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Building a 9-Figure Baby Brand: Bobbie’s Kim Chappell (Chief Brand Officer)
01:18:28
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- [00:00]
A
The number one baby formula brand at Whole Foods. They have fed over 1 million babies.
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B
I was in a basement four years ago in San Francisco, like, building my own desk, and now Cardi b has come to us and she wants to be a part of this. How freaking lucky are we early on?
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C
When you guys don't have the social validation of, like, millions of very happy customers, what did building trust look like then?
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B
Doing the unscalable things. If you're not staying unhinged, then you're not really building a memorable brand. You know, you're playing it too safe.
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A
All right, welcome to a special episode of Marketing Operators with Kim Chapelle, the chief brand officer at Bobby. They're a multiple nine figure business. Absolutely incredible business. They 10x their revenue last five years even though they had a baby formula shortage during part of it. They have triple digit growth last year. They have a massive retail presence even though they started D2C and were for a while. They're in Costco, they're in Target. They are now the number one baby formula brand at Whole Foods, which is absolutely incredible. They also just announced that they have fed over 1 million babies. Incredible business. And Kim is a big reason why. And so we're so happy to have her here. Let's start by getting practical and controversial. What don't traditional performance marketers in D2C get about brand marketing? Why should they even care?
- [01:09]
B
Ooh. I think they always, always, always want to put the data against it. And sometimes you have to have the absolute patience to go with your gut and know that the data will turn up. And sometimes it's okay to fail. And that's how you build a good brand. Every bet is not a winning bet, whereas performance marketers want every bet to be a winning bet. And it's a mindset shift. And so you have to pull them out of their spreadsheets and you have to say, you trust what the possibility is for this brand, and let's let the data cook. And sometimes that can take six to nine months, which is like completely against a performance marketer's brain.
- [01:49]
A
Or a cfo.
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B
Or a cfo. Yeah, true, true. Where's the roi, Right? I'm like, I think it's coming. Just trust me.
- [01:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Much easier said than done. So what are. I am personally a recovering performance marketer. It's actually funny because you asked me one time to chat about, you know, how we view brand investments. I'm like, I'm actually a terrible person. Let me learn from you. And that's why One reason we have you on, what are the first steps somebody like me or like somebody like Connor should take? If we're like trying to do a little bit more brand stuff and want to get more comfortable with it, how do we start scratching the surface a little bit?
- [02:24]
B
I believe that it always goes back to really beautiful and strong storytelling. And if you can find the story that is going to resonate with your customer. And for us at Bobby, that's around the emotional journey of becoming a parent of the hurdles of feeding a baby in year one, of the trust and transparency that needs to exist in our space. All of these chapters that your customer is experiencing or going through, those are the stories that your brand has a right to tell. And if you think of everything as a mid funnel or bottom of the funnel offer conversion without meeting them and introducing yourself about why you're here for them and just investing in those stories and gut checking them with your customers that they're resonating, then you're completely missing a huge opportunity.
- [03:12]
C
So one of my questions here, Kim, and you kind of hit it with your, your earlier point as well, Cody. Cody called himself a recovering performance marketer. I mean, that's almost the premise of marketing operators. It's like performance marketers Anonymous would be like the other term for it.
- [03:25]
B
I feel like I'm the person that's trying to now learn performance marketing for the first time.
- [03:30]
C
100%.
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B
Let's all get in a room.
- [03:35]
C
So great story, great storytelling, fantastic point. I think that needs to become a core competency for most brands, especially as they scale. When it does come to the data you need to be looking at, like, how are you measuring it? You know, we spend a lot of this time on the podcast talking about incremental return on ad spend. Really? Like incremental dollars generated. But I'm trying to get more into the mindset of like, should I be looking more at brand lift, brand recall, things like that. So I'm just curious, what are maybe some of the non revenue data points that you're measuring to quantify the performance of, of, you know, quality storytelling?
- [04:07]
B
That's a great question. I think there's a few things and I can speak for us in our category, I am measuring our brand trust like a hawk. And how are we stacking up against our competitors? How are we stacking up against the industry as a whole? Are we above the benchmark for trust? We are. And if we are leading the category in trust, then we're doing our storytelling right. I think it's also about how long people stay engaged with your content. So it's not necessarily the click through rate, but it's the view through rate that's going to tell you if people are remembering they're engaged and maybe they'll come back if and when they're ready to purchase. I would say there's other ways to test it out, but I think it's watching that story content on your site, it's how people call and repeat and talk about it. So it's the conversation that you're starting. So for example, one of the things I always push our team to do at Bobby is when we send a great meaty new storytelling or message driven email, I'll look at it on my phone and say, would I screenshot this and want to share it in my stories? Because we see people that have done that, our customers will do that with really great content that we're putting out in just a brand marketing email campaign. And it's like, are you giving them something to react to, to share and are you starting a conversation with your customer that they're proud of being a part of your brand and they wanna then share that with their own followers? So there's these little tiny things like that that tell you, okay, this is landing and, and people want to have this conversation with us. And then I think there's the high level brand metrics that you can keep an eye on through different data dashboards.
- [05:46]
C
Love it.
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A
Love it. Love. Trust is the main KPI. I don't think I've ever heard that before. So I really love that.
- [05:52]
B
Well, I mean, and it's so unique to our category too, right guys? Like if you don't trust a baby formula company, you're not going to purchase their product to feed your baby. It is one of the most intense experiences that you can have with a product. And so for us, like that is the barometer. If we are doing that well and we have a parent's trust, a mom or a dad's trust, then we know we have the right foundation to build off of. And it means that you can go and say silly lid stickers and have fun in brand campaigns and do wild partnerships. You are allowed to go do those things because you have the trust of your customer. And if you didn't, then you're wasting your time and money.
- [06:34]
A
Speaking of, I feel like you guys have done some wild partnerships. Maybe wild's not the right word, but you, you apparently you, you shot a commercial in Tan France's living room. You sat next to Nicole Kidman At a time gala comparing notes about how she fed babies. You ubered formula to a customer whose package was delayed. I love the Molly B campaign was one of my favorite ones. What is one of the most unhinged things that has happened to you since joining Bobby Formula?
