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Ep 535: Ashvin Melwani On How Obvi Fixed Meta Pixel Poisoning and Recovered Ad Performance
00:38:23
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- [00:00]
A
Listen, I've tested thousands of ads. We've done iterations of our landing pages. Like, I know what works and I know what doesn't work and I know when something is off of my ad account because, like, you don't just see this, like, sharp decline overnight for no reason. So if you are a health and wellness brand and you don't want to get flagged, 50% of the people are making their first search on TikTok. They're not googling it, quote unquote. They're going to TikTok and searching for it there. If you're not there and you're not showing up there, you're missing a massive opportunity. Do I keep this ad on or do I turn it it off is not easy. That's why having media buyers to understand when to do and when to pull certain levers is very, very important. The name of the game for 2025 is Just Survive and hope for the best.
- [00:53]
B
Ash, welcome to the DTC podcast. It's been a long time. You graced our stage in Las Vegas. I guess that was in 2023. I've been watching you from AF. You've spent over $50 million on Meta. You have helped drive AbbVie to over $100 million in sales. Big congrats. How you doing?
- [01:13]
A
Good. I'm good. I know it's definitely, definitely been a minute. I've been trying to cut back a little bit on the traveling just so I can focus on the brand a little bit. But, you know, here and there, there's a few, few things that we love going out to and hopefully we'll, we'll see you guys soon.
- [01:29]
B
Yeah, we're going to be doing some meetups I think, in the next little while, but until then I've just been, I've been enjoying. I think you're one of the consistently one of the best tweeters or Xers on the topic of, you know, the deep topics on Meta. And I wanted to kind of walk through a little bit first of all, maybe just catch us up, catch us up a little bit on the growth of avi. What I want to dive into today is kind of your story of having to rebuild your pixel, because I think that's something our listeners could benefit massively from. But maybe before we get there, catch us up a little bit on obvi's growth trajectory kind of since the last couple years.
- [02:04]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So last year we had our best year ever. We grew 100% year over year, changed the strategy, cracked the code on Meta. Things were just humming along. Retail was humming along, and, you know, everything was. Was great. I think it was like December, slash January of this year, end of last year, when obviously this update for Andromeda started to come out, the health and wellness policy started to take effect. And so we definitely felt it. We got hit with some of these, the flags, you know, for health and wellness, which is really interesting because everybody's getting hit in different ways. There's different combinations. So it's like if you're a health and wellness company that is just like, you know, just a supplement brand, you know, you're getting flagged, but the consequences are different than if you were like, say, a pharmacy company.
- [02:55]
C
Right.
- [02:55]
A
You know, for. For those who are. Aren't familiar with why this is even happening is Meta is going through lawsuits for. For violating, you know, HIPAA laws. And so they're essentially just putting everybody under this one umbrella and saying, if you're somewhat related to health and wellness, we're just going to flag you and we'll. We'll deal with the review later. But then once you're flagged, you're getting deprioritized in the auction. And that's what ended up happening with us right now. People are like, oh, like, are you sure? It's like, it may be your creative, it might be your landing page. Like, listen, I've tested thousands and thousands of ads. We've done iterations of our landing pages. Like, I know what works and I know what doesn't work, and I know when something is off with my ad account because, like, you don't just see this, like, sharp decline overnight for no reason.
- [03:40]
C
Right?
- [03:41]
A
And so what we ended up doing is, and to be fair, January 1st, literally New Year's Day, our ad account got restricted. And obviously we have a really good rep. We weren't doing anything wrong. We got it reviewed. But then ever since then, we've had this, like, flag for health and wellness. And so, you know, a few things that we did were, you know, we've tested, you know, different ad accounts, we've tested different Pixels domains, and, you know, there's so many things that we tried to get, you know, performance back on track, but some of the things that actually made a difference was, you know, one being the actual pixel data and the health of our data.
- [04:19]
C
Right?
