From Mergers to Metaverse: Exploring the Latest Industry Developments

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy the Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live every Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy highlighted significant industry shifts, starting with major partnerships like Protobrand and Brandtrust joining forces to enhance brand loyalty strategies. Another headline-grabbing move was the Voxco and Ascribe merger, promising improved data collection and deeper insights.

Vypr's expansion into the U.S. sparked a discussion about the challenges of cultural adaptation and the importance of data-driven strategies for successful product launches.

WPP’s acquisition of NCA, now integrated into Ogilvy, was seen as a game-changer in elevating brand and customer experience services. The episode also explored the UK’s junk food ad ban and the rising trend of metaverse marketing, with platforms like Roblox taking center stage.

In tech, the buzz centered on the AI-driven features of the iPhone 16 and OpenAI’s latest model, both poised to revolutionize business and consumer technology. The episode concluded with anticipation for an upcoming AI event, expected to feature real-world applications and groundbreaking insights.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript 

Lenny Murphy: All right, and we are live. All right, this is gonna be fun. Welcome everybody. Karen is at a wedding, I believe. So we roped in our good buddy, Will Leach to go host. Will, welcome.

Karen Lynch: Showtime is what I need to say.

Lenny Murphy: It is. It is showtime. Here we are. So here we are. All right. And back together again. And back.

Karen Lynch: And I really hope you missed me. I mean, I listened. I didn't sound like you missed me too much.

Lenny Murphy: We did. We did miss you. It was fun. It was fun having Will. Shout out, Will. Thank you.

Karen Lynch: Thank you, Will, very much. Thank you.

Lenny Murphy: All of our co-hosts, Will and Carrie and Tim, the stand-ins, always It was fantastic, but I did miss you. Did you have a good time?

Karen Lynch: I was driving, we were in the middle of the Catskills in New York, and when I tell you, every now and then Tim would be like, there's a house for sale, and I was like, oh, hell no. I am not a rural kind of girl. Oh, come on! No, no, no. I was like, this is not my energy, you know?

Lenny Murphy: I got some tips for you. Yeah, nope, nope.

Karen Lynch: I'm really good. So anyway, it was, I mean, it was lovely. My niece's wedding was exactly what she needed to be. It was very rustic and very earthy and just beautiful, basically like a barn that she single-handedly converted into a venue. It was beautiful. So wonderful weekend with family. We all piled into an Airbnb, you know, my kids and my parents, like all of us together. So it was a great, good, good weekend. But yeah, Friday, I was literally off the map.

Lenny Murphy: Tell your niece if she wants to convert a barn, she'd give me a call because- Oh, you have no idea.

Karen Lynch: She'd be like, on it. You know, it's funny. She could probably make a living doing that sort of thing. Cause she is, she definitely has an eye for how to make a rustic space like that beautiful. I mean, it was transformed, so.

Lenny Murphy: Other conversations. Speaking of transform, lots of transformation is happening, right?

Karen Lynch: Lots of transformation. Business transformation, somebody.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, it was a busy week, all types of stuff, as always, but there was just a ton of stuff to get to. So do you want to kick us off?

Karen Lynch: Well, yeah, you know, I think it's funny because when I looked at everything that, you know, it's kind of being thrown out this week, I was like, you know, look, I'm sorry, but shout out to Proto Brand, man. The image, because of the red pants, right? Like everybody in the industry has sort of said, well, you know, the red pants. However, can you not picture Anders and his team like in the red pants every time their name comes up? It's so effective. So kudos to them. They've partnered with Brand Trust to combine behavioral science with AI expertise for brand tracking, kind of, you know, another partnership that is going to move those firms into the future, which I think is the big story with this partnership.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. I'm a big fan of both businesses. Darryl and his team at BrandTrust, just amazing consultative work as well. Of course, Anders and everything that they've done in metaphor, elicitation, and expanding that. It seems like a match made in heaven to me. Yes, shout out to both companies.

