This week’s episode covers an incredibly important topic – safety. Liat Kaplan is the mind behind Wisp (formerly My Bouncer), a groundbreaking product designed to protect adults in vulnerable situations at bars and nightclubs. Discover how marketing and compassion intersect to create solutions that empower and change lives, especially for women.
imPRessions Season 2 Episode #16 Transcript
Jenn: Hey, Kalli.
Kalli: Hey, Jenn.
Jenn: So, you know I like to drink.
Kalli: Yes, I know you like to drink. I enjoy the occasional beverage.
Jenn: As fun as it is, I think today’s episode is a little somber. It does kind of touch on some implications of drinking and going out and having a good time. Because unfortunately, in the world we live in, women especially need to be cautious and protective of themselves. And Liat Kaplan is an old friend of our agency. We worked with her on SodaStream and believer meets, and she has come up with this amazing new concept called My Bouncer, which essentially will help individuals who are at parties or bars or clubs be able to test their drinks to detect if they’ve been tampered with because there are some not so nice people out there that will take advantage of putting something in someone’s drink. So, while you and I like to have the occasional drink and happy hour, and a lot of people do, I think that this is a really good topic for our listeners. Um, something is hitting the market, and it’s really going to be a game changer for people that maybe are a little concerned about going out and leaving their drink unattended.
Kalli: Yeah, I think that’s great, and definitely something that we need to talk about because especially a new product like this, yes, it’s going to be helpful to so many people, but really getting people to understand something that’s so different and so innovative and really getting the people who need to use it, you know, not just your mom telling you is really important and very nuanced. So I’m really looking forward to this one.
Jenn: Absolutely. All right. Let’s welcome Liat and learn more about My Bouncer. There are thousands of amazing ideas that hit the market every day, and while innovation and creativity are at the forefront, some, like today’s guest, use their inventive ideas to make a real difference in the world. My Bouncer is a new product that has been created to ensure adults are protected and potentially vulnerable situations in bars and nightclubs; Liat Kaplan has helped create a product that, for many people, especially women, can change lives. Hi Liat, we are so happy to have you on today to talk about the marketing and strategizing for this incredible new product.
Liat: Hi. Nice to be here.
Kalli: So, before becoming an entrepreneur and co-founding my bouncer, he worked for many notable brands such as SodaStream and Believer Meats. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and your journey?
Liat: Yeah, sure! So basically, it all starts with me loving people. I started my career in marketing and I absolutely loved it. I loved understanding what people need, what are their pains, and trying to solve those through products. I worked at large food corporates, and I also had the privilege to head Global products and innovation for SodaStream, PepsiCo, and that was just amazing, leading new products from ideation to R&D all the way to commercial go to market at almost any market in the world.
Jenn: I love how you say that you love people, because especially with the creation of My Bouncer and for our listeners, my balancer is basically a way for people who are out drinking to test their drinks, to make sure that they haven’t been tampered with or drugged in any capacity. And we’re going to talk a little bit later about how it works exactly, but it’s really an incredible, innovative solution for individuals to stay vigilant while out drinking. So, can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with the concept?
Liat: Yeah, well, I always joke, but it’s not an actual joke that it all started with my midlife crisis as I came closer to celebrating my 40th birthday. I felt an inner voice, like my midlife crisis, telling me that I have to find something good to do with what I know how to do, which is to solve people’s pain through solutions of products and services. And I was just searching what’s good can I do? And then, one day, my husband, who’s a chemical analyst, came back home from work. He runs a lab at the university, and he worked at a pharmaceutical company for many, many years as an analytical chemist, which means that his field of expertise is to develop new analytical methods to detect drugs and residues of drugs in different matrices. And then, as I’m searching for something good to do, He comes back home and says, hey, there’s a technology that can detect rape drugs in liquids, and we use it, and I know that the forensic lab uses it, and I can’t understand how nobody ever made the device based on those fundamentals to end-users. I’m building a device for our daughter. She’s 11 years old and obviously is the good wife that I am. I laughed at him and I said, do you think she’s going to get a vodka shot at a party and say, oh no, let me take out the device my father built, like it’s never going to happen. But then after a long negotiation, we realized that we can take the fundamentals of this almost 100-year-old technology. And through innovative engineering, we can condense it to something that is the size of a phone wallet. That can be so intuitive that she might actually use it in real time. In parallel to that, I started interviewing victims because I never like, wanted to think about drink spiking. And as I interviewed victims, I realized, what a terrible, terrible thing drink spiking is because 25% of those incidents lead to sexual assault. I never realized the prevalence of it. And afterward, we conducted quantitative research pieces in the US, only to find that 1 in 10 Americans were affected by drink spiking. So, I was asking the universe to give me something good to do with what I know how to do, and it gave me an answer. My bouncer.
