Winfluence and Influencer Marketing with Jason Falls

Welcome to Brainfluence, where author and international keynote speaker Roger Dooley has weekly conversations with thought leaders and world class experts. Every episode shows you how to improve your business with advice based on science or data.

Roger’s new book, Friction, is published by McGraw Hill and is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere. Dr Robert Cialdini described the book as, “Blinding insight,” and Nobel winner Dr. Richard Claimer said, “Reading Friction will arm any manager with a mental can of WD40.”

To learn more, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction, or just visit the book seller of your choice.

Now, here’s Roger.

Roger Dooley:     Welcome to Brainfluence, I’m Roger Dooley.

Today’s guest wears a few hats, and my favorite one is bourbon influencer. By day, Jason Falls leads digital strategy and hosts two podcasts, Digging Deeper and Winfluence for Cornet, a Kentucky-based agency. He’s worked with a number of the world’s most iconic brands, including bourbons like Buffalo Trace, Weller, 1792, Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, as well as companies like GE appliances, AT&T, Valvoline, Humana and more. Jason’s new book is Winfluence: Reframing Influencer Marketing to Ignite your Brand. Welcome to the show, Jason.

Jason Falls:        Thanks, Roger. Great to be here.

Roger Dooley:     Now Jason, we always have such fun when we talk, and we always sort of get into that influencer marketing, but I wonder if you could sort of recap, what are the differences between influence marketing, and influencer marketing?

Jason Falls:        Sure. So, the whole impetus for the book is really kind of that premise. When the mainstream media reports anything about influencers, it tends to be how bad they are, or how superficial they are. They put them in a really odd light. And I think for most businesses out there, who don’t spend a lot of their time in these little online conversations about marketing, like we do, that might be the only exposure they have to influence marketing or influencers.

And so, the idea behind the book is we’ve got to stop thinking about that word influencer, because that’s a noun, that’s a person, that’s a channel, and we’ve got to start thinking about it in terms of what are we trying to accomplish? Well, we’re trying to accomplish influence. We’re trying to influence the audience that we want to reach. That might be through a YouTuber or an Instagrammer, but it might also be through an employee advocacy group, or it might be through the president of the parent teacher’s association in your community. Depending upon what your business is, where your business is, there’s lots of ways to push the buttons of influence.

And so, the book is really about, we’ve got to get out of this silo. I think the mainstream media has backed us into a corner, into thinking that influencers are superficial, frivolous people who do peace signs and duck lips, those kinds of people or what they portray influencers to be. Whereas I know the world of influencers as these brilliant content creators, who have collected audiences that love their content and the engagement with them online. And they can be very influential in certain circumstances for certain brands. Yeah, there’s a percentage of them, probably 10, 15, 20% that are superficial, and aren’t really going to move the needle for you. But there’s a big world out there that businesses can tap into, to influence the audience they want to influence. So, the difference is influencer marketing is really focused on people with a lot of following on social networks, influence marketing is focused on, how do I influence the ultimate target audience that I want to reach, to take action on behalf of my brand?

Roger Dooley:     Yeah, it seems like the influencers are still the public face of influence marketing, and I don’t quite get why. When I see one of these influencer pages, and every shot looks like a photo shoot, where, “No, I’m just casually walking along a street in Venice,” with perfect lighting, perfect makeup, perfect hair and everything else, to me it just screams fake. And I don’t understand why these people collect hundreds of thousands in some cases, or even millions of followers, when it seems fake, but I guess maybe they are aspirational for people. Why do these people remain popular?

Jason Falls:        Yeah, I think there’s a couple of explanations, and you’ve hit on one particular one that I think is really the reason. First of all, you have to remember that the influencers in question here, the beauty, style, fashion, some travel influencers, really are aspirational people. They are producing a life that may or may not be 100% genuine and accurate, but they’re producing a life that they’re sort of filming, and photographing for an audience online, that’s, “I’m living my best life, and I’m trying to inspire you to do the same.” And so, you might be surrogating that lifestyle, and just following along as a third party, watching and wishing that you can live that lifestyle or travel to those places, or wear those clothes, or look like that or whatever. But it might also be that it just inspires you to achieve more in life, and try to get there as an aspiration one day.