- [07:00]
B
It's hard to pick just one unhinged thing at a startup that's. Now you know where we're at as a company. I love the word unhinged too, because if you're not staying unhinged, then you're not really building a memorable brand. You know, you're playing it too safe, so you gotta stay unhinged. I would say there's. Can I name a couple? Is that okay? I feel like one of them was actually a learning fail and one of them was a success. So one of the unhinged things we did when we were fresh out of the gate at Bobby and being very cavalier and really not fully understanding the space that we were stepping into with a controversial, politicized product and the deep rooted history that it has, we decided to do a campaign on the first day of National Breastfeeding Week that was not a good idea, that was a bad idea. And I learned in real time how people were going to react to that. And I wish that I had not stepped into that turf at that time and respected our lane and not made. Tried to make National Breastfeeding Week about a Bobby campaign. And that was a really big learning for me. And by the way, this was five years ago, so we've evolved a lot since then. But it was a really, really good reminder for me that although there are times to be bold, understanding the exact timing of that is just as important for it to land. I would say the second thing was when Cardi B. Emailed us or her agent emailed us me, and on a Tuesday morning or whatever it was at Bobby, I got my coffee here in my office and opened up my inbox and it said something like Bobby and Cardi B. About spit out my coffee and thought to myself, this cannot be real. Like, this cannot be real. And then I'm thinking, of course we can't afford her. How are we going to make this happen? And I was like, we got to make this happen. So we were able to take that email and turn it into our largest campaign to date in a matter of weeks last year. And it was just one of those moments where you're sitting on set with Cardi B. Who's pregnant with her fourth baby at the time, and I'm thinking to myself, I was in a basement four years ago in San Francisco, like, building my own desk, trying to help get this brand off the ground. And now Cardi B has come to us because she loves what we're doing, she loves our product, and she wants to be a part of this. How freaking lucky are we? And to be able to carry those brand stories and to have people like her that have 63 million followers step into our ecosystem and be able to carry not only the product message, the brand message, but our advocacy as well, it's just. It's so, so surreal. And I'm sitting there behind the scenes with my headphones on, and I'm just like, wow. Like, this is it. And you're looking around, and we've got this team of women that we've been working with and moms with this female director. And it was just this really incredible moment of, like, we're doing it. Like, we are actually building this brand in real time. And it's just really amazing and fun, and I feel lucky to be a part of it.
- [10:05]
C
Motion just dropped their 2026 creative benchmarks report. And it's been getting shared everywhere. Slack channels, LinkedIn, Twitt, sharing it in our private group chats. And it's great because everybody's been asking the same four questions forever. What is normal? How many ads should we actually be shipping? What is a healthy hit rate? And which formats really win? The report analyzes over 575,000 creatives from 6,000 advertisers and over a billion dollars in ad spend to answer these exact questions. And the report has some really interesting findings, like the fact that only 4 to 8% of ads actually become winners and over half of ads actually lose. And for Motion customers, this report is especially helpful. You can upload it into your Motion dashboard with their runneth AI chat and compare it directly against your vertical benchmarks. Hit the link in the show notes. I promise you won't regret it. And as always, go to motionapp.com and tell the marketing operator sent you.
- [10:58]
A
Obviously, probably everybody listening would love for that to happen. To have, you know, mega superstars reach out to them and be like, hey, we want to work with you, or we're a customer and we would love to do it. What is it about what you guys have built? What can people learn from that and take away so they can get just a little bit of that for their brand?
- [11:14]
B
Yeah, I keep seeing the messaging, you know, on LinkedIn or an ad week. Those celebrity partnerships are dead. And, you know, gone are the days of celebrity partnerships. And while that may be true for some brands, I think if a celebrity genuinely loves your product and your brand, then it makes a ton of sense to go all in together. And that was exactly the case with Cardi B. She came to us because she was feeding our product to her baby for that past year. A little baby blossom. You know, sometimes with formula, I mean, you know Cody, it's like six or seven times a day you're making that bottle. So she's opening our can, she's touching our products, she's getting our delivery, she's getting our emails. And she saw also on the sidelines the work that we're doing through our advocacy efforts, through Bobby for Change, we're fighting for the black maternal mortality crisis, we're fighting for paid leave, we're fighting for breast cancer survivors. And when you're genuinely not performatively, when you're genuinely doing the work and you're rooted in a purpose that people want to get behind and you have a product that they genuinely are obsessed with, then I do think there is this two way street where you're not sitting there reaching out to CIA agents trying to beg, borrow, steal to get a celebrity, but you find a way to work with them and they come to you. And it's just been a remarkable thing for us and we've been able to. I feel like just, I always, like, I'm from it, I'm from the south. So it's like we act bigger than our britches sometimes, is a phrase that we have because from day one, like our first year, we had Tan France coming into the brand. We had Ashley Graham the next year coming into the brand. And it's, it's like we weren't, we were not shelling out and we still are not shelling out millions of dollars for these people. We still do not have that kind of money on marketing. But they are willing to come to us and they are willing to do it for far less because they believe in our mission and they want to share the platform with us for the change that we want to see. And it's really just been an incredible ride to be a part of.
- [13:09]
A
That's so cool. It's really cool. I wonder about that because you guys have done some pretty big ones. A I feel like they feel so on brand and the stories are great where like, you know, Ashley Graham is awesome. She's got, you know, very, very, you know, strong, confident, you know, tan France, obviously, like it makes a ton of sense. I love again, my favorite one was the Molly Baz one. Tell us a little bit about how that one came together. That one seemed like it came together pretty quickly.
- [13:34]
B
It did. And this is where I feel like the newsroom backroom background in me really comes to life because I almost go into like, it's breaking news mode. I'm like, breaking news, everybody. We've got Molly baths. We've got a sprint. Go, go, go. And we got in touch with her through a mutual connection and had found out that she was interested in getting some Bobby because she wanted to start combo feeding. And so we sent her some formula. A couple weeks later, we hear back from her manager. She's using it. She loves it. Let's do something together. And this was actually right, if you guys remember, about four months after she was on a billboard for the incredible company Swell, which is a breastfeeding support company. And she. The billboard that she was on with her pregnant belly out was taken down. The billboard company said that it was inappropriate advertising. So here is this pregnant woman's body in Times Square next to men in underwear and the Calvin Klein ads and the lingerie ads. But no, this is inappropriate. And so the policing of what women's bodies should or should not be doing in advertising became the story and it was pulled down. And so within a few months later, when we found out she was on Bobby, we were like, okay, well, now's the time. We gotta move. We can't wait six months on this. The cultural moment is still relevant. This window is still open. So we got in touch with our manager and we're like, oh, hey, hey, can you do November? Actually, no. She's launching her mayo company, which we, we all know AO now came out. So they were like, you have the next two weeks. That's all she's got available through the end until 2025. So we were like, okay, well, two weeks it is. So we took our in house team. We did everything in house. We flew to her kitchen in Aptos. I think, no, I'm going to get it wrong. We flew to her kitchen in L. A, did a whole photo shoot on her kitchen counter and had the whole thing scoped out. We had to turn around the creative in 24 hours to deliver to the billboard company. So everything was mocked up. It was like plug and play. Our creative director was heavily pregnant and she couldn't be there, so she had to do the whole thing via zoom. Direct it via zoom. We get this creative up, and it was the first time that a woman has been breastfeeding on a Billboard in Times Square. And that was our big to the billboard company that says, what should women's bodies be doing in the media? Well, here's our response to that. They should be doing what they were implied to do, which for her is combo feeding. That means she's breastfeeding and she's formula feeding. And that is a story that we have been behind since day one, because turns out 78% of Americans are doing it and no one's talking about it. So we've created this false, like, breast versus formula feeding wars. And actually people are doing both. And so is Molly Baz. And we wanted to break that stigma on the billboard. But also the fact that women are still ashamed to breastfeed in public. One out of. I think one out of four feel like they can't do that in public even. It's the most basic use of a human mother's body. And we felt like, you know what? If we do this, we hope that it gives people inspiration, that if she can do this in front of millions of people that go through Times Square at any given day, that any woman anywhere in America can do the same. And so that was kind of like our response and our continuation of that original story from her billboard. And I have to say, like, this is where finding the partner that has the same, like, chutzpah as you as the brand is so important. Like, whatever your vibe is. She was so down the clown, you guys. She was like, let's do it, let's go. Like, she was ready to put her elbows out. And her excitement and passion and ability to just carry that message was so amazing. And she was all in on the two week sprint and she was really proud. And that campaign has won some awards and it's up for a shorty, and it's something we're super proud of. We made history in Times Square.
