Full Throttle Leaders- John Petrocelli from Bulldog DM

All right, we got John Petrocelli from Bulldog Digital Media.

Hello.

Who I've known for probably 26 years.

Yeah, about that.

Yeah, and has been an entrepreneur since I've met him. But before that, where'd you work, John? Intrigue.

Yeah, before I became an entrepreneur, I, you know, I worked for, um, I got out of school, I worked for NCR, which is one of the biggest at the time Fortune 100 computer corporations, migrated into telecommunications, and then kind of discovered the early days of the internet and moved across the country to LA where, you know, I wanted to understand the creative part of that world. And once I figured that out, I realized those 2 worlds connected in streaming, and I began a career in streaming and then eventually involved in the startup lifestyle.

And so tell me this lifestyle, this, this company Bulldog Digital Media, like what, what do you focus on? Who's your best client and what do you do differently that people hire you for?

So we're the world's most experienced livestream studio, which means we provide all of the turnkey services and strategies that a client would need to really deliver and optimize a live video content strategy. And a client for us could be a brand, it could be an agency, it could be a social media platform, a creator, and, you know, it could be a promoter in the music space, or it could be, you know, a subset of all those, a group of those kind of entities functioning together harmoniously. And we are into our 14th year as a business that I've started and managed. And what Kind of got me into this world. It was kind of like this 3-phased approach where initially, you know, in the early days of the internet, I was involved in, in content delivery when it was the format wars. You might remember Microsoft Windows Media versus RealPlayer versus Apple's QuickTime. And I was in the middle of that as—

Oh my God, whatever they had, QuickTime. I don't even remember QuickTime.

But I was kind of in the middle of that and, uh, Uh, someone from Apple said, hey, you're doing a great job with QuickTime. We want to— um, we were approached by a music artist who wants to do it themselves. Would you talk to him? And I said, great, who is it? And it turned out to be Prince. And I ended up getting into business with Prince, but also seeing him, uh, go on tour and do some shows before this big massive comeback experience. And it kind of dawned on me, wow, that's going to be a business someday where rather than me pick the phone up and call you the next day and say, I watched this amazing jam session he had with Alicia Keys, we'd, we'd be able to have a shared experience. I thought, that's coming, you know, some— somewhere. And I eventually, um, took over a business that was a live streaming company that was immediately acquired by AEG, who is, you know, the world's largest presenter of live music and live sports. And right At that moment, I had also gone to YouTube and said, you should be in the live space. So you'll bring— 2 reasons. You'll bring everybody together for a cool live moment. And then they can also look at and consume content related to that experience post-show. So it was really that kind of Prince, AEG, YouTube that gave me the idea to— this is going to be a business someday. And that's how it all kind of was a springboard into this world.

What was the company that acquired— that AG acquired? I could try to remember that company.

It was Incited Media, which was like a boutique company that focused on the execution, production, and technology. And, you know, how I— you'll appreciate this— the reason I got into streaming is really Mark Cuban, right? I looked, you know, I heard his— what he had done with taking this aggregated bunch of channels that he had put together and, uh, was AudioNet. And then he repurposed that into, or renamed it into Broadcast.com. And Yahoo came in and $5.7 billion acquisition. I thought, there's something here, right? This, this guy's on to something. And as a result too, I've followed almost everything he's said or written. And, uh, you know, it's all to him. He said, you know, sales is what keeps a technology company going. You know, sales cures all, you know, no matter what your solution is.

Revenue is king.

Yeah.

No, content is— when I was at Warner Brothers, content was king too.

Or the other thing is, you know, no sales, no company. And I've listened to you now espouse all those things. And I thought, you know, hey, it certainly helped me. It certainly gave me some clarity and some grounding about, you know, running a business in technology.

I just saw him at Silicon Slopes talking about, um, his, uh, pharmaceutical, um, like competitor approach to TrumpRx. I think it's got what his company—

No-cost drugs. Yeah, yeah, it cost plus.

Yeah, yeah. So he was, he was interesting. Plus obviously I worked with him when I was in sports marketing, um, and the Mavs and, and the Legends and stuff like that. So that was cool. He's always, always good to listen to.

Yeah.

Um, so I think you pivoted a little bit from live video experiences until something different, if I remember correctly, that I saw posted, or no?

Well, what's happened in, um, I think this is indicative of all, almost all advertising and all marketing, uh, because, you know, our clients are AT&T, Jeep, Nissan, Hyundai, Coca-Cola, YouTube. Marketers, it's not just enough for them to have someone look at their message or brand awareness. There's now this kind of shift towards performance. They want a call to action or they want a conversion. And we've certainly responded to that or reacted to it and noticed that there's this booming business now in e-commerce live streaming, which in China is a $400, $500, $600 billion business. And it's where consumers discover something. It's presented to them. They're listening. They're watching this livestream. It's entertaining. It's informative. And there's also— they're learning about a particular product. And there's also potential call to action if you want to— it's like the modern-day Home Shopping Network or QVC. You can buy it now at a significantly reduced— price point. And this is now shifting, uh, to our part of the world. And we became a TikTok Shop certified agency.

