The Identity Layer: Why Consumers Aren't Obsessed with Your Brand (And What to Do About It)

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Speaker B: There ain't no change in the weather

Speaker C: Ain't no change in me.

Speaker D: Welcome everybody.

Speaker E: Excited to talk to advertising and audience. So you all know because we live in this world, we're not just competing on product, right? Brands just aren't just competing on product. We're competing for attention and emotional connection.

Speaker F: The emotional connection right now.

Speaker E: Oh, attention right now. Let's go. Here we go. I'm gonna come give a hug to. Okay, there we go. Any other means you want?

Speaker G: There we go.

Speaker E: Uh, um, yeah.

Speaker F: So we're excited to get started.

Speaker E: This is the audience and advertising panel. It's fierce out there. So we're, you know, we're not just competing on product, we're competing on relevance. We're competing on emotional connection. Uh, storytelling is a critical aspect to that. Today's panel, uh, is talking about why brands are succeeding and why brands aren't. And so we've got an incredible panel today. Uh, we'll get started with introductions to each of you. Oh, I'll start.

Speaker G: I'm Matt Baron.

Speaker E: I'm the CEO of Agility.

Speaker F: Uh, we're one of the sponsors.

Speaker E: AG is Precision brand advertising. So there's been a lot of talk

Speaker G: about brand branding, brands.

Speaker E: We're the very nerdy and scientific engine behind it that makes sure, uh, that the connect, emotional connections that you make generated a profitable return. And you can prove it.

Speaker H: My name is Nathan Google's life.

Speaker I: Um, we spend my career working at a number of different advertising agencies, big

Speaker H: advertising agencies, working on glamorous kind of

Speaker I: Nike, specializing mainly in sports and fashion.

Speaker H: And then about six years ago, launched our own studio, Witz, which worked with Nike, Jordan, a number of other athletes helping her launch brands to market. So really we're big cheerleaders for the brands and we love to tell your

Speaker I: story, find ways of making it relevant,

Speaker H: especially focusing on, um, tops at the moment. So Gold cup coming up right now is a big one. A lot of the brands are like,

Speaker I: how can we appear? What do we do at the World Cup?

Speaker H: How can we make some noise? And so that's an Area I'm going to specialize in.

Speaker F: I already introduced myself, but bravely new. My name is Kristen Hare. Um, I'm a global chief marketing brand and growth officer and advisor now. I just moved to Utah in October. So I've spent my career over the last 25 years. We're building a bunch of big iconic global brands. Started by building a bike. Kenny, he also was for quite some time moved on to Nike, moved on to Samsung, and then became the global chief marketing officer at Bel um Shave. Then the global chief marketing officer, Vance, and then the chief brain officer

Speaker D: professional athlete. Played for about 13 years. Transitioned uh, that into being Martin for Davis about eight years. Just help me. Welcome.

Speaker I: My name is, uh, Jacob Z. I'm the CEO of a company called Whisker. We make the litter robot. If you have a cat that poops, you should know who we are. Um, I've been there for 11 years and joined as employee 25. And now we have just shy of 700 people on the team. And I've been able to grow up in the company.

Speaker G: My name is Daniel. Um, I played in the NBA with.

Speaker E: No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker G: I'm a chief data scientist with Matt and this morning we both decided that bald and beard was exactly the right style.

Speaker E: It's our only option.

Speaker H: Let's be honest.

Speaker E: We got nothing else.

Speaker G: I'm the math behind the marketing.

Speaker E: Awesome. Well, let's get started. So every brand wants customers who are obsessed, right? Not just buying your product. Uh, you want somebody who feels an emotional connection with your brand. Um, what makes people care about your brand? Not just buy.

Speaker F: I sort of talked about it this morning, but I really feel like I walked through sort of that five step framework. The first step was solve or being a problem. That's where your kind of first step in an emotional relationship with the customer or the person that you want to serve, you're solving. I think a few clients ago we talked about the importance of relational connection. That's sort of the second step. You can get there with the two or three other pieces of criteria that I talked about. But to make someone obsessed, it goes back to the last piece that I talked about with Sponi, which is virtualizing identity. You have to give them something that says something very loud and clear about themselves. Um, and so, you know, I think that's super relevant for part brands. But in order to get to a place of obsession with who you are, you actually have to say something about the people that they should product.