- [17:27]
C
So one of my questions on this, you kind of hit it towards the end, is how do you guys talk about the Bobby brand internally? Like, is there. Is there really codified, like, mission, vision, values? And how do those attributes give you direction on who to partner with and how.
- [17:41]
B
Yes, we have a whole brand charter that I should pull up. And it really. It really codifies who we are and what we stand for. We always say if Bobby were Bobby were a person, she would look. Look you directly in the eyes and tell you exactly what she thinks. And that is how we try to approach our brand campaigns, too. We talk to parents who do not want to be called mama. They do not want to be patronized to. They just want a real company that's going to be straightforward and talk to them like the professional and sophisticated adult that they are. And with that I feel like we've been able to differentiate ourselves honestly in the category and how we show up and our tone of voice has been a big part of our brand.
- [18:26]
C
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- [19:26]
B
So you asked about have you codified the Bobby brand? What does it stand for? And we actually have three very clear personality traits and a slide in our brand book that says what our personality is. So not only do we always like to say that Bobby is if she were a person, she would look you straight in the eyes and she would tell you just what she thinks. Because we think that's what parents deserve and that's how we would want to be talked to as a team of parents. But the other three pillars are fierce empathy. So how do we always show up with trying to understand where that person is coming from and versus telling them what they should do or telling them what is right, kind of listening and guiding them based on whatever their unique experience is. The second thing we have is unshakable confidence. We always want to be clear, not cute. So if the sentence works without an extra word, we cut it. All of the ways in which we show up should help people feel confident about what they're feeding their baby. And the last pillar, this actually comes from our Irish CEO and co Founder Laura Modi is our Sally fourth Spirit. So we're bold. We like to take risk. Sometimes those things don't work. That's okay. You're going to have fails. But how do you continue to sally forth no matter what? Don't sit there and feel sorry for yourself. Don't over pontificate on things. Just keep going. And that momentum that you can build within a company is currency and it keeps people going and it keeps people, people motivated. And so it's like okay to pick yourself up and just keep going. So we're always like sally forth. The way, the way in which that shows up daily in our slack channels is just a great reminder that people gotta keep going.
- [20:58]
A
Yeah, no, that's, that's so cool. Um, I, I love that. It's really, really cool. Like I said I was. It's, it's clear that you guys are very intentional. I like that it was only three as well and it's not like this long, long list of things. But it's also so clear in seeing your as work. So it's awesome. But I love that campaign. I still actually have that Molly Baz campaign screenshotted in Figma because I think you guys did such a great job and probably always do of consistency across channels and it was telling the same story in a bunch of different places. So have saved that. But the news thing totally makes sense because I remember when that was happening. Speaking of, I want to get into your background a little bit so clearly you spent a decade as an award winning TV anchor and reporter, two Emmys Murrow. Is that true? Seems very true. But you walked away from it all to become the first PR hire at a website builder nobody had heard of. What was the conversation you had with yourself the night before you made that call?
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B
I loved news until I didn't. And for those that have been in the industry like it's sort of like if you know, you know you're all. You're a recovering performance marketer, I'm a recovering reporter. It's such a grueling industry. You learn so much every single day. And what you realize that you have that no one else has. Going back to the first question is this muscle of storytelling and deadlines and the ability to just turn things out daily without thinking about it. Because I did that every day almost for 10 years where it's like it doesn't matter if your interview falls through, doesn't matter if something happens. You have to have a minute and 30 second story every day at 5:00am like, you don't know what your day is going to be. And that unpredictability and the ability to go through that and just pivot, understand that there's going to be challenges and keep going is so core to who I am and how I lead the brand team. And, and some people have that and some people don't. And I think it's been a big piece of how I built out our team at Bobby. But the day before leaving that I would say, or making that decision, I was ready to feel challenged again. I had the itch to learn when I was an anchor at our last station, I felt like I was able to help bring on young reporters fresh out of college and help them and mentor them. And, you know, it was great, but I felt like I was teaching, but I wasn't learning. And I still felt so young to, to be in that place. So I was just knew I could be doing more. I knew that I could be accomplishing more. I knew that I had more to give and that it wasn't going to happen within this industry. So my husband and I had a chat about it and we were like, we need to move to San Francisco. That's where the action's happening. Let's make it happen. Whoever gets the job first will be the reason to move, and the other person will figure it out when they get there. Well, your girl got the job first. And I was able to get into an amazing e commerce company called Weebly, which, you know, take us back to 2013. And, you know, I have to give a shout out to the founder, Dave Rusenko, who is still a dear friend, but he gave me an opportunity. Like, he took a bet on somebody who didn't have a traditional background. And that's the same thing that happened to me with Laura. Right? Like, I didn't have a traditional marketing background. I didn't come from an agency, I had not run a brand. And yet she bet on me and said, I think you can do this. And so was consistently trying to level yourself up. But when you see other people believing in you, to believe in yourself, I think was a good lesson for me in that era of my life and still today. And I was so grateful for the opportunity to switch careers. And I have to tell you guys, like, jumping into a tech startup in 2014 in San Francisco was like, not for the faint of heart. If you're not into that culture. It was all male engineers, male startup founders. There was like, maybe less than five women at the Company, which was fine, but it was, it was just a different vibe. The ping pong table was humming, the beer pong was going like it was a classic San Francisco scene. And you know, those were like the glory days of it all. Pre kids just having fun and we. I felt, I felt like I did what I knew how to do. I told stories about the customers. They were small business owners who were building websites. I helped the founder with executive comms. I ended up writing the press releases like I just did what I knew how to do. And I learned everything else as I went. I would sit in meetings, guys, and I'd have to Google like, what is this? What is like, what is tac? Like, what is the thing? I was just, I was pretending like I knew the whole time, but I learned as I went. And then we ended up getting acquired by Square. So I worked at Square for a few years, which was another great, great learning experience. And I was there for a while and then that's when Laura approached me about joining Bobby.