And so, I do think there is a degree of sort of acting that is happening there. It’s people that are living their best life, but the reality is it’s probably not all that glamorous. But for whatever reason, there are people that want to follow aspirational folks. I do that to a degree. There’s a number of people out there in that sort of influencer space, that either take really luxurious trips to the Caribbean and places that I want to go, that I’m going to follow along just because I want to aspire to do that one day. I’m not necessarily going to put a whole lot of stock in products and services that these people might recommend, necessarily. I’m going to reserve that for the content creators that get a little bit deeper in teaching me something, and providing me something of value, other than an inspirational place to go or an inspirational look to have, if I want to dress a certain way.

But there’s an audience out there for it. And some of it revolves around very superficial, fame and popularity and wealth and all this kind of stuff. But some of it actually revolves around someone’s taste for style, or makeup or fashion. And so, there’s an audience out there for it, and if there’s an audience out there for it, there’s going to be people who are able to manufacture a career out of doing it.

Roger Dooley:     Yeah. I think manufacture is an element for some… One of the funnier things I’ve heard that some influencers will do, is simulate an airplane window with a toilet seat. But if you have the appropriate background up next to your head, it looks just like you’re sitting maybe in a cushy seat on a Gulfstream or something, when in fact it’s nothing like that. Well, there was just the new documentary, Fake Famous from HBO. What do you think of that?

Jason Falls:        Yeah. I wrote a piece for Entrepreneur Magazine about that, and I actually interviewed Nick Bilton, the director, on my influencer marketing podcast. And the documentary more than anything, underlines this mainstream media attitude toward influencers. The premise of that was, let’s see if we can take a person that doesn’t have influence, and buy them a bunch of followers, and fake all these pictures with the toilet seat in the window to make it look like you’re on a plane, and all that good stuff. And so, he got this one young lady to 250,000 followers, and then brands started wanting to give her products to review, and take her on trips and all that good stuff. And what Nick Bilton, the director did in that movie, was he looked at the fringe element of influencers out there, content creators online, who are engaging their audiences around certain things.

And he looked very intentionally, and very specifically at the fringe element, that would fake an airplane photograph with a toilet seat, would rent a grounded jet, private jet for an hour, for 60 bucks in LA, just to take pictures on a private jet so that you could fake the fact that you were on a private jet. There’s a subgroup of influencers out there, that is basically manufacturing that lifestyle, lying to their audience about who they are and what they are, in order to build up enough followers to get free products from people, to get paid to be an influencer. And that’s no different, I think, quite frankly I don’t think it’s any different than someone going to Hollywood and trying to fake it until you make it in the acting world and whatnot. It’s the same type of thing, they’re just trying to grasp on to something that will make them famous. And I contend that that’s maybe 15, 20% of influencers out there, and it’s a very fringe element.

If you look at the rest of the world of influencers, you’re looking at people like Derek Wolf at Over the Fire Cooking, who has over a million followers online, because he teaches people how to grill out in really elaborate ways that makes the meat and the veggies and everything look good, smell good, taste good. And he has a lot of people who just really like learning from him. And as a byproduct of him building up that audience, he’s got brand partnerships with folks like Buffalo Trace bourbon, who I work with. We’ve partnered with Derek Wolf for a number of years now, because his audience aligns very much with Buffalo Trace’s audience, and there’s a really nice collaboration there between the two. He’s also developed his own meat rub product, and has his own products as an entrepreneur, that has parlayed itself from this Over the Fire Cooking channel that he runs online.

So, that’s the world of influencers that most of us deal with, Nick Bilton, Fake Famous, looked at one little sliver of the best practices of the worst examples out there, and made a movie out of it and says, “That’s what all influencers are like,” and it’s not.

Roger Dooley:     Well, it’s been so long since I’ve been on an airplane, with the pandemic. I’m about ready to hang a toilet seat in my office window, and make it feel like I’m on one.

Jason Falls:        Make-believe a little, yeah.

Roger Dooley:     But I think you make an important distinction there, Jason. You’ve got these influencers who are basically, in some ways showing off their lifestyle, or their wannabe lifestyle or something, but then you’ve got others who are delivering actual value to their followers. They are showing how to do stuff, and presumably have much more engagement, or at least more real engagement simply because of that, because they are delivering that value. And often those may not be in such glamorous areas, I’m sure there are cosmetics influencers who provide makeup tips and such, but your example of cooking is an example that’s not quite as glamorous, still sort of in that area that you can get a little bit of maybe fakery going on. If you ever see, you being a part of an ad agency, you’ve probably seen the occasional food shoot that didn’t really resemble food that you would want to eat very much. But are there influencers in every industry like that?

