Do you know what $8 feels like?

Welcome to Make Good Things Happen, a podcast for makers in business presented to
you by Angela Dalton and Renee Baker.
This is the first podcast from Make Good Things Happen ever.
Is this the actual podcast? Yeah. I mean, anything we do from now on is podcast
material, fair game. Good to know. So this is a podcast for Makers in Business.
We are Angela Dalton and Renee Baker. I’m Angela, joining me is Renee.
I’m Renee, hi. Hi. And we’ve been working together for a really long time.
And as a result, we’ve accumulated a whole bunch of experience and
I can’t. It’s first I’m really stumped. The first segment we are going to have or
one of the segments we’re going to have and the first segment we’re going to have
is random stories from projects past. Isn’t that a name? I mean,
yeah, it’s a name, but it’s just not, I don’t know, I feel I don’t feel like it’s
snappy enough for a podcast feels a little It feels a little too first draft for
me. Well, that’s what this is. It is, all of it.
So I am going to start with that. We’re going to talk about my time at Garage Sale
Trail or more accurately what our relationship is with Garage Sale Trail.
So I’m going to start with that. We started and we had a Garage Sale Trail event,
a garage sale, as they’re known. At Renee’s house in Newtown, we were trying to
clear some of the stock because we were thinking about closing our then online
vintage store called Twin Set. And we decided to have a garage sale on the garage
sale trial that we’d heard about. I don’t know how I couldn’t tell you how we
actually heard about online? Maybe it was Facebook. I feel like that’s not good
information to have for the story that we don’t know how we found them, but it’s
good for their marketing. But I would say that it happened. I think it was a
Facebook event would be my guess. I reckon. Or you know remember that around that
time there was a lot of like online blogging street press stuff where they’d say
top five things to do in Sydney this weekend on a blog post. And, you know,
that’s, that’s how a lot of the events media was sharing their stuff back then.
I reckon that’s how we found it. Anyway, we did that. We shared, you know,
that we were doing that online with our then social media. We had a twin set
account
On Facebook, we had a page. I think that’s accurate. I don’t know if we had
Instagram just yet, but we had Twitter. And we told a lot of our friends about it
and it was in, on Renee’s stoop, I guess, is the closest description I can provide
because at the time you’re in and what, like a up and down sort of split level
black thing, what would you call it? Terrace thing. I don’t know.
Worker’s cottage, but…
because it was near public transport. And it was back in the days where people sort
of went places and could find a parking space. It was, we did that. And I remember
it was the day after Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys died ’cause I was wearing
my Beastie Boys t -shirt. I remember that. Anyway, we went to, we had that garage
sale trail and now we did a post on one platform where we were doing,
who were giving the double -flip birds. And I remember when I met Andrew Valder
after asking him to be involved in Etsy Success Sydney. Who is Andrew Valder? He’s
one of the founders of Garage Sale Trail along with Darryl Nichols, the two founders. He
said, he remembered the photo that we did where I was giving the camera the bird.
He thought it, he sort of encompassed the spirit of Garage Sale Trail really well so
hang on if I’m piecing this together correctly you got a job based off the fact
that you were giving the bird publicly. Well good’s possible. That’s actually pretty
cool.
It’s it’s punk but yeah so but I did get a job with them yes you’re right But
after we had gotten to know them a bit from Etsy Success Sydney, they did a
presentation at that conference that we had. And then I did get a job with them
when I was worked as their communications manager. I was in charge of the PR,
social media, and all sorts of things like I arranged for brand ambassadors to say
they were having a garage sale or I got photos of them. And So I arranged like a
couple of artists to do special posters that we could share. We hit 5 ,000 followers
on Instagram during that campaign. Milestone. No, but really, that is good.
Yeah, it’s funny because when you mentioned Garage Sale Trail and I started thinking
about garage sales and how so much of what you do at a garage sale is actually
just old school sales and marketing that once again, you could have a garage sale
and be selling next door to someone, and you could do so much better and so
differently to them based purely off how you decide to present yourself, how you
choose to market yourself, and just thinking back to how you were describing. We
didn’t really go into that thinking much more of, “Oh yeah, let’s just throw some
stuff out the front and see what happens.” But I think what we did actually do is
have that underlying sense of, “This is something that we need to promote. This is
something that we need to sell. And what did we have to do to make that happen?”
And that, I think, was just an interesting thought that I had. No, it’s
lovely economic kind of microcosm of what happens in business, you know,
you’ve got to set it up so it looks good, so it’s easy to get stuff. And if you
don’t, people still love a rummage if it looks attractive enough. And then there’s
the posters, you know? Well, the posters, yeah, the promotion,
the artwork, but it even, it made me think back to one of the very first garage
sales I ever had, which I was a child and it was a family run garage sale. So I
wasn’t the coordinator or the organiser or anything. I was there for the snacks.
Yeah. And I remember my family, my auntie in particular, meticulously labelling and
pricing every single item in the garage the night before and laying it all out and
doing all this effort. And I remember thinking, “What? Aren’t we just going to open
the doors and let people come in here and buy stuff?” But it was that extra Isn’t
it a free for all? Yeah. Isn’t it? Yeah. But that extra time and effort there.
Are we expecting just some sort of marauding hordes there,
smashing shit around the garage? Yeah. But it worked. I think yeah just taking that
time and I know like right now and at the moment a lot of makers are preparing
for markets that are on this weekend, the weekend that we’re recording this podcast
and it’s that same thing like all that time and effort all that attention that you
put into the lead up to these events is how it actually pays off and I think why
we managed to have success at those sorts of events. Yeah Yeah. Yeah. And we did
put what we knew about markets and promotions. We did put that into our,
you know, personal effort in that particular scenario. We just went, “Oh, I mean,
I remember we even colour-coded the rack.”
Do you remember? Like we had the, we had the, the shaded progression from,
through progression through the colour wheel all across the rack. It was a thing of
beauty. You know, I have a photo of it somewhere. I’m going to try and dig it up
so that I wouldn’t put it in the show notes. I think the difficulty is that I
have no memory of any of this. I’ve been trying so hard. No, but there’s things
that you remember that I’ve got no recollection of. So I don’t think that’s…
It’s not like you forget all of the things and I forget all of the things. Like
some things you remember, some things I remember. But also you gotta remember when
you’ve spent this much time together. There’s so much stuff to remember.