- [04:20]
A
And so working with the right partners to get that set up correctly. You know, I've been telling people, like, listen, yeah, there is that free app on Shopify to connect your pixel from Shopify to Meta. That is the Bare minimum. Now like I would 100% take a look at some of these companies that have tools that do this in the right way. And you know, like right now we're using this company called upstack, where the Michael who is the founder has essentially created a way to not send the data that Facebook doesn't want back to Meta and only send the stuff that's super relevant and can actually help performance, right? So if you are a health and wellness brand and you don't want to get flagged, you know, setting up your pixel in a way so that you're not suspicious or you know, under that, that radar from Meta. So fixing the pixel, health and data was very, very important. Obviously, you know, number two, being like CAC is always going to increase, right? Year over year, how do you just get better, right? So like coming up with new, you know, landing pages and offers. So we had a product that we were selling like a one month supply, a three month supply and a six month supply. What we ended up doing was taking our top three selling products and creating a bundle and just like a, this kit which allowed us to take our AOV from $65 to $100, right? So not only did we increase AOV, but it allows us to spend more and afford a higher cac. And then I, I think the other thing here is honestly like just buying behavior is so different now. Like people are seeing and hearing about brands and products for the first time on TikTok. And you know, if you, if you actually look at the data of like where people are searching for things, 50% of the people are making their first search on TikTok. They're not googling it, quote unquote, they're going to TikTok and searching for it there. So as a brand, if you're not there and you're not showing up there, you're missing a massive, massive opportunity. And so that was something that I also realized, you know, maybe later than I would have hoped. But you know, having a presence on TikTok shop, making sure that that is up and running, even if you're just running that at break even, the, the, the awareness play that you can get from there is, is massive, right? Like I tell people, like a million views on TikTok can drive so much growth versus like a million views on like Instagram reels or, or Facebook, right? Like people are using TikTok with intention and they're on Instagram and Facebook reels just scrolling to just doom scroll. But people are heavily influenced by what's happening on TikTok. So if your brand's not on there, I don't care what your, your demographic is, like, everybody is on there now. It's not just, you know, 16 year olds. It is a full range of people. Like our demo, our, you know, our Target demo is 35 plus. Like, they're on there. So if you're not there, you're. You're missing out. And so I think this is the year of one diversification for us. Two trying to build, build away from this over reliance on Meta and then potentially figuring out, okay, well, we're now in 20,000 doors nationwide across multiple retailers. Is this the moment that we pivot away from D2C and really go all in on retail and tone back the more direct response stuff and just go full branded TV spots, influencers, TikTok, whatever it is, and just like now solidify our space in this, like, market and support retail. So trying to figure that out this year is kind of like, it's definitely not an up year. It's like really flat for us and it's fine. We're kind of just getting through the year. Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty with tariffs and just consumer sentiment. And honestly, the name of the game for 2025 is Just Survive and hope for the best. So that's kind of where we're at right now.
- [08:14]
B
It's been a while since I've actually been running an ad campaign, but I remember that feeling of, like, when, you know, something's off. And so what actually happened with. It's funny, I didn't even think of collagen as being as part of that category of what would be potentially, you know, fall under the health restrictions. Talk to me about what happened that made you tick over into that category.
- [08:35]
A
Yeah, honestly, I don't know. Like, and I actually tweeted this out maybe two months ago where, like, I showed everybody, like, hey, here's what we got flagged for. It's not a direct flag, it's an indirect flag. But from a lot of people that I spoke to, it's like, even if it doesn't necessarily say you're flagged for your domain, if there's a random domain associated that is flagged, could you be penalized in the back end? And the answer to that was yes.
- [09:01]
C
Right.