Karen Lynch: Shout out to both companies. Evidence of these, because they're partnerships, right? They're just publicly made partnerships. Not everything that we're sharing is a specific merger, where there's that. These partnerships are designed for both companies to remain intact and keep operating, but with that, oh my gosh, symbiotic capabilities. It's really a nice business model that I wish more people would look into.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, very synergistic. And more and more in our industry, right, when we have this bifurcation between tech and service, and both are equally valid, right, and needed, not all companies have the wherewithal to combine those, and that can be challenging. So these types of partnerships do make sense, absolutely. And especially when they're aligned to, philosophically, you know, to the approach of applied behavior, science. I mean, that really is the deal for both of them. And yeah, I think it makes great sense. So I was thrilled to see that. Yep. Good stuff. Well, then they're more of a merger, right? Yeah. Voxco and Ascribe. And you know, and it's really interesting, because Voxco is one of those companies that, I mean, they've been around for forever, have been the foundational kind of data collection platform. But you don't hear about them all the time, right? They've been like the Intel inside and for a lot of companies, and they did a private equity deal a few years back, and then they acquired Ascribe, which has been around forever as well, as a coding platform, then with text analytics, now more AI, and I think that's really the story there is the incorporation of a data collection platform like Bosco, which has always had qual and quant capabilities, augmenting that with the ability to analyze data in an unstructured way. We used to scribe years ago. They were great partners. Yeah, and this was long before the era of AI. And they were always forward-looking, especially in the way they visualized data. I really liked how they approached that. And this was probably, gosh, Shoot, maybe even 10 years ago.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and what I like about it is if I put my vendor hat on from when I was literally on the supplier side, and I think one approach is to figure out where are we losing to the competition because we don't have these offerings or these features aren't a part of what we bring to the table. And instead of saying, saying, oh, let's hire to shore that up or let's grow our capabilities, thinking strategically about who can we, again, partner with, who might we have that synergy with, to use that word, too. It's just a different way of looking at filling a gap in your offerings that I think could be a win-win if you share values, if there's something at a high level that will allow you to collaborate together beautifully. Because I imagine some of these partnerships might fizzle out. It might seem really good in theory, but do the work to make sure it's solid, right?

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Like any relationship. And yes, I mean, fundamentally, every business is the growth that has been built by our partner, right? Yeah, to drive growth, especially from a technology standpoint. So, you know, we're no, no surprise, we're seeing, seeing more of that occurring. And I think we will continue to see why I actually just got the call with another company. Actually, in the past 24 hours, I've had probably five calls, variations on a theme of this idea of, you know, of mergers and acquisitions and building by partner approaches. And I always call it the Reese's Cup, right? So, you know, where do you, they're chocolate, and someone else's peanut butter, and how do you come together to make the Reese's Cup? So.

Karen Lynch: Chocolate and peanut butter.

Lenny Murphy: Oh, yeah.

Karen Lynch: That's a delightful way of saying it's so much better than peanut butter and jelly.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, absolutely. Or, you know, cookies, peanut butter and bacon. We'll go a little Elvis there. Oh, no, if you don't try peanut butter and bacon, I'm telling you, guys, it is a phenomenal combination.

Karen Lynch: Oh, my God. Since we're doing this, there is, you know, Kyle, who is like my bonus son, his mother, who he is. Part of the reason he became my bonus son is because his mother passed away when he was very young. But she had a chocolate chip cookie recipe that had bacon in it. And I was like, I just can't make sense of that at the time. But yeah, like that her cookie recipe was to put bacon in the chocolate chip cookies.

Lenny Murphy: So bacon is meat candy. I mean, so I'm all for it. Anyway, we digress.

