Whisky & Commerce with Laura Doonin

Check out this episode where I have a chat and a whisky with Ryf Quail, Managing Director of Comexposium for Australia and New Zealand.

Ryf has a super impressive career across publishing, media, marketing and digital. A business man and entrepreneur, and most importantly, he is a great guy.

We chat about whisky, what keeps him going, what brings him mindfulness, his thoughts around search, the retail dominator that is Amazon and the trends coming through in retail.

A few favourites:

1. Brands diversifying

Ryf "It's really about so much changes going on and how data is really informing so much. I mean, Crayola has launched a makeup brand.

Me "Crayola, the crayons?"

Ryf "Yes. It doesn't sound very intuitive, but obviously, they know something about their customers and say, They'd buy makeup."

Me "Actually, I think it makes complete sense because if you've seen some of these makeup tutorials, it looks like these girls are putting crayons on their face."

Ryf "I think we should start at the positive place."

2. How will google play in voice search?

Ryf "Google dominates search. It still dominates search because it's product is better than anyone else, right? And no one really can surpass them in that text-based search. That's fantastic. But voices come along, and it's very hard for me to look at that model and go, Is there a commercial model around voice? Now Amazon's got voice, but they don't need a cost per click generated model because everything that they ask for on Amazon points to their store. So it's the utility that drives the retail purchase. Whereas Google doesn't have anything behind it. Their whole transaction's around the search transaction."

3.Stalky Ads

Ryf "I think that whole tech space is a bit like — and I use this analogy a lot — It's a bit like, when the library puts in a system to stop you from taking books out, you threw the books out the window to get around the system.... the point is, it's no different, say 30% of Australians, now thats a finger in the air number, are using ad blockers. Now, one of the big claims that native ads is that it doesn't get blocked.

Me "Do you think thats going to grow?"

Ryf "Yes, lets take a step back. One of the biggest failings of the ad industry digitally is that the ads are shit. So the consumer's gone, I don't want to see them. So therefore I am going to put in blocking software. And, they are either creatively bad or they're creepy in the way they behave because they're being a bit stalky."

Episode Notes:

Noble Consumerism: "as consumers we have a responsibility to be engaged in the right businesses. I think that's gonna become more prevalent over the next few years. There's gonna be a rise in noble consumerism. Not just that businesses will be challenged to think broader than just short-term profits".

Success to Significance

"One of the things for me is moving from success to significance. So I've had some success in my life. There's some big names under that, but I'm grateful for some successes I've had. But I want to see how I can plug more into significance and making a difference. And I'm on the board for a charity in Sydney. It's a charity called The Freedom Hub. It focuses on the issue of slavery. It runs cafes, it plugs 100% of its profits back into that cause. And that's something which has sparked in me desire to do more of that sort of thing, generating a longer term wealth back into society."

More Human in the Age of AI:

"In a fast world and a time-driven world, you just want to get to the next place, you don't want to waste any time. But I think being able to stop and connect and just be able to dream and access your creativity is really, really important. As we think about giving our whole selves to work, which I think is super important for things like innovation. Because you can't truly innovate if you're just giving part of yourself to that. I think as you do that, there's a challenge for us to be more human in the age of AI".

Supply Chain

There's probably more slaves in the world today than there has been in history. In Australia, they are largely getting hidden. It's not so much about the sex trade in Australia, it's more about getting paid to work below the minimum wage, or not even being paid, having ___ taken away when they're being brought over, that sort of thing. So I think the biggest question that I hear when I talk about it is, 'Does this really happen in Australia?' And it does. And the great thing is that you hear is that... slavery has been brought in, and corporations are now gonna have some of the best supply chain.