Jason Falls:        Yeah. I wouldn’t say that there’s influencers in every industry that manufacture this fakery.

Roger Dooley:     I mean, are there are there real influencers who deliver value, I guess.

Jason Falls:        Yeah, there’s real influencers out there that deliver value. The key for brands and businesses, is to really look into the content and see, does this engagement look real? Now, there’s two things you’ve got to watch for. First of all, you have to distinguish between the fakers and the ones who can really drive value. And that requires getting into the content and saying, do they get passionate about the brands they work with? Do they make really good recommendations to their audience, and does their audience seem to respond? So, that’s one hurdle you’ve got to jump over, to isolate the ones who are going to be good for your business. And that’s probably going to weed out most of the other ones.

But we also have to contend with influencer fraud. There are people out there who, like in the movie Fake Famous, are buying followers, are actually buying fake engagement with bots, they’re participating in comment pods with other influencers, so they all go comment on each other’s stuff just to drive up the engagement numbers, but they’re not really paying attention to the content. So, those are things that the software companies are trying to find ways to fight against, that a strategist or an agency person like me would sit down and actually manually go through a lot of influencers content to say, okay, we have a pretty good degree of confidence that this person is genuine real, and they can move the needle for your business.

Sometimes there’s a little trial and error. You work with an influencer for a while, you’re not seeing any movement, well, move on to another influencer. So, there are things that brands need to watch out for, but yes, there are influential people in just about every category out there. If you want to find someone who can influence an audience of people who are enthusiastic about beekeeping, there’s four or five of them out there. There might be four or 500 of them out there, but I’ve actually physically gone and looked to see, and there are four or five of them at least. There are people in blacksmithing, there are people in certainly health, wellness, fitness, and all sorts of angles of food. And then you get into the B2B space, and there are people who are specialty influential people, authorities in IT software that I can’t even pronounce. And so, they’re out there, it’s just a matter of uncovering them and seeing if you can partner with them with your brand.

Roger Dooley:     Right. And these aren’t necessarily people who are on Instagram, they might be. But if you are writing about an expert in B2B software, you might be using other media. You might be using LinkedIn, or your own blog, or company blogs and such, perhaps some of the publishing platforms, and so on. So again, we think of influencer marketing, or influence marketing as being often about brand awareness. Because okay, I get this person to talk about my thing, then other people will know about my thing. What are some other good reasons to use influencer marketing? Because you talk about quite a few, well beyond that just brand awareness piece.

Jason Falls:        Sure. So obviously, brand awareness is a great starting point, obviously. Because you’ve got individuals online who have an audience that you can persuade to try, buy, consider, be aware of your brand. I love the case studies that are in that sort of brand awareness category, that are all about changing the way people perceive your brand or whatnot. I’m a PR guy by trade, so I love the examples of companies like Mighty, which is a facilities management company in the United Kingdom. And they had this kind of reputation of just being a supply company, so a mop and bucket company, but they’re actually a very forward thinking, innovative company in terms of facilities management technology.

And so, in order to change their perception, they reached out to several hundred influential people in the facilities management space, to get their feedback on a research report that they had created. And so they got them quotes and comments and whatnot for the final report. Well, what are these people going to do with the report that quotes them? They’re going to turn around and share it with their networks, right? So, all these influential people in the facilities management space in the United Kingdom were talking about this report from this company that nobody perceived to be a forward thinking innovator in that space. Then they engaged five, 10, 15 of them to go to trade shows with them, and talk about the issues of the day, all in the environment of Mighty, this company that did this. And so, they changed the perception of how people think about them. So, that’s a B2B example that could be used in B2C as well.

