David Ray’s Most Valuable Perspective
MVP Episode 7 | A podcast by State of Social & Dear Storyteller
This week on MVP, David Ray, Reddit’s Country Manager for Australia, sits down with Dear Storyteller GM Mike Drysdale to dive deeper into the topics he covered at State of Social. The two discuss the way Reddit differs from the battleground of other social platforms, admiring how it harnesses the power of community to create positive social media spaces.
During their conversation, we discover that David’s focus on community extends past the digital world, as he shares his belief that the pandemic and political climate has strengthened Australia’s own sense of community. He then goes on to contemplate his journey as a young entrepreneur and writer, and credits his mentors for helping him navigate the industry. The episode is also dotted with David Ray’s advice for brands looking to interact with Reddit, detailing how they can use it to connect with their audience.
To round out the episode, David Ray answers Mike’s quick-fire questions, describing everything from his favourite sock brand and appreciation for Garmin watches to his desire to hang out with Stephen Colbert. Throughout the episode, David offers practical advice and insight into Reddit’s capabilities, while taking an in-depth exploration into the way community has influenced every one of his ventures.
Read the transcript below or click to listen on your preferred streaming service.
Mike:
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of MVP – The Marketer’s Most Valuable Perspective, a podcast by State of Social and Dear Storyteller. We are here recording live at Optus Stadium at State of Social 2022, which you’ve heard me say at the beginning of all of these episodes. I’m recording them back-to-back, sorry if I’m being repetitive, but I am joined by none other than the man himself – who has just delivered an incredible keynote speech – David Ray of Reddit. David Ray, welcome to the show.
David Ray:
Hi Mike. Thanks for having me and thank you for that very, very glowing and unnecessary reference.
Mike:
Mate, I had such a good time listening to your talk just now. Reddit has been a platform that I’ve spent a lot of time on over the years and always been amazed by its ability to create just massive organic reach, providing that people knew how to play within the lines. To me, one of the interesting and valuable things about Reddit is that it is a kind of self-regulating platform. The moderators on the platform and the subreddits on the platform have strict rules that people need to abide by in order to be there.
You talked in a little bit in the talk about the idea that rather than being a platform that says, “Look, post whatever you want, and if it’s wrong, we’ll take it down,” you guys kind of automated that at the head. What do you think that that’s done for Reddit as a platform and can you see both positives and negatives as a response to it?
David Ray:
I think I’d say the overwhelming positive is that – and I don’t necessarily think it’s a byproduct of what the world’s gone through – our social media interactions have evolved over the last decade or so. I think it’s more the idea that the word ‘community’ is a positive one. We’re all being part of something positive that way. Now if people want to go on platforms to yell at each other and do what they want to do, okay. Well, knock yourself out where you get enjoyment from. But where Reddit flourishes, and where it provides a much more positive role in the world, is having that ability for people to set their own rules about what they want engagement to be.
If you decide that you want to have a subreddit and it’s based around telling people what you think the worst type of coffee is; well okay, you can do that. But at the same time, if you want to do something that celebrates it and you want to discourage that negative behaviour, you have the ability to set those rules.
So I think a great strength has been allowing people the freedom to set what the rules are within it and then determine that; “Well, this is what I feel is the positive sense in my community.”
Mike:
Giving that autonomy, being a kind of ‘generator’; a community generator of engagement. There are so many sideways conversations on Reddit – rather than that ‘up-and-down’ host-to-audience, it’s audience-to-audience. It’s community-to-community.
David Ray:
Yeah, it is. There’s also the ‘splintering’ of communities as well, and that’s in a positive sense. So if you think about something like US slash Perth, where we are today per capita, it’s a very, very large community, based on the size of the population here and the size of the subreddit. But within Perth, the general questions might be about traffic or restaurants or the stadium or junior sport or hairdressers that are in an area that you might wanna go to. So then if the level of interest within that community gets big enough, you end up with Perth Hairdressers, Perth Junior Sport, and you do it that way. The idea is it doesn’t have to be all things to all people; and if you think it’s gonna be more positive, you then spin that out.
