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- [00:00]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
Foreign. Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast
- [00:15]
Marcelo Cortez
devoted to examining the issues and trends
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Allison Schiff
in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.
- [00:24]
Sarah Sluice
Today's episode is sponsored by Verve. Verve captures over a billion daily search, AI chat and zero party signals, giving brands and publishers a real time understanding of intent.
- [00:48]
Allison Schiff
I'm Allison Schiff and you are listening to Changer Talks, the podcast that grooms your mind, which is my silly segue to introduce my guest this week, Marcelo Cortez, CMO of Manscaped, the men's grooming brand originally known for going below the belt that's now expanding into tools and products for the whole body, which is also a marketing and perception challenge. Before joining Manscaped, Marcelo cut his teeth as a creative director on presidential campaigns in Brazil and beyond, including helping elect the country's first female president. That experience helped shaped how he thinks about strategy, storytelling and being under pressure. Because in politics your KPI is pretty binary. You either win or you lose. There's no in between. We'll talk about how Marcelo is helping reposition Manscaped from quote unquote ball to all, which is his witticism, not mine. I can't take credit. Also how the brand has shifted from performance heavy D2C to a more brand and omnichannel driven strategy. Manscaped's hilarious debut at this year's super bowl, which involved singing Hairballs and lots of other good stuff. But first, we're a few weeks away from programmatic AI in Las Vegas May 18th through the 20th, and there's still time to snag your ticket. We'll be talking about all things AI related, from AI in Media Planning to Agentic Optimization, Measurement Reinvented, and how to be responsible. Of course, we've got a great speaker lineup, including folks from JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, AI People, Inc. Horizon Media, WPP Media, Canvas, Worldwide Advertiser Perceptions, the Ivy Tech Lab, the Weather company, and lots more. Podcast listeners get 10% off the price of their ticket when they use the code POD10. So see you there. Hey Marcelo, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:34]
Marcelo Cortez
Hello Alison. So nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
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Allison Schiff
So I wanted to start out with something a little silly because I love your glasses and when we met in New York last year, I admired them. You might have had a different pair on. I think you're one of those people that has multiple pairs of glasses and I recently became one of those people. So for the people who are or the listeners who are also watchers, I'm going to change my glasses and wear my really cool ones so that I can match your energy.
- [03:05]
Marcelo Cortez
Thank you. Those are really cool. Love them. Yeah, I am, I am one of those that has a few, not a lot, pairs of glasses. And I love, like, being able to change the color, but sometimes the prescriptions are so expensive that, that, that's what makes it hard. Right. Because the frames deal with it. But I do have a few colors that I.
- [03:29]
Allison Schiff
These frames cost a hundred bucks and the lenses cost $500.
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Marcelo Cortez
Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I think keeps me for having more colors. But I, but I do enjoy them. Yeah. And thanks for noticing.
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Allison Schiff
Yes. I admire them. So I usually ask people, as my little icebreaker, to share one thing with me that a lot of people might not already know about them that you can't easily find out by just checking out their LinkedIn. But I want to prompt you, actually, because I know something very cool about you that I'd love you to expand on, which is that you were a creative director between 2010 and 2013 for seven presidential election campaigns in five different countries, including the election of the first female president in Brazil. It's very cool, and I guess it's good ROI when your candidate gets elected. Although I imagine it's also so intense. Not that you don't have stressful days as the CMO of a brand, but I mean, it's a lot of pressure when you have a singular KPI. You either win or lose, and there's no in between. Really.
- [04:34]
Marcelo Cortez
Yes, yes. And it does help. You know, it does help a lot when, when you have that experience and then you are. Because in, you are in a commercial environment like, like, like manscape, not political campaign. Because I do think it puts, puts things in perspective. And, and there's no level of pressure that compares to those campaigns. I actually did. So the timeline, you almost nailed it. It was my first one, was 2002. It was, it was the first election of President Lula, who is actually today Brazil's president again after many, many years. He was running for the fourth time, and he had lost the previous three. And, and this was like, the most beautiful campaign that I was part of. It was very inspiring. It was a moment of hope. The world was in a different place, I might say. And then after that one, I, I, I did, I went back to the advertising, you know, agency world. And then in 2010, like you said, I got invited to help, like, run creative and strategy for our first female president, President Dilma. We won that one. Then we got a series of invites. That's When I ended up doing another five, which totaled the seven that you mentioned. And I was, I was lucky enough or privileged enough to win six out of the seven that I participated. So it was, it was a good track record. The Last one was 2014, the re election of President Dilma. And that's when I decided to take a break because it was a really intense, you know, few years and, and that's where I came, that's when I came to the US and at first it was just to take a break. Then I decided to stay and kind of start my life again. And here I am a few years later at Manscape. Totally different, you know, situation. But like you said, the learnings from, from the campaigns are still used like every day from many, many different layers from understanding consumers in a very obsessive way to have solid strategy. Because I, one of the things that stuck with me with the political campaigns is that no matter, like everything, every choice that you make from a creative perspective, even, even the lens that you choose to shoot your candidate or whatever piece of content you're making becomes a strategic decision. Everything is aligned with the strategy and, and we are really obsessive in kind of dialing down what are the three or four messages that we need to win in order to win that election. And then as you have that level of clarity, everything becomes, becomes easier because then when you're choosing a camera position, a color for the background, what like what kind of soundtrack you're, you're using, everything needs to build up to those clear strategic access. So that's something that I use in my, in my, in my day to day life at Manscape still today.