Speaker I: So also piggybacking off of that, we Solve. I think the number one problem for all cat households, but the way we show off is really identifying with the cat person and focusing just on them. We've made a bold statement that we are not a gamble company and that we are cat only. And I think by doing that we really help that cat parent really feel love for our brand. And even in how we show up in our advertising and how we've shown up for uh, the way in which we activate our brand for our consumers and the way we've continued to engage with them over the years. And then secondly is the experience. We have 170 customer service people on our team. We have a technical product that if you need help, we're there to support you. And I think that's how people feel about our brand years later is that they made a very expensive investment in our product. It's a $700 litter box for cats. And years later, Whether it be 10 years later, a year later with a technical problem or a warranty support, we're showing up in the same way we did on day one.

Speaker G: Nathan? Why? Why are they wrong?

Speaker H: No, they were right there. Excellent. I just going to say one additional thing in terms of like the obsession want to create fight and hype culture around your brand. I think it's really important to find moments in culture that are happening and trying real ground conversation to those particular moments instead of just I love my brand. This is our mission, these are uh, our goals. Let's talk about ourselves. We have, this is sort of formally. We have to find how you can tie that into certain moments and communities and cultures and find how you can kind of connect those pieces together. If you just talk about yourself, your brand often finds it kind of misses the mark. There has to. You have to find the right time and such a creative component on the identity piece.

Speaker F: I think it's a little bit of a fallacy to even say out loud or assume that anyone is going to be as obsessed with your brand as maybe you are as the founder.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker F: Like it's not really a thing as consumers in this room. Can anyone like name a brand you're actually obsessed with that you think about 24 7, right? Well, I think the real truth is people are obsessed with themselves, they're obsessed with their lives, they're obsessed with who they are and how they're showing up in the world and so making sure that you're solving the problem and really a strong left brand point of view so that when they use your product it says something about their identity. That is the real value to people. And I think when you attach your brand to cultural moments, it amplifies it. But I think you're outpitting ourselves. If the food believes that any one consumer is going to be obsessed with the thing that we sell, we're obsessed with. They're not. They only care about themselves.

Speaker E: What's a better word than for obsessed? Like what we're trying to get at, right, is loyalty or something like that. How would you describe. So obsession is, is an unachievable goal. What is achievable and how would you describe it?

Speaker F: I think loyalty is good. I mean you want purchase so you want to be top of mind. You want to be some, you want to, you know, live in, to echo my conversation from this morning, the identity layer of where brands live. You also want to be cool. And that's what he was talking about. So I think loyalty was good repurchase. And that's still a really hard thing to win. That's not easy. Obsession is maybe unattainable. Loyalty starvation has. Who disagrees with me?

Speaker G: I've got a follow up question. I'm thinking specifically of uh, my dear wife Liz. She doesn't have many brands top of mind, but she has several creators top of mind. What are people doing wrong with creators right now? How does that fit into the scheme of how. And here, here's the debate that I see online. Some people think creators are a distribution solution. Some of them think that creators are

Speaker H: actually how you build their brands.

Speaker G: Right.

Speaker I: I think you have got real influence as a creator now. I think that it's been to me water bound so much of everybody taking the next brand deal. And so for us we need to the cat business, we only partner with

Speaker G: people that have a cat.

Speaker I: Doesn't matter what their clout is or how big their audience is. If they don't genuinely use our product, we will not work with them. And we've, we've gifted our product to celebrities before, before we even consider a partnership with them. We know they have a cat. We won't even engage with them unless they're genuinely using the product. Because what we found is along the way, when we partner with a creator who just did it for the money, which they're in it for the money and I don't knock down at all, we found that the audience can see through that. And so I think selling a premium good like we do at a higher price point, if there's not true authenticity to me it doesn't show up in the way that Actually resonates with the consumer.

Speaker D: Yeah. And on that side I think the creator cancel space completely over saturated space. Give somebody some shoulders along day at all. Back into the post and find a

Speaker G: connection

Speaker D: uh story because the main goal was to be I'll uh, soon, you know I did my some here. How do I measure how I. How can I sell their generic sales. So I mean if they want money using that and pay them anything, you know just the way I work, I'm sure other brands are okay with that. But I didn't feel anything just because we're using government.

