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Special Episode: Location, Loyalty, and Building a Super App: Life360’s Mike Zeman on Modern Marketing
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, AdTech God.
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B
Welcome to another episode of the AdTech God Pod, where we speak to the marketing leaders of our industry. Today's guest is Mike Zieman, the Chief marketing officer of Life360. Mike's been with Life360 for over two years and leads on all the marketing and communications for the company. Mike's held some really impressive roles over the years. He's worked at some companies you may have heard of, one of them being Square, Another Google, Netflix Publicist Group, comScore, Yahoo, and Starcom. And if you haven't heard of any of these companies, you probably have never worked in advertising. So welcome to the Pod. Before I get started on this episode, I do have to disclose it's a sponsored episode, but that does not change the format. And I'm really looking forward to meeting Mike and understanding what Life360 is doing in the market. Mike, thank you for joining me on the Pod.
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C
Pleasure to be here. And hearing that list makes me feel old, but that's okay. It's been a really fun, exciting journey over the last 25 years. Yeah. But great to be with you, Mike.
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B
I can't tell you, I've interviewed, probably just on this podcast, close to 130, 140 people at this point, between multiple guests on one or just, you know, individuals you've worked for some serious companies. Really impressive. So I'm really looking forward to chatting and trying to understanding your perspective of the market and where things are heading, as well as a little bit more about you.
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C
Appreciate it.
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B
If you want to take me back, can I get a good understanding of how you landed at Life360 and how all this experience at all these great companies got you to where you are today?
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C
Yeah. I was fortunate to grow up on the agency side. I actually got to work for Rashad Tabakiwala. I think probably a lot of your audience know who he is in the Chicago ad scene, so learned a ton there. I came out west, worked for Netflix for a number of years and kind of continued to broaden my scope. Went over to Google and Square, and then I'd always said for years, I never want to be a cmo. Right. I like having kind of that shield between myself and the board and all the tough questions, and then thought that was kind of being a little bit of a chicken. So kind of made the leap and came over to Life360. I had actually been using Life360 for six or seven years before I came over. I've got three kids and our two are driving age and so kind of really a wheelhouse customer right in the ICP for Life360. So knew and loved the products, got to know the CEO and the board and the founder really well and they are huge believers in marketing. They want to take big swings and it just felt like the right opportunity and the right culture for me to come over.
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B
How do you feel working at so this is an app for safety. You worked at Square, Google, Netflix streaming solution, an agency. As a cmo, do you feel like a lot of the learnings you had from those prior companies carried over into a company that's so focused on safety and family and trust?
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C
Yeah, I think all of them. It doesn't matter where you are if you're B2C or B2B. It's all about customer centricity. Right? It's understanding the problems that people are dealing with and figuring out can I help address these problems differentially better than alternatives on the market. So whether that's, you know, helping restaurants, you know, get paid properly or sort of maximizing cash flow or, you know, working on Google Play, understanding how to create a better experience for gamers, you know, worldwide, or coming to life360 and really thinking about, you know, how do I help families and just create a little bit of peace of mind for them. Those skills are all transferable. I would say each of those stops. Along the way I learned something different. Functionally. Google is a fantastic product marketing organization. So I learned, you know, a ton about PMM work. There's, you know, Square was great at creating experiential marketing. A great sort of out of home, in the neighborhood, in the community type advertisers. I learned a ton there. Netflix, honestly, I learned the most about what it takes to build an incredible culture from Reid and the leadership team there, which I carry with me today. So, yeah, you definitely take each piece and sort of build upon it along the way. And this CMO gig for me is really about okay, I have points of view on everything now let me kind of put it out there to the test and see if it works or not. And you know, that's kind of the most fun part about this is it's kind of a litmus test for my own capabilities and learnings.
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B
It's incredible because, you know, like 360 itself is an app and it has its core product in market and the reason why people download it is for the particular Reason, which is the safety and taking care of your family. But you guys have kind of pivoted and now you have not pivoted. You now have an advertising solution in marketing. And as a app that's really built on safety and trust, how does that work for you? And how do you maintain that trust without compromising the happiness of your users?