- [09:02]
A
There is no official documentation about this. This isn't like, oh, like, you know, there's a, there's a blatant bug that's going on with Meta. And because there's this one team this small Team of health and wellness people that are, like, just focusing on this. You have no access to them. My rep has no idea. A bunch of people's reps have no idea. Like, I've been talking to other, you know, agency owners who are well connected within meta, that have their contacts that are, like, super high up at meta, essentially saying, like, yeah, like, this is an issue. This is a known issue. We don't know when a fix is coming. So now it's like you're. You're kind of playing against this behemoth that there's just a. That's just a black box. And so, you know, what we ended up seeing was the one thing that my rep pointed out, which was really suspicious was the day that we got flagged. Again, I'll get a little bit tactical here, but what you can do is there's a ratio of landing page views divided by total outbound clicks, right? So say you have a hundred outbound clicks from your ads and you get 90 landing page views, right? That's a healthy ratio of 90%, meaning 90% of their traffic let the page load and they actually got to where they needed to go. If that ratio is sub 80%, you know, 50, 60%, that means half of your traffic isn't even letting the page.
- [10:24]
C
Load and they're going, right?
- [10:26]
A
And so on the same day we got flagged, our ratio went from 85, 90 down to 55. And so what does that even mean? It means one, the traffic that we're getting is. Half of it is bouncing before they even get to the landing page. And if half of the traffic is bouncing, that means your CAC is literally doubling, right? And so this happened. I can literally pinpoint day by day, this ratio being, you know, anywhere from like 80 to 90. The day of the flag, it hit 50%. And I was like, okay, this is definitely like an issue. Like, and then we go in, we get those, you know, the domain reviewed, the appeal was rejected, which made no sense because the domain actually had nothing to do with Avi at all. It was a random. It was a. It was a domain for a. A funeral home in Florida. Made no sense, right? But it's now associated to our brand. And so I talked to a few people, and this is when Michael from upstack actually introduced or he reached out and said, I've been seeing this across multiple brands. This is all falling under this health and wellness bug that's going around. Let's see if we can fix, you know, some of the pixel stuff, right? So literally Switching over the different integration with his system of like removing certain, you know, information, sending it back to Facebook. I'm not even kidding you, like seven days after our ratio started to go back up. And so that in itself is a signal, it's a positive signal. Back to meta saying hey, people are engaging with this page again, let's give them better traffic, this and that. And then you can literally see our CPMs come down, our cost of traffic comes down, our CPA start to come down and I'm just like, this had nothing to do with us. Like we were doing everything right and then this random domain gets flagged on our account and we're getting penalized. It made no sense and my rep had no idea. His boss had no idea. And so that's why I'm like, if somebody comes to me, like whether it's on Mentor pass or you know, somebody messages me and it's like can you audit my ad account? The first place I'll go now is events manager and see what's going on within there. Because we had a solution set up before all the scores look perfect, everything there was no errors whatsoever, just a different solution that was sending back information and perhaps a little bit better than others fixed the issue. And so it's like you gotta just make sure your pixel is like in place because with Andromeda's update the system is way more faster to pick up on irregularities. And so it's like if there's something that's broken, you will start to get deprioritized right away. Whereas before it would take maybe a week, two weeks for the system to catch up. But because this AI is moving so fast, it'll know when to deprioritize you. So like if something is broken on your website, your pixel is not flat or firing or you know, there's, there's an ad that's getting too many negative comments. You will get deprioritized so fast that you'll be like, oh my website's broken. Like no, it's the algorithm punishing you because something is broken.
- [13:30]
B
Because it's a self fulfilling prophecy probably. I, we've seen this on some Google accounts where you get a bad signal in the mix and then it just trends down to the point where you. Right, it's, it's sort of, it's a loop, that doom loop and it's just.
- [13:44]
A
A faster response time for meta. So like, which is great because if you do do well, that's a great signal and you start to perform better right Instead of like, oh, I gotta wait a week, two weeks for things to optimize. Like, things are optimizing way more quickly now, which is great.
- [13:59]
B
So when you launch this new pixel and rebuilt your campaigns, great opportunity to. To put your sort of new thinking into practice. When you do the redux.
- [14:07]
A
What.
- [14:08]
B
What was your sort of thought process with how you built the campaign back, maybe creative and audience wise? Was it. Were you basically duplicating what you had already done before, or did you start with kind of a new thesis?
