Joseph is the former host of Forktales and is currently working as the VP of Digital Experience for 3 Owl. He’s also the author of “Stop Blasting My Mama” (a book about effective email marketing) and “The Bullhearted Brand: Building Bullish Restaurant Brands That Charge Ahead of the Herd.” Joseph’s book, “Stop Blasting My Mama,” tackles the topic of email marketing and how modern marketing is overrun with overly aggressive terms – like blast and campaign – to describe what should be a friendly and civil interaction with consumers. Consumers today have more power today and can ignore brands – or cancel brands – whenever they want to. Technology is changing the restaurant industry and restaurants need to get onboard with that technological evolution or risk being left behind. QUOTES “One day we’ll be able to do a podcast without mentioning the pandemic. Today is not that day.” (Joseph) “I always cringe when I hear the words ‘e-blast’ or things like that because it’s antithetical to behaviors of humans in general. Nobody is walking around saying ‘Gosh, I really hope I get blasted today.’” (Joseph) “I like to think of this world that we’re in as one big party. If you walked into that party alone and you said at top of your lungs, ‘Hey everyone, I just want you to know that I’m really cool.” You’re immediately not and you’re going to have a hard time convincing everyone that you are.” (Joseph) “Restaurants are the backbone of every single economy – from micro local to federal. If you lose restaurants in the city center, you’ve lost the city center.” (Joseph) “The first victims of AI are the ones who phone it in. The mediocre hamburger won’t be there anymore.” (Joseph) “Bro, we are not eating bugs. It’s not happening. Unless there’s some sort of nuclear holocaust, Americans are not eating bugs.” (Joseph) TRANSCRIPT 00:01.20 vigorbranding Well hey there um some of you watching this may be a little confused right now usually ah Joseph is on ah on the left side of your screen and for those that who are watching ah this podcast. The reason he's on the right side is because he's a guest a guest today. And I was honored to be 1 of Joseph's guests way back when um, the reason we've switched sides is Joseph has accepted another position. He's no longer with vigor or the provone marketing group but he's off into some wonderful new things that he's going to talk to us about and we're excited to to catch up with Joseph. Um. For those don't know my name is Michael Pavone I'm the Ceo of the provevone group and we have several different agencies in our holding company and we're excited to talk to Joseph. He's created 67 fantastic episodes and we're going to hit a little bit of your. History the the the good old days. Ask you some questions and just just find out what you're up to. 00:55.28 Joseph Szala Awesome. It's great to be here. 01:00.95 vigorbranding Ah, since you're in your house. It probably is always great to be there. But anyway, all right? So ah, let's see let's it's talk. Let's talk about a little bit. What have you been up to talk about your career which you're heading to now and what you're excited about as far as the restaurant industry and technology. 01:04.39 Joseph Szala That's right. 01:17.37 Joseph Szala Yeah, yeah, so um, as you said I forayed out of the advertising and marketing world into more tech forward focus and space I'm currently vice president of digital experience at a transformation company There's not much detail I can say but. We'll we'll say that we're building an experience management system for restaurant brands. Um, you know what? What really got me excited about the tech space is how much this industry is going through a breakneck speed digital transformation. Um. one day we'll be able to do a podcast where we don't mention the pandemic today's not that day. Um, the pandemic really spurred on any mules