- [07:54]
Allison Schiff
Well, so for a lot of your career when you weren't helping elect political candidates, you were very focused on branding and design. And then when you joined manscaped, it wasn't as CMO originally. In 2020, you came on as VP of Content, Brand and design and you did that for a few years and then you were promot CMO back in 2022. How did that transition happen for you? Like going from a very brand and design driven role and that is your background into a CMO job where things like measurement and media mix modeling and all of that nerdy stuff is now part of your remit.
- [08:30]
Marcelo Cortez
Yeah, now that's, that's a, that's a great question. One like when I started as a creative back in Brazil, I was always obsessed with the goals behind it. Right. So this, this language which at the time was not called KPIs or measurement or anything like that. But this connection between what the creative needs to deliver and the business goals was always something that I was very obsessed about. And it was not that common to be honest within young creatives at the time to try to understand the business side of things and try to understand what drives that creative request that lands in your table. But I, but I had that in me. I, I'm a creative that has as much love for, you know, designing our direction as for a beautiful spreadsheet. I, I, I claim that my spreadsheets at Manscape are the most beautiful ones because I can marry the world. But so that that passion for strategy I think helped me a lot. And then I believe that the, the political campaigns like I was mentioning with this very specific and demanding goals of, you know, you need to have 50% market share plus 1, or is it as it is, as good as none? I think it's what brought me closer, without my knowledge at the time, to the CMO role. So when I joined Manscape, like I said, I joined to run everything they had creative on it. So it was product design, packaging, content, advertising, digital. Then a few later, a few years later, I got invited to be the, to become the cmo. Super excited about it. I knew what I needed to do so I was confident that I could deliver good results. But to be really honest with you, the first thing I did after I got that, after I got that, that, that offer was go to YouTube and type how to be a CMO. And I watched a few tutorials on how to be a CMO to see if there was something that I was missing. I didn't get a lot of good insights, to be honest, but I think it added to the confidence like, you know what? There is not super, something super complicated being shown here. I think it's something that I can learn, can learn in the job. But, but I, I, I believe that first I had the privilege of having a great marketing team at the time. So they didn't need someone who was technical, hands on keyboard, deploying kind of marketing initiatives, but most of all like someone who could see where the brand needs to go, what are the next challenge is the hurdle and how to get there. So that's, that's how it made sense. But, but yes, but it was, it was a, it was a challenging, in a good way moment to me. But I love, I love tackling, you know, new challenges and learning new skills. And just to add to that, just recently at Manscape we had a, a change to where now I also lead Product development. So it's a new area to me. It's something that although I have been very close with product design, which is part of product development, but far from being the bulk of it now I also lead product development and Manscape. And that I think will be very interesting because connecting everything that is consumer facing, which is the creative side the consumer insights and strategy with marketing and product development. So new and exciting times ahead too.
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Allison Schiff
That is very soup to nuts. What are those meetings like when you're talking to the product people and you're weighing in, what are you sharing? What do they want to know from you and what's the vibe in a meeting that has marketing people and product development?
- [12:37]
Marcelo Cortez
Well, we like Depends. There's, there's so many kinds of meetings. Right. So when, when it's more product focused, let's say it's similar to what I was telling you in terms of when I joined the marketing organization as cmo. We do have a very strong team and, and everyone on their roles is very capable. So what I bring to the table is more of that vision. So right now, for example, it's what are the next categories that Manscape will break through or reinvent or you know, where are the big growth opportunities for us in terms of product and product categories? And then I think the beauty of it is that now I can marry when I am still thinking about the new product category or when I'm still thinking about, you know, where is our next step on product for growth. I can marry that with the storyline that the brand can deliver on that space, you know, the marketing initiatives that we can deliver in that space and even some of the creative that we can do to activate that space. So I can't tell because it's a new category that we haven't launched yet, but just, you know, without naming it, there's a new project that I'm, that I'm rallying internally and to help both internal and with our retail partners to share that vision. I was able to build a deck where, you know, there is the products, why it makes sense for this consumer, what's the opportunity in terms of the target audience and what insights that we drove from the consumer and how we can flex the marketing and creative to activate that, all of that in a very early stage. And it helps a lot because it helps our internal teams have a more cohesive vision of what they're doing. So it's not just like the product team thinks about thinking about features and specs, but they are actually understanding and having a glimpse of how this will be marketed to the consumer. What, what pain points it helps address in a, like they start to see a little bit of the communication and aspect of it. So that helps everyone focus on what's important. So right now we had like, this is all very early, like I said, but we had this first initiative and I think it's pretty powerful to have all those disciplines connected in a more, you know, from the beginning in a, in a, in a very almost umbilical way. If I, if I might.