Karen Lynch: All right. Well, let's talk about growth in a different way. Right. Because I thought this was interesting. And, you know, like some of this comes from Research Live. So again, hats off to the people that, you know, are posting this stuff. Lenny and I can only react to what we see, what either shows up in our news feeds or is on some sort of a news site or that you're emailing us at the exchange at greenbook.org. We can see things there also. But anyway, Vypr is expanding into the U.S., a U.K.-based consumer insights platform, bringing stuff over here. And I always think that's really interesting when one of those companies wants to jump the pond in either direction and start to do business there, because that level of expansion doesn't come easily. It involves knowing the cultural nuances, but also then having the team in place. Anyway, good luck with that expansion. More power to you.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. An interesting data-driven new product development. Let's think of it as a, you know, a next generation basis, if you will, which was a conversation I was having earlier today, I was thinking about the two areas of biggest waste in enterprise is one advertising.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And the other is new product development. So many new products fail. So, there's always opportunities for new players coming in that can provide data driven approaches to, to enhance the new product development cycle and ensure certainty or at least increase, you know, uh, your level of certainty in the new product launch. So, uh, be interesting to see, I'd never heard of Vypr. Uh, so I'll, I'll look forward to seeing what they do in the U S cool.

Karen Lynch: Yep.

Lenny Murphy: And then we got a protege.

Karen Lynch: So, you know, this is sort of like, again, growth in a different way by launching a new feature. It is one of, I feel like every week, Lenny, we say, and this comes now has an AI offering, and this company now has an AI offering.

Lenny Murphy: Because we do. Because that is the case every week. Everybody needs to.

Karen Lynch: Oh my goodness, I cannot wait till our AI event, because I don't want to spoil our opening keynote, but I was just on the phone with him this morning discussing kind of where we're going in the future, and I'm like, our audience 100% needs to be paying attention to this talk, if none other. 10 a.m. The first morning, friends, we're going to, you know, we have a consultant who's going to be kind of sharing a look forward. And with the launching of a new feature, at some point, this will be just how we live our lives, just like, as we've said before, our mobile phones are part of our lives. At some point, conversational AI will just be how we do things. And we won't be thinking about it as much.

Lenny Murphy: So, which particular is for coming as a protege, right? I mean, they're a sample company. They also have a marketing component, right, through their Swagbucks and all of that, and then they repurpose that for a sample. But a business like Protege makes most of their money from a volume standpoint via surveys. So for them to launch a quant scale solution shows the transformation we've been talking about for quite some time now, from the survey to something more qualitative in mode. That's more interactive, more of a discussion, even though it is an AI agent doing that. Absolutely indicative of where everything is going. So I thought that was interesting.

Karen Lynch: Well, and I think you and Will said last week, as a rule, there's too many kinds of new hires for us to cover every week. We wouldn't get to all the other stuff we'd like to talk about. But every now and then, one of these, certainly a CEO which does indicate something is coming for that organization. And it may not come immediately. But if they're bringing in a new CEO, for whatever reason, change will be coming. And we'll see it when it happens. So I think it's interesting to point out when it's And yeah, I think with this article that, thank you, Karley, this article that was sort of shared about it, the release about it is, you know, his expertise is in enterprise technology. So that just goes to show you what that expertise is going to do for them and watch what it does, because that's how you're going to stay competitive in the marketplaces. If you see what other people are doing and what skills they're shoring up at the top of the helm, then. Absolutely.

Lenny Murphy: And especially, So it's not talking out of school. I have no personal information about it, but the, um, you know, it's, it's, it just shows they're ready for the next level, which will be some type of transaction of some form in the near future, because that's how these things work. Yeah. So, yeah. And then speaking of

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Speaking of change. And this is interesting because I, actually, was just speaking to this gentleman on the phone about our AI event, and this became a part of that conversation. These big changes where WPP has acquired new commercial arts or NCA, which is going to be integrated into OLV. So speaking of advertising, because we will get to advertising today, there's a lot going on the advertising space right now. But, you know, NCA, which is really only a company since it was founded in 2020, offers brand and customer experience services. So kind of bringing that expertise, because James Murphy, who is amazing, a name. I mean, oh, well, I guess.