But right now in the B2C space, you’re seeing an influx of technologies and strategies from brands, that include things like shoppable images, other types of opportunities, where the influencer’s content is actually, you can click on it and it opens up a purchase point for you. So, you can actually drive transactions, you can use influencers to drive foot traffic into retail locations. Depending upon their geographic footprint and who they’re reaching, you can actually use them for that traditional advertising, conversion sales as well. You can also use influencers to drive ratings and reviews, which anybody who knows anything about search engine optimization, ratings and reviews are critical to your business online, especially if you do e-commerce. And so, your website needs ratings and reviews too. There’s no terms of service against you engaging people and paying them, to write and review your stuff on your website.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend you do that for a website that has a terms of service against it, like Yelp doesn’t allow you to solicit reviews. They will discount those and penalize you for it. So, don’t send an influencer that you’ve engaged to review you on Yelp. Or Amazon is another example, they don’t like that either. But you can certainly use their reviews on other sites that allow it, and on your website, which is important in the SEO game. And then the last piece, there’s a chapter in the book, it’s one of the final chapters, chapter 14, where I really focus on the real power, I think, for influence marketing is driving word of mouth. And you can use influencers as fire starters for the message of turning to their friends and saying, “I love this company. I use this product. I love this brand because…” And if you can find a compelling reason for them to do that, they can actually be the first domino in a long series of dominoes that builds enthusiasm around your brand.

Roger Dooley:     Yeah. And you mentioned the ability to actually drive sales, but you also pointed out that sometimes executives can be too revenue focused. In other words, “Okay, we’re spending this money on influence marketing, how many sales do we get from that this quarter, or this year?” And often, I would guess it’s very hard to… First of all, that may not be the objective of the campaign, but also it may be hard to attribute those as well, because you don’t really know what happened after your influence effort hit that second or third wave of influence out there, an echo or whatever, that actually drove a sale.

But I think one of my favorite stories was Steinway, the famous piano company. And they were probably one of the first influence marketers, because for decades if not longer, they’ve been sponsoring pianists, famous pianists. They pay the money, they will fly a Steinway to wherever they’re performing, have it set up, have it tuned, just so that performance will be on a Steinway. So, when you see that famous pianist performing in your hometown, that is probably because Steinway enabled that in some way. And so, they totally get it. But the story that I found interesting in your book was that they’re looking 20 years out with this. They’re talking about conducting a campaign now, that might not really have its full impact until 20 years later, which is pretty interesting.

Jason Falls:        Yeah. They basically have engaged a lot of millennial and gen Z pianists and performers. I think Emily Poon is one of them, who is a world-class pianist. And they’re investing in her as an influencer for the brand now, knowing that her audience is not an audience that can yet afford a Steinway. But in 20 years, many of them will be able to. So it’s again, investing now in the future, in that aspirational audience to say, if you are a fan of Emily Poon, and one day you want to buy a piano, we want to make sure you buy a Steinway piano. Because they know 20 years from now, half of that audience or a fourth of that audience, or a 10th of that audience, is going to be able to afford a $25,000 piano, or more. So, it’s really smart to invest in the future that way, as an aspirational brand.

Roger Dooley:     I just find it fascinating that a company would think that far ahead, because all we hear about today is the short term thinking of major corporations, that they’re worried about this quarter’s results, this year’s results. And that’s true in so many cases, they won’t invest in customer experience improvements that won’t pay back in six months, things like that. So, it’s heartening to hear that kind of story. Now, maybe some of those expenses aren’t that great if they’re doing it now and planting those seeds, but it’s great to see that kind of thinking. One interesting thing you mentioned, is a content arsenal. Where again, I think common thinking is, well, we are going to engage with an influence campaign. We’re going to have influencers, or people who may be experts in our field, create content around our stuff to promote it. And maybe we’re going to pay them for that, or we’ll give them free stuff or both. But you talk about having a content arsenal. Why is that important, and what exactly does that mean?

Jason Falls:        So, having a content arsenal is really making sure that you have all of the assets at your fingertips that can empower, and enable an influence partner to do a great job for you. And so yes, you may engage someone on Instagram who’s a great photographer, and think they’re going to just take a bunch of great pictures of them with your product, for their audience. And that might be the simple thing that happens, so your content arsenal is basically giving them product. But you also want to give them information about the product, so that they can underline your talking points, so that they can communicate the messages you want them to communicate. And that might be that you send them sales sheets, or that might be that you send them some slide decks with some product information in it.

It might be that you’re working with someone who is also a blogger, and they need images from you of the product, or how the product is made. Maybe they want to know how the product is made. Maybe they want to interview an executive at your company, or someone associated with the making of the product. So, you’ve got to think through how are these individual influencers that we’re engaging, going to use the content, or how are they going to produce the content, and what content can we give them to make it easier for them?