- [25:34]
A
So what were some of the things that you think actually carried over the most? Like, I also had a, have a non traditional career path and there's some stuff that you wouldn't think carries over that. What are some of the things that for you, you feel like carried over the most that like wouldn't, wouldn't have happened if you just had a traditional marketing career.
- [25:50]
B
You mean from news or from.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, from news specifically.
- [25:54]
B
I think it is the ability to remain unfazed in absolute chaos. I can't tell you guys how insane working in news is. You either have lived it or you don't. Like, you will be sent out to a town where a tornado just came through and there's literally nothing and there's like bodies on the ground and you're just supposed to start reporting live about what you're seeing. And you know, you're supposed to go knock on doors of meth heads whose house is just blew up because there's meth lab. Like you are just thrown into these insane, insane situations. But I look back on now and like that was not safe. Like one time I got chased by a pit bull at a trailer park and had to jump on top of the back of a pickup truck so that I didn't get bit by the pit bull. Like there are so many insane stories of working in local news and you are just unfazed. And you work in a car, you're writing your story on a laptop in your car, you're living in a van, editing your story in the van and your ability to just keep going through anything. I mean, even I remember when I was in North Carolina, I had to report through hurricane season, and I'm standing there in the middle of a freaking hurricane. I'm like, everybody stay at home, because it is not safe out here. And I'm like, but I'm here live in the hurricane. And you're just like, what am I doing? So I think that just anything is doable, Everything is figureoutable, and every deadline can be met. It just becomes a part of your DNA, and it's in your bones. And I think the other thing is that everybody has a story to tell. And I feel so, so insanely deep about that. Every single person has a beautiful story to tell. And how that comes through at Bobby is that every single customer has a different and unique feeding story. And there's so many different and unique emotions that are tied to that and reasons and whys. And so for us to be the brand that helps share and tell those stories is just newsroom 101.
- [27:48]
A
I love that. Yeah, it's not. It doesn't seem that stressful having to turn around, like, a big celebrity partnership in a few weeks. If you.
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B
No, I'm like, you guys, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We can do it. Don't worry about it.
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C
I also love the juxtaposition of the pit bull in the. In the. Would you say, junkyard, and then the beer pong in San Francisco. Like, you're really covering the full spectrum in terms of, like, work environment.
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B
Oh, yeah. It really. I was. Could not be more black and white. It was such a transition for me.
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A
And then what about. What were some of the biggest challenges? Like, what were some of the biggest learning lessons that you had to go. Let's say, coming into Bobby, that was, like, really your first, like, marketing, you know, lead role.
- [28:25]
B
I think I really needed to understand, first and foremost, how to build a team. I've never done that before. And that was also about taking bets on people that had untraditional backgrounds, but also learning along the way that holding on to a team member who is not performing is bad for business, and it's bad for them, and it's bad for the rest of the team and your high performers. That was a lesson I've really had to learn here. And having the courage and actually the respect for that person, to let them go at the right time is the right thing to do. And I think sometimes I don't want to speak for all female leaders. But I think sometimes it's like you want to be liked and you don't want to be the person that's letting people go. And that feels really challenging. And I've learned that actually, like, Clear is kind, and sometimes it's just not going to be a fit. But building the team was a really big part of it, and it still is. Our team is big, bigger now. And I never thought I'd be running a team of, you know, 18 to 20 people, which is crazy. And then I would say other things I've had to learn. I mean, I've really deeply feel like I've gotten a master's degree in marketing, traditional marketing. If you would have asked me about a media mix six years ago, it's like, huh, excuse me. And I just really had to learn so much of this as we went. And I feel actually grateful. I feel so grateful for the experience. I've had to drink from the fire hose at Bobby since day one. And I would say every six months, this company is in a different place, and every six months, they're asking me to do something different or rebuild a thing or start something new or figure out this channel and the ability to continue to learn as I go and have that growth mindset and say, listen, I don't. I don't know the answers, but I'm going to figure them out or I'm going to find somebody who can help me. And to be in a work environment where you have leadership that allows you to not to feel safe, where you're like, I don't always have the answers, and that's okay. That creates a really safe place for everybody on the team to be like, I don't know, let's figure it out. And I'm really grateful for just the ability to continue to learn as I go.
- [30:39]
A
I love that I'm the same way. I feel like Connor is as well. Like, some of it is whether, you know, Connor and I are not founders, but we're, you know, we're. We're very much like, you know, partners in the company and, like, very early and stuff. So, like, I feel like we all have the entrepreneurial spirit where it's just like, hey, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to learn. I'm going to jump into new things. So I love that.
- [30:58]
B
Can I say, too, like, I feel like what that is and what I've learned, and some people have it, some people don't. It's like some people come in with such great, hard Skills and you're like sold by the skills, but they don't have the mindset. And if you're working at a. I'm sure Jones Road is the same way. A fast paced, hyper growth company that's got investment backing and there's high expectations of you, you know, you have to have a team that has that growth mindset because the skills are changing so fast, especially in marketing year over year. The things that we did three years ago are no longer the things we're doing in a lot of ways. So you have to have that mindset and some people have it and some people don't.
- [31:40]
A
Absolutely. I was just gonna say, I was just gonna say I wish we had money. I think Jones around Ridge are both self funded so I wish we did. Makes it even harder. I think you need even more of it.
- [31:50]
B
But you don't have to make an FDA regulated product so you don't need the money like we do.
- [31:55]
C
So I'm curious, like early on when you said you got a master's degree in marketing and kind of going 0 to 1 in many ways in terms of directing to remarketing and building a team, what did, like, what were your resources that you leaned on to improve your skills? That there was a people or there were no podcasts at the time. So like what did that look like?
- [32:15]
B
Well, there was no, there was no AI either. Let's remember I couldn't ask Claude anything. I feel very lucky that I had a really deep bench of mentors. We also brought on some advisors into the Bobby brand that were working for equity within those early days and they really helped me, you know, build out that first year marketing plan. And I'm not going to take credit and try to say that I did it all by myself, but I have a couple of really amazing cmos. I could call right now and be like, hey, like this just happened. What do I do? And they would answer my call and they would help guide me. And I feel like everybody should have that no matter where you are in your career. And now that I'm here, six years into this journey with what we've built at Bobby, I am, I am doing that for people. And it feels really good to be able to reach back and help new marketers or other female leaders. And I, I love to talk to other people like Cody does. I'll blow them up on slack. I'm like, what are you doing? How are you doing this? And I even had just time built into my calendar to have conversations with other portfolio companies that have the same investors and be like, how are you guys doing this? What's working for you? And it's interesting because what I also learned from that is that we are not that alone right now. And I think maybe you guys could speak to this too. But I almost feel like many companies are in a marketing rebuild stage right now. Like there's a lot of energy around rethinking the funnel and what channels are we optimizing and how is search changing and everybody feels like they're in this 2026, like let's call it year of the fire horse rebuild. And I love that because we're all figuring it out at the same time and people are not keeping secrets. They're not, they're swapping secrets. And it's actually, it's a really nice community to be a part of and I think marketers should help each other out.
