Nathan Bush: Before we get into today's checkout, I want to invite you into something brand new. Our free Slack Add to CART community. After four years of bringing you experts and leaders in E commerce, I thought it was time to connect you our listeners. I have no doubt that you can share experiences, tips and questions that will help you in your e commerce businesses and careers. It makes sense to bring you all together. If that sounds like a community that you want to be a part of, head on over to add to cart.comau ecommerce community to join.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to Cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, bushy.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Nick Morgan, founder and CEO of Vudu, a platform that connects content to commerce and brings the checkout to the customer. We're talking turbocharged shoppable video and engagement to match. Vudu started in 2016 and clients include Nike, Westpac and Vogue.
Nathan Bush: Nick, welcome to the checkout. Thank you so much for joining us. We've learned a lot about Vudu and how you're changing the game when it comes to shoppable video and a whole bunch of other formats for retailers and publishers. We had some great examples, I love the News Corp and the Moet example around bringing those videos to life. Got a few questions here to learn a little bit more about you.
Nick Morgan: Go for it. I love it.
Nathan Bush: You might not say that afterwards.
Nick Morgan: This is the lighted one. This one?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, exactly, exactly. We just try and get off to a good start, get to know you. What's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Nick Morgan: This is not that weird. Or you, you might think it's weird. I bought vintage foot leather footstools that my grandma used to have when I was growing up. I was like, these things are amazing. And then I was like obsessed by them and they were real 70s 80s thing. And I found them on, I found them online years ago and I bought two of them and my wife hates them. She's like, these are the ugliest things ever. And my kids are kind of tearing them apart and I'm like, no, they're my, they were my footstools at my grandma's house. So I've got all this kind of emotional. And I found them online and bought and they're just sitting there in our
Nathan Bush: lounge room that goes ballistic and they
Nick Morgan: don't understand everybody hates them. And I'm like, you Know what? I found them online and I bought them. They're mine.
Nathan Bush: That's fantastic. I literally did the same thing last night. Not with your grandma's footstools, but I saw there was a vintage 1990 Canberra Raiders. You know the video Easy Jersey that was on that popped up in my Facebook feed, and it was something like $350. And I was like, oh, I don't really. And then I just end. Somehow I end up buying it that night because I'm like, I got to have it. I couldn't let it go.
Nick Morgan: You couldn't help yourself, could you? Yeah, I know the feeling.
Nathan Bush: There's something about nostalgia. All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Nick Morgan: Look, I'm going to have to toe the company line now and say I've been blown away with Amazon this year. Look, we are an Amazon partner. We are part of the inner sanctum in the us and there's lots of exciting things that'll be announced. But what I've been exposed to from that team is really groundbreaking and really in line with what we're doing. And I think there's some really exciting stuff that's going to come from Amazon in the next few years. They know that they've got a big beast they've built. You know, their.com platform is. It's a big beast to work on. They know that there's an opportunity to empower shoppers wherever shoppers are. So I think there's some really exciting stuff coming out of Amazon at the moment. I'm really. Yeah, they would be my favorite in
Nathan Bush: terms of having that partnership with them. Have you picked up on anything around how they work, how they operate and move at speed that you've been able to incorporate into what you're developing at Vudu?
Nick Morgan: Yeah, it's been really enlightening to see how their teams work at any one time across Amazon, there's like 4,000 projects. Like, they're almost running out of project names. We've got really obscure project names for their projects because they've got, you know, we're running our names. I'm pretty impressed with the speed in which they move. Like, we meet weekly and they always delivering. And that's not because they've just got tons of people. You'd be surprised. A lot of the innovation there doesn't have a lot of resource behind it and I've got to do a lot with a little. So it's been quite validating. And it reminded me that even though Amazon is a massive company, they can do A lot. With just small amounts of resources in pockets within that business, we can do a lot with a little too.
Nathan Bush: How nice to hear that because sometimes you feel like this big beast that we're all battling against and it is a big beast. But they are hustling and I hate that word hustling, but they are hustling and working the efficiencies as much as every other retailer.
Nick Morgan: Yep, 100%.
Nathan Bush: Number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Nick Morgan: Well, it's happening. It's the, you know, the death of the cookie and second and third party data. I think it's always been, you know, it's kind of like it's a relic of the early Internet and early Internet marketing. It's always been a gray zone. Never been really fully attributable in different areas. I think it's a good thing for consumers, for brands. Anyone that's got a budget and wants to know that they're getting solid attribution their spend, you know, moving to first party data is a good thing. So I'm happy, I'm happy.
Nathan Bush: Embrace it, don't fight it.
Nick Morgan: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, agree.
Nathan Bush: Cool. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Nick Morgan: Yeah, there's so much content. Everyone's got all their favorites. Right. I actually come back to a book and it's a book called Range Wider General's Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. I actually was made aware of this book about four years ago and it crystallizes so much for myself. I often find I'm having to be, you know, I sit across so many different pieces and I sometimes question, you know, you have those moments of, you know, say imposter syndrome. You question or what do I know? Or you know, do I really, you know, others know more than me. And I think that book just reminds you that we, that you know, if you have a very experience and you've sat across quite a few different things, it can actually all come together and be quite a powerful tool. And you're being a generalist really allows you to operate at scale and be able to work holistically. And off the back of reading that book, I did quite a bit of reading around general hospitals. One of the things I actually came across was that in medicine, quite often a general practitioner, a GP can actually diagnose and be say more high performing. I guess you want to use that phrase in a medical sense because they're looking at the entire person. So a specialist will say, okay, I Just specialize in this. Quite often they can't diagnose what the problem is because they're not actually taking the entire person and everything that's happening within that person. It was a really interesting book and then it kind of opened me up to a lot more kind of, you know, stories and, and just interesting pieces of information around being a generalist.
Nathan Bush: That's a great analogy. My brother's a GP and he gets annoyed whenever someone says, oh, you didn't specialize. He's like, no, being the GP is the specialization.
Nick Morgan: Yeah. And quite often, and I've heard stories where they've had really trick really difficult cases within hospitals and they'll bring in the GP of this patient who, you know, it's been the local GPS and have known him for 20 years or longer and they've got this really complex problem they can't seem to solve and they'll bring the GP in to really solve the problem, you know, so no power to you, brother.
Nathan Bush: Great recommendation. Thank you. It's something that I definitely struggle with and everything that you said there about imposter syndrome rings true because I am a generalist across E commerce. I mean E commerce is the niche, but I'm a generalist across E commerce and there is absolutely those moments where you go, what am I good at here? So I will be reading range. Thank you. All right, number five, finish this sentence. The future of retail is contextual commerce.
Nick Morgan: I really believe that being able to extend your checkouts to where your customers are is going to deliver great returns and you're going to have a great acquisition tool. You've got a great converting tool. It's first party data. You need to add it to you to your channel stack. And I really think that there's a lot of opportunity. And you know, I'm not the only one. You've got a big beast sitting up there in Seattle that goes. Actually, you know what, a lot of our future growth is going to come from off platform shopping. Let's head in that direction. So I think we're going to see more of that.
Nathan Bush: Nick, how exciting. Thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. And if you're interested, go check out Vudu V U D Double O.
Nick Morgan: Been a pleasure.
Nathan Bush: Thanks, mate. To hear more from Nick, jump back into episode 330 where Nick shares how his tech enables choose your own adventure style customer journeys. He unpacks the growing relationship between advertising and E commerce and tells us why he sees the death of cookies as a cause for celebration. Let's get him out of here. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
