Episode 29 –
Using Data to Drive the Success of Your Business with Viva Chu of Good Boy Studios

RESOURCE CENTER   ❯   Identity Revolution Podcast 4-7-22

Episode Summary

Digital transformation is not a new concept anymore, and many organizations are embracing the digital age to connect with their audiences by incorporating the newest technologies into their business processes and jumping on board the latest trends.

But without data, every strategy is just a shot in the dark; as our guest today puts it, your data is the key to your company’s success.

In this episode of the Identity Revolution podcast, Infutor host Fred Pfeiffer welcomes Viva Chu, the Co-Founder and CEO of Good Boy Studios. They chat about the importance of first-party data, why data is at the heart of every organization, and the latest trends in data science.

Guest-at-a-Glance

Key Insights

• Data is the key to your success. If you want your company to evolve in the right direction, listen to what your data is telling you. Data keeps you grounded, but it also sets you on the right path to success. Viva explains, “It’s really having that kind of mix of passion as well as this knack for applying analytics, tracking the metrics, and having some methodology to iterate and learn from what the data is actually telling you. And so, I think that’s really guided my career as an entrepreneur from the get-go.”
• Universal ID is the new “old” standard. Viva talks about some of the possible trends that are likely to come up in terms of data. He says Universal ID is here to stay and will probably become more relevant than before. “Universal ID obviously is going to be kind of the new ‘old’ standard that we’ve gotta reinvent, and hopefully, it’ll end up in a consortium of companies that have control of it, and then it gets standardized in such a way that it’s hard for any company to kill it. And I can’t emphasize enough how important that is. It’s a shame that the Facebooks of the world have caused this rift between the consumer and responsible advertisers.”
• We need to give users more control over their own information. User privacy is one of the key concepts of the digital age. Viva thinks one way to approach it is to give users more control. “My teenager’s view is that it seems unfair that everybody is able to profit off of you, and you don’t have any control over that. And so, the capitalist in me thinks that if you give the consumer a way to actually share in that or, even at the basic level, kind of understand in an easily controllable way and have them own it, then that’s the solution rather than to just take it away.”

Episode Highlights

The importance of first-party data

“I think obviously this importance of first-party data and the shift towards it. With Apple and Google pulling a rug out from under everybody with device IDs and third-party cookies going away, there is this scramble among any consumer brand — not just within the pet space, but across all our industries — to acquire their own data. And with that, companies like ours, who’ve actually been focused on acquiring first-party data from the get-go, the control and the shift is going back to the publishers in that regard.”

How to measure click-through rate on TV?

“The real problem is how do you solve that click-through? How do you even do the click-through on TV? People are experimenting with QR codes, which I think is silly and not really a great user experience but also with the attribution. How do you tie the upticks and search traffic with the times that your ads are actually playing? How do you attribute the sales back to the TV campaign?”

Staying on top of current trends as an entrepreneur

“My job as an entrepreneur is to stay up to speed with trends and stuff. And so, another important resource is my wife and kids’ TikTok feed. It’s just about what’s going on in pop culture ’cause with me being an old man these days, how do I stay relevant? How do I know what products people are paying attention to? What are the cultural trends and just how do you stay up to date with what everybody is kind of into these days?”

Top quotes:

[10:29] “There are going to be some real technical disruptive shifts that you’re going to see. I think that there are going to be some exciting innovations from voice technology. All of the groundwork that Amazon has with Alexa and the voice controllers are going to play a big part. And hopefully, some startups come into that space as well.”

[11:15] “I think data is always key to measuring your success and keeping you grounded. And so, for me, being an entrepreneur/software guy/product guy, I measure my success and check my enthusiasm about all of the great ideas that we come up with and the great opportunities that we want to chase just by looking at cold hard numbers, data, and conversion rates, et cetera.”

[28:27] “I subscribe to all the newsletters that you guys do and just read up and stay up to date on that stuff, but I think what keeps me informed, young, and relevant is really just paying attention and talking to my kids.”