Mike:
And people can be very quick to redirect you to those subreddits and say, “This belongs in Perth Hairdressers”.
David Ray:
Yeah. Then they’ll cross-post, they’ll interact with each other. The moderators will develop a friendly relationship as well, to make sure that they’re saying, “Hey, a lot of people are talking about this over here. Why don’t you set up a separate one?” So it’s not only the community itself, it’s the moderators. When they start to foster their community, they then encourage people. They’re not operating on the basis that ‘they have X numbers of followers, therefore that determines their success’. It’s the interaction within the community.
So if somebody’s got 500 people or 500,000 people in their community, it’s still the idea of just continuing to make sure that it flourishes.
Mike:
Well, one of the things that I think was so fascinating about the way that you described brand engagement with Reddit during the kind of conversation was – and I think it’s impacted by those rules and moderators and things like that the difference between straight-up linear advertising versus community engagement. If brands are going to be on the platform, they have to come in through the front door; and unless they’re doing advertising which is capable on Reddit, they have to be involved in the community and have an engagement with them authentically. Otherwise, it’s just not going to work.
One of the things that I felt as I was listening to you was that Reddit almost feels like a crowdsourced search engine. So some people will go on Reddit, search for a specific subreddit, and see if a subject has been covered. But what you talked about is so many people just ask Reddit; they just put in the question and they go, “You are my search engine,” and they seek out the wisdom of the crowd. Is it in answering questions that brands can have a place on Reddit?
David Ray:
I think it’s a couple of different ways. One of the major ways, or not the major way, but we get a lot of traffic just purely through SEO; which is people asking a question and there happens to be the highest quality answer in a subreddit. So people will click on that result, read it, and then digest it and then go back. Also, we’ve seen a major trend in recent years – which is people adding ‘+reddit’ to their search topics and their questions because they know they’re going to get the best quality answer. So it means that they don’t necessarily have to go to Reddit and search, they’re just going, “I’m gonna search for the answer. I know it’s on Reddit.” They get their answer and then they move on. That actually has a benefit for us, that it’s the perception of the brand. It’s also the perception of the quality of the interaction on there, but that may not be as familiar as what we do.
So when it comes to brands themselves, I think the most important thing is that communities can ‘smell a rat’. They self-regulate in the way that they do. They know what’s genuine and what’s not, so they know that if a brand is trying to be cheeky or what they’re doing. They’re gonna call it out that way. And so that’s why I made that point before about ‘come through the front door, come talk to us’; like if you’re an automotive manufacturer or an automotive retailer, come to us and we’ll tell you how to find the right audience that’s into the brand you’ve got, or might be adjacent to it, so we can help you understand how to interact with it in the right way. That’s really what it is, is the more genuine because they’re genuine places. If you act in a genuine fashion, you’ll be welcomed.
Mike:
Is it the case that straight-up self-promotion is probably never going to go down well, but if you can offer actual genuine expert advice or a perspective that somebody might not have seen themselves, that maybe there’s value to be added there?
David Ray:
I wouldn’t necessarily get so specific about it. Look, the bottom line is using straight-up display advertising is incredibly effective. Yeah, there’s no question about that, because it’s based on interest, not necessarily demographic. A demographic can have its filter and then miss out in particular ways.
Whereas the example I mentioned before – if you’re an automotive manufacturer, you can find people who are interested in cars – that’s it. Those people may be a 75-year-old who’s happened to come into some money. It might be a 19-year-old who’s saved up for their first vehicle. No way you’re gonna be able to find those through automatic demographic filtering! But if you do it based on interest, it’s going to work.
So I wouldn’t wanna get too prescriptive about it being a catchall. I think that the great advantage we have is that every brand often has a different dilemma and we think that we have a different solution each time.