Speaker F: I've had the same issue across multiple companies where you would sign someone from a micro influencer all the way up to some of the biggest entertainers in the world who literally wouldn't hold the product. That was super fun. And so yeah like yes, I think when Instagram first launched and creators were really seen as a distribution, you know, they were part of a media plan. Now the way that I think about creators is like how do we build the product with them, treat them like a co founder. And I think one of the stories just from bringing to my fear when I walked through this morning, the best example that sticks out and it's old but it's true, still true. The mini ride has changed maybe, but back in the 70s the original creators of skate vans were those dudes on Santa Monica boardwalk and they adapted that shoe and then they co built all of the five classic silhouettes with Paul Van Doren. There's nothing different today other than the platforms have changed. But if you're going to partner with somebody who's part of the community that you want to win with, that you want um, to adopt your brand, you actually have to let the free agency appropriate with you and then tell your story using their platform in the way they want to tell their story. Like literally build a relationship with them and get out of the way.

Speaker I: As I was listening to conversation about athletes, we just partnered with Isaac Tesla from the Detroit Lions. And we did it because he showed up on a uh, new spot and it was talking about how he wanted to get a dog, but because he traveled so much he didn't get cats and he wasn't a proud cat dad. And so we took that opportunity as a moment and flipped it into making him a proud cat dad. And that's what the spot was all about. We had his little robot custom painted with Detroit Lions logo and everything all around it. And he owned it. And he owned it very proudly. And he kind of took that moment in the press and tried to flip it with something different using his own words, but kind of the reverse of him. And I think when you can find something that shows up in the news, a moment in time or a media event or something that resonates with the creator themselves, it just gives you a point of view that may be more resonant with a consumer who cares about that framework.

Speaker E: Okay, let's get. Let's take just a second. Who here is satisfied with the emotional connections that are created with their customers?

Speaker D: Who.

Speaker E: Who here is. Is what. What's below satisfied? I know. Uh, who.

Speaker H: Ah.

Speaker E: Who's doing it? Yeah, who's doing. Who's creating emotional connections with their customers?

Speaker G: What.

Speaker E: Five. Okay, who's not? Or is that a weird question that was open publicly? Okay, okay, next question. Who of you are. Are satisfied with the uh, your use of creators?

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker E: Is anyone working with creators?

Speaker D: Okay. Super interesting.

Speaker H: So much more opportunity. Yes.

Speaker I: It's saturated and they're hard to chase down.

Speaker H: It's like a lot of manual work chasing down.

Speaker E: Okay, well let's look at the landscape today. Who's doing it? Well, what brands are they excited about? They're. They're doing impressive things. Brands that we can learn from at large. Talking about advertising, audience and emotional connection.

Speaker D: I think skin is doing good. Kim K Is, you know, some people like us and don't so. But I say that because one thing I've learned about her, she values herself not being a small person. Whenever she does it though, she breaks it rather than she has sources to. So I really appreciate

Speaker E: um,

Speaker F: you know,

Speaker D: status being a started to that. So I think she's doing amazing. I will say one my former brand stuff I do with Anthony Edwards kind of necessary because it's kind of the Kirk enthusiasm type mindset. They have like uh, a concept that would give it to him and they let him work it out. So kind uh of like what you were saying for like they let him work it out all by himself. So when you hear says on camera that's completely different things. Tell him what to say.

Speaker I: Like I'll figure it out.

Speaker D: Very, very, very. And as you've heard that happens before. They speak into that authenticity, the opportunity. They're smarter than Tony. Can't talk to them, not at them.

Speaker F: Well, I mean it was almost 10 years ago now, but the video I showed earlier tweets and I stat work that we did with Samsung, same thing that entire script with him. The way that we got him to become Samsung is to say you're building this brand and it was super authentic. It came off so well. Um, and it was true also you didn't make it up. It wasn't just you got a paycheck and co wrote the thing. Deeply believed in it. Um and so I agree, I also agree that Stamps is doing a great job. I did not see those partnerships coming in. I thought it was an incredible move. They really have entered into multiple spaces that no one else is entering. So yeah on the creators, I actually think some of the hottest brands out there right now are being filled five players. So you think about Alex skincare line that sold out in 48 hours. Was it 48 hours or something? Yeah but I mean she launched a skincare brand based off of five years of social media content developed based on her get ready Get Ready with me videos and unknown problem that she has acne prone skill. She basically launched a campaign after a five year tease and so I thought that was incredible. Uh, not to be talked to Room Steel but Absouper also is doing a great job and moving into starting her own not just the Unwell network but her unknown beverages that she launched and then her media company. So I mean I actually think Skims basically is a creator driven brand as well. So yeah, I think creators that have their own platforms are killing it.

