting people to know how to use it and engage with it, that's a challenge.

Alex Gangi: And it's absolutely been a challenge. We always avoided apps actually for that. One reason is that it's a stop gap, and the fewer motions from the user to the end product is the easiest when you're doing any digital work, which is also why so many times we go to where the people are. We don't try to bring them to us, which was also one of the things. So, you know, when, you know, we did a lot of, I don't know, lenses in Instagram, lenses in TikTok, lenses, in, you know, Snapchat and stuff like that, because people are already there on those platforms. It's like when you're using, when you try to break into Discord. We're actually looking at Substack right now. You know, like at brands on Substack. You know, Substack is a really interesting platform.

Like maybe there's something that that we can do there because it's fairly untapped. So you're not trying to bring people out of it, you try to bring people into it, right? So we would always do like just a microsite, and we'd use partners such as like 8th Wall to bring AR to the masses easily and simply because it would work off your phone, and you didn't need to download anything.

You could just go to a site and just be part of a digital experience.

Chris Hill: And that's so much easier, so much smarter than having download the app, do all that. I have a story I can tell you maybe offline.

Alex Gangi: I mean like, you know, like if you already have an app and you're a brand, right? And they're like, okay, let's build this into here, and we'll whitelist it, and we'll just, we'll make an AR experience within the brand, I mean, like, you know, those digital try-on things have been incredible for brands. It explodes sales. You always see how it works. I always recommend that for any of you know, anything that makes sense. I don't think you need a digital try-on for a brand like Lenovo. What am I going to do? Look at the laptop on my desk? When you have a digital try-on and stuff like that, that's AR every single time, you know? And that's a very simplistic way of looking at it, I think, but it's already built into the app that you are already using. You're not trying to teach a user something, they're already doing it. It's just part of it now. So you're trying to build into the things that they're already doing instead of creating something new.

Because trying to draw some people to something new is so much more difficult than going into where they already are. And it's probably not gonna work as well.

Chris Hill: Yeah, yeah. People are lazy.

Alex Gangi: Yeah. You have to teach a learn. You have to teach a behavior versus just tapping into a learned one already.

And people are lazy. People are so lazy. Oh my gosh.

Chris Hill: That's always my recommendation when we're talking about, how do we link to something? How do you share? It's like, what's the fastest path? That's what you need to do.

Alex Gangi: Exactly. And you know, like when you do some of these things, especially with AI, like legal always loves to jump in and you're like, guys, we gotta kill the check boxes.

You gotta kill. It's too many people are gonna just sign off. They're not gonna be interested If they have to click three things and read seven se seven words, we gotta make it simpler.

Chris Hill: Absolutely. Well, very cool.

Well, I always like to wrap up here with just the question of like, what brands are you crushing on right now?

Is there any brand in particular that you're just like really into or really admire at the moment?

Alex Gangi: For sure. I mean there are a bunch of really engaging brands. I think the ones that are showing up for me are the ones that are unafraid to try new things. They're the ones that their whole company gives the marketers power to fail and try stuff that's never been done before. And it's like, really where I'm looking at is brands like Elf, last year, blew up all over the map. They were so interesting. Elf Cosmetics. It was so interesting what they were doing. I mean, their partnership with Liquid Death and doing like the death mask makeup was so funny. It was completely out there.

They jumped into Roblox, which negotiable on like how good of a platform that is for stuff, but like, it's still out there. It's interesting. It gets talking points. Got so that's L'Oreal, right? So L'Oreal's doing really interesting things. I gotta go back to Coca-Cola always. It's like, it's such a marketing powerhouse.

Nobody markets like Coca-Cola, and I don't mean that like, in a way that there are great marketers, a lot of other companies and I'm, and you know, some of them are my clients, some of them are my friends, but like, just the entire structure of Coca-Cola is built around marketing, and everybody gives power to the marketers to try new crazy things.

I mean, like we work, you know, we've worked with the head of innovation over there basically on stuff, and he is, gets to do like the most incredible things. He made that, you know, they made that AI commercial. Say what you will about. It got a 95% positivity score from consumers, you know? And an AI Santa and just like really crazy stuff that's never been done before, and they're allowed to push that envelope, and I'm so embedded in that world, unfortunately, but like, it's so crazy 'cause no one markets like they do. They're always at the cusp of everybody, every, they're always doing something different and new and so many different things so that everyone always knows Coca-Cola.

That's why it's the number one brand in the world, basically.

Chris Hill: Oh yeah. I mean, when you're up so high, I mean, like you said, number one brand in the world. I mean, when you are so well known everywhere, it's like how do you push the envelope to where people still remember that you're relevant and you're present?

I mean, I literally out this window right here to my right, have a Coca-Cola painting that mural that's on the wall of the building next to me. So, I mean, you can't get away from it, but it's one of those things where it's just fascinating to see how they always do something different. I mean, I remember as a kid going down to the, we're in Knoxville, Tennessee, I don't know if I've told you that, but we're in Knoxville, Tennessee, so driving down to Atlanta, Georgia to see the you know, the 1996 Coca-Cola City, everything they did there. I have fond memories and very vibrant memories of going there and the branding and the styling and everything, and they've just, they've just always been with it like that.

Alex Gangi: I mean, it's easy to talk. I mean, obviously that's probably like low hanging fruit. I'm in Atlanta, right? So it's probably low hanging fruit because like it's just, it's one of the easiest ones to grab. But at the same point in time, like you gotta be impressed by everything they do, and everything they do points to marketing. I mean like their PR team is one of the best in the worlds. They're like just everybody, their C-suite is always like, yeah, let's try something new. And they support that culture. It's pretty fascinating watching them work, and I get to work with them all the time, so it's always nice.

Chris Hill: Absolutely. They didn't let New Coke get, get the better of them.

Alex Gangi: No. 85 New Coke or the relaunch that they did about like seven years ago? You remember? You know that? Yeah. I got one up on my wall back here. Yeah. They relaunched it for like a month or two for fun. I think it was in partnership with Stranger Things. I think they did a collab because it was in Stranger Things in one of the seasons.

Chris Hill: Brilliant. It's so brilliant. But. Awesome.

Well, Alex, thank you for your time today. Where can people learn more about you? Where can people learn more about Sounds Fun? How can they get connected?

Alex Gangi: Well, that's great. Yeah, no thanks Chris. It was wonderful talking to you, of course. And Sounds Fun. You can go to our website, soundsfun.co. We're not a comm yet, we're still at .co. You can also find us on LinkedIn. We do a lot of posting there. Sounds Fun creative studio, and we have a newsletter that we send out every now and then, and always has the stuff that we're thinking of, things on the cusp, things that are drawing our attention, both cultural, both innovation, all the pieces. All the things. And I have a personal website as well. alexgangi.com, but I'm not here to plug myself as much as I am my team because without them I wouldn't be as much as I am. So it's great

Chris Hill: Alex. Well thank you for your time today. It's been a pleasure talking with you. And yeah, hopefully we'll get to chat again in the future. Thank you.

Alex Gangi: Thank you, Chris. I hope so.

Chris Hill: Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand. Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice. You can keep up with the podcast on our website at webuiltthisbrand.com.

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