- [34:06]
C
I totally agree. I also feel. Well, I'll say I'll totally agree because we spent like six episodes earlier this year just talking about our 2026 plans. It was just like, hey, let's just, let's just all collectively, Connor, Row Lane, Cody and myself, like just talk about like where would we like to get better and basically do a bunch of content around like exploring those new efforts. I also feel we're at the point now where it doesn't feel advantageous to be keeping things secretive. Like there's not alpha in the information, it's alpha in execution. And therefore like if, if you're just able to work towards it, like that's what's going to be the differentiating factor whether you can win or lose and not do I have this secret bit of information that nobody else has. So it ends up feeling way more sort of synergistic within the community.
- [34:48]
B
I totally agree. I feel like a good our team, when our brand and marketing team is in flow, we are executing, we are shipping, shipping, shipping and it feels so good and putting out great, high quality on brand. Memorable. Talked about work is what motivates and fuels not only me, but my entire team. So getting into that state of flow is an art form and it takes time and it takes, you know, everybody understanding each other and having a clear brand guideline and listening to everyone's ideas and feedback. But I totally agree that it's like when you can stop keeping your secrets and you can go into execution mode and who is executing at the highest quality, that's what sets you apart.
- [35:37]
C
So I'm curious, I love this idea of flow state. What is that cadence? I'M curious what the cadence looks like at Bobby for you guys. Like, I'll just speak personally for a second because I, I feel lately we've been doing the best work we've ever done. Team is dialed in. We are like going to market with a bunch of new products. We're on time, it looks great, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of the things you just mentioned, and that's probably. We're launching products on a bi weekly ish basis every other week. And I'm curious where. I don't feel we're in a flow state right now. Is like every social media message or every email is not necessarily as like dialed in as it could be. We are executing in the way that we always have, but I don't feel like we're in the flow state in the same way we are in other parts of the business. So like, when you say flow state, what, what cadence does that look like?
- [36:21]
B
Oh, God. I think our cadence is a little kooky at times and potentially maybe over ambitious. And, and we're working, we're working through that. We actually just went through. I wanted to try and pull this up, but that's okay. We just went through a sort of marketing, really core marketing plan for, for Q2, because things are always moving so fast over here. And here we are three days away from it and we've really locked like, what are the deliverables that everybody is working on week by week? And there's eight key work streams that are cross functional, brand marketing, front of house, retail ops, all the things that, the ways in which we all intersect. And I think there's 465subtasks within those eight work streams. And that is how we break down. We're at max capacity. So if we want to add something to this roadmap, something must come out. And trying to protect the mental health and wellness of the team is something we're, we're really trying to do because it can get really crazy. But I mean, what does it look like? It's, it's a social campaign followed by a product, product brand or product partnership launch, followed by a new unlock within our safety and quality that we have a brand messaging launch followed by a press comms initiative. I mean, it's constant. And again, like we get fueled by that. To me, that is energy. People want to be doing work. This is the other thing I've noticed. It's like you give a team two weeks to do something, they'll take two weeks if you give them five days. They'll get it done in five days. Will the quality be different? Maybe, yeah, but people will. People will rise to the occasion that you ask them to do it. And I think if you give them six months, they'll also take six months and they'll like, over pontificate and like, do too many revs and, you know, get too many opinions brought in. And it's like, okay, let's just move. Like, sometimes you just gotta move. And that is how we sort of operate for better or for worse sometimes.
- [38:17]
A
At Bobby, how do you, you guys, you guys clearly work fast, have a lot, you know, going on. I also get the feeling you guys love to be creative and like, maybe your flow state is like, also where you guys are like, coming up with, like, wacky ideas. How do you balance the two? Because sometimes when you're that busy, it's kind of hard to sit back and think, how do you, as a leader for your team, how do you balance the two?
- [38:36]
B
We definitely have no shortage of creative brainstorms or creative ideas happening. You know, we have brand marketers ping us all the time that want to come join the team. Like, oh, I just don't need another ideas person. Like, I need. We've got plenty of that on our team. I think what, what I find is that sometimes you get handed something or you have something, whether it's a celebrity campaign or something that you have to execute against, and it's hard. And you're like, why is this so hard? You know, like, it should feel easier. And then an idea will come in that everybody is so excited about and the ideas are popping off in slack and it's like, you can feel the enthusiasm. And I always say, like, follow the enthusiasm. If your team is excited and they want to work on it and the ideas are coming and you can make the business case, scrap the original thing and move to the thing that's driving enthusiasm. Because if we're excited about it, the customer will most likely be excited about it. And so I think there's, there's also, it's the idea of, like, not getting trapped in, in a bad idea. It's like, it's okay. Like, it can be a bad idea and you can kick it to the curb and move to the next. But I do think following enthusiasm of your team and a great idea, sometimes companies, I think, probably see something in slack like we do, and they say, oh, we don't have time for that. It's not on the roadmap. I don't know where we're going. To find budget. And instead at Bobby we have a. Okay, let's pause. Let's actually, let's get in a zoom room and talk about this. Okay, this is a great idea. Like actually, let's kick this thing to the curb and let's do this. And the ability to pivot that way and to move into great ideas that happen from your team allows then people to feel safe coming forward with their next big idea because they know that it might get executed. Okay, I'll tell you one. One of the great ideas that our social lead Angela Hanks shout out to her had last year was around putting our customers into a billboard and saying on our Times Square billboard and saying actually, moms are the original influencers. They're influencing their kids, how they grow up. And for Mother's Day we're going to surprise real customers and put them on a billboard in Times Square. And it was this beautiful moment for these mothers to come into Times Square to look up at a billboard and to see pictures of them and their baby. They had no cl. They were just doing a weekend brand trip to New York City and it was just such a human moment and a way for us to again highlight our real customers, which we do at every turn. That's now an award winning campaign that she put together and that started as a slack idea that we did not have resourcing time or budget against, but we made it happen because everybody was so excited about it.