Jenn: I love that especially, you know, drink spiking and date rape, and all of that does happen to men, but it is predominantly women. It’s the LGBTQ-plus communities that are predominantly affected by these types of unfortunate circumstances. So I just absolutely love this idea. I love that you really wanted to put some good and some, you know, to the end, because some use into your creativity and your abilities to kind of come up with this inventive and innovative new product.
Kalli: Yeah. I mean, like Jenn said, it really can be anyone who is a target, unfortunately. And it is very sad. And when you said, oh, you made this for your daughter like I have small children. While they’re tiny now, I think of it differently for myself, but for my children. This was something that obviously isn’t around that we do need and thank you. Just on behalf of people, thank you for creating my bouncer because, like I said, unfortunately, it is needed. But having some type of tool to really help prevent any type of issue or targeting is so important. So can you tell us, like how does it work?. Like what would a person need to do. And how does it work?
Liat: Okay, so that’s a great question because oftentimes people think this is science fiction. Actually, the core technology that we’re using was invented in 1928, and it’s called Raman spectroscopy. So what Raman discovered was that if you shoot a laser beam at a material, the material scatters light back. And if you’re able to capture the light and channel it through unique electro optical system, then each molecule in nature would give you a unique fingerprint. And this technology is commonly used to detect all sorts of materials and drugs and rape drugs. It’s only that the devices that are built on this technology are designed for people like my husband. So you have $1 million devices that are large or portable devices that may cost thousands of dollars and are not at all discreet and intuitive. Nothing that any of us would use at a party. And so these are the fundamentals of the technology we are infusing to our product, other technologies that support it. So, in the end, what you have is a phone wallet-sized device that has the ability to check your drink in a reusable way. It’s super quick, so in less than 10s, you get a result, and it can detect all sorts of drugs. We’ve actually created the hardware in a way that will allow us to further add use cases. So, add more drugs that it can detect through software updates, and by that, make that into a much more robust platform for end users. Because, you know, to your point, today when we go out and we want to drink something and we want to make sure that what we are consuming is what we intended to consume, all we have to do is pray. We don’t have solutions that can detect various list of drugs in a quick and affordable way. And so, our plan is not only to solve drink spiking but to expand to other use cases as we move forward.
Jenn: So if I’m at a bar, just for clarity, and I am meeting somebody or I’m alone or whatever the case is, will My Bouncer be essentially like a strip that I can dip into my drink and then it would change color, and that would alert me that it’s either tampered with or it’s good to go?
Liat: So, unlike a strip, My Bouncer is a hardware device the size of a phone wallet, and it has a sampler. So imagine something that looks like a stirrer that you would use with a cocktail glass. All you need to do is to dip your sampler in your glass and put it back in the device, and then you will get an alert to your phone, and it can tell you whether it’s safe or not. And you can also decide whether you want to connect yourself with your friends or your family so that they can get the notification that you just got to know whether you’re safe or not.
Jenn: Oh, I love that.
Liat: Yeah, it can also trigger emergency actions as you decide to set them up before you go. And I would say that another key thing is that we will be able to finally register data about what’s happening in the streets, because all experts agree that less than 1% of victims come up to report. Absolutely. It’s going to be the first time that we have data, and we can push for systematic solutions.
Jenn: And there’s also proof, right, with this device, which is, I think the biggest issue with, you know, a woman say something happens, they wake up the next day, they might not have the full recollection of exactly what happened. So they can assume they were drugged based on the fact that they don’t remember. And things like that, but there is not really that clear-cut proof to go to the authorities where the police say, okay, well, what proof do you have? So in this event, this is such an incredible device because now we have the actual proof and the science to back up and prevent anything from happening. And also, in the same token, you know, alert authorities.
Liat: I think you’re touching on something so important because there is so much self-blame with drink spiking. So the first key aspect is, yes, for you to test your drink and for you to know that it’s not you that wasn’t responsible. Right? As it comes to proofs, you know, the whole forensic world has different compliances. So, I don’t know that that would be set as forensic evidence per se, but we are striving to follow the same compliances, and it might be like a pre-forensic solution. Anyhow, if you know that your drink is spiked at the moment of truth, then you can prevent further crimes, and you can take this sample to the authorities for them to check it at whatever device because you know that it was spiked.
Jenn: I really just love this. I love this concept. I want to pivot a little bit and talk about the marketing for it, because we have the product now underway, and we, we kind of have the science portion of it nailed down, and I’m sure you and I have talked about this, Liat, when you were in New York, marketing a solution for personal safety has challenges. So, can you tell us a little about how you plan to market My Bouncer and some of the feedback and public sentiment you’ve heard so far?