There’s a lot. – Some of it’s gonna fall through the cracks. – That’s why it’s
handy to have a podcast to record it so I can listen back to it. So That is our
Random Stories from Projects Parts section.

Media and culture. See, that really does need a new name. – Yeah, because it just
feels like the most boring school project that no one wants to do. – It sounds like
a subject. Yeah, as opposed to a fun, interesting segment talking about stuff that
can run talking about stuff. Yeah, hang in there kids. Yeah, look, I mean, maybe
it’s Gruen Lite or something we feel like we want to live out our dreams of
being on Gruen. Can we? Yeah, let’s go pick us Gruen Lite.
We have microphones. Please notice us. Look, look at our professional media production
skills. Help us.
I saw an ad on TV the other day that I want to talk about and it was for,
came up. And they were talking, well, they weren’t talking about the message.
The whole message behind the entire advertisement was, what does $8 feel like?
And it just kept flashing, that question kept flashing up on the screen in between
pictures of things. I am assuming you can buy for eight dollars at Kmart.
Thoughts already before I continue. Renée Baker.
That’s right because this is audio so you can’t see my face. Is this the style of
ad where like in the traditional Kmart ad that they’ve been sort of running for the
last few years where it’s the white background and it’s very simplified. Highly
simplified.
Yes. Yes. And the products are the centre of the entire campaign as you say,
very plain, very blank background or just a single coloured background and.
Products – Product price, yes. – Product price, product price, product price. – I mean,
I think what is interesting about using that kind of messaging is that we talk
about it a lot with our educational content around key messaging and focusing on the
customer experience and what something feels like for them and how it feels when
they interact with your brand. And I think what Kmart are doing in that example are
trying to evoke that sort of concept through the messaging,
what does $8 feel like? I think though that it doesn’t, there is a disconnect.
It doesn’t hit right. There’s something wrong with that. Well, first of all, what
else costs $8?
In my mind to any particular thing so I guess what they’re they’re immediately
trying to get at is it’s it’s a lot less than you expect or you don’t even know
what you can get for $8 at our store. You know and and here’s a few examples it
has that jumping around thing where it’s showing me a variety of different products
that products that I can assumedly buy for $8. There is dog clothes,
there are phone covers, there is someone shooting fragrance into the air.
And you know what? I could smell what $8 smells like.

As you were saying that, I thought. I’m not putting that anywhere near me. Sorry.

I looked at it, I literally, No, I physically, like, recoiled from the screen when
I saw her. She sprays it in the air and I was like, “I know what that smells
like. That smells like year nine.” Yeah. I was not.
And my year nine. And I mean, and that’s in 1987, so you can imagine it’s,
it was bad news. Seeing that ad, I actually had a visceral response. Like I
physically felt very uncomfortable watching that ad. Like I started thinking of all
the little things that had had to have happened in the supply chain for those items
to be $8. It made me feel really uncomfortable. And I’m not, I don’t want to,
first of all, I just don’t want to be a hypocrite. I shop at Kmart. Everybody
shops at Kmart because sometimes that’s in this country where manufacturing is non
-existent. They are literally your only choices for certain things unless you are able
to source handmade items from some place and you have a lot of money.
It’s just the way the economy is designed in this country and the industry is
designed. But it made me feel really uncomfortable. They were saying it with such
pride. And that’s possibly why was uncomfortable. I’ve maybe it was like,
yeah, look, we all know what’s really going on here. Is there any real need to
kind of brag about it or something? Yeah, I think that, and I mean, I hadn’t seen
the ad, but as you know, I just described it because I know the ad. In your head,
you’ve seen it already. I think we’ve probably reached it. There’s an expiration on
that kind of messaging, particularly now when even like when the media starts talking
about the problem with fast fashion and, you know, overconsumption and unethical
production, it’s probably time to shift the model somewhat or at least shift the
advertising model, they’re never going to change the product model. That is also, you
know, once my sort of like, oh, yeah, okay, I can see what they’re doing there.
Education inside of things lens went, I did start to think, “Okay,
well, I know what $8 feels like from all of those other perspectives and it doesn’t
feel great at all.” I guess these are the times in the podcast if you are
listening, we’d love to hear what you think and we will always leave the opportunity
for people to leave comments on our podcasts. – We are keen to hear your opinion.