So, if I am working with someone who is a blogger and a writer on their website, as well as someone who has a YouTube channel and maybe an Instagram account, I’m going to say look, I don’t want to necessarily make it really hard for this person to get our message across, so I’m going to supply them with three minutes of B roll from my factory. I’m going to supply them with logos, I’m going to supply them with headshots and quotes from my executives. I might even hook them up with a direct interview with one of my executives, so that they can create content that way. So again, depending upon the influencer and depending upon the their content outputs, you can think through, what can I give them upfront?

Because the ultimate thing you don’t want to have happen, is reach out to an influence partner and say, “Okay, I’d like to engage you to do this. What do you think?” You don’t want them to be able to say, “Okay, yes. I would love to do that. I need A, B, C, X, Y, Z.” And now you’re like, “Oh crap, well, push pause for two weeks. I got to go create all that stuff.” You want to be ready from the get-go. It’s kind of like the old PR mentality, media relations mentality. When you’re reaching out to a reporter to pitch a story, you need to have that content arsenal at your fingertips. So when they say, “Well, can I get the sales information for that?” “Yes, you can. Here it is.” “Can I get the headshot of your CEO?” “Yes, you can. Hear it is.” You want to make it effortless so that they have everything they need to be able to do a great job for you. So, that takes planning, that takes some forethought.

Roger Dooley:     Right. And that kind of relates to the theory underlying my own book, Friction, that if you make something easy, people do more of it. That they are more likely to do the thing you want them to do, or do more of that thing. And that’s why, well, I remember back in the pre-digital days, I’m sure you do too, Jason. I think you’re old enough to remember the old media kits, these fancy glossy folders that were stuffed with eight by tens, and content, articles and product sell sheets and everything else, to make it easy for reporters to talk about the product. I also remember, say at a big conference, something like a CES in Las Vegas, where there would be literally dumpsters filled with unused media kits nearby, because everybody came with boxes and boxes of media kits, and probably one percent of these actually got used, and the rest either didn’t get into a press person’s hands, or just got discarded within seconds, after they checked to see if there were any goodies inside that they could actually use.

But now, in the digital world, it’s a lot easier to provide these kinds of assets, and more diverse assets. Because you’re talking about providing video, B roll and so on, that really can be delivered very quickly at relatively low cost, once you create those things. Obviously it costs money to create this content. It’s so handy, and it makes it easier. In the same way, if you want somebody to do something as simple as share your podcast, if you alert them to the fact that your podcast is appearing, here are some links, here’s a sample tweet or a sample Facebook post or something like that, that can facilitate that process, and make it just a little bit easier and make them more likely to do it.

And I guess this is kind of brings me to the next point, talking about media kits and outreach and such. And both of us are in our own ways, mine less than yours perhaps, influencers, in that we get people who are reaching out to us because they want to promote something. People reach out because they want to be on my podcast, or because they are a PR person who has a client that wants to be on the podcast. And so much of this is so bad, you wonder how these firms earn a living, when just a little bit of work going into it would pay such big dividends, I think. You obviously deal with this every day, and you’re on both sides of that too. What’s your take on outreach to influencers, whether they’re big time influencers, or just somebody that you want to get in contact with?

Jason Falls:        Sure. This is tried and true media relations outreach. Doesn’t matter if the media is new media, an online influencer, or older media, the traditional journalists and whatnot. It all comes down to relevance and research. You’ve got to research that particular writer, that particular YouTuber, that particular influencer, and understand everything you can in a short amount of time, usually, because you’re on a deadline to get stuff out the door. But you’ve got to understand everything you can about the type of content that they create, when do they talk about brands, and how do they talk about brands? Is there a place for you in their content?

And then you’ve got to be really, I think, short and sweet. I’ve got actually, a section in the book that talks about reaching out to the influencers. And I’ve literally developed over the years, almost a system of reaching out in two or three sentences at the most, if I’m reaching out via email, or by direct message on one of the social networks. Because I don’t want to waste their time, and I want to very quickly say what’s in it for you, so that I can get them on the hook. It uses a lot of the same sort of philosophies from Friction, from your book, because it’s like, I want to make it really super quick and easy for them to be able to delineate very quickly, is this something I’m interested in? Is it worth my time?