- [14:18]
A
Yeah, I mean, a great question, because again, like, even throughout this entire year, because, like, since January, performance was like, kind of. And so a lot of it was trying to figure out the best way to run the ad account post Andromeda, right? Also you would have like, really good, like, runs, and then you'd have, like, performance would fall off a cliff, right? And that was happening. And if you go and look back at the conversations, like, again, we have this little bubble on Twitter, but, like, they're pushing algorithm updates consistently. So, like, when there's updates like that, you're going to see volatility. And we felt it right now. For me, it's like, okay, well, what I was running in my setup I was running last year. Is it still the best practice post this update, right? And so I wish it was a little bit quicker, but after talking to a lot of people, it's like, okay, well, one, over excluding can hurt you. Two, having or not having enough diversity and volume in your ad account can also hurt you. The way that you test and testing by concept and angle and having like three or five variations of that angle and testing that by itself can also hurt you, right? And all your best practices that you were running for the last, you know, 12 to 18 months completely changes overnight because of their new system, right? So now Andromeda has this AI that says I can process way more ad creatives in a single second than I could previously, right? So what does that mean? If I give meta one ad concept and I do three to five variations, right? And my variations are very different in the sense of maybe I have the same ad, but I'm testing a different headline, Facebook is going to be like, well, this isn't diverse enough. I'm just going to prioritize one of these ads, and if one of these ads doesn't work, then the whole thing's not going to work. Now, instead of giving Facebook five variations of one ad, can I give it five unique ads with maybe two variations, Right? So at least ads may more Options to pick from. And instead of testing those five new angle separately, can you test them together?
- [16:37]
C
Right.
- [16:37]
A
And so what, what Meta is doing now is like, okay, if you give it 10 creatives, completely different, all visually looking different, angles are different, the messaging is different, whatever all the differences you possibly can, can, can do, it's going to look at these 10 and say, okay, well, this angle doesn't necessarily work. This version doesn't work. This one doesn't work. Here are the ones that actually work. It. It gives the winners more context to see what actually works versus giving it one variation. And there's no additional context to say, is this the best of what I can provide to the audience?
- [17:15]
C
Right.
- [17:16]
A
So the way that I started to test was different. I loosened up on my exclusions. I wanted to give Meta more signal. So, like, I used to exclude website visitors and customers, right? I'll still exclude customers, but I removed that website visitors because that warmer audience is fine. I want them to see the new ads because what that means is the warmer audience is going to start clicking on these ads and engaging on them and then potentially convert and whether. And even if it's maybe slightly retargeting, that's still a positive signal back to Meta. And Meta is going to prioritize me again in the auction, right? So I removed the exclusions. The other thing was instead of testing 50, you know, ads a week, and that being like 10 net new angles with three to five variations and then having 10 ad sets, I'm cutting that down to two or three ad sets with like 10 to 15 ads within that, right? So now not only am I, am I consolidating and competing less with myself, so there's less auction overlap. I'm able to test a lot more, you know, batches quickly. And so that was probably the biggest thing. And what I changed in terms of testing, I was big, big, big on cost caps. Last year for my testing, I've kind of moved back to automatic bidding just to kind of force spend, right? Because I have these 15 ads, I need enough spend to go through every single one. So, you know, testing on the lowest automatic bidding. But because I'm now consolidated, whereas I would have 10 ad sets, I got to have to give each ad set $400. That's like four grand to test, you know, 50 creatives. Now I'm giving three ad sets, you know, $500. So instead of testing for $4000, I'm testing for 1500, right? So it kind of balances itself out and then just leaning into I mean, scaling, right. You just have your winning campaign with all your winners in there and letting that go. And yeah, still leveraging, you know, manual bidding as like a side campaign. So whenever, you know, there's an opportunity for something to spend, I'll spend. But those are probably the biggest changes that I made, which was consolidating a little bit more, making sure that the creative output was way more diverse than it was before. So my team knows to only give me two variations of a single idea now instead of three to five. And then, you know, giving them more resources to create more diverse.