Speaker H: I think one of the things that makes sense of creators and why it's working for them is they have an element of restraint. They're not trying to sell, move mass and actual products. They care more about kind of people like I fancy trying to. I liked what made um Checkers were saying earlier about being restrained and patience and timing with launching a brand that takes time. There's a couple of like athletes and artists we work with um, asap. Rockawin, we've been watching his product collaborations the last couple of years. He doesn't really care if anyone buys it. He's more concerned about who loves it and he's obsessed with it and he gets it to a place where he's happy with and he's not thinking how do I move mass amount of product, how do I do this? And staying very tuned to kind of the core philosophy. I mean we mentioned before we do help Jim Butler Lunch Coffee Ground. He doesn't care if anyone drinks it and he loves his coffee and he spends hours and hours trying to get the coffee film with the perfect. So I think there has to be. I know it's a very difficult tension when launching brands because we have to unique products but at the same time there has to be like a patience and restraint to do it properly in order for them to bring the succession

Speaker E: or answer it.

Speaker G: Um Kristen, you talked earlier today about cultural crams and there's a bit of a debate about did the cult come first or should come first. One thing the research seems to be clear about is long term value from customer or from a creator. Doesn't come off those two transactional. There's some co creative element. Where does that start? How can you intentionally use emotion and storytelling um with the brand to build the brand and the culture and the movement that people want to be a part of.

Speaker F: I don't think it's good. I don't think it's too convenient. I think your culture comes first and like I said this morning brands that are winning that get it that understand the culture get adopted and brands that don't get adopted. Um so I think it's pretty straightforward. But also brands that had product that has been developed from the perspective of obsessing with those people want and you talking about Adidas. Anybody a runner injure anybody watch the running marathon. Nike has been trying to break two hours in the marathon for a decade and it's just good. Um and the entire running community swamped. It's like the last thing that my team needed right now and they did it Starting with obsessing the culture of others and obsessing a product that was going to be super efficacious and putting it on a world stage connecting to culture in the same way that you were saying they all have to work together.

Speaker D: Do you guys for the brands that are struggling or I shouldn't say struggle.

Speaker E: I apologize.

Speaker D: Do you guys do focus groups uh so are you brand new than to go on and say hi from such and such I would suggest doing. I learned that the hard way. If I go to some art demo with 12 to 16 spot I go there and say meetings tell me what I want to hear you know and that impacts the future. So I mean respectively I don't know if Mike keep doing that when it comes to running and make problems so that's why they managed to build a product and break two hours ideas. They said they'll go all over uh stuff like that and ask them what's going to figure it out build better product so that have a simple thing to definitely not be full you need to understand it assuming what's potentially

Speaker H: that's

Speaker I: the thing I would call it channeling our anger that we ah have we have a huge Reddit community of uh 60,000 people now of our customers that are in there that are constantly talking about our product. And I am, and I joined Reddit to be part of the community and I get tagged multiple times a day and I engage the Rockley. But I listen and I take all that and I channel those little product improvements because it's almost always somebody telling us how we can be better and how they can love us even more. And I think for me, that really hit home when we had a challenge with a launch in 2022. I listen, we reacted, and our community loved it and it made them happy. Everyone was the word culture obsessed. It made a fight. We gave to where they then felt comfortable, you know, talking to me. And my email is super public. I wrote it out for all of them. I heard from all of them and I engaged one to one because I didn't view it as a waste of my time. I viewed it as the best use of my time because it was helping me drive my team towards a better product, which in turn creates a more passionate customer.

Speaker F: There's definitely a culture that doesn't hurt.

Speaker E: Awesome. Um, this gets at exactly our next question, that product and marketing are constantly pulling each other, right? I mean, that's the question which is responsible for the growth, which is responsible for the result.