Because if I can prove those two things in a couple of sentences, I’m going to get a response, and the response opens the door for you to say, “Okay, here are the details,” or, “Can we get on a call,” or, “Let me email you a little bit more information.” Then you know you’ve at least got their attention. And so, too many people these days, especially PR folks, will reach out with, “Here’s our press release on this big announcement that we’re making, that we’re sure is very important and that you’re going to want to cover.” And then here’s 1500 words that I’m never going to look at. I’m just not going to read them, because I don’t care. And basically for me in my inbox, if your email is longer than the fold, if I have to scroll down for any of it, I don’t look at it. I just delete it and move on, I don’t have time for you.

So, if you send me a couple sentences and say, and I’ve got an example in the book, I think almost verbatim is, “I’ve got a client that is basically reaching out to influencers with a $3,000 home entertainment system to try. Are you interested?” That’s the whole email. Because if they email me back, or they message me back and say, “Hell yeah, I’m interested in a free $3,000 entertainment system,” now I’ve got their attention. Now I can tell them anything I want, and they’re going to read every word of it, right? Because they want that entertainment system. So, not every product-

Roger Dooley:     Jason, I replied that I was interested and I never heard from you again.

Jason Falls:        Sorry about that. But it’s one of those things where if you keep it short and sweet, and not every product is a $3,000 entertainment system, so you have to kind of be creative on how you do it. But if you can very quickly say, “Here’s what I’ve got for you,” and or, “Here’s what I’ve got for your audience. Is this something I can tell you more about?” That, “If you’re interested,” trick is I think a little psychological trick, and I’ve asked you about it for the book, that lets that influencer say, “Yes, I am interested,” and then you’ve got them on the hook. Or, “No, I’m not,” and they move on, and it’s not upsetting to anyone because they just dismiss it, and it’s okay.

Roger Dooley:     Yeah, that quick outreach is also sort of a micro-commitment strategy, where if you’ve ever seen online forms, or if you’re presented with an online form that’s 20 fields long, you look at and say, “No, no, I’m not going to fill that thing out.” But if there’s just one question that’s very simple for you to answer, not threatening, not personal, you’ll answer that and click again. And there’s a lot of research that shows these little micro-commitments can get you much farther along in the process, to the point where you’ve made an investment and you want to keep on going. So, that initial, “I’m interested,” greatly increases the chance that when you send the next piece, which may itself not be 1500 words of press release, it may be something that explains a little bit more, by moving folks along that path you can keep invoking that-

Jason Falls:        I’ve actually got a really good example of this, that just happened yesterday. I reached out on behalf of a client, that they were opening up a new office location in a city. And so, not earth shattering news, not front page, anything like that. I sent a note to the local business publication for that city, and I said, “Hey, I’ve got this client, here’s their business. They’re opening up an office location in your town, do you care? Would you be interested in the press release, and maybe an image of the owner?” And the person responded within five minutes, said, “Yeah, that would be a great thing for our little business note section, send it along.” So, I sent it along and like two hours later, they had copied and pasted the whole press release on their website, verbatim.

And it was Just because I took the real gentle approach of, “Is this even worth your time? I don’t want to bother you if it’s not.” And now they realize, “Hey, this guy knows who I am, knows what I use, at least wants to make sure that he doesn’t offend me by sending me too much stuff. I appreciate that, I’ll respond.” And so, it worked out really well.

Roger Dooley:     Right. I get, as you might expect, a lot of content from PR people, but there is one guy who probably emails me twice a year. And when he does, it’s a short thing, “Hey, this client of mine has this thing going on,” which is always spot on relevant because he knows what I do, what I write about, what I talk about. And as a result, when I see his emails, I always read them. And most of the time, they’re successful in creating some additional engagement. Because it’s not like he’s devoting that much time to researching me, he probably spends as much time on doing press releases as any other PR person. It’s just, instead of trying to bash out 3000 of them to a mailing list, he takes a look and selects maybe a couple dozen people to get a targeted outreach, and gets way better results because of that. I’ll have to ask him about his process sometime.

I want change gears here for a minute, and talk about whiskey. We have, actually in the past, I’ll link to the episode in my show notes, a guest whose company had created an aging process for whiskey that could produce pretty good whiskey. In other words, whiskey that tasters thought was equivalent of maybe a medium priced bottle, in just a matter of 24, 48 hours or something like that, using heat and pressure and… I don’t know what all the process was, I don’t think they’ll tell me what it was. But in any case, I’m curious whether you are seeing interest in these kinds of processes, even among upstart distillers or among traditional ones? Because whiskey is like the worst business model in the world, where after you make a product, you let it sit around for years and years, and let it evaporate when you have no idea what demand is going to be five, 10, 15 plus years down the road. Great business case study that would say, this is not a business I want to be in. So, I’m curious, what’s your take on these novel types of whiskeys?