Liat: Yeah, well, It is a huge challenge. And I’m so happy for the opportunity to deploy everything I know into creating consumer behavior change that can maybe make this world a bit better. But to your point, there is a lot of social pressure going on with our consumers when they need to use it. It’s not like they’re sitting in their homes with the privacy of whatever they’re consuming. We’re talking about house parties. We’re talking about peer pressure. And so, it is critically important to make sure that both the user experience is discreet and intuitive and that the brand itself is legit. In order to overcome that challenge, what we’ve been doing for almost two years since day one is listening. As I already said, I’m 41 years old, and I was never a collaborator when I was younger. So we’re just in love with our users. We spend hours interviewing them and understanding how they feel, how they feel when they go out so that we design the brand and the user experience and the appearance and the UI, and every touchpoint, so that this is something that they can consider as something that is relevant for them during the social event, and not something that maybe their parents told them, you know, do this and do that.
And whenever they leave the house, they just forget all about it. It’s one thing to make sure that they have those devices, and it’s a different thing to make sure that they actually use it through the night.
Kalli: That’s such a good point because I mean, how many of us wear one outfit when you’re walking out the door, and then you change, you know, kind of when you get in the car when you get to the party? It’s that same type of idea that, if your parents are telling you to do something, you can say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you’re not really going to do it. So I think that’s so important and a really important step in marketing and marketing this because yes, like even as I said before, as a parent, this is something I would try to tell my children to use speaking to them in a way that makes it, like you said, something that they’re going to use when they’re out is really important and really key in this. So wondering if I know these days there are so many different influencers and celebrities that we all look to and try to do the things that they do when they’re out and emulate them. Do you have any plans to share about potential brand ambassadors or celebrity spokespeople that you think would be open to endorsing My Bouncer?
Liat: I don’t have a name to share right now, but I can tell you that one of the greatest things about Gen Z is that they have already adopted the concept of harm reduction. They are much more aware of the risks of drinking and using recreational drugs. So, to some extent, this change in behavior and perception is already there. All we need to do is tap into that. And we’ve been in contact with musicians and people from the festival industry and they are all waiting for my bouncer because it falls perfectly to everything that they’re doing right now. So, I do anticipate that when the product and the brand are ready to come to market, we will have micro-influencers for sure from those areas to help us endorse the product and bring it to the relevant spaces. When people go out and to kind of, you know, do a product placement like it should be.
Jenn: Yeah. And there are so many celebrities that open bars, open restaurants who maybe, you know, come out with their own whiskey brand or anything like that. Alcohol is a very popular industry for budding entrepreneurs who may start out in music first or acting, and they kind of want to start their own venture. So I definitely can see once the product is out and in the open and being marketed and people are learning about it. A lot of those big minds are definitely going to want to tap into this. There isn’t anything else like it, and it is such an important thing for, you know, businesses to be able to have at the forefront. I mean, even if a bar sells it to people or offers it in some capacity, it would just be a complete game changer.
Liat: I agree. Also, California just released a new law this January in which it will require all bars and clubs to offer drink spiking test kits starting this July. So, we see a huge legislative change in that specific combat against drink spiking. And I think that venue owners would be pretty much mandated to collaborate with those types of solutions.
Kalli: Yeah, that’s really amazing. I know liquor brands and alcohol brands themselves. You always see “drink responsibly”. And a lot of times celebrity cocktails or tequilas or whiskeys or whatever that come they talk about responsible drinking. Obviously, I’m going to bring up that the two stars from Vampire Diaries have a whiskey line.
Jenn: Oh, God, here we go.
Kalli: But again, for someone that’s a fan, like I’m following their page, I’m not even really a big whiskey drinker. But if I was going to go out and order something… I’ve been following them, I know to drink responsibly. I mean, not that I don’t know how to drink responsibly, but you know, having that messaging come from all angles is really, really nice and really important. This is the perfect partner for that type of messaging and that responsibility. And I’m just curious, as a woman founder bringing something so new to the market, what are some tips you have for young women who have a product or a business idea but aren’t quite sure how to flesh out the concept?
Liat: That’s a great question because I think that building something from the ground up is very difficult, and oftentimes, it’s terrifying. For me, it all starts with the purpose and the passion. I was actually giving a lecture the other day to potential founders, people who are considering funding their own startups. In the end, I told them that if they are considering funding their own startup, then number one, don’t because it’s so difficult. Number two, in case you do, you have to bear in mind that, especially in the first couple of years, you have no money, you have no brand, and you have no fancy offices. The only way to gather people around you is your passion. That’s your only currency. And so you have to make sure that you’re extremely passionate about what you want to bring to the world. And whenever things are tough, I go back to my users and to the people that I want to create a better world for, and that’s what is helping me go through the current challenge all the way to the next one.
Jenn: I love that that is it’s such great advice. Between My Bouncer and all the other incredible work you’ve done, I think that this has proven to us that inspiration can strike at any time. And today’s conversation has definitely taught us that we need more people in the world like you. So, thank you so much for sharing the story behind My Bouncer, and we really look forward to seeing it in the US market soon.
Liat: Thank you for having me.
Jenn: As a reminder to our listeners, new episodes drop every other Wednesday, and we appreciate all the love and support from our network. So continue to rate and review the show, follow us on social media, and say hello anytime to myself and Kalli at impressions@pollackgorup.com