Mike:
I like that. Reddit users – well, there’s a trend. There’s a pattern that many Reddit users use Reddit to the exclusion of other social media platforms. Is there some insight, some psychological thing that you found as to why that is the case? What do they have in common that causes them to go, “Reddit is my community of choice”?
David Ray:
I think it’s more what we just discussed. It’s the genuine nature of it. In the environment of potentially other social platforms, are you talking to a bot? Are you talking to someone real? Is the post that somebody’s put on board put up? Are they being paid for that, or is it genuinely the bronzer that they use every single time that they’re going to do something? Or do you go to a Reddit community and say, “What is the best bronzer that I should use for the skin tone that I’ve got?” They’re the sort of moments where that community is going to tell you and give you an honest answer. I think that’s a huge difference.
Mike:
Yeah, I think it’s so fascinating – something that really had not occurred to me until today, that’s kind of wild. But it’s just the idea of the ‘wisdom of the crowd’.
David Ray:
Yeah, and it’s also people that want you to be in a better place. We live in an overwhelmingly cynical world in a lot of different ways, but I always come back to the notion of community. The word community – at its heart – when you say it, it’s a positive thing. People talk; it’s like family in a lot of ways. I often talk about the notion that the word ‘mateship’, it might be a little bit twee, but that’s such an endemic part of the Australian DNA; and mateship and community are connected. You think about a disaster strike in Australia; the Australian community gets behind solving these things and supporting each other through these periods. So I think that is the thing that becomes not just self-regulating but self-perpetuating.
Mike:
See, there’s something really wild to me about that, because I mentioned this in another podcast that we just did recently with Jennie; because obviously she has a lot to say about community as well with Next Door Australia. We had a politician in Perth recently declare a civic crisis in Australia, that we were going through a civic community-based crisis because of the situation between charities and volunteer organisations. I don’t know, are Australians still communal beings? Has the word community changed? Is there something in Reddit’s future about mobilising those communities in real life? I’m not sure. It just seems like such a strange thing where you’ve got these two conversations where it seems like community is so rich on a platform – what you’re talking about – and then we have another very loud kind of public voice saying the opposite.
David Ray:
My answer’s probably more personal than professional in the way I do it, and it’s purely anecdotal, so no evidence to back up. The premise of what I’m saying is, look at the sort of ‘pressure’, if you will, in Australia since May. The election was something that was happening for 18 months and then post-election, I just sense personally that the pressure’s come off a little bit. There’s the opportunity being afforded to new governments and new parties to be able to fix things, or to change things, or to make change. I think Australians are at a point where they’re ready to be treated as grownups. They don’t necessarily want somebody to tell them that everything’s perfect that way. I think that it’s an interesting sign of honesty that’s required that way. And look, it’s politics and it’s government and it’s never going to always be that way.
But I personally believe that there’s a bit of a change in attitude and it’s perhaps just the pendulum of the way these things work; that change in government in the UK, change in the US, change here. It’s the idea of going, “What does our world look like post-pandemic?” I think we all learned a lot about our local communities during those periods. And our community might be a suburb, our set of shops nearby, the local restaurant that we tried to help, it might be a local bar. We actually got closer to all of those things. Now, as we emerge, we are doing it; but we want a standard to be met across the board. We felt we did the right thing. We expect that those who are in charge are gonna do the right thing and we want it. We’re calm about the way we’re doing it. I don’t see the anger that I used to see.
Mike:
Well, I love that. And two things that you said there on a more personal note, I want to change tack a little bit and ask you something a bit more personally, professionally – and it is your calm nature. You’ve been described as somebody who is calm under pressure, and good at negotiating deals and working through periods of turmoil with grace. I just wonder if you could give us some advice as to what it’s like to be in situations like the ones that you’ve been in – where you’ve been working with global platforms, making deals that impact huge companies and launching products in different areas. What is it like to be in those rooms? How do you manage to stay calm under pressure and be an effective negotiator, dealmaker, et cetera?