Jason Falls:        Well, the whiskey market and the bourbon marketplace is really competitive, and you’re always going to have upstarts trying to disrupt things. I think that most consumers, especially those who are really dyed in the wool whiskey and bourbon drinkers, will look at someone who’s trying to cheat the system and say, “I can produce something that tastes as good as a 12 year aged bourbon in 24 hours,” they’re looking at that with a high degree of skepticism. Because aging a barrel of bourbon, or a barrel of whiskey in a rickhouse for 12, 15 years, 10 years, eight years, whatever, Mother Nature is what produces that bourbon. It has a lot to do with your weather changes and things like that. And so, you might be able to falsely replicate with flavoring and whatnot, that taste. But I think it’s less about the taste of the bourbon, and more about the time that it took to get there. I think that’s part of what you’re buying when you’re buying a good whiskey.

So, I think most consumers are going to be very skeptical of that. That being said, I would try it and say hey, if this tastes good and I like it, maybe it’s something I have at my home bar as a novelty. Maybe it’s something I mix with cocktails, so that I don’t mix the good stuff, the stuff that’s been sitting in a rickhouse for 15 years, I don’t want to put that in a cocktail, I want to sip that. So, there’s probably a place for it, and there’s plenty of consumers out there that are whiskey novices that don’t necessarily like whiskey by itself, that are going to put it in a cocktail or use it in recipes and whatnot, and maybe there’s a great place for it there. So, I wouldn’t discourage anyone from trying it. I haven’t seen a lot of it, frankly, but I’m also in Kentucky. And if somebody walked in the state of Kentucky with that idea, they’d get run out of the state real quick, because we love our bourbon here.

Roger Dooley:     Well, it may be on the shelf right now actually, because I doubt if anybody who is making that product is going to advertise it as their 24 hour bourbon. They will give it a traditional sounding name, with a very traditional looking label, and make it appear that it’s been aged in barrels for years, without actually claiming to do that. So, who knows. And it’ll emerge whether this is a thing that… I have to believe that as you point out, even for the cocktail market or for the very casual drinker, if you can produce a bourbon that is better than the cheap traditional bourbon, better tasting than the cheap traditional bourbon, much more quickly, and perhaps at the same cost, people will buy it.

Jason Falls:        Yeah. If you take a look at the trends in the industry, years ago, anybody who knew whiskey or bourbon would have told you that you cannot put flavoring in this stuff, there’s no way. And I mean, Fireball now is one of the best selling whiskeys in the world, best selling spirits in the world, and it’s flavored whiskey. So, the trends are there to buck, and people will buck them.

Roger Dooley:     Yeah, I’m not necessarily a fan of flavored whiskeys, but that’s a personal taste. And some folks, especially again in cocktails, where that’s going to somehow compliment the flavor of the other ingredients, hey, why not?

Jason Falls:        If you eat a dinner with a lot of onions and you’ve got some breath issues, Fireball’s a pretty good after dinner drink to freshen you up a little bit.

Roger Dooley:     There is the key takeaway for this episode, Jason, and probably a good place to wrap up, now that we’ve solved that critical problem for folks. Jason, how can people find you and your ideas?

Jason Falls:        Jason Falls everywhere, jasonfalls.com is the website. I’m Jason falls on all the social networks. If you’re interested in Winfluence, the book, you can just go to winfluencebook.com. There’s links there to get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you like. I appreciate you having me, Roger. This was great.

Roger Dooley:     Well, it’s been fun to catch up, Jason. And we of course, will link to all of those places on the show notes page at rogerdooley.com/podcast, where we’ll have audio, video and text versions of this conversation there as well. So Jason, thanks so much for being on the show. It’s been fun.

Jason Falls:        Thanks, Roger.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of Brainfluence. To find more episodes like this one, and to access all of Roger’s online writing and resources, the best starting point is RogerDooley.com.

And remember, Roger’s new book, Friction, is now available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and book sellers everywhere. Bestselling author Dan Pink calls it, “An important read,” and Wharton Professor Dr. Joana Berger said, “You’ll understand Friction’s power and how to harness it.”

For more information or for links to Amazon and other sellers, go to RogerDooley.com/Friction.