- [15:19]
Allison Schiff
That's a visceral term. I think of what you're talking about too. Just it ladders up to this repositioning that you guys are involved in now, right? Where you're kind of going. I think of it as like beyond balls. So like more of a whole body brand, not just a trimmer, you know, for down there. And there's a lot of very funny ball. Trimmy humor though, in your marketing that I guess you'll be applying to other parts of the, of the human body. But I want to go through some of the stuff that you've done over the past few years because it's very amusing. So there was the tagline, when you trim the hedges, the trees stand taller. There was that partnership you did, which I do hope you bring back with Open Fortune. And for people who don't know, it's this media platform that distributes branded advertising messages at restaurants, like tucked into real fortune cookies. So one of the fortunes was a smooth ride is always more enjoyable. And Argy can't argue with that, although my dog might. And there was the Send Face pics Instead campaign which showed all the amazing things that could happen in your personal life if dudes just started sending pictures of their face instead of, you know, genitals to the strange stranger women on dating apps. Where does that like voice come from? And are there any like guidelines or guardrails that you put in place so that you could still keep pushing into this very funny territory but without tipping over too much or like just becoming kind of just like a joke brand, Like a jokey brand.
- [16:56]
Marcelo Cortez
Yeah, no. And I mean you nailed a lot of concepts in your, in your question already, which is great because it, it, it shows that at least that, you know, what we are trying to do is coming across. So thank you for setting like a such a rich question. But yes, it started like humor in our brain started as a necessity. Right. Like when we are breaking through a new conversation where people were not necessarily comfortable talking about their private parts and taking care of Their private parts. Humor is a very powerful, effective tool to kind of, you know, release the tension breakthrough and establish those conversations. The danger with that is like you said, you could become like a joke brand, a one off brand, or you know, like those novelty products that you see in a store, like a, you know, a toilet paper with someone's face on it and you give as a gift and it's funny, but it's not really some like a brand to be taken serious. So the first thing that we did that was very deliberate decision was the decision to counter that with like high, high standards of design, packaging, you know, the website experience. So everything else is screened, how serious we are in terms of the quality of our products, the quality of the experience, the quality of the packaging, you know, the care that we have and all that. So that was a very powerful way to offset our very kind of sometimes fifth grader, you know, like humor that we have. I like it especially on the early days. But, but to your point, like it's a very powerful releasing of tension connection too, because the world today is complicated, complex, heavy. So more and more I believe that a brand that just brings a little bit of joy and a smile, that it's not pretentious, goes a long way. Which leads me to. You asked about guardrails and there are a few guardrails. They're not complicated. But one of them is we, although we want to be a force towards, you know, being better. So we not only want men to take better care of themselves like grooming and you know, and being, being, taking like self care, but also in cultural conversations, we want to be a force towards, you know, better, better behavior better, you know, being, being, being a better person because we believe in that and we believe that brands can be a force towards that. But at the same time, we never want to be prescriptive. So we don't want to be telling people what to do and you know, like pointing fingers and trying to shame people into things or anything like that, because that's not us and you don't believe in that. And two, we never want to take ourselves too serious. So even when we are talking about something that is a serious topic, like we have this partnership with the testicular Cancer society that we established since the early days of Manscape. We've helped a lot of men by raising awareness about testicular cancer, which is very frequent but at the same time very easy to detect if you adopt a very simple behavior. But we did that with humor. We did this in a lighthearted way because you know, we don't want to take ourselves too serious because, again, there's too much seriousness and complexity and dance things in the world we don't need to be. To be another one. And we believe that we can establish better relationships with people by just being a little lighter. Right. So those are some of the guardrails. So making sure that we are on the right side of things. If we want to talk about cultural conversations like the face pics versus pictures of your private down there, doing that with humor, doing that, not taking ourselves too serious, and most importantly, not being preachy or prescriptive because we don't feel like we have that position and we don't, you know, we don't. Like, who are we to be telling people, you know, what to do in such a hard way?
- [21:20]
Allison Schiff
True. Although I would argue you do have the right to tell people about, you know, testicular cancer. Right. Because you spend all of, you know, your marketing time below the belt, and that gives you, I think, you know, a Runway to make the kind of pronouncements and statements and to share things that other brands can't really do.
- [21:44]
Marcelo Cortez
Yeah, no, I. I agree. What I, when I say about not being prescriptive or preachy is, you know, not taking a tone that just instead of people embracing the message, you end up alienating people because you're overstepping your boundary as a brand. So it's not. It's not about not telling people what to do in a way, but not. Not in this way of, you know, pointing like, hey, this is how you need to do it, and this is the right way to do it. It's bringing this as a conversation, Bringing. Bringing the topics as, hey, maybe there's something that you could do that is good for you. And here we are to help you on that, on that direction. So it's. It's a. More of a tunnel kind of guardrail than actually, like, not like staying away from people's lives. Because, yes, we.