That's right. Okay.

Last—

I was trying to remember what you did. Yeah.

Yeah. TikTok is about— they're about to do $23 or $24 billion in revenue over here, which is not even, you know, they're 2 years into this market. And the theory is that, um, you know, people under a certain age, this is how they're gonna discover and purchase and It's about a 30% conversion in a livestream, which is, you know, 10x the normal e-commerce conversion. It also reduces returns by 40% because it's interactive. You can say, hey, Michael, does that shirt come in black? Or can you show me? Can you move around? Or, you know, can I kind of look at it from a different perspective? And so that's a, that's a, um, an exploding business, certainly led by TikTok. But without question, I think you, you know, Amazon and YouTube and Meta are all going to be in that space.

So we're, uh, so Amazon's not even— I don't see Amazon doing that, right?

They are. Uh, I think what I mean, they were kind of leading that space.

Yeah, I saw that, but they, they didn't take— they didn't have the experiential and the fan base almost of TikTok, right?

Yeah, I think TikTok has really changed the market in that, um, you know, a lot of Amazon is you've created your storefront and you're selling there. And people come there, hey, I know I wanna buy like a pen and I'm gonna go and do it there.

Yeah.

TikTok, it's all about community creators.

Content.

And that's a kind of a different shift. But I think there's correlations, right? You might discover something on TikTok, but your purchase history might be at Amazon. You might go over there to do that. But it's the wild, wild west. And for my business, I now live in both lanes, right? I still have to do, you know, I'm working with companies to amplify their product launches, or we, you know, we just worked with last week with Caterpillar, you know, giant industrial construction company. And then the same week we worked with the new Beach Football League, which is ex-NFL players playing tackle football on the beach. So, we're certainly—

That's cool. I didn't hear about that.

But we're also gonna be involved in this e-commerce universe where people are actually moving and selling product in real time. But they've gotta, you can't just say, hey, come buy this. It's gotta, you gotta entertain the audience. So there's all kinds, again, it's brand new, but it's fascinating and we, it keeps us on our toes, so to speak.

So you said $24 billion in the US is TikTok, right?

Right.

So what's the overall number for TikTok?

I think it's $52, uh, globally.

$52 billion a year?

Yeah. And you know, the idea is that, um, I think it's— I've seen stats that say 58% of millennials have purchased this way and 80% of Gen Z have. And I think the recurrence rate is up, you know, 70-something.

But it's still, it's still completely China-owned, right? Because they didn't do the whole switch to some of it US, right? I think the president—

I think it's been approved. I think there's a process they're going through, but I don't, you know, there's 170 million users in the US. I don't, I don't think you're going to see a noticeable change. I mean, there's some— commerce has got a lot of rules behind it. You have to, you have to fulfill the order. You're also rated. I mean, they are, they're evaluating agencies like us, but also the sellers. And, you know, you want to You want to appeal to the TikTok algorithm, and it's really based on— back to the word performance— you've got to perform to become a beneficiary of all the things that are available to you. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's—

So if I'm, uh, if I make a football, and I'm talking about this beach football, I would go to you and say, hey, I want to be able to sell my product inside of some sort of content. What ideas do you have? Like, What's the— what's the— how would someone engage with you, or why would they, I guess?

Well, uh, you've got to go through, uh, an agency because it's a complex, uh, process. You've got to be compliant. You've got to have the ability to fulfill orders. You can't, you know, you can't sell handbags.

You actually— you're actually fulfilling orders for someone, or you're—

No, no, the, the customers, a lot of them do the fulfillment, but we're the kind of the glue and the, um, in between and running those operations. And I think, you know, right now you've also got to partner up typically with creators who are trusted, who are passionate, who understand your, your product. But I think a lot of this market is now going to move heavily into the live space, right? You can, you can get on and sell things and build a TikTok shop, but I think the emphasis is going to move over to live. And, you know, I've been doing this 20 years and Live is not easy. It's complex. It's hard. Fortunately, we've figured it out. But to run a live video experience, it could be a studio you're going to go into, or we're going to go and create a pop-up one at an activation where someone's launching a product. Or we might go to their home office and design a content studio where they can execute. So it's all a lot of different ways that this can happen. But at the end of the day, this is a powerful way and a cost-effective way to reach, engage, and actually sell.

Awesome. So why should— I'm sorry, not why. How does someone get a hold of you and what's the best type of company to get a hold of you?

BulldogDM is the perfect way to find us, our website bulldogdm.com. And I think that the solutions we provide, we're gonna still live in both lanes. Like, you know, we're doing work in the music space. I think what's happening in my market, the other side of our market is Yes, it's e-commerce live shopping, but the other thing to contemplate is, you know, Netflix is building this massive portfolio of live content, right? I think it started with, uh, you know, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock and the Tom Brady—

Yeah.