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C
I guess I would start with we are a family connection and safety app today. That's the core of the product experience. But we're on our way to becoming this family super app. So we think we'll have first and third party services and solutions to really address lots of different problems for families. Keep my family safe is one of them. Keep my family coordinated is another one. That's kind of where we started. But Help my family save money is a good example of another one. Help me manage the situation I have with an aging parent that doesn't live near me. These are good examples of things that we're trying to address in different stages today, sort of en route to becoming that family super app. And honestly, we think advertisers and third parties can play a huge role in that. If we're about making everyday family life better, the sort of Pollyanna ish, but sort of very real thing that we're trying to deliver on is how do we bring advertisers and really partners, third party partners into that, you know, so that it's congruent with our brand promise of making everyday family life better. So just a couple examples. We work very deeply with Uber, right? So that, you know, when I land at an airport, you know, it says, welcome to sfo. We've notified your circle that you've landed, you know, safely here. And then it will offer to sort of send an Uber to pick me up out front, right? That's an ad, right? There's a value exchange with Uber there, but it's something that delivers great service to our users. Right? Accuweather is another good example. People are notified when a loved one in their life. 360 circle is experiencing severe weather now, right? That's an ad. That's a value exchange, but it's highly accretive to improving everyday family life and peace of mind. Or even something simpler like working with Dutch brothers, where if you're proximate to one of their many, many locations and still expanding, you can get a dollar off coupon, right? Just for being kind of in the proximate area. So every advertiser is targeting families, right? Family doesn't just mean nuclear family with kids. Ages X to Y. Right? Everyone has family and we really think we can work with lots of different types of advertisers to kind of bring value to families in the ways that I just conveyed Y.
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B
You touch upon a lot in what you said. Proximity, your circle, the family. Super app, just understanding the normal day to day behaviors, right? Landing at an airport, notifying my wife and my mom and my dad that I've arrived and I'm safe. So you have a lot of location data, you probably have a lot of enriched data that you could use for advertising. How are you guys utilizing that today? Especially since you've, you've recently acquired Detivo. How does that all wrap together and bringing this like really unique offering that maybe nobody else can offer.
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C
Yeah, it's really exciting. So you know, historically, if you think about delivering relevance for advertisers and value, you know, for users or members, it really is boiled down to kind of two types of relevance, right? Relevance based on what you search, right? That's Google primarily. I had relevance based on what you click on, which is obviously a lot of the social players, but that's really missing a huge component which is relevance based on real world behaviors as you just described. Right? So you know, where you go says a lot about not only who you are, but what you may need, right? And what you may need from third parties like advertisers. People don't get that. You know, 84% of retail, for example, is still physical. I think that's mind blowing to a lot of people. So it just goes to show there's sort of this like, yeah, I guess for the lack of a better pun, there's a map, right? And got two thirds of it covered with what you search for and what you click on digitally. But missing piece is really the IRL kind of spatial component. And we think we're really well positioned to deliver on this for a few reasons. One is because we are a huge location provider with deterministic data, right? So approaching 100 million monthly active users. And that's not modeled and probabilistic data. That's real data, right? Continuously monitored and synthesized data. It's totally opt in, right? So it's not coming in through sort of shady, questionable means. It's people saying I want to use location, agree to the terms of service and then working, you know, to get the services they need from us. And it's also finally about household understanding. So knowing location data for individuals is interesting, but understanding how people within a household move together or not together was also a really interesting signal. And think of that as really a family graph that's been missing from a lot of the advertising conversation.
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B
Yeah. And I think maybe that's where I was leaning into was the web of family members understanding behavior of when I am with one child, when I am with my spouse, when we're usually together and moving together, how the messaging could change. There's quite a bit of data that you can utilize there to just really create relevant, accurate, targeted ads for users. And I could definitely see how there's a lot of data there. And you probably have some fantastic data scientists, by the way, that are probably looking at this.