David Ray:
That’s very kind of you to say. Thank you. I’m very flattered. I think that the approach that I take to work all of the time is that everything is solvable. I don’t wanna say “nothing’s impossible” because things are impossible. But I think it’s the idea that particularly when it comes to problems, as I’ve said to my teams over many years now; “I don’t care that the mistake’s been made. I don’t care that there’s a problem, but if the train’s coming at me, you’ve gotta tell me and then we’ll work out what we do and then we’ll work out how it happened later.”
And so what that does is encourages a sense of risk appetite, and then the teams that you’ve got understanding that it’s okay that they’ve made that mistake as long as they just come to me. I often have old team members that talk about that kind of premise themselves.
They go, it’s made them be in an environment where they’re encouraging their teams to make mistakes. If you operate in an environment where your team is treading on eggshells and they think that the slightest stuff up is gonna make that happen, then they’re never gonna back do the right thing and they’re gonna make me look bad as well. I think the second thing is really about if you inherit a team, or you bring people on board, that everybody is trainable and everybody is coachable. And so it’s the premise that people aren’t necessarily bad, behaviour is bad. Behaviours are not necessarily at the standard they can be, but it’s your job as a coach to make them better and better.
I’ve had superb bosses, I’ve had terrible bosses, I’ve had three leaders in particular who shaped who I am and I give them immense credit for them being the people that allow me to be able to forge my career ahead. So it’s never been a matter of going “Yay me!” because I’ve been as clueless in the early stages of my career as anybody has been. And often now, with the people that come through my teams, I tell them the mistakes I made; because I really feel the generation coming through is smarter, more alert, more empathetic and better at this than I’m ever gonna be. So the more I can foster that in them, the better they’re going to be.
Mike:
I love that. Let’s jump into some of the quick-fire questions that we have. We’re asking this of all of the speakers that we’re having on the podcast. I’m excited to hear your answers. Question number one, where do you go to learn more about business and marketing?
David Ray:
Wow, that’s a great question. There’s a couple of different places. I’m a voracious media consumer. I read far more media than I do fiction or nonfiction. One of the main people in terms of the mix of culture and business at the moment is Scott Galloway. A lot of people will say that they’re into that way – I’m a huge fan of his work. I couldn’t nail down one particular one.
I think they’re the sort of things – but there are also other people like Daniel and those cathartic books you’ve read during the course of your life too that really help rewire your brain. I’ll say as well, the Amazon writing style that I was trained in a couple of years ago was one of the biggest things. That allowed me to understand how to write things that are succinct, objective, and basically get things done.
Mike:
I love that. I’d love to know more about that at some time. I don’t think we have time right now, but I’d love to know more. What’s a small brand you love and why?
David Ray:
Well, I mentioned in my talk before; LA Socks is one of the big ones, which is something that was crowdsourced effectively and I didn’t know about before that. When I got it, it changed something that I love doing in my life. I’ve been a runner all my life, done marathons and half-marathons and all those things, but if I’d known about them years ago it would’ve changed my life. It’s one that, basically – what the product says it does, it absolutely over-delivers.
Mike:
I love that. It’s so funny to kind of witness a product where you just think for so many people it’s just socks and then for somebody else, it’s life-changing. If you could spend four hours with any marketer or business person in the world, who would you choose and why?
David Ray:
I don’t necessarily know if I’d call it a marketer or a business person, but it’s somebody who markets the concept of who they are in their brand. It’s either somebody like John Oliver or Stephen Colbert. The reason being that, yes, they are comedians, but their empathy and desire to improve the world drives what they do.
Their ability to be exceptional communicators is quite astounding. I think particularly for Stephen Colbert, the great moments for him are when somebody starts asking him questions. He is somebody who lives in a world where it’s all about him forcing it on the other party, but he genuinely loves the question. He provides really thoughtful answers, and I think that’s part of the dynamic that I really love. I dunno if marketers are necessarily the sort of people I really wanna spend my time with; I wanna spend time with people that make me go, “Your intellect blows my mind.” Unbelievable. I think particularly in the cynicism of recent years, their ability to distil it through comedy that makes people more aware is better than say – I love Four Corners, but it’s an hour of them distilling an issue – it’s perhaps gonna be more effective.