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Speaker F: have a lot of. I think earlier this morning I talked about, uh, White Infinity as my created grad school after law school, business school, and then bankrupt brand management grad school. And then I got to Vans and I mentioned this morning that one of the core issues at Vans is I just felt like they sort of took their eye off the ball in terms of who the consumer was becoming post Covid. So we talked about the styling differences pre Covid, post Covid and how styling fashion changed. But the other thing that was really important is just the state consumer completely changed. Um, and as we were trying to sort of diagnose that and fix it. Also realized when I entered into the VAAS organization, uh, that the product engines and there were two, wasn't one. They weren't United Footwear was On a totally different product development time on the apparel, that's a huge problem. But also the marketing engine was completely separate. So both of the product engines and the marketing engine weren't really talking to each other. There was no like the footwear development cycle was anywhere from 1825. But typically that's what it takes. It's just long lead time that there was no real upstream planning where you had marketing, product, product creation, insights, sales around the same table, talking about where are trends going, what do consumers want, what should we go make and how is that going to deliver? On our point of view, when you don't have that engine firing across your core global. The core global engine and an organization, you cannot inject a pain view in the culture. It's broken. And so I guess my short answer to the question is I've been in many environments where um, management or just legacy behavior has been. Marketing sits over here on its island. Product sits over here on its island. They're an amoeba. They have to work together, they have to push people on each other. And marketing has to be involved upstream. If marketing is not involved upstream, we cannot sell you product. We just said amen. So I feel like that was a good answer.

Speaker I: I mean I think to me, at least in a consumer electronic product, to me our brand is only as good as our product. And I think that at the end of the day, to me the way a brand shows up is how you feel about your product. You was later, um, at least for me, at an expensive price point. People think about our product five to 10 years after they buy it. And in doing that that's their decision of whether they're going to buy the next one. And if we delivered on the customer experience and we delivered on continued innovation. And my product I launched in 2022 has had 38 software updates in the 38 months since we launched it. Um, about one per month. And we have 800,000 multi active users of our app. They really appreciate that the product they bought two years ago is way better today than it was then. In a lot of ways that's the brand that they have. A brand that continues to improve and weirdly um, jumping from litter boxes to Lululemon as a life on blue London, you know, consumer. But I saw like three or four years ago and started to evolve and products started to evolve and I stopped buying it. And it wasn't intentional and it wasn't something I thought about until I reflected back and looked at the brand they have today. And I don't like them, whether my opinion matters or not. I uh, that's all I wore for 10 years and I completely stopped buying. I don't know if it's a product or brand, but a combination m of the two goes together. I stopped purchasing a product and I switch to Yori and uh, other brands. But I think that it is so much about product and brand together. And at least for me it's hard to separate the team.

Speaker H: You may have seen there's this really cool video online where the virgin abnormal from off white he holds up like a candle, right? And he's saying I've got, it's kind of a crush metal um, tin. He said I've got two options if I want to m create a better candle. I can either build like a better sort of case for it to sit or I can build a better candle if that makes sense. And he talking about, you know, so in terms of this product or brand, you know, I think also there's kind of you can do even more in lots of situations, right? We can build the world around these galleries and where the product sits and keep it the same and build the hype around it or you can focus purely on the product. Obviously it's the best scenarios and combination with both. But I feel that was something really interesting.

Speaker E: Thank you. So let's get into something tangible, something probably really painful. The investment decisions. So how we're looking at uh, short term versus long term where, you know, how are you balancing your investments across these things? When you talk to a client, what do you tell them about how they're going to measure success? About this incredible cultural moment that you've created. You've lived this forever. When you're talking to a client, how are they measuring return on uh, investment? With creators, you live this every day. Tell us about this.

Speaker I: I just heard the CEO of CO and uh, the dental brand and I, I thought what she said was really resonant with me, which was when she joined the company, she asked the founder if she could rebrand the business and not to measure it right away and not to have immediate KPIs because it wouldn't stack up. And over the following three years it played out. Their story kind of tells itself now. And I did the same thing a number of years ago and I don't know if that worked with a great product or what. Like we, we invested in high funnel marketing back when I joined in 2015 and everything we did was on high phone. We were spending money on TV versus Meta back then and we didn't go all in on Meta until 2023. And we were spending a lot more on TV, especially in 2020 during COVID and everything. And it was around a spot called don't be a Scooper. We took a high funnel point of view that and we made it like a derogatory meeting where to call someone a scooper. And it resonated because it was funny. It didn't sit with everybody. It frustrated some people. And we're about to do the same thing again. In about three weeks, we're launching our, Our Biggest Brain campaign. It's not to be measured immediately. It's been measured over the months and hopefully not years, but the months you know, to follow that which is around taking the point of view that cats are better than dogs.