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C
Yeah, indeed you do. Indeed we do.
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B
When you look forward in the industry, we've covered a lot on this pod over the last, I would say, six months or so. People are talking about, you know, behavior changes across the open web. You obviously have a moat around that. It's not the open web. You've got your app, you've got your users. Behavior changes for search. That's changed as well. They're moving to LLMs. But I would love to hear your perspective, like, what are some trends that you're excited about over the next six to 12 months? And this can be related to life 360 or not. But what excites you about what's happening in the advertising industry?
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C
Never adult moments, but no, I think it's. Yeah, I've been in the ad space for just about 25 years and I've never been more bullish about marketing's value. I hear a lot of talk about like, oh, advertising is just less relevant. Brands don't matter as much. And I just don't think that that's true at all. And I believe marketing is really most effective at its extremes. Right. And so what I mean by that is you probably heard the barbell example before, but I think marketing is best when it's really evocative, like really kind of breaking through the noise, putting brands in the zeitgeist, etc. And then when it's really performant. Right. So it's driving results for an advertiser or, you know, member value. Right. So delivering something a user wants. Right. Which an advertiser can facilitate. And I think we're better now at both of those things than we've ever been. Right. You think about the storytelling and the explosion of video. I mean, CTV is like the epicenter of every conversation that I have. Right. And there's so much video first thinking out there, which I think is great, because video right now at least is the most evocative, you know, format because of the site sound and motion of it. You know, I think about, you know, conversion oriented marketing and what agentic auto optimization. Right. Is doing what we can do with creative permutations to kind of find the right winners, the right message for the right person at the right time, et cetera. And we're just getting better at both of those things. And I think we're doing less of the stuff that's in the middle, which I think is right. And you know, we're not only folks like myself can kind of, you know, know stay employed. But obviously as agencies think about their future, like it's. Those things are more fun, I think, than a lot of the stuff that's kind of in the middle. So I'm excited to see how that space evolves. I would say, you know, AI is, is interesting as well in that, you know, there's, there's all these unknowns out there right now. Right. And I think it's triggering togetherness in a way I haven't seen within the industry before. And I'm not sure it's fear based, although I think it's, it's partially fear based, at least it's more like how do we figure out as a community how to prepare for this thing? And so there's this intensity of knowledge sharing that's happening like I've never seen. You know, I've been to more valuable networking dinners this year than at any point in my career having that conversation and being part of it. And I think it's also facilitating a really healthy respect for early career folks. I know it's really hard right now, you know, for people coming out of college and trying to find work. But I will say, you know, in my earlier years, especially agency side, there wasn't a great deal of respect for your media associate. Right. And now it's like, oh my gosh, like you better listen to the 21 year old, right, who is an AI native. And there's just so much better two way value exchange than it's ever been between mid and late career and early career.
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B
I want to talk about two of the points that you brought up and then I would love to hear some advice from you as someone who's sort of successful and accomplished in marketing and working at these companies. But I think the first one is the brand building topic that you talked about. I do feel that there was a long period of time where brand building was not as important. It was really a performance driven ad economy. If you wanted to call it that.
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C
It's all performance.
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It's all just, how do we get roi? What are we spending? How much are we getting back? What's our roast? And I have seen this rise of the importance of brand building and storytelling in the market. And I love that you had actually brought that up, because it's something that used to frustrate me that I could go buy something for $4, but there's no brand association. But I would much rather pay $6 and get something with a brand that I trust. And I think there's a extreme, undervalued perception of how important a brand is in market. How do you do that for your app? Like, how do you do that for your product to get people to associate family safety, et cetera, for a brand like Life360, well, it's super fun.
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C
I could talk about this topic all day.
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B
Me too.