- [41:14]
A
Multi Touch Attribution tools are great, but there's one big downfall and it's that most brands are using them to make next month's budget decisions with last month's data. Your attribution tool cannot tell you what happens if you shift 50k from Meta to CTV or whether your best channel has already hit saturation. MTA and platform reporting will only tell you what happened. Pre MMM tells you what will happen. You can see where your next dollar will perform best. Catch where channels are maxing out and hitting their saturation curves and move money before you waste it. Models update daily for online and weekly for retail, so you're always working with current data and it also maps out how your channels work together. This is one of my favorite things about Prescient. It tells you things like how Meta drives Amazon sales, how CTV lifts branded search. We use it at hexclad. Other brands like Sava and Coterie are also using it and it ultimately is like a GPS for our performance marketing and you'll get your first insights within a week. If you're interested, go to preschionai.com operators P R E S C I E n t a I.com operators to see how prescient can give you your next best move. Now I want to transition to Bobby a little bit. We know your, your story now. It's awesome. It's, it's really cool story and I think really cool to hear, you know, how people can transition because I think so many people in this industry, like marketers, DTC marketers don't really have like traditional marketing backgrounds. And so I love your transition. Talk to us a little bit about Bobby and the history of Bobby. Are there certain like milestones? Like what's the story? When did you come in? How early was it? And then are there certain milestones? I know you guys had the shortages. You guys have had an acquisition as well. You guys have had some really interesting moments and it seems like growth has been exclusive. So walk us through it from your side.
- [43:04]
B
So Bobby was started by our co founder Laura Modi in 2018 after she had her first baby, she struggled to breastfeed exclusively. She found herself in a pharmacy aisle looking at these formulas that she was not excited to feed her baby. And she was wondering why was this experience terrible? What are these ingredients? Why are people going to Europe or importing, you know, European formula when the US should be able to make a gold standard infant formula and people should be able to trust that here at home. And so she had that experience, she turned it into Bobby. She brought on our co founder Sarah about a year later. I joined about six months after that in Laura's basement. And it was like a true blue startup. They were still in the pre launch days getting the sourcing, finding the manufacturer, getting seed funding. All of those really, really basic foundational moments of a company where you're, you're taking a bet, right? I was taking a bet on what we thought was possible on the product, but also I was taking a bet on Laura and I believe in her so much. She's an exception, exceptional CEO and she still is to this day. So that was sort of where I joined in the company and you know, never. I remember that first lot. We launched our product D2C in January of, was January 5th. I remember because it was right before January 6th, January 5th, miss that 2021 and we launched our site and I remember Laura telling me, okay, like we've made this order for this amount of product and you have to, we gotta figure out, we gotta make sure that we, you know, can sell through this before it expires. And I Said like, how are we gonna do this? This is so much. And then we almost sold out within six, six weeks or so. And so it was, that was the moment where I feel like you believe so much in something and then you realize that everybody else is excited for it too and that you do have product market fit and that there is, there is an opportunity here to disrupt a legacy industry and to build a purposeful and mission driven brand in a space where there was not one. And it kind of, it was, it was sort of glory days in a way because we didn't really have any, any new competitors at that time in the way that we do now. And we trailblazed and led the way and showed people that this, this industry can and should be disrupted and here's how we're gonna do it. And I remember we didn't think anyone was watching and we know that the big companies were probably laughing at us. And then we got our first season desist from one of them and we were like, oh, so you are paying attention.
- [45:45]
A
All right. So Connor and I have also both been at our brands for, from the beginning and we've seen a lot of growth, but we know it's not all up into the right. What were some of like the bigger challenges along the way?
- [45:53]
B
Yeah, well, growth happened until one night it happened so fast that we said what is going on? And what was going on was a nationwide formula shortage that completely flipped the table on our industry. So a major, huge legacy player that serves a vast majority of us parents, their entire manufacturing facility shut down and everything had to be thrown out on shelves. And anybody who was feeding their baby that product had to throw it in the trash that night. And that led to insane demand for us for about four or five days until our amazing head of growth, Shereen Auburn at that time intercepted and said, guys, if we don't turn off our store tomorrow, we're going to run out of product for our subscribers. What we left on the table with our wait list of 70,000 people was like $300 million in product. By turning off our site and saying all the product that we have made we are going to hold for our, our customers, our subscribers, because they have signed up for us and we, they are relying on us to feed their baby at a time when shelves are empty. People cannot get this product, cannot find infant formula at all. And we didn't know how long this was going to last. Like it was really a scary time to be a new parent, a formula feeding parent in this country. You could not Find formula. Our customers had their deliveries uninterrupted for eight months through that formula shortage. And the amount of loyalty and love and trust that that built through for our brand new brand during a crisis is still talked about today by customers who have come back for even their second or third babies. But that was one of those decisions where if you're looking at the spreadsheets, you're saying, go get your dollars, girls, like, go sell your formula. You don't know this could be over next week. And there were some investors that told us that, and Laura doesn't lead that way. And she said, no, these are parents. And we told them we were going to deliver their formula. So we're going to deliver their formula and we're going to put it on hold. And to this day, that has turned into our Bobby promise, which is if you subscribe to us, we subscribe to you. And we will always allocate on D2C the number of cans that you need to get to your baby's first birthday. And we'll put those aside to ensure that we always have reserve and that you will not face a formula shortage. And so, knock on wood, to this day, we have never missed a subscription box for our customers.
- [48:20]
C
So, okay, so extremely cool little anecdote there because I was, as you were telling the story, I'm like, what a crisis. It reminds me of some of the, like, news background that you mentioned. It sounds like the equivalent of being in like the hurricane riddled city that you've got to report on now and figuring out, like, how do you want to craft the message around that? Because obviously the Bobby promise seems like a fantastic way to like, repackage that as like a core brand value, making it really clear what you're guaranteeing for your existing customers. I'm curious, one, what were some of the other strategies and, like, messaging out what you guys were doing to existing customers and try to like, maximize goodwill? What went into that? And then two, what was the response from people who were unable to become customers? And how did you maybe treat that messaging differently?