And now you're seeing, uh, NFL games on Christmas Day. I think there's an, uh— and now as a result, their competitors are building libraries. I think, uh, Apple is doing F1, Hulu is offering Lollapalooza, and I think Austin City Limits Music Fest.

It makes, it makes them all like non-commoditized content, like live. You can't repeat that, and it's, it's specific and different. So it's not like a movie that you can get it there, there, and there. It's all unique.

No, I think that, um, Netflix smartly went into this business. And I think they looked at some of the data from their original executions and they realized, A, people were showing up, and B, they were watching almost in their entirety. And then, and they also started offering an ad-supported tier, which I hear now is like got 47 million users. And the way, like, if you saw the— to me, the textbook example was that Mike Tyson-Logan or Jake Paul fight where It's in the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, and the fighters have to walk through the gauntlet of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. And that's also a— that's a feature, that's a document, that's an episodic show on Netflix. And then they would cut to Ralph Macchio and the other star of Cobra Kai, and then you'd see somebody else. So they did a couple things.

They were cross-marketing.

They were advertising their portfolio of shows, but they also sold out the ad inventory, right? So there were, there were 3 or 4 major advertisers. So they're now— they're driving revenue from advertising. They're advertising their own shows and they're bringing potential people onto the platform because—

Yeah, subscriber. Yeah, multiple—

Whether you're a subscriber or ad-supported. So I imagine that probably a conversion factor as well. Maybe some of those free people, hey, wow, this is a pretty good platform, I'm going to convert over. So that's now, I think, causing a ripple effect in the minute that, um, Skydance bought Paramount, they went out and did a 7-year deal with, with UFC. So the live space is active, roaring, and exploding on 2 fronts. One, on just general live content, but 2, on e-commerce live video as well. And we want— we're living in both of those lanes as a, as a, as the world's most experienced livestream studio.

So to kind of go back to how to reach you, Mostly, if someone's watching this, would it be a brand? Would it be a producer? Would it be an entertainer as far as music or product placement or agencies or all of the above?

It's a good point. A lot of times we deal directly with the brand. Also in parallel, we work with their agency. But, you know, we're live video companies and I would say more on the, on the, on the more premium end. So, somebody that has a product to launch, we've done things like automotive reveals for Hyundai. Maybe they're at a— they're doing a conference as we just did with Caterpillar. It was involved with the largest construction conference, I think, certainly in the US, maybe in the world in Las Vegas. And we do it for—

So, what'd you do to kind of dive into Caterpillar? Tell us what you did there.

So, Caterpillar was live streaming and they built a stadium outside of the convention center. And the first day was the Global Operators Challenge Championship. So, from around the world, these teams using Caterpillar equipment had, you know, it's almost like obstacle courses and precision and how quickly they can do something. The championship was on that Tuesday and the rest of the week were product launches and demos. So one of the things that we do is also bring real-time viewership to these experiences. And we take the video, create an ad unit, and syndicate that across really high-traffic websites, you know, CNN, Washington Post, MSN, Yahoo, and find viewers who are largely passive text-based scrollers who discover the video, click, and go into the experience. So with Caterpillar, our job was to just bring a large and engaged audience to the broadcast. And that's, that's exactly what we did. And that's particularly—

Was there ancillary video usage of like any of these platforms like CNN or whatever using that content and reporting on it? Or was it mostly just, just placing it in their ad units on those different networks?

Yeah, it's a discovery exercise. And what we've Well, the real thing is we're providing the right audience at the right moment. So, back when we started doing this, if I sent you an email and said, hey, Michael, put this on your calendar on June 1st, we're going to do a livestream, that no longer works anymore. And you have to catch people in the moment and drive that. It's kind of like the e-commerce conversation, right? I'm discovering this kind of cool product and I'm going to go and—

But where they're at, where they're at, not where you want them to go, right?

Correct. You know, that whole notion of meeting the consumer where they are, that's, that's how you win today, right? You make it easy for them to experience something and kind of go on this journey.

Yeah.

So that's become a big part of our business. We did the same thing with the beach football that we actually executed, shot and produced. We had drone coverage on the beach. But also, you know, it's the beginning of the second season, it's a new league. And we did the same thing. We broadcast that out to platforms like ESPN.com, or maybe it's the sports section of Fox or NBC, and drove real— and we can also target, right? We want to find people that are a certain part of the world, that are a certain age, that maybe have expressed an interest in sports content, or in the case of Caterpillar, they're construction professionals. So that's become a focal part of definitely of our work.

Awesome. Yeah. Do you want to give your email address out so people can get a hold of you too?

Yeah. John, john@bulldogdm.com. D as in David, M as in Mary.

Thanks for your time, John. Good seeing you again. Thank you.

You too.