Speaker E: Do you really how. That's if, if it's worth talking about, uh, if it's not going to in the weeds, how will you measure it? Like, what proof are you looking for? Because you all have words to report to your partners or whomever that you have to tell the story to about those investments.

Speaker I: Well, I don't. I mean, at least it's 700 a product. That consideration, uh, window is not tomorrow. It's over a period of time and you hear about it from friends, family, you see us on tv, you see us over here. For me, it's about website engagement. If I'm getting you to our site and you're on the site for more than a minute, that's a win to me. And so if I can get, we get 1.7 million people a month to our site. If I'm average and I'm not averaging, you know, a minute for all those visitors. So half of them maybe, but the other half are high formal visitors coming from a paid social app. That user. If I can dial them in to stay longer by giving them the appropriate content at each phase of their journey with us, to me that's a win because the next time cat poops on the floor, you're going to remember us. And I think that that's part of that brand moment where it doesn't have to be today. And as much as I'd love to have everybody today, that's not realistic for the average consumer. And so for me, showing up when they're ready is. Is what I'm aiming for.

Speaker F: And you're.

Speaker H: Yes.

Speaker F: I mean I think that's really interesting for a high price point. Another example that I feel is similar. Who read that verse hoopa ah. Around the Snoop Dogg solo stove commercials last year it's the same thing. What? Like it was genius. Completely genius. It got so Terrelli. But how about just a solo stove like at least. And I think the board or someone who's after the details, but someone was upset and think the CEO somebody seems to be got. And I'm like, give it a minute, give it a minute. You know, they didn't take the deal.

Speaker I: It's three months after that, after he moved on from there.

Speaker D: So at that point I kind of like artist drops the same. It's not always about quantity for quality. So, uh, I know we did something once a month. We came up with a shoe called, uh, the four. It was kind of our broke down version of Air Force One. Uh, and it did amazing. We have five colorways, so the brand thought it was genius to come up with 30 more colorways. And I'm sure you guys can guess what happened from that point. None of those color they sold. I mean every color, every mix and match that you can imagine it came out and it's just like it was too much too fast. So we were trying to build the trust with the product and because we had a little bit of success with the shoe, they just thought to rush it. And I think that's mentioned, uh, being a little bit more patient with some of the campaigns, some of the drops

Speaker F: at grants and all of that said though, I mean I think there's having entered, uh, as many brands as I had and have over the course of my career, I think very. I'm now just helping a lot of really small brands. Like defining what big discipline looks like across every part of the funnel is super, super important. And educating people on if we invest even 20% of your budget in upper funnel brand awareness activity, you're not going to see the payoff for six to 12 months. And in fact, I'm not going to check it for at least 12 months. We'll set up the study and then we're going to forget about it. And a lot of farmers are like, what? Like freak out. And you have to take the time to onboard if it's that level of 50. At the same time, when you start thinking about whether or not you believe the funnel is broken or intact, it's easier to tap on it this way. Um, mid funnel and lower funnel assets. I mean you have to be super clear about what the funnel metrics are and then what your, your business metrics are. And I've worked in enough businesses where they don't define that. And then it's a mess. And it becomes a finger pointing game. And I think the most important role that a head of marketing can play is being excruciatingly clear about how we are measuring success and what we're looking for. Because I think the reality is no matter the breakdown between brand and performance spend really depends on so many factors. What is the brand? What does your business look like? What are your core goals? Like there's not one formula. I wish I could sit up here and say yeah, it should be a 6040 split. That's not true. It really is situational and I think you have to diagnose the situation and then completely define how you're measuring it and every part of your market.

Speaker H: So the only thing was, as you mentioned, I think it's so fun now, sort of um, when you do launch campaigns or the advertising as well, how you get that real time reaction for what people really think about it through social now which is so fun because you know, six, seven years ago you put these massive marketing campaigns out there to the world and then internally they would be high fiving each other and you really know what people were saying. Now it's so fun because we put something out there. The world immediately goes to comments and people tell you exactly what they think and exactly what reactions are and I think that's amazing. Like we were saying, I think it's very important not to overreaction quickly to the negative comments because one a reaction. There's nothing worse than when you put something out into the world and it's silence you that's the worst case scenario.