- [49:06]
B
Yeah, no, that's a great question. So I think in that moment of the national formula shortage, it was nationwide news. This was what the President, President Biden was talking about at his White House briefings every day. Every single media outlet in the country was seeking a voice and an understanding of this industry which no one had ever paid attention to before. And of course, the legacy players did not comment, did not return any press calls. And I was like, oh, no, we're gonna Jump into the lion's den here. And I was like, laura, put your suit on. You're getting on the tv. And we put her out there because she is such a unique voice in this industry. She is the only. She was the only mother that was a CEO that had actually fed a baby, that was a CEO of an infant formula company. She was the only one who had a literal baby at that time that she was nursing and feeding Bobby. And she had a unique perspective. And we put her on pbs, cbs, cnn, Fox News, Washington Post. And she became the voice of transparency during a time when there was no comment from everybody else in this industry. And I also, I like kudos to her for that because it's scary to go into that. Well, she had like minimal press training at the time and she did great. And I think that helped her find her confidence. Right. But it also led to what we knew, to what we knew to be true was that we can and we can and we have the right to be leading in this industry because our voice and our POV and our brand and our company and our product is different. So sorry that these legacy players are here, but we're also here and we have something to say. And it gave us a bit of confidence going into the next stage of the business that we, we should be here. And we felt that, you know, we were able to carry through our customers in that moment when a lot of companies couldn't. I forgot the other part of your question, but. Oh, the customers. Oh, I remember. Okay, so as far as how do we message to those customers, it was, here's what was really interesting at Bobby on your back end in your dashboard and shopify and recharge. You can change your shipping address just in case you're traveling or you're going to your mom's house or something. And what we saw was so many subscribers changing their shipping address and they were basically passing their subscription along to keep it going for a friend or a family member instead of canceling. They felt like they had a golden ticket to access to high quality organic formula in a time where people couldn't find anything. And we saw it happening and we didn't stop it. We said, this is what being a part of a community is all about. If you. That's what you want to do, we're going to let it happen and we're not going to try and cut it off. But we didn't forecast that into our supply that we had left. It got really. I mean, I, I wish I had the exact number Guys. But it got really low. Like we were at a point where we were like, are we going to be able to actually pull this off? Our cans got so low. And finally our next delivery came in. But it was what we were living on, a prayer for a second that we weren't going to run out a formula for our customers. And it was a really scary moment. And then as far as those 70,000 people that we had gathered on our wait list, we put them into buckets based off of when they had signed up. And we just basically put them into cohorts and we batched out the amount of subscription spots that we could as graduations happened. And you know, that was hard for the business too, because essentially as a subscription based business, we had people that all basically fell out at almost the same time. And we had to rebuild our entire subscription, our entire subscription bucket coming out of the formula shortage, which we were able to do through cohorting that wait list. But people were so grateful. People called our CX in tears. They were so. They just felt so looked after in that moment. And the, the way in which we were able to onboard them, support them, and carry them through a really traumatizing time to be a mom. This was also on the heels of COVID Remember, these are like Covid moms going through a formula shortage, just trying to feed their babies. Like it was an unacceptable scenario for our country to be in. For us to be a small part of the solution for a small number of parents felt like the least we could be doing.
- [53:29]
A
And how long did that last?
- [53:31]
B
Too long. It was too freaking long. It was started in March of 2022 and I think we started to roll people off of the wait list in October of 2022.
- [53:44]
A
And how do you come out of that? Like, how do you. How do you go from that? Like preserve, preserve, preserve. And then like thinking about starting growth again.
- [53:52]
B
You order a ton of formula and then you make sure you have a lot of reserve. You figure out how do you go from sloth mode into growth mode. You rebuild your marketing funnel, you rebuild your messaging based on the mindset of this customer at that time who is scared and they want guaranteed supply. And it was something that we knew we could offer as the only direct to consumer subscription based business in this industry. Our how you shot Bobby became our differentiator. It became the trust builder. And so it didn't. It wasn't that hard to do, you know, because people wanted. They had heard about us. The word of mouth engine was so on fire after that. That it wasn't like we had to pour tons of dollars into performance marketing to get the awareness out, the loyalty of the people that we had carried through and the way that we gave them their referrals. And he just carried the torch for us into 2023.
- [54:48]
A
One of the cool, like, it's, I love that you guys are obviously, like, looking after the subscribers, things like that. One of the cool things that you guys do is when you cancel a subscription, you guys celebrate it. I think you guys have, like, do you guys have. What do you talk, talk about that a little bit?
- [55:01]
B
Well, this is, what's so interesting is we realized when people were canceling their subscription, they were sending us so many customers, send us these love letters and these subscribers, these literal long emails or tagging us in Instagram stories with sob faces that they're. They're leaving Bobby. It's their last can of formula. Name another subscription that you go to cancel and you're crying about it, and you're. And you're taking the time to write out a story to the company to say thank you for what you've given me, which is peace of mind and health, a healthy baby. And so we knew that there was something magical happening with the subscription, with the cancellation, and instead of just trying to keep people on to say, oh, here's another 30%. Stay longer, stay longer. It's actually a celebration. Your baby's turned one. They've hit a new milestone. Congratulations. You don't need us anymore. And that's okay. So how do we make this a moment where we did this whole Spotify sort of wrapped campaign, if you will, where when you graduate and you click through, you get to see how many diapers you've changed, how many bottles you've made, and we give you a graduation certificate that says you've done it. Mom, dad, you finally hit year one. Your baby is no longer a need of formula, and we have this wonderful celebration, and then we invite those people every few months to join a Zoom session with Laura for a graduation ceremony. So we love to hear their stories. We celebrate them in real time on a Zoom. And it just builds a beautiful community moment where we're recognizing the journey and we're not just like, okay, bye, you're done paying us. So we don't care about you, but it's like, how are we, how are we building that community? And again, that word of mouth referral, because we genuinely care about the journey that you've been on and we want to hear your story.
- [56:46]
A
It's so cool. You also obviously, you know, you want to keep in their good graces because a lot of them are going to have second kids and things like that, so.
- [56:55]
B
Yeah, well, yeah, of course. And, and one of the things we, we tested out, I think it's still happening, is when you graduate, you can get a bon voyage box, which is like a toucan box that you can then gift to a friend. And how do we. Yeah, so how do we then put that word of mouth referral into people we know are in this stage of life have friends who may need formula they may want to have in their pantry just in case, or they're going to a baby shower, whatever that looks like for them. But how do we actually turn that, that love in that moment into a pay it forward? And here's a can for you, and here's a can for a friend.
- [57:27]
A
That's a good point. We. My son just turned like 13 months and he was a Bobby baby as well. And I think, you know, it's, it's impossible to time it when you got transition to, you know, off. Off of it. So we definitely gave stuff away, but we're. When we give it away, we're like, hey, like, this is great. This worked. Maya, I don't know if I ever told you this, but our, our story. So our daughter, who's three and a half, she threw up every night before. Like, every single night. I'll show you a picture. When I have, I have a picture my wife took of me feeding her in bed. And I had like, blankets just like everywhere covering me just in case. And one day we were, we were in Florida and I was like, this only happens at night. I don't, I don't get why. Like, I was like, oh, we run out of breast milk during the day and we're feeding her one of the, like, the old school generic ones that the doctor recommended. I was like. And so we made the switch, like, throw up, pretty much gone overnight. So, like, I am definitely. I didn't write in. I didn't know about it, but I, I'm writing into you now to tell you, like, it is a very. No, but I mean, I would literally, like, it would be midnight and I'd be like, almost crying to my wife, like, I can't do this. Like, you're so tired you barely sleep and we have to go change the covers. And it's like we were super grateful to Bobby for being able to be there for the, during that time.
- [58:34]
B
And like, those stories, like, your story is unique. And your story is important and we hear those stories all the time. And it's like when you people don't understand when you're in that year one feeding and there's something that's not clicking and then you find something that works. Bobby or not. It is an unlock of just peace of mind. You feel like a different parent when you know that your kid is keeping down their food. And so I'm, I'm so glad we could be there for you and I'm so glad that your baby stopped barfing. I was out for them. No, that, that does make me so happy. But it really is just such a precarious time where you know, if you're a first time parent, especially like you don't know what you're doing. You're figuring it out. Yeah, there's instinct, but then you question it all, you know.