- [22:35]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
We.
- [22:35]
Marcelo Cortez
We do believe that we can. We can be a positive force in that sense. And it's. And it's. I think it's. It's something that gives us joy too, you know, when we feel like we can help. And. And also when we enter the categories that are outside of the groin, where. Because that's an interesting aspect about manscapes marketing today. Right. We came to life by detecting a white space, inventing this category of the ball trimmer, having a very humorous approach towards it. And in that space, we are still, you know, the leaders. We have to defend our kingdom. There was a lot of people copying what we did from all fronts, from big brands copying even, you know, our technology naming and all those things, to copycats, like brandless copycats that show up on Amazon every day. So we have to defend our space on that side of the business. But then on the other side of the business, on the face shaving, beard trimmer and all those other categories, we are almost like in a flip position. We are coming to steal other brands lunch and we are, you know, they have to defend their kingdom. So we have to play those two categories sometimes with very different tactics, but with the same, same overall strategy. And one of the things that I really believe that we can deliver, that it's hard for other brands is exactly that tone of voice. And it's, it's almost like a litmus test that we do internally when we are developing a campaign or whatever piece of content, of message. I asked our team if other brands in the space could say the same thing. This is not us, right, because they don't have that same voice. And we can talk about things and the way that we can talk about things is what distinguishes us. So let's make sure that we keep delivering on that promise. And that's a very easy task to do. Like, you know, you see a campaign, like, could another brand be saying this? Then it's not manscaped.
- [24:54]
Allison Schiff
All right, well, we're going to take a quick break, but when we're back, we'll talk about bringing that voice to a very big stage because this was the first year that manscaped advertised during the Super Bowl. So stick with us and you'll hear about that.
- [25:17]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
Thanks.
- [25:21]
Sarah Sluice
I'm Sarah Sluice, Editorial director of Ad Exchanger, and with me today is Samantha Dasher, SVP of Publisher Strategy at Verve, where she works with publishers on audience development in what may be one of the most interesting moments that open web has had in a decade. So welcome, Samantha.
- [25:39]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
Thanks so much, Sarah. It's great to be here.
- [25:41]
Sarah Sluice
Audience development is going through a real shift right now. How are you seeing discovery actually happen today?
- [25:49]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
Discovery is no longer a one way highway and honestly, I think that's a very good thing for publishers. A reader might find a story through Google, a friend texting them a link, a newsletter, a podcast, mentioned TikTok, or increasingly through ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. What's changed is that there are now more surfaces rewarding quality content instead of fewer. If you create something useful, authoritative or genuinely interesting, there are multiple ways for that content to travel to the consumer. At Verve, we have a unique lens into this because we see roughly a billion publisher searches and LLM prompts every day. That means we can watch behavior shift in near real time. And what we're seeing is that the strong content tends to win everywhere. A well reported article might rank in search, get cited by an AI assistant, show up in a newsletter and spark discussion elsewhere. And that compounding effect is real. And for publishers, it means the opportunity today is broader than it was during the era where everyone relied too heavily on one channel. So diversified discovery is healthier, more durable, and frankly, way more exciting.
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Sarah Sluice
So one of the biggest shifts that you just alluded to is that if I'm looking for information, I'm not typing it into a search engine as often anymore. I'm putting it in a prompt and it's giving me that full answer. So what does that open up? How does that change things?
- [27:12]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
Oh, a lot. Search queries were often really shorthand, two or three words with very little context. And prompts are very different from that. People are telling AI systems exactly what they want, often in full sentences with details, preferences, constraints and intent layered in. And that gives a much richer understanding of what consumers actually care about. Someone isn't just typing running shoes anymore. They're saying that they need marathon shoes under a certain budget because they over pronate and train four days a week. That's a completely different level of signal. Because we sit across both search and LLM activity at scale, we get to see that evolution happen side by side. It's one of the clearest indicators of where audience behavior is going. And for publishers, I think this creates real opportunity. The sites with actual expertise, niche authority, and content that answers nuanced questions well are positioned to win. This is a much better environment than the old game of chasing keywords and volume for the sake of volume.
- [28:18]
Sarah Sluice
So with discovery changing so much and happening in so many places and new places, how are the publishers that you think are the most forward looking and innovative thinking about where to invest?
- [28:32]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
The smartest publishers we work with are doing two things at once. They're protecting and optimizing the channels that still matter today, while also investing in assets that compound tomorrow. Search still matters. It drives meaningful traffic and revenue, and publishers doing it well should absolutely stay focused there. But we're also seeing real momentum behind newsletters, registered users, first party data, strategies, direct relationships, and content built to perform across AI surfaces. Those investments travel further because they create value across multiple channels at once. And part of what we help Publishers do at Verve is understand where they already appear in search and LLM environments, where white space exists and where they can grow. When you can see a billion of these moments a day, patterns become very clear. I genuinely think this is one of the most interesting moments Publisher has had in years. And I've been doing this for 16 years now. There are way more ways to reach audiences, more ways to monetize quality, and more value being placed on what great publishers do best.