- [19:40]
B
And volume higher contrast tests as well, Right?
- [19:43]
A
Exactly. Way more higher contrast. You know, making sure that there's an equal split between static ads and video ads and then within that all the different formats that you can do.
- [19:52]
C
Right?
- [19:52]
A
So like static ads can be, you know, your product with the main headline on it, or it could be an us versus them, or it could be a review, it could be an offer. Like there's so many different formats, so making sure that we have all those formats is important. And then on the video side, I mean, there's so much you could do with video. UGC isn't is just a single format. Like you have podcast style ads, you have street interviews, you have, you know, founder, you know, ads, whatever it is, there's so many different formats. You just have to make sure you're, you're giving the ad account as many formats as possible and letting it rock. And then the last thing I would say is for CRO testing. I'm not even kidding you, man. Like, I just, I just ran a test last week. I changed the above the fold copy, right? Like just, I took the top three performing ads right now, whatever was my copy on that ad. Change the copy on the landing page to kind of just match that a little bit. 30% lift right there, right? And so when you start thinking about like okay, well this landing page can always get better. Well, on a weekly basis, what can I test on this landing page? Like, even if it's just copy, even if it's just like changing the imagery, those like 10 to 20% wins stack and will allow you to continue scaling. So I'm making sure that there is no week where I'm not running a test just to learn something, right? Even if it's just like testing your CTA button copy instead of buy now, it's claim offer or you know, the first image that shows, you know, what is that image? Is it a lifestyle image? Is it a render? And then thinking through like offers, you know, how can you give as much value for most margin for the business? Right. So those are the things that I've been focusing on a lot. And then Obviously this, this TikTok shop stuff is, is a whole beast on its own too.
- [21:38]
B
Before we dive into that, I just have a note here. I don't know if it's still relevant, but I saw a tweet about Proxima and using AI built audiences during the reset. Was that, is that something that's still working? Maybe describe that a little bit.
- [21:49]
A
Yeah. So. So Proxima I. One I've been. Alex is amazing. The, the team is amazing. We had an issue probably three years ago where our ad account was just like so focused on this one audience that was brought in from this like one influencer that we really leverage in our advertising. Long story short, that influencer, when she stopped working with us, the ad account was trained for her audience.
- [22:14]
C
Right.
- [22:15]
A
And her audience isn't really our target demographic. But now Meta thinks it is and it's only going to go after that. Now what Proxima did was it kind of forced the algorithm to relearn who our audience was based off of the high quality data points that they gave us. So using look alikes to kind of retrain the algorithm. Proxima has always been like a tool in our ad account where I would. If my scale campaign, you know, is a single ad set going broad, I would have a separate Proxima ad set with all their audiences, all the same winning ads and in a cbo. So one day Proxima does really well, one day Broad does really well. Limiting my risk by giving two audiences Facebook can go into and scale for the day. And so when ASC started to roll out they. I didn't necessarily have a use case for Proxima anymore because it was just Facebook would decide the audience for you.
- [23:10]
C
Right.
- [23:11]
A
Which was kind of annoying now, which I think they've realized because they reset that and they said you can give us a seed audience to start with, but then we'll go and explore based off of that. And so that's when I went back to Proxima and said, hey, like now I can use these audiences as a base. Now Facebook will do whatever it wants to do, but at least let me give you an input of a high quality data source audience and then kind of let it run. So again, it's still part of my, my best practice of like not over relying on a single ad set just going broad, like having an additional like audience to Start with is is important and Proxima is really good at that.
- [23:51]
B
I think you're a great example of why media buyers don't necessarily need to worry that their jobs are going to go away in the short term. Like, you are innovating so much in your ad account. Like, do you agree with that statement? Like, are you? Because you're seeing the AI tools get developed all the time, you're seeing them wanting to take more and more control into their hands, but yet you're starting still so tactile, still making so many choices across your funnel. Do you feel media buyers are at a risk of being pushed out of the picture anytime soon?