Lenny Murphy: I mean, I don't even know the guy. But you know, he is kick ass, I guess, I guess.

Karen Lynch: So all right. Well, there you go. So he's one of the co-founders of NCA. So he is going to be serving as the UK chief executive of Ogilvy, which is a big freakin deal. So imagine founding a company in 2020. And then here we are four years later. Oh, and by the way, you're gonna be chief executive at Ogilvy. Like, yeah, that must mean that yes, this Murphy must have a lot to offer if he, if he made such a big movie, of course, he does. So being that ego right away, right? So anyway, yeah, it's just cool. And interesting to think about the changes that Ogilvy made as a result of all of this. So very interesting. 

Lenny Murphy: Yes, absolutely. And I will say somewhere down the line, we're cousins somewhere down the line. So I know, I do think that's interesting, because the, the, I think it's very data driven, very CX focused was my understanding of it. So building that into Ogilvy is not just a consolidation play, right? That's a transformation play, as the agencies continue to transform as well with all of this. And that's probably a good segue into, well, what's transforming? You know?

Karen Lynch: There's a lot transforming. We will come back to advertising, because again, we will wrap the show with some other advertising things. But I mean, the two big big, obvious, in-your-face tech announcements this week. You know, open AI and the iPhone, like the Apple intelligence. Now, you know, we've been kind of pointing to all of these things, but, you know, the iPhone and as an iPhone user, I have the iPhone 16 series on my mind. It's, you know, it's been confirmed as a launch. It's not going to be on sale till September 20th, which really is just a week away here in the U.S. And many other countries, other countries, they're going to have to wait a week. And by many other, I mean, I think the article said like 57 countries will be able to buy this on September 20th. But it's the Apple intelligence features, right, that Lenny and I are paying attention to here. And they'll be according to the author of this article that Karley just shared, just the beginning of this Apple intelligence. So yes, there's other things going on with the phone, but that's not really what Lenny and I are that interested in, we're really interested in the AI capabilities.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Well, it is interesting that the one piece is the chip. And I think that that's actually worthwhile to have a conversation real quick about because earlier this week, I was thinking about that of adoption, right? What drives consumer adoption? And certainly there's features and all that good stuff, right? But fundamentally for technology, It is availability and technological efficacy, which comes down to processing power and bandwidth. Those have been the limiting factors in many cases. And we've gotten through that for most of the world, especially bandwidth. We've got 5G now and we'll have 6G in the next couple of years, whatever, the whole planet will be connected, which it fundamentally is already. Processing power for these solutions via chips continues to accelerate. Why is NVIDIA, right? So that's the other arms race because the processing power and the bandwidth drives greater availability of AI and it can be embedded in more solutions. That's how this works, right? That infrastructure and capabilities. So now that we're with the iPhone cracking that new chip that powers it, we'll see that in every other device. That just has a new chip that can process the AI, which will boost consumer adoption because everybody will be used to it, now you have your AI on your phone.

Karen Lynch: You can interact just with your phone if you're an Apple user in this case, but it'll be on, everybody will have their version of it at some point. This will just be our smartphones acting like, we've been saying conversational AI with chat GPT or whatever, like, you know, is something that we, you know, leaned into, but we went, we had a destination to go to. Well, we may be able to just pick up our phone and ask it a question and get the AI response. And that's interesting because it builds right into, you know, our laptop. We can be sitting in our laptop and then just ask our laptop a question instead of having to go to an app or a website. Like it will just be integrated into our lives.

Lenny Murphy: Yep.

Karen Lynch: Oh, it's not going to be like, if you are a user, it's, it's just going to be there. So you don't even have to go out and you know, like, put in that much effort. It's just a feature of your product. 

Lenny Murphy: Right. And then so the segue, right, bear in mind, that's the old AI. That's already outdated, right? I know.