Speaker I: I think that uh, in opposing view is a good thing and I think even me saying cats are better than dogs in your immediate reaction, that's the intent of our upcoming campaign. I want there to be three different audiences which is the cat person, the mixed cat household and then the dog family. And I want them to have a different point of view on the creative because if we do and we win over the dog person to remember us is the brand that tried to tell you cats are better than dogs, you're going to remember that the next time you're the cat person. And that was, you know, arm um, 10. That is whether it works or not. We'll see. And how do we measure that? It is a little bit of a gas, I'm going to say it which is we have a strong position and it's going to work and we're willing to bet on it. And I think you did that six years ago with Olympia Scooper and the businesses, you know, grow Meaningfully since then. And at the time that doubled our business and then doubled it again the next year. And it was taking a point of view. It was saying something that in our case, people could be frustrated by. And I think that that worked. And the heat now was just a bonus.

Speaker E: Okay, um, Daniel, I have one question for you. I'm going to break the quorum a little bit. Daniel probably should have been a panelist. Daniel. Daniel was our chief data scientist. He came, uh, up through Overstock and he was responsible for reporting to the executive team and board about advertising results. If you need something more than you got to take a 6 to 12 month back from a data science perspective, what would you tell them?

Speaker G: Is it that time for everyone?

Speaker E: I actually already heard the answers that

Speaker G: I firmly consider correct answers, long term studies, culturally, prepping the team discipline. Larry, I can't believe it fell out of my brain. You said something so brilliant. I want to remember it. I'll remember it again and text you. There was something you said that I was like, yeah, that, that's exactly how you mentioned it. I think one of the most critical things is, um, that marketing science is not so different from medical science. Understanding how to use placebos, understanding how to use clean rooms and data. Understanding where attribution works and doesn't. Understanding how to measure sentiment, mood, understanding how to measure emotion, understanding how to constantly test and above all the measurement. Problem is problem. It's can you have long term conversations, multiple conversations, screaming at the other end of the conference room at each other. Conversations where you're both on the same side and you're just understanding the truth bit by bit. Like the, uh, blind man in the elephant that I feel a trunk, I feel a lip, I feel an ear. What is this thing that I'm feeling with my hands? Mark Twain is about can you solve a people problem? If you can solve the people problem, you can solve the data part.

Speaker E: Awesome. Okay, Q and A. What questions do you have?

Speaker F: Handful of questions, always. Um, so I have a friend who like works with high end brains and he's saying that they're having a harder time connecting with people and they're just not having the same sales as they used to because like people like the idea. Now knockoffs are more common and different things how as a luxury or like string. Foss is $4, right? $129 product could see expensive, but it's not because the cavity is $340. So how do we get luxury M to be excited? Like, I just, I see some of the campaigns that You've done. And they're so beautiful and wonderful that the. How do you get the people to feel the emotion and the connection? Does that question make sense? Yeah, especially right now. Uh, what gas prices are, what they allow. I mean it's hard. Luxury is hard right now for a lot of people. So you know, honestly, I think it comes down to clearly communicating the benefit that you deliver. Why is what you sell different than straight floss? And just romanticizing that. And also the other thing I would say I told you this earlier today. I am someone who is like, I'm going to use the word obsessive about oral hygiene. I go to the dentist three times a year or four times a year, once a quarter. I really believe in dental health as to me it's, it's actually an extension of physical health. And I'm deputy. You were talking about that earlier. There are more people like me. You got to make sure you're talking to people like me instead of wasting your marketing dollars on people who are super price sensitive and will not spend heavens from the on floss when they can get in a target for four. So our action is super. Email me and we'll have a conversation.

Speaker I: So as the CEO, um, I'm constantly

Speaker H: pressing my VP of brand to identify which 50% of our marketing spend is a waste, which 50% is effective.

Speaker E: Is my request unrealistic?

Speaker H: I'm not getting satisfactory answers.

Speaker I: Or is there a magic bullet email address?

Speaker H: There's definitely like a big correlation between clients happiness and how much money they spent on uh, certain advertising campaigns. Because after the function work, say Nike's launching a new product, they will throw a million, $2 million into the campaign. Another time it might be $300,000. And then sometimes they'll find out that the $200,000 campaign got better results than a 3 million dollar one. And then that causes rage, you know. And so I think um, just being very cautious and calculating in terms of what money spend you put into certain campaigns and no momentum like throw down when to hold back I think is massively.