- [24:17]
A
No, I don't think so. I know, I know, I know. Zuck wants to automate the entire thing and they're like, oh, we're going to automate it by 2026. The system is still broken. Like, you can see that the algorithm prioritizes certain factors, right? Like, say you have a really, really engaging ad, but it's not necessarily driving the right audience and that audience isn't necessarily converting. Meta is still going to prioritize engagement and it's going to push that ad and it's going to take up all your spend right now, is it good for Meta? Yes, because you're spending and to it's on a piece of content that's engaging, which keeps people on the platform but the business, I'm not meeting my target goals with that. So now if, if I'm giving up all control to Meta to do that, I'd be blasting through my budget.
- [25:05]
C
Right.
- [25:05]
A
I have to be the media buyer that goes in and says, okay, well this is getting all the spend. Is that the correct allocation of budget that needs to happen? Do I turn this off? Like, as simple as that sounds, do I keep this add on or do I turn it off? Is not easy. And that's why having media buyers to understand when to do and when to pull certain levers and is very, very important. And you'll see this all the time where people will be like, oh, like my top spending ad isn't hitting my target cpa, I'm just going to turn it off. They turn it off and the whole thing implodes.
- [25:41]
C
Right?
- [25:42]
A
So making those decisions can cost you the business. And so understanding what, you know, the breakdown effect is what Every, every ad isn't going to have the same cpa, but it's not going to have the same frequency either.
- [25:54]
C
Right.
- [25:54]
A
If you have an ad that's driving net new people to the brand, but it has a higher cpa. And then you're. All your other ads are converting. You know, there's traffic at a lower cpa. That's. That you have to look at and measure that against your blended results for the business too.
- [26:08]
C
Right.
- [26:08]
A
What's. What's being reported in. In Facebook versus what, you know, triple whale is showing. Your NCPA for the day or your contribution margin for the day is different. And you have to bridge the gap between the two because Facebook doesn't know what your business goals truly, truly are. You can say, hey, this is my cpa. This is what I want to hit. What about profit? What about, you know, LTV and things like that? So the media buyer, the role has changed in the sense of, one, there are tools out there that can upload ads in 20 minutes.
- [26:36]
C
Right.
- [26:36]
A
One, you should be using that. Two, the media buyer needs to be somewhat part of a. Like a. Have a creative strategy, you know, mindset. They also have to have some sort of CRO mindset as well. Making sure that the full funnel makes sense from. From ad to landing page to checkout. That, I think is very important. And I do think they need to understand the business goals from the bottom up. And so that. That in itself is a big role. And it's not like media buyers commoditized. Yes, uploading ads is easy. Now, that's fine. But making decisions based off of actual business outcomes, that is very valuable.
- [27:15]
B
Okay, let's shift to TikTok shops here. We recently did a podcast just about the switch to only being able to use GMV Max, essentially. So you're driving to your storefront, talk about how you approached because you're a buyer through and through.
- [27:28]
C
Right. You're.
- [27:29]
B
You're a marketer. Talk about how you approached TikTok as a more organic channel and kind of building it up once you decided you had to.
- [27:37]
A
Yeah. So I was lucky enough to talk to some of these bigger brands that are.
- [27:43]
C
Are.
- [27:43]
A
Are crushing.
- [27:44]
C
Right.
- [27:45]
A
Goalie Mary Ruth, you know, shout out to Jay, I believe, is their chief revenue officer at. @ Mary Ruth. Selfless guy, man. Most humble. Like, there's no reason that guy should be hopping on a phone call with me on the middle of the week.
- [27:57]
C
Right.
- [27:58]
A
And so he kind of just walked me through what they were doing and honestly was super impressive. What it really comes down to for TikTok shop is getting your product into as many hands as possible and making sure that those creators are posting as often as humanly possible.
- [28:15]
C
Right.