Karen Lynch: All right. So open AI released a one, its first model with reasoning abilities. So this is a big deal. But also keep so you might have heard a bit about it. This is sort of like the strawberry model. I know that you and I talked about two weeks ago. I don't know if you and we'll talk at all. So like, you know, we've known this next model was coming. Um, we, I think I started talking about it six months ago where we're like, you know, by the end of the year, there'll be the next, there'll be the next model. Well, it's here. It's being called Oh one, two, which I thought was interesting in this article that Karley just shared, um, to reset the counter back to one. Like it's, it's, this is a brand new generation. This is a brand new start. So like even that concept, right? That's a big deal to be like, we are already at the next gen, which is why at one point it was called like, it would be like, you know, chat GPT next or something like they're setting us up for this is next generation intelligence. And apparently it's really going to be super sharp for the math, for the coding, probably great for the analytics and the data really strong. They're a little less intelligent in their knowledge of the world, but in the research industry, I don't know if that matters. If it nails data synthesis down, I don't know. So here we go, but it's expensive. So yeah, lots to talk about there.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, well, and I think that what's interesting is from this general purpose AI, right? So let's say what's in our phones, right? Or we're used to it. Now they're addressing business, specific business use cases where rubber hits the road, right? Math, coding, you know, those types of things that have real business, everything, I don't mean to say they don't have business applications, obviously they have. But when you get into that type of stuff, then that broadens. And in organizations like you, especially in data-driven industries like ours, it opens the door to do a hell of a lot more than we've been doing. Because now it's not just coding open ends, for instance, or analyzing unstructured data, okay, now we'll be analyzing structured data, which were already there, but it wasn't quite, it was still very, this will open the door towards more and more of that happening.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and I think one of the things that was interesting in the article, and there's been other articles also, so when I say the article, it's the one I read right before our call to make sure I knew this part of the conversation, it was talking about, oh my gosh, in my head I used the concept of showing your work, like it will explain. So I think what's really interesting about it is it will educate us. If we ask it to do something for us, it will do perhaps a better job also telling us what it did. And I think that's, to me, one of the more interesting components is here's how I, I don't know, I'm imagining, here's how I'll handle this task or here's how we would do mathematically or, you know, here's some code, you know, that it, I just think it's really interesting that it, it will, for many of us who are not mathematicians or data scientists, it actually is going to, to be able to educate us.

Lenny Murphy: Well, that's my reasoning now. So one of the articles we had put into the pick list, uh, uh, I think had the, the, and we didn't make it into this. I'm going to mention it anyway. It was, uh, I think our like, uh, AI consciousness is going to happen. Come on. Right. And so Karley, I don't know if you probably can't see that, but from a link.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, we're talking about science, not science. We're talking about science and what we know is showing itself as possible, not fiction.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. No, this is real. And it is a step in those directions of enhanced capabilities. Because to your point, so yeah, I don't want to go off in my usual sci-fi. Yeah. I mean, I always want you back to reality. Capabilities are expanding and we don't. We continue to not have. We don't know where that's gonna take us. Yeah, right so those possibilities that sound like sci-fi when we have these new things that that emerge that things like reasoning that gets us further down the road of It's it's It's reasoning in that it can learn patterns and data. And it's reasoning within a certain construct. It doesn't have self-perception and existential reasoning. It's not there. Got it, got it, right. Yes, reel me back in. But my real point is, so take the singularity away for a second, right? We're three years into this, we're resetting with a new standard that is focused on not just predicting the next word, which is fundamentally what LLMs have done, but now reasoning through complex problems. And that is a very different model than existed before. What's next? What is the advancement that occurs next?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, for sure. And I can't wait, again, Like, you know, Karley, I know we're a little early and we still have other stuff to talk about, but for our AI event, because when I tell you that Donovan Andrews, you can look him up online, check out his LinkedIn profile, the conversation he is going to lead us through to kick off this event on the 15th is, I literally on the call today, I was like, that's coming, that's going to be mind blowing. Like a really smart, sharp guy from Ogilvy telling us a bit about some of the kind with a futurist lens, but one based on, you know, like a significant amount of knowledge of that playing field. He is a consultant, and has been a consultant for Ogilvy in AI transformation. So it's going to be a great, great talk. So please get yourselves signed up for our AI event. Use the Exchange. Actually, Exchange 30 will get you a discount on the pre-event. Which is the paid ticket, the main event is free of charge, so.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, good shout out. And I'll ask something real quickly. I told you I've been in lots of conversations the past couple of days about M&A and all this stuff. I will tell you the, I can't tell you who, but there are companies in the market right now that will soon be launching solutions that utilizing existing data driven by AI replace the need to ask a question. 