- [29:37]
Sarah Sluice
So audience development is expanding, and it's important to think of audience development as something that's encompassing AI as well as all of these other tactics that people have been using for a long time. So thank you, Samantha, and thank you to VERB for supporting Ad Exchanger podcast.
- [29:55]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
Thanks so much, Sarah. It was a real treat.
- [30:12]
Allison Schiff
All right, welcome back. And before we talk about the Super Bowl, I have to tell you, just something funny and amusing aside, there is a PR person on your team whose name is Austin Bush. And his last name makes me chuckle every time I'm like, I'm getting a manscaped pitch from Austin Bush. So funny. It's the perfect surname. So, yeah, right.
- [30:38]
Marcelo Cortez
There is, there is always like those. There is, there are places, sometimes I see in magazines, sometimes on websites where they, they call out like the people that were born to a certain task. Right. Because they, their last name was almost like a predictor of where he would work. But yeah, it is funny. It makes it like, oh, okay, is this a joke or is this for real?
- [31:00]
Allison Schiff
The first time I got it, I'm like, wait, I mean, no, it's just Bush is the last name. So. Yes. So Manscaped made its super bowl debut this year. Congratulations. And I do want to talk about the campaign in more detail, but first, just was it worth it? Those are expensive ads.
- [31:19]
Marcelo Cortez
Yes, yes. And I know, and it was totally worth it. Of course, we are still measuring a lot of its effect because it's, it's a, it's a long campaign that has a pre Super Bowl super bowl activation and then a post super bowl part of it. But it is because, you know, I think super bowl, if you know what you want to achieve, and in our case, we had a very direct task to implement. It can be a platform that just compresses time and you can achieve an impact much faster and even on effectiveness, like on effectiveness level, the amount of people that you reach. But most importantly, all the repercussion, like people talking about the ads and debating the ads and, and you know, and, and trying to read between the lines all of that creates such a cultural moment and such a buzz that I think it. People pay more attention because cuts above the noise on what you're trying to do. And in our case specifically, we were launching the main carrier everywhere platform. So like said early manscape started at the groin and we had this moment where like now we are ready to go full body. By the way, just quick side note, I was. I was briefing the creative teams on the super bowl and it was the shortest brief that I could come up with my whole life, which was basically four letters and one strikethrough sign. So the letters were B, A, L, L and then striking the D. Right. So the whole briefing was from ball to all. So all I had to do is like four letters cross the B. And that's what we need to do. We need to tell people a very simple message that the manscape that you got to know and appreciate for what we did with your balls, Sorry, now it's here for your whole body and. And. And that. So that was the core message. And so for that super bowl was the perfect stage because it is like a defining moment. It is a very clear but powerful message that has a lot of implications and, you know, and cascades through supporting a lot of our product portfolio and all that. So why. That's. That's pretty much the core of like, why it made sense and why it was such a perfect moment for us. And then from that on, building the campaign was. Was a joyful but tense ride that I'm happy, you know, to talk about. But to start with, we knew that the best proof to people that we were the brand that we're bringing products from other parts of your body is showing the products. Right? Because it's one thing to say men carry or everywhere, but then what do you really mean? Like, what is they everywhere? What kind of products for what kind of body parts and all of that. So we knew that the story, you know, had to have our products not as an insertion, you know, like those artificial, you know, holding the credit card or like holding the trimmer, but it needed to be part of the storyline. Although it was not a product spot, it was not to sell a specific product. It was not to talk about specific product features or benefits, but it needed to be to feature products. And for the storyline to be triggered by products, the products needed to be somewhat of a protagonist in the story. And that was. It was one of like the factors that made us dece. Decide for that story that we went up with.
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Allison Schiff
Well, just to describe it for People who haven't seen it, although I'm sure a lot of people saw it because it's a Super bowl ad. But it features anthropomorphic singing hairballs, like woefully lamenting having been shaved. Shaved off from all over different parts of the body. So, yes, balls, but back, face, arms. At one point, there's a shot of a woman helping a guy reach this hard to reach spot on his triceps.
- [35:53]
Marcelo Cortez
The back of his triceps. Which, by the way, it is a pain point. I myself had a hard time reaching the back of my trice. But yes, in, you know, this story, I think everything that came from a human truth that maybe no one has observed before usually creates a powerful story. It's kind of the recipe of good standout comedians, right? Observing something about human behavior and then bringing that to the spotlight. And what we observed here was the hair has a very interesting aspect to it. We don't mind, you know, hair when it's in our bodies. We, you know, we touch our hair, we appreciate, we shape it, we groom it, we love it. You know, we embrace hair in our bodies, but the millisecond that we cut it from our body, that it gets detached, it becomes, you know, gross. It becomes unappreciated. We hate it. We hate the clump of hair in the bathroom. We hate seeing hair, like loose hair floating around. So what we thought was like, imagine for the hair having such a kind of moment, you know, in their lives where they change from being loved and groomed and styled and appreciated to being hated in a. So we flipped the lens and said, you know what? Let's hear what they have to say. And actually they had this very beautiful song to talk about this moment of departure and not being appreciated. So that was the powerful truth that we brought to the super bowl stage. And I love it. If you haven't seen it, I really go to YouTube or whatever, you can find it and watch it. But it's a really fun and real in terms of, you know, human behavior story. And, you know, to my earlier point, what triggers that departure is our tools. So we have a very protagonist part or, you know, blame on that, because we are the tools. We provide the tools that establish that departure from, you know, your human's body to be on your own and being despised.