- [28:16]
A
That is the goal. Now, how do you do these Things and how you get these things to happen is very important, right? So one, obviously you can send out a thousand packages that costs a lot, right? Like for us, if for example our bundle, all in shipping, everything cost to us is $20, I'm gonna send out a thousand care packages, that's 20 grand. The problem with that is, is that sending out a thousand packages to a thousand creators is necessary for your success on TikTok shop. You need a lot of people posting about you, you need more chances of going viral. So that was, that was step one, right? So being able to understand your numbers, what can you actually invest in getting content or creators of your product as well? Number two is how can you actually incentivize people to even want to post about you, right? So requesting a sample and then actually going and posting and then posting multiple times is very, very difficult, right? So you know, we set up a bot on, I believe we were using Yuka AI, which kind of just you can find all these creators, you can sort them by number of followers, number of gmb. They've, they've generated gender, this and that, whatever, and then set up a automation message that just messages everybody and then a follow up too. So what we did was, is we took a play or took a page out of Goalie's playbook, which was these campaigns. So what they do is they have certain GMB thresholds that if you hit certain thresholds you get a bonus. So if you hit $500 in sales, not only do you get commission, like commission on TikTok shop is everybody has to offer commission, like that's the standard practice, but what else can you offer is these goals. So you hit $500 in GMV, you get your 25% and maybe it's a prize, right? So we did was if you hit 500, you get like a ring light, right? To help you create content. If you hit 1000, we're gonna give you, we have different thresholds. So you can earn like an iPhone, you can earn, you know, AirPod Max is a Dyson. We went as far as going all the way, you know, hit 100,000 in GMB, we'll send you on vacation, you had 300,000, we're gonna buy you a Tesla, right? So like figuring out all these incentives to get people to consistently post and say, hey, you can earn these results or you can earn these rewards, we'll stack them for you and you're going to get 25% but you need to post at least 15 times a month to be even qualified to earn these gifts. And so that was in our outreach message. And like, within the first 24 hours, we had like a 30% response rate. We had a ton of people requesting samples. We had big people, like with millions of followers, with tons of GMV started to tons of GMV that they've generated for other brands start reach out to us. And so we're like, okay, well now we get to be a little bit more selective of who's actually posting and then start approving those samples. And then the last thing is actually creating a community where all these creators can join. So we created a Discord chat. Now we're in touch with all these creators that are actually posting about us and reminding them, like, hey, when you do post, post in the Discord. So everybody in the chat can engage, which will help you grow more views, more engagement, more commission. And then we'll also give you feedback on what we're seeing do well for, for Avi and other brands so that you can go and take a winning concept and go and create it yourself. And so being able to have that connection with these like, creators, because you're gonna have hundreds of people in this group, how can you talk to every single person, like, individually is very difficult. And so just having one collective place to do all that is probably the best bet. You know, set up a set of a community. So right now it's been like two weeks. Things are good. We're trending up in terms of sales for, for TikTok shop. We're getting a lot more requests for samples. So we're vetting now. So the bigger, you know, GMB creators we're approving. And then what we're doing now on the GMB max side is just boosting everybody's videos, right? And so we're saying, like, hey, like, you will also get 10% commission on a boosted video. So just keep posting. It'll automatically get boosted. You're going to earn your commission. If you had certain thresholds, let us know, we'll send you a gift. I want to buy somebody a Tesla this year. That is my goal. I want somebody to hit 300,000 in GMV and I want to send them a Tesla. So, you know, it's. Let's, let's see what happens. So it's a slow burn, but once you hit that, like, viral moment, that's when things will pick up.
- [32:47]
B
You mentioned something earlier in the podcast just about the crux that you find Abvy at right now. And it made me think of this book that I Read earlier this year and Pilot House has been. A bunch of team members have read it now. It's by Byron Sharp called How Brands Grow. Have you heard of this book?
- [33:00]
A
I have not. Check it out.