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C
I mean, like, so for us, it's, you know, we've got some pretty big competitors, depending on how you define our competitive set. But we know that we know who we're core and we're for families. Right. And so we know that our family. Our app brings families a lot of joy. Right. And it also saves lives. Right. So we have emergency dispatch, you know, crash detection, et cetera, for safety purposes for families. So we go out and we create what we call demand creation work. Some people call it upper funnel, some people call it branding. Doesn't really matter. I think of it as evocative. Product marketing is the sort of framing I use. But we go out there and we paint these really evocative pictures of the value we provide. So, for example, last year we launched a spot called, I think a New Dying. Right. And it was an animated spot.
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B
I remember that. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. That was pretty extreme, by the way. Pretty. That was like, pretty extreme. But that was good.
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C
You noticed it. Right. And we're not spending tens of millions of dollars against it. Right. But it got 30 million organic views on social. So, like, we're coming out there and. And speaking to these truths about what it's like to be a parent right now. Right. And the anxiety you have. And one of those anxieties is you don't know where your kids are, so you kind of presume they might be dead. Right, Right. Which is kind of extreme. But, like, that's where parental minds go.
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But I agree. Yeah.
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So we. We lean into that. Right? We. We want to make people laugh or we want to make them cry because we feel like there's a clinical Middle, where everything is ignored and where 95% of advertising sits. So that's. That's kind of what we're trying to do to sort of build our brand is lean into that.
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B
It's funny because I. I leaned into. I mean, I. I think this account in particular has changed so much over the last year. Probably because I'm way busier doing normal work rather than just focusing on. On, you know, the POD and community and people pieces. And that's okay. And I think that's an evolution. But I used to lean in a lot on the emotion piece, the frustrations in the market, the frustrations for employment, the frustrations for employees, and for. For companies overall. And you're right. When you touch up on emotion, it is probably one of the strongest marketing tactics you can do. If it resonates, it really resonates and people just remember. And I think that's one of the big things that I focused on with this was like, what are people really feeling that they're not talking about? I can do this because I'm anonymous, so I'm just going to post it.
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C
Totally. Think about this like, advertising is content, right? Do you want to go to a movie theater and see something that's, like, neutral or benign? Like, no, you want to go feel something, right? Whether it's funny or horror or whatever. It might be a romance, whatever. So why do we have so much advertising that's not doing the same thing? If it's content, and it's content to
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B
persuade people, I totally agree. When it comes to AI, it's kind of the second topic you had brought up. It is changing a lot. I think people in particular are starting to. I feel like this peak of fear has been reduced lately. Like, I think there was a lot of fear six months ago. I think there's still a lot of concern now. But people who are listening to the POD probably still have some hesitation about what it means for them, their careers, how they're going to progress, how they need to pivot their careers or pivot their skill set. I'd love to hear from you as someone in the industry today, whether junior or senior, what would you recommend to them to just improve their overall knowledge and to protect themselves from being replaced by a robot?
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C
Yeah.
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B
How I like to say it.
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C
Well, I'm not sure I agree that the fear has diminished that much, especially as my alma mater yesterday and in square or block, you know, exited half the company with AI as the sort of core rationale for that. But it's here. It's going to be here. And so, yes, we need to adapt. I've been in the industry long enough where luckily my first job was in the interactive division of an agency. So day one, I've been in digital marketing, but I saw firsthand people who were in print or broadcast and could not make the leap. And I'll be honest, it was sad. It was just kind of sad to see kind of the loss of relevance that happened so quickly in the beginning, know, years of the, the 2000s for those folks. And so, you know, I think the, the lesson learned is you just have to make the time and you have to lean into the discomfort. You know, I've been spending a lot of time with flawed cowork this week, really trying to see, you know, it's, I've been sort of using it at the base level, but what are the more sort of 201, 301 kind of things that I can do with it so that I can understand its value and try and stay on top of, you know, the emerging trends so that I don't become irrelevant. Right. And the same is true for my team and I'm, I'm kind of pushing on them, you know, for the same thing. So honestly, it really comes down to you have to fight the urge for complacency and put yourself in an extreme place of discomfort if it's not something that's coming naturally to you.