Karen Lynch: Well, and a lot of partners, they got the memo about bringing a client. We have active case studies from, again, partners with big brands. We're taking the stage to show everybody how brand A is using this technology with this particular partner. So across the whole event, you'll see partners, sure, but talking about real use cases with big brands, so that if you're a brand, you can be, you know, kind of benchmarking what the other brands are doing. And if you're a partner, you can see what your competition is doing. Like, to me, this, without a doubt, is the event I've been most excited for, because the content is going to blow your mind. I mean, absolutely, different types of things we're about. And I'm not just talking about my ass friends, like, I mean, I'm on this agenda. And I am, I am so anyway, and we're going to be talking about using it not just for, you know, these use cases, as I said, you know, yes, we'll be talking about digital trends, twins, yes, we'll be talking about different models for sentiment analysis, we'll be talking about new product development and use cases there, we'll be talking about early stage forecasting, we'll be talking about strategic intelligence in general, like not just soup to nuts, call it scale, but we're talking about all of the different pillars of an organization leaning into AI to help them with their insights work. It's gonna be genius. And of course, we're gonna cover data quality, and of course, we're gonna talk about AI washing, and we'll be talking about some other stuff as well. I mean, just so much.

Lenny Murphy: Right, and do you guys see how this works, our audience, right? I mean, we do this show every week because This is our, you know, it's a feed, you know, we're looking for examples of the, of these changes happening while also prompting us to think about what does that look like, And then we, we take all this information and we build events, you know, to, uh, to help demonstrate like, uh, like I XAI. Here's what's happening right now. So when we keep harping on, you have to get on this train. It's not because we're, you know, it's not a hypothetical.

Karen Lynch: So I do wonder. If other people like this stuff as much as we do. So please let us know that you like this stuff as much as we do, because Lenny and I really do geek out about it. It's like what we are, it is what we have in common, right? The most is our geeking out about this stuff, but please give us feedback. Again, the exchange at greenbook.org, you can just let us know that like, yep, we geek out with you. So anyway, we'd love to hear from you. And now I- We have two more quick stories.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me add to this. The Roblox Meta Marketing World for Brands.

Karen Lynch: You don't have... Yeah, I don't have little people anymore either, but my people were big Minecraft people. So for a while there, I was calling Minecraft, Minecraft, and my kids would come after me. They're like, it's not Minecraft. And I'd be like, okay.

Lenny Murphy: Although at least it makes you think. My kids play Minecraft as well. And you do have to use your brain.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. My kids are all the way up to 25. I mean, whatever, they love that anyway. But what they're doing at Roblox is really interesting because they've launched a branded virtual experience called the Brands Experience to showcase advertising collaborations in their world. So that if you are a brand who hasn't ventured into the metaverse yet, you can go to this place and see. It's like benchmarking virtual advertising companies like Walmart, Universal, Adidas, Paris Hilton. I mean, there's some cool stuff that's happening there that other brands can go in and check out. I mean, I thought this was brilliant. What a great way to do it. What a great way to showcase it. It's almost like a brand exposure, but in the metaverse. So come and see what's possible. It's good stuff.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. These experiments were done with Sims, Second Life. I mean, you know, these early iterations of the metaverse. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: But world, a designated world for a brand who's considering it to have that destination to say, I will join you in this world to see what's possible is what I think is really, yeah, really cool. Like, it's really transparent. Like, let's go see what other people are doing. It's actually helping to elevate the whole concept across the CPG space, right? Instead of, you know, instead of it, the It's so competitive. It feels like, I don't know. I just really like it. I think it's cool and good for them.