Yeah, we’re keen for the conversation as well. And I know that particularly in the
early days, we’ll have some of our members of our community make good things happen
and shout out. – Yeah, no. (laughing) – We’ll be listening. So yeah,
if that is you, you know where to find us. But yeah, we’re looking forward to
having another place to chat and to share and to be in your ears hopefully in a
nice way.
So now we’re going to have the next segment again needs a new name in the news
where we’re just going to briefly chat about a couple of things that we’ve both
encountered in our scrolling slash usage of news media The first one being the Canva
price rise, I think was probably the one honestly one of the funniest things I saw
play out in a few different places.
What’s funny is the internet is almost boring. Yeah. It’s almost It’s almost boring
in its predictability to lose its shit over something that it’s got some sense of
entitlement to. Wouldn’t it be funny if Canva had announced a price rise and the
internet just went, “Yeah, okay.” Yeah. Canva,
with no warning, sends an email out to every single subscribers telling them that in
a few months time there would no longer be free teams accounts or something like
that or you could there was a limit I can’t even remember this is how well
basically teams were priced in the same way that a pro account or a single account
was priced and and to be honest I don’t know exactly myself but they were then
going to start charging per user on the team you had five users included and then
they were changing it so you had to pay per user and there was a price increase.
And I guess the lack of detail that I have around it is kind of indicative of my
level of care because for once probably in my life I have embraced the price
increase of the Canva software because quite honestly, I feel like it’s one of those
times where it’s warranted. And let me rephrase that by saying,
I never feel that way when I’m talking about makers in the community of artists and
designers because chronically, they tend to undercharge. And that’s a different
discussion for another day. I’m talking about, you know, big, large, highly profitable
corporations who are constantly increasing their prices month on month out but in
this case Canva who is yes highly profitable and a large corporation I feel deserve
the price rise yeah it’s the first time you’ve ever said what to me what do you
remember what you said I’m I’m more than happy to pay more to be honest No,
or something along those lines. To be honest, I’m more than happy to pay more.
Probably quite a shock as well because the backlash of this price rise has been so
large that we’ve seen it in major news outlets. And I mean,
of course, we’ve seen it all across the internet as well. Outrage from people who
just feel like how is this going to be sustainable and okay, I understand that it
is, in some cases, quite a jump, but if you have a business that’s operating at a
level that can support five team members using software that is as sophisticated and
evolving as that is, then I guess, again, it kind of comes back to that being a
cost of business and that’s what it costs. Yeah. Yeah. It’s also like they we’re at
the forefront of that piece of software. It’s like what what we were talking about
before literally earlier this evening we were talking about all of those silly online
things where you used to log in and upload a few things and you had these limited
number of collages you could do or whatever you know. Canva is as you said the
word you used was sophisticated that is exactly what it is for for a piece of
where that you can perform such complex activities through your browser.
It’s phenomenal. Not to mention, you can pretty much do everything and anything in
there that like from a basic word document, word processing through to highly
complicated animations and graphics and video, you can have things printed,
you can have things and to social media. You can, there’s a lot going on there.
Plus it now connects to Dropbox, Google Drive. I was looking for a photo today in
using Canva and on a client document today. And I connected to a Dropbox through
Canva so that I didn’t have to go upload, find the file, go here, go there.
I literally just went to Dropbox, typed in the name of the folder and all of the
photos just appeared from that folder and I’m like, “That’s the shit I’m looking for
in a piece of software. Something that does exactly what it says it’s going to do.”
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so wonderful. So, yeah, you’re right. The price rise. Who cares?
But it was just… Break it on. I can’t tell people who don’t know you as well as
I know you, how unusual it was hearing you say that you were glad to be paying
more for something.
So the next segment that we are going to end our podcast on is this week I and
this is our on the spot opportunity to talk about what you read or watched or
listened to or a project that you worked on or a funny story.
I’ve been watching the Great Pottery Throwdown and it’s great.
It’s on binge and I started from the latest season which is usually goes against my
watch, what do you call it, protocol? Yeah, I would normally very much go to the
very first episode of season one if I’m ever trying anything new but I thought on
a whim I was probably only going to have binge for a month and so I thought,
“Nah, I’ll chuck on the latest season.” So I watched season seven and it was,
yeah, it was incredible.

They move people. – Wow, it sounds amazing. (upbeat music)

So thanks for joining us on our very first episode of Make Good Things Happen podcast. And yeah, stick around ’cause there’ll be more episodes to come. And we will have ways for you to get in touch with us but you can find us as well through our social media at mgth .com .au. Yes, that is our handle.

It’s a URL as well. So we’ll see you. Thank you. I’m not good at goodbyes.

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For show notes and more, head to mgth .com .au. This has been adult and baker production.