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B
Especially, you know, Mike, one of the, one of the ways I keep myself up to date is I am a vibe coding junkie. It has gotten to the point where I've created some of the coolest and yet most ridiculous apps. I've just learned so much just from being able to bounce back between Claude and Gemini and ChatGPT and, you know, AI powered website builders. It's unbelievable what you could build without ever having to write a line of code. It's actually pretty crazy.
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C
And you know, like, we all have these sort of moments, both personally and professional, where it's like, I know exactly where I was when X happened, right? And it's like this visceral feeling. The first time I created an image on Dall E all those years ago now, which is crazy, I couldn't believe that you could do that, right? And now that's like ridiculously simple. So it's fun to be a part of this evolution for sure.
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B
I remember waiting to get access, remember that now it's like you click a button, create an image of this and it's like, here's the image. Okay, I know we Chatted before the pod a little bit. You'd mentioned things like the importance of mentorship, the importance of networking and just like being up to date. And I feel like maybe we touched up a little bit on the educational aspect of it. Just, you know, get uncomfortable, try something new. But I'd love to hear terms of mentorship and networking. What's a good strategy there? What do you recommend to the people listening?
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C
Well, for networking I think it's. You kind of scan the landscape and see what companies and individual marketers are doing, the kinds of things that you aspire to do and you know, finding out the places they're going to be and, or being bold enough to reach out directly and having conversations, you know, with that. Right. Whether that's part of a group dinner or individual coffee, you know, or what have you. I've done, like I said, more of that this year than I've ever done because I'm feeling a lot of the discomfort and I'm feeling like I want the togetherness if I'm going to stay in this industry, you know, which I intend to do to just kind of learn from people. So like, admittedly it's a little bit selfish, but we're all being selfish when we network. So I think that's fine. On the mentorship thing, you know, again, I really think about that as you know, people will come to me because I've been at some of those companies or been around a bit and you know, they're younger and want to learn from me. But again, I'm selfish because when I mentor people, they're mentoring me too. You know, I learned so much when I meet with a 22 year old or a 25 year old that's doing things that I'm not doing right or is kind of tapped into the cultural zeitgeist in a way that I'm not. So I, I think, you know, be careful when people reach out to you if you're mid career to think, oh, I don't have time for that, you know, that's just an additional overhead that I have to deal with. It's not, you're going to learn so much, you're going to take away so much. So really kind of flipping the framing to kind of a two way value exchange.
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I'm a big networker, both the real me and the not real me. And I think for me what's important is just keeping a pulse on what's happening. And I think it's a really underestimated benefit of just talking to people like Being able to allocate an hour a week or two hours a week to just have a conversation with multiple people. Even if it's like, hey, how's work going? And they let you know. It gives you an idea like, hey, spend is up. Hey, there's challenges in employment, like budget cuts. It just keeps you dialed into what's happening and in return they're also getting, you know, some of the benefits of hearing, hey, it's okay. This is a phase. Like, we'll move through it. You should focus on these products and like the, the ability to just network and Bond with a 30 minute call total is unbelievable.
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C
It is. And you're like, you're alluding to it, but it's also like cathartic, like, oh, okay, let some of this out. Right. With somebody who probably can empathize. What I'm dealing with, there's, there's so much value in.
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B
Right.
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C
Your family doesn't always understand. Luckily, my, my wife's an ad set. She does, but.
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B
Oh, really? Yeah. No, see, mine, I, I mentioned something. It's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm like, it's okay. Something didn't work out the way I thought it might work out. Yeah. Mike, I really appreciate you joining me today. Thank you. And thank you to Life360 for sponsoring this episode. But Mike, this was a fantastic chat. Thank you. Thank you for joining me.
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C
It's a pleasure. Thanks so much.
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A
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for
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the people about the people.
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A
Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of adtech. Don't miss out on the latest updates. So follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of ad tech innovation.
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B
Station.