Mike:
True. It’s gonna reach a broader audience. It’s sort of hiding the medicine in the dog food, so to speak. Is there an emerging customer behaviour that you think will be highly influential in the next decade?
David Ray:
Yes. I think the second-hand market is going to get bigger and bigger, and I think that’s partly out of our desire to be more environmentally aware. But I think it’s more the idea that we have the ability to connect with each other that way; in the same way the internet has allowed everybody to find their person. I said it before; find your people. Like dating services allow people to go, “No matter who I am, there’s somebody who’s into what I am.” And that’s a lovely thing. I think that therefore means that there are second-hand products around the world and a level of recycling is going to happen, that’s gonna allow people to go.
One of my passions is old Rugby League jumpers that I’ve found, and I find these through Instagram. I found this through Reba in various places. It’s the idea that the sort of shoes you buy, or clothes you wear, or ties, or old jackets, or whatever. That form of love for vintage I think is really gonna really work.
Mike:
Two more questions to go. Thank you. This has been packed with insights. It’s so wonderful to be able to ask these questions and get immediate responses because they’re not exactly easy questions. Okay. Surely we’ve got an answer for this, but has a major public opinion recently flipped where you felt marketing or communications – or perhaps Reddit – played a major role?
David Ray:
Maybe not Reddit playing a role, but I’m gonna go to a personal example again, which is on a fan of the Canberra Raiders in the NRL. Two weeks ago, our coach – after a match that we lost – made a personal attack on one of the opponent’s players based on something that happened when the opponent was 12, and there’s the ‘rough and tumble’ of sport with behaviour. We saw it in the AFL on the weekend between Brisbane and Melbourne.
But in this situation, it was the idea that 10 years ago, I think people accepted that, well, that’s the dynamic compared to how people do it. Whereas in this situation, it was, “Okay, there’s a power imbalance.” I think that’s one of the key changes; that way that we’re seeing – and I think this is again about the pressure coming down – hope. The hope of a more empathetic world; which is that interaction should be like, that should not necessarily been a conversation that took place, but it did. There was punishment and circumstances that happened on the back of it – the coach being suspended – whereas the public reaction was, “Yeah, I don’t like the way this is,” and I think we are much more conscious of where our power balances operate now.
Mike:
I think that’s fascinating. Last question is a bit of a fun one. I need you to not answer LA Socks. When you think of the term ‘prized possession’, what’s the first branded thing that comes to mind, and do you remember the specific ad or piece of marketing that convinced you to buy it?
David Ray:
I’m probably wearing it at the moment; my Garmin Fenix 6, which is the third Garmin watch that I’ve owned in the last 15 years. We operate in this situation now where fitness tracking and everything else, the way it’s meant to be. I also have a love of watches, but I don’t find myself wearing my watches because this is the thing that basically monitors my ability for everything I do. So when I go out, I go “running headphones, phone music, watch, go.” And the marketing I remember associated with it was the progression of Garmins, fantastic marketing.
There was a point in time where this was the watch for when I was running then, and it had all these amazing capabilities. Then the next one came, and then five years passed, and the technology has moved again. It’s good because the leaps in technology are huge, but it’s not every year. It’s done in a way that means that you can get mileage out of – pardon the pun – out of that device for a long period of time, rather than encouraging you to continue to dump the old one. And I should say that the previous one I had, I ended up selling secondhand as well.
Mike:
Hey, look at that. That’s an awesome way to put a pin in it. Just a final stop for us. Thank you so much for joining us here on MVP, David Ray, we’ve really enjoyed your insights. We got a little gift that we’ll give to you off-screen in a second, but that is all we have time for on this episode of The Marketer’s Most Valuable Perspective. Thank you for joining us.
Give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts, and we’ll be back soon with another episode from State of Social.