- [38:29]
Allison Schiff
So I felt such compassion for the little balls of hair with their googly eyes, poor things. Oh, I want to talk a little bit about measurement because, of course, the purpose here, although it would be nice to sell lots of trimmers but the purpose isn't to say, okay, someone saw the super bowl ad and then they bought a trimmer. This is part of a longer process of trying to have an impact on someone's brand affinity and their perception of the brand. So for you, what does good look like? And I know this is a campaign that will have multiple components that are still unfurling, but what does good look like for you in the days after? Or what did it look like for you in the days after? And then what does it look like now, you know, a few months after? And yeah, what does it look like, you know, this year? Because it's a big, big expenditure. So you want to get a lot out of it.
- [39:19]
Marcelo Cortez
Totally. And there's so many measuring points and measuring aspects. The first thing that there's a two, two things that just I think is important to give context. One is Manscape was born, although we had like retail distribution and marketplace distribution from early years, but the brand and the company was pretty much D2C and performance heavy on the early, on the early years, right. So that creates an internal culture of the CACs, you know, the immediate measurements, the things that you put the money in today you want to see it like in, at most in seven days, you want to see what it does. And, and you're always like measuring those day to day, almost like a day trader mindset, right. Of things working. So to shift to a Super bowl deployment where it's everything is long term, it's different measurements, it's not just sales, although of course the end goal is always sales, but there's so many other touch points creates a huge internal culture challenge. And that's part of, you know, this, the challenge of this transition from a D2C first company to a full omnichannel product portfolio company. So I, I, I had to be very diligent on the measurements on Super Bowl. And the other aspect of it too is depending on the category, the cycle of reading the results, especially on sales is pretty different. Because if I'm doing a Super bowl spot for Pepsi Cola, to mention one, right. The decision to buy something to drink is something that you do probably a few times a day, right. So there is a big chance that if you saw this amazing commercial that made your mouth water and next time that you are buying a drink in a couple days, you try pepsicol and they probably see a sales spike pretty fast on categories like ours where, you know, the, the buy in behavior is long term. It's not like you're buying a trimmer Every day. It's not part of your daily shopping, it's not groceries is already different. So that all, all those things together puts a lot of pressure on how we measure super bowl and how we give internally the confidence that this is working. But we did a few different measuring points. So we had the day after where you know, it's, you know how much people are talking about it. We see spikes in search, all the things that are immediate and we saw amazing results on that. We have all the industry talking like the top 10 Super bowl spots, like making to the super bowl list of the top 10 spots being on the New York Times on like best spots for Super Bowl. We had this amazing long feature on Vanity Fair Italy. I don't know why they went so deep, but they got to the point of not only describing the campaign, writing a whole like multi page piece, but they even translated the lyrics of the, of our, you know, our ballad song to Italian so readers could appreciate the song and the word. So all of that PR buzz was important, the social conversations. So those were like day after, like in a week. Then a little later we read, you know, lift in brand consideration, brand awareness. There was a very important read for us. We have this brand health tracker where we look at, you know, how our brand is perceived in certain grooming spaces, right. So for growing, as you might imagine, we hugely over index like this is where people feel and see that we have authority to play and all those things with face shaving and trimming we under index. And a big goal for this campaign was to move the needle on that space like getting people to understand and appreciate and trust Manscape for what we do in other parts of the body and face being, being a, being a big focus area. So we had that read as well. So we saw positive movement in that space and, and then we had already started to read like spikes of sale that we can attribute to the super bowl campaign. So there is a multitude of reads and they come in different frequencies. Frequencies meaning like one is short term, then we have the medium term, then we have like the six month read. So there's a lot of like yet to, to give like a full definitive answer on how like how well did it work. But so far all the early signs are extremely positive and, and even on you know, on the maybe the less scientific but most exciting like reads like you know, even people from Brazil kind of sharing with me not knowing that I'm at Manscape, but sharing this super cool campaign they saw on super bowl and that they loved that for Me was like, the best moment, because then, you know, you get the chance to say, hey, it was actually ours. You feel pretty cool at that moment.
- [45:01]
Allison Schiff
You know what I want now? I want someone to share the video in Italian with me. I would love to hear that song in Italian.
- [45:10]
Marcelo Cortez
I don't know if they made a video. It's. It's a written piece, but I can send you the link. It's funny and. And the way they describe it. Mochi di peli, which is like a ball of, like a hair. It sounds cool in Italian. It's so cool.