- [33:01]
B
It's basically just about how brands truly achieve scale and it almost always happens through retail. Just because retail is so much more of where people purchase these things. It's basically, you know, and I think you guys have done one of the best jobs in the world at like building your brand through performance marketing. Like really through establishing memory structures with your ads. I think that's what you're talking about with, with all of your angles, how the ads are always reinforcing these. You've done a great job with community. But I think the thesis of this book says that like true scale is really only achievable for most CPG products through retail, through being seen on shelf, having that brand established. And so I'd be just interested in your thoughts on how, how ABVI gets to that next phase. You're obviously already in retail, but how do you feel you guys get to that like, household name kind of thing through retail in the future?
- [33:54]
A
I think one, it's just mass marketing, right? So like getting into every retailer we possibly can. So Walmart, we're nationwide, we're in a few grocery chains. We're in, we're going to be, we're actually doing something with Dollar General because Dollar General is actually starting their own health and wellness line. So creating, you know, cheaper products, smaller serving sizes to fit that market. I mean, I didn't know this, but dollar general has 20,000 stores nationwide. We're getting into 10,000 of them.
- [34:24]
C
Right.
- [34:25]
A
And so being able to be on the shelf and in front of as much foot traffic as possible, I think is how you get to the next level. How do you get people into those places? I think now leveraging TV linear connected, being able to now be a brand marketer and show off, you know, our packaging, how cute it is, this and that. Instead of worrying about like direct response marketing and funnels and this and that, it's like, hey, we are a legitimate brand. Here's how the product works, here's what it does, here's where you can find us. Now ease of access becomes way better because you end up becoming a, an item on somebody's grocery list. Now, right when they go to Walmart, they're going to pick up the groceries, they're going to go down that health and wellness aisle. They'll see you, they'll pick you up.
- [35:15]
C
Right?
- [35:16]
A
Can you be in as many places as possible and tell everybody that. So running TV is now our next step, where we have a campaign going out in a couple of weeks or so and pushing traffic to Walmart. And so we want to see if we can, you know, create a lift with branded content, get something that's eye catching and see if we can grow velocity that way and if we can grow velocity that way. In my opinion, it feels easier almost to do this type of marketing. It costs more, but it's easier. And so then you just rely on the brand being the brand versus, like, Facebook ads. Like, I got to be like, direct response. I'm competing with everybody. Like, TV is a white space. I'm not competing with everybody. I'm talking. I'm competing with. With the. The legit brands now. And, you know, that's. So let's see. I think that's probably the next step to figuring out retail is just more retailers, more products in the retailers and getting obvi in front of everybody as humanly possible with the cheapest CPM possible.
- [36:24]
B
I think it makes a lot of sense. And you guys have done such a great job building up the brand to where it is, making it stand out against other, maybe more commoditized players in the space with all your flavors and your, you know, just the brand that you've kind of built out. And so I could see it working well in the next phase. And I'm excited to follow you on this continued journey. Ash, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Go check out myobv.com if you want some collagen. I just realized that obvies that are. That collagen is a peptide. Everyone's talking about peptides and like GLP1 and all these different things. It's fun. I. I thought. I never thought of. Of collagen as an actual peptide as well.
- [36:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, it's. I think. I think that's where, like, collagen. The way that we're going now is if you actually go to the website or even some of our retail offerings is like putting collagen in as many popular products as possible. So we have a collagen greens formula now. Collagen hydration colostrum detox.
- [37:18]
C
Right.
- [37:18]
A
So being able to kind of just add it everywhere and build that cohesiveness for the brand, I think is very important. And so hopefully it just solidifies our space in the college market.
- [37:29]
B
Well, thanks for taking the time again and we'll get in person one of these days and reconnect it's been been awesome, brother.
- [37:36]
A
Awesome. Thank you for having me.
- [37:38]
B
You got to follow Ash on if you're not already. You got to go to DTC Twitter. The great echo chamber that is DTC Twitter. I've been loving the the conversations about triple whale and shilling and all this fun stuff. Always a laugh, right? If you're not on DSC Twitter, you're not following. Ash, you are missing out. So, yeah, man. We'll catch up again soon. Thanks, brother.
- [37:59]
A
Appreciate it.
- [38:06]
B
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at Direct to consumeralloneword Co. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been the D to C podcast. We'll see you next time.