Speaker F: It sounds to me like you have a, a clarity problem. Like there hasn't been your maybe head of marketing hasn't managed uh, the rest of the executive team around how we're going to measure the marketing activity set. So the way that you, maybe that's not true, but the way you ask the question, it sounds like maybe there's just foundational lack of um, clarity on how you're defining. Yeah. So that black and white like you said, sounds a little Unclear what success looks like in your business. And so that's where I would push if I perform it before we continue a more spend, I would push for clarity on the measurement system.

Speaker I: I think for me, I'm a performance marketer at my core who has become a brand marketer as we've built a larger company. And I still want everything to be

Speaker H: performed, uh, at my four.

Speaker I: And I think every dollar that I spend, I still measure the percent of market as a percent of revenue. So I'm not as focused on cash as I am marketing, um, as a percent of revenue because that allows me to blend all my initiatives together. And then I also look at them by channel. But I think for me, when I joined the company, we're spending 8% of revenue on marketing. That was a long time ago. That drastically evolved that we spend a lot more now. But along the way, 8 and 10 and 12 and 14, 16, 18, 20. But at that 20, I was a lot more profitable even to our bottom line because I can grow the business so much more significantly. That was over a long period of time. And I think even still, we've lowered it a little bit as we gained more scale. And I still look at every single month, or I should say every month we aim for our, um, target. But by the quarter I have to be. So if I'm spending money on a brand marketing initiative, I have a blended model that I have to look at in order for me to continue spending at that level. Um, and I still do that today. So we're about to head into a planning campaign. We're going to have enough of our dollars working in the low and mid funnel to make sure that our engine is still running. And as we have more people on the top funnel, I got to make sure that my low and mid are working properly to drive people through it. And if that's not working, then I will pull back on my funnel. Because as much as I love the idea of running a bigger brand campaign, it's not something that I can wait a year on because I do have, you know, financial goals that I have to hit. And so trying to find that blended balance at every point is still a struggle. Um, you know, even at our scale

Speaker H: that we've reached, I think that's going

Speaker E: to wrap us up unless there's any other. Last question.

Speaker I: One last question.

Speaker E: So, uh, earlier we talked or you guys discussed influencers and how they've kind of waned in the current market. What about a brand building their own influencer? Similar to, like how insurance. Insurance Companies build their mascot.

Speaker H: What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker G: Have any of you guys ever done

Speaker E: programs like that where you take like an employee or an internal person and elevate them to like maybe a hybrid

Speaker G: between a mascot and an um, internal creator?

Speaker D: I, uh, would first question the sustainability for that. How consistent can you be with that model? That'd be my first question. I don't think it's a bad idea, I'm saying, but I mean, across, uh, the board, you want to do whatever you do, especially when you spend money and be consistent. So if you can't be consistent with that, I can't see like six 12, two, three, four years out with that model, then I have to look back at it.

Speaker F: I mean, the only other thing that I would say is like more scaled brands like the insurance company. You're thinking about the guy from Allstate, the progressive lady. I mean, if those are winning ad campaigns, they continue shows from testing. If there's memorability, they've spent decades of display equity into those characters and it's a way for them to differentiate in a category that really is faceless and hard to remember. I think it makes sense. I've also worked for scaled brands that use the founder as the face of the brand. Or when they get to a certain point, executives start fighting over who's going to be the face of the brand. I think that is a huge waste of investment. Right? So I think it just comes down to if you have a founder or somebody who actually has natural equity behind what you're building, then it's okay to continue. But I would keep testing it. I'll tell just a quick Annecy story, $9 trillion Shave Club, which I spoke about this morning. I mean, Mike Dubin was the face of the brand. We launched that $4,000, $5,000 video and his name is synonymous with Dollar Shave Club. When I got there, we did a brand equity study and we put his name in the equity study and we tested it with thousands of consumers all over the world and he didn't score that high. And I took him the data and I was like, hey man, I think it's time to retire the jersey. And he's like, that's totally fine with me. So I mean, I think data informed decision making around that, even for family led brands is really important.

Speaker E: Well, thanks for coming guys. Um, let's get more out of the blog.

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