- [45:26]
Allison Schiff
It sounds beautiful. Oh, my God. It sounds like a cologne. So you and I have talked about the sort of flip that Manscape made from being very focused on performance to being more focused on branding, and you just alluded to it. But for. For our listeners, I mean, around six years ago, like, when you joined, you guys were spending, like, almost 75% of your budget on performance marketing, and now it's more than 70% or roughly 70% upper funnel. A total blip. That's a big psychological shift.
- [46:00]
Podcast Host (Ad Exchanger Talks Intro)
You.
- [46:00]
Allison Schiff
You did touch on it a little bit, but talk to me a little bit more about what it means for a team to go from being able to basically know what's happening in a few days. It's a very different mindset than, oh, we might not really know for six months. Like, how do you get everyone comfortable with that slower feedback loop?
- [46:20]
Marcelo Cortez
We actually don't, to be honest. Like, we don't get comfortable. It's pretty hard. And it's. It is still like, a big challenge. Um, but, yes, I mean, it's a lot of work to create as much as, you know, as much comfort as we can, although it's never a comfortable position. But I do think that the, you know, the good changes in life in general even come with a level of discomfort. So not to rely solely on that, but it's usually an indicator of that things are changing and that you're moving. And we have all the reasons before to believe that change was not only the smart thing to do, but needed for Manscape. As we, you know, get. As we grow as. As quickly as we had and as we have the objectives of reaching way more people than we did in the early years, but it's. It is a challenge. I'm. I'm like, I. My job as cmo, I have. I have very few core challenges that I call. One is to bring the brand from growing first to be an authority in much more than growing. So that is a challenge. Like, I Said the groin is something that is very, it's a catchy topic that, you know, it's so easy to communicate and capture people's attention and memorability by talking about that because there's still a little bit of that tension, a little bit of that 50 grader on us like we discussed. And then as we go to face, although we bring the joy and the humor to a category that was pretty stale and talking about tech specs and talking about like features and like RPMs and titaniums and this and that and we bring a little bit of humanity and joy there. But it's, it's a challenge. Like it's not, it's not an easy transition and the other one is that from performance to omnichannel. And I think the big bulk of the challenges, the internal culture is getting people to feel not comfortable because I wouldn't dare say that we get to that point but feel confident that this is the right thing to do, that this is the right movement and this and, and we have a ton of indication that you know, this is the right thing to do. I, I, I did a deep dive on companies that started in the D2C world and it's hard to see an example of a company that could scale to the level of our ambitions. With the D2C performance binomial. It's something that like even by logic it, it is hard to scale because it's made to be to put your ad in front of the most likely to convert person. And just by definition, that algorithm that was beautifully designed for years and years of, you know, perfecting, it's always going to be like, okay, my number one customer, it's going to be the most likely to convert. But as I get to a million customers, it's less likely to convert. And now instead of one hit, you need 5 and then 10 and then 20 and then scaling is by definition and by nature not, not efficient. It's kind of the opposite of, you know, mass like economies of scale like, like, like we know it. So it is important to be more top funnel. Is it important to have all the channels activated? So I believe a lot on the combination of brand availability and physical availability. Right. So it's building that brand availability bring that mental availability, sorry that people, you know, has manscape when they are ready to make that, that purchase. But it is a big challenge and, and, and not easy. I think bringing measurements always help because for a company that is very keen to measurements, you need to deliver some level of measurements. But also it's never going to be the same. So it's not going to be solved by measurements alone. There's no, there's no level of measurements that will make people as comfortable as they were on with pure performance or like heavily performance. One measurement that I love though, and I, and I need to call out because I'm very proud of it, is for a young brand like ours. We are now number three in the, in the US Electric shave market. And we dethrone brands that were here for more than 100 years, which by the way, is a very interesting aspect of our categories. Like most of the leading brands are either centenarian or very close to being a centenarian. If I recall correctly. Last I checked, the younger of the pack was 79. Most of them were over a hundred. And we are the young guys in the block. And being able to be number three in such a short period of time, I think it's, it's amazing. And we, and honestly, internally we don't celebrate that as much because we are so into the work that we forget to look and like, hey, this is actually pretty awesome. So that's a metric that I love now. It's market share. Right. It's not, it's not looking to CACs anymore as much, of course, you know, for certain activations and channels we still do, but it's bringing like new, new big measurements that are the ones that matter for us.
- [52:16]
Allison Schiff
Kind of in the same vein as going from ball to all. The word groin is actually in growing.
- [52:24]
Marcelo Cortez
So I like that.
- [52:25]
Allison Schiff
There you, there you go. I might feel that it's all yours. So we're nearing the end, but I wanted to bring up something very cool that you guys do, which is that every marketer on your team gets some portion of budget that's for experimental stuff and it's measured differently so not like the rest of their spend. And that really encourages people not to be afraid to play and to be more wild and just, you know, do some, some crazier stuff. Are there any examples you can share of wild and experimental ideas? Maybe some that were so good that they became part of the media plan. And I don't know if there's one that was just like pretty great but you couldn't do it.