Lenny Murphy: It is. It's the early iterations of what I always refer to as the Ready Player One universe, right? That idea. We're getting there. All right, you want to wrap up? Because you found this last one, which I thought was really cool.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, I think it's interesting.

Lenny Murphy: And I feel like it's been talked about for a long time, but the UK friends has put into place, they've confirmed a ban on junk food ads, pre-watershed junk food ads is what it says, but junk food advertising, define junk food advertising, but you all know what it probably is, banned on TV before 9 p.m. Along with a total ban on paid online ads for unhealthy food and drinks. That is a monumental change. I think so too it on here in the US.

Karen Lynch: Absolutely.

Lenny Murphy: I don't know if we'll go there, but it's all aimed at taking on childhood obesity, which shouldn't be existing, but I think you and I probably grew up on ads for Pop-Tarts after school.

Karen Lynch: Grew up on Pop-Tarts. What are you talking about?

Lenny Murphy: I mean… Pop-Tarts and Kool-Aid. I didn't know anything else existed.

Karen Lynch: I know. I know. And like, you know, the soda ads and the, you know, the candy ads and the, the, the gosh, the Doritos and the potato chips and all of that stuff that believe me has a place in our home as well. So I don't want to pretend to be that person because I'm not, because my son calls them bed Ritos actually. Cause he likes to literally like in college was like their bed Ritos. They're not Doritos. So yeah. Anyway, so we're not those people. However, the idea that parents can do a little more gatekeeping because your kids aren't clamoring quite the same way because it hasn't been drilled into your head that these are the best. I know one of my son's friends, the same kid who does like Bedrito's, came over to our house one time and was like, oh, can I have some of your Doritos? My mother never buys this. And it was such a forbidden fruit, but he saw it all the time and wanted it desperately. So I just love this effort and I wish the US would do something similar. I agree. And I wonder if our ad conglomerates will allow it. And I wonder if the big brands will get on board with it because- We love you, Coke and Pepsi and Frito-Lay. We do. We love you, but. Yeah, well, I mean, think how we grew up, Right. Saturday morning cartoons, right? And we sat there eating the sugary cereal.

Lenny Murphy: At least I did, you know, on Saturday morning watching the commercials for the sugary cereals.

Karen Lynch: I know. I know. It's really unbelievable when you think about it. So anyway, that's it. That's a wrap. Way to go, UK. Lots going on with the UK today.

Lenny Murphy: Again, shout out to the team at Research Live because a lot of that stuff doesn't come our way specifically. So we'd like to tune into that to see what they're sharing over the pond. Research Live and Daily Research News Online. All of those.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Good stuff. Keep it coming.

Lenny Murphy: Yep.

Karen Lynch: All right. That's it. I guess that's a wrap. That's our show. Thank you so much. Everybody have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Thanks, everybody. Take care.

Karen Lynch: Bye, Lenny.

Lenny Murphy: Bye, all.

Karen Lynch: Bye.

Links from the episode:

Partnership for Brandtrust and Protobrand 

Voxco and Ascribe Combine Platforms 

Vypr Expands to the US 

Prodege Debuts AI-Based ‘Qual at Quant Scale’ Feature 

Alchemer Names Martin Mrugal as CEO 

WPP Acquires New Commercial Arts (NCA) 

iPhone 16 Pro: Price, Design Update, and Battery Life Confirmed in Apple Launch 

OpenAI Releases o1, Its First Model with ‘Reasoning’ Abilities 

Roblox’s Meta-Marketing World for Brands 

UK Government Confirms Ban on Pre-Watershed Junk Food Ads 

Jibunu Introduces Automated Scheduling and Management of Longitudinal Research