- [53:10]
Marcelo Cortez
I mean, I, what comes to mind one just, you know, just clarifying a little bit on that because I, I do think it's, it's a good, it's a good thing to implement and I, I, I highly recommend to other companies to do that because, you know, as much as you can tell your team to have, like, to experiment things or to try new things if they're being measured against, you know, the same old metrics. It's very hard to experiment when they are not confident that they will be graded differently. And that experiment, if it fails, might affect their grade. So you might be saying one thing, but actually not doing that. So people will pretend that they are experimenting, but they are still keeping everything super conservative. So by setting up part of the budget that is Grady, that is graded differently, and it has nothing to do with the common performance metrics that you might have for the rest of the budget, gives that real level of freedom to try things out. And, of course, you know, we want to try things that we see potential and not just throwing money or kind of being crazy, but it's the things that you really don't know if it's gonna hit or if it's not gonna hit or how magic will hit. And just having that confidence, like, hey, if that hits, it will be great. If it doesn't, at least, you know, it didn't hurt. On the super bowl campaign alone. Like, we had this activation with comedian Stavros that was part of that budget, right? So we had this. Those. Those beautiful hairballs that were featured in the super bowl commercial. And we did a partnership with Stavros where we built his hairball, even had his trademark glasses, and. And he did a piece of content to auction that hairball. And, you know, his style of comedy is very unique sometimes, you know, very intense even. And it's the kind of thing that makes you nervous, like, is this gonna perform? Is this. You know, is this too much? Is this too intense? And if we didn't have that budget set aside where we can try this, maybe we would never done it. And it was a very fun piece of content that I do think helps build the brand and I think, you know, keeps us fresh, keeps us on the edge, but on the good side of the edge. So that's a great example of even on a huge deployment like the super bowl campaign, having some activations where that experimental budget plays a good part in keeping everything fresh and pushing the limits. Within good reason.
- [56:10]
Allison Schiff
Did someone buy the Stavros hairball?
- [56:13]
Marcelo Cortez
They did. They did. I don't have the details. I. I wish I had, like, to tell you, like, how much in it or. And who bought it, but I know we auctioned on. On. On ebay. I know we did. You know, like, he posted it, and it was a fun content. I got to see the actual hairball with his, with his glasses. It was super wild and funny. But I, I, I'll owe you like the details of what happened, you know. Next.
- [56:39]
Allison Schiff
So last one. What was more stressful? Election night when you were working on a presidential campaign or Super Bowl Sunday when you're singing Hairballs and I wish I remember how to say them in Italian, were about to debut.
- [56:58]
Marcelo Cortez
I will actually bring a third moment that it was maybe the more stressful moment for me. It was speaking what content to run on super bowl. We had 49 different pitches from nine different teams, two internal teams, seven external teams. I was like very, very into it. And it was a stressful moment because in the process of debating the options we had, most of the team at Manscape fell in love with a piece of content and the guys presenting it and everything was so beautiful and so perfect and everything seemed like the right choice. They took a vote, which I would not recommend taking a vote on those things, but they took a vote and like 98% of the people that voted voted for that content. And, and I picked the monster hair ballad which as the numbers tell, was not on the popular side of things, but I had really, really good reasons why I picked that. And for me, not only was a nerve wracking moment because, you know, it's very easy to follow a popular decision and just say, hey, everyone is, was on board, so like, why not? But I knew that. And that specific decision, I had the privilege of a perspective that I don't think anyone else in the team had. I was, you know, connecting multiple points. That was what my position was about as CMO of the company. Right. So I made the decision very nervously, but made the decision. And I also took on me the task of showing people very objectively and walking them through. And I even did a presentation on this on why I made that decision and why that was the best choice for us. So it was a, it was a nerve wracking moment. But at the same time I was very happy that I, that I worked throughout. Like I worked through this and not just, you know, took my, hey, it's my decision. I and I don't care. I really worked hard to build more consensus. And as we were developing the campaign, not even at launch, like before that, I started to get people coming to me and say, hey, thanks for making that decision. Now I can totally see it. It would have been a nightmare if we had done otherwise. And, and it was very rewarding to see how, you know, you could build that and you could help people understand why and then people coming to that conclusion and coming back to you to say how thankful they were that not only you made the decision, but you took the time to explain why and now they're seeing that play out. So that was the most nerve wracking moment for us, for me.
- [60:06]
Allison Schiff
Otherwise, well, I mean, congratulations. And otherwise the world wouldn't have these. Wait, I don't know how to pronounce it. I looked it up while you were talking. Oh, is that right?
- [60:24]
Marcelo Cortez
No, like the Italian was a Mucci de Pelly.
- [60:29]
Allison Schiff
Oh, Google Translate Translate failed if I'm not mistaken.
- [60:32]
Marcelo Cortez
I'm playing my memory too and I'm not fluent in Italian, so. But I will send you the link because it's a fun one.
- [60:40]
Allison Schiff
Ariva Derce. Thank you.
- [60:57]
Sarah Sluice
Today's episode was sponsored by Verve. Find out more@verve.com that's V E R V E.