- [59:22]
C
Rich Panel CEO just predicted his own SaaS product will lose 90% of its revenue. And he's the one building what will kill it. They are betting that AI agents will replace traditional support tools entirely. No dashboards, no seats, no workflows. So what did they ship? An autonomous AI agent that handles customer support from end to end, reading order data, issuing refunds, updating shipments without a human ever touching it. Here's why this matters. It means you can run a faster, leaner support team at a fraction of the cost while resolving tickets instantly. 247 rich panel is cannibalizing their own business to build the future of and support for brands. Because if they don't, someone else will. Go check out what they're building@richpanel.com and learn how you can automate your entire support operation today. So I'm curious to dive into like the economics of Bobby a little bit more. You guys have an interesting model in the sense that there's really high. It's a consumable product for like a defined period of time, the like first year of a baby being born. So you get this awesome LTV within that year. But then you have people naturally churn. They naturally need to be feeding their, their baby in other ways. So like, I'm just curious, you guys are in an interesting position with very high LTV technically also high enough churn that you still need to be good at acquiring customers at scale. So I'm just curious, like what were some of the lessons learned and what are the strategies to support both of those things?
- [60:43]
B
Today we have to be the absolute best at infant formula before we can go past that. And so that has been Our, our focus for the past five years in the market is to be the destination for the best high quality organic infant formula. And now that we feel we are in a really good place to solidify that foundation and I think we've done that and people trust us and they know what BOBI stands for. High quality organic infant formula. Now we have permission and now we have trust and now we have awareness and now we have an audience to expand into new categories. And so we didn't want to do that off the bat because then it can come become confusing. Are you here for the toddler? Are you here for the mom? Are you here for the ancillary products? Like who are you? And we wanted to really take the time to bake in and invest right back into innovation, into our manufacturing, into our core core products. We have four infant formula SKUs now and nailing that and launching the first organic whole milk formula in the US at our owned facility and the only gentle infant formula in the US that's made with lactose. These core things that are differentiated to us, it's like we had to do that first before we start to get skew hungry and AOV hungry and lifetime value hungry. It's like that's short sighted in my mind because then you're losing the brand equity in some ways of what you want to be known for, legacy wise. And this is where we've taken our time and I'm proud of the company for taking our time. But now that we have that foundation, we have our brand awareness, I feel like we have permission and we have trust from our customer to start to go into some different spaces. And so that's what you're going to see us do over the next couple of years.
- [62:28]
C
That's super exciting. And do you think it will be largely centered around consumable products early in a baby's life or like over what timeframe do you guys expect to be building products for, for the infants?
- [62:43]
B
Well, wouldn't you like to know, Connor? No, I'm just kidding. I mean, listen, it's not rocket science, right? Like we're feeding babies zero to one. There is a lot of space within that feeding journey of 0 to 1. And I think 1 to 2, we talk to a mom every day. What does the mom want from the Bobby brand? Those are all questions that we're asking and have asked and are answering. And without sharing too many specifics, we, it's, it's, it's nothing crazy. You know, we're not launching a David's protein bar. You know, it's, it's going to be pretty straightforward on the core audience that we serve.
- [63:17]
C
One of my questions here also is around this idea of building trust related to the product. I would imagine early on, when you guys don't have the social validation of like millions of very happy customers and you're pre Bobby's promise and you're pre the founder being the voice of infant formula, you know, the infant formula industry. What did building trust look like then and then, has it changed over time now that you've hit like critical mass with like true social validation and community support?
- [63:43]
B
I think yes and no. Building trust in the earliest days was it was doing the unscalable things. It was doing the things that don't make sense, but feel right and mean something to that one person on the other end of it, like someone's delivery was late or it got stolen off their porch. How do we find a team member near them that can Uber formula to their house even if it costs $250 to sit through the middle of Atlanta traffic? And that happened. And that was for a normal parent. That wasn't for a celebrity or an influencer or anybody like that. And so it was about building those consumer relationships and doing the, the just the smallest things. I'm trying to think of what else we did that was not scalable. There are so many non scalable things at Bobby. But then, now I feel that the, the goalposts have shifted in a lot of ways. And I. We still do those unscalable things because they're the right things to do for our customer. But our industry as a whole has completely changed since we started five years ago. I mean, just this past six months, there have been a US Company that's gone down for a botulism recall. There's global companies who have recalled their product, major European players, a European company recalled in Canada. And those things happen in a food industry. Right? No food company is necessarily like immune to recalls. But what that's done in this compounded space and time is it has a completely eroded trust in the category. Formula search is down. Formula conversion is down for everybody across the category in the last six months. And that is indicative of people's fear that they have because of what they're seeing in the news and what's happening industry wide. And so, you know, we talk a lot about building trust and sometimes that means transparency and storytelling and showing the receipts. And that's what people want in this area or in this arena. Right now I go back to one of my favorite real housewives quotes of like proof receipts, timeline screenshots. I'm like let's give it to them. And so how are we showing and sharing our heavy metal testing, our clean label certification, our pesticide free certification? How are we showing how we start with us American made farms and we also source from New Zealand when nestling necessary. How are we showing how our formula is made and bringing cameras into our facility for the first time to allow people to see that it's a beautiful state of the art facility and it's not disgusting and we're not hiding anything. How do we show and share the people who are behind the brand and the coo who's making the quality decisions? You know, all of these things matter to us and there is just a cloud of uncertainty around our industry that I feel like we have a responsibility in a lot of ways to lead with transparency not only for Bobby but for formula feeding parents in general to be like your formula is safe, like the vast majority of formula is safe. Here's what we're doing at Bobby and while we can't speak to everybody else, we hope that this brings a layer of credibility and trust to the process of making infant formula.
- [66:44]
C
So I have like a very tactical question on this one because and that's what I was getting at was like how much of like the technical formulation of the product makes it its way to consumers is a part of the marketing and I'm just curious what that looks like from a channel perspective. Are there, these are in the email flows, Is it in all the ads? Like yeah, where are you leveraging that information?
- [67:04]
B
I mean we have a brand new safety and quality page that we send traffic to that's not rooted in selling you product or conversion. It's truly to show and share all of the details. In our quality and safety testing and our 2000 plus safety and quality check, we did an SMS campaign that led to that same page. We are doing a whole ad flight about it that all drives to that page because it's an awareness and it's a trust builder and it's a way to introduce who we are and what we stand for and our quality standards. I'm really proud of the content that we've been able to put together there. But also the way in which we've had cross functional buy in for some really traditional regulatory and ops. People on our team that are, you know, they're like oh, I don't know, should we? I'm like yeah, let's share it. Like there's nothing to hide here. So it's been great to see just how we are able to work together to bring that transparency to consumers. One of the things we just launched was a transparency tracker. So this means you can take the lock code from the bottom of your can, you can go to that quality and safety page, you can pop it in and you can see all of the heavy metal contaminant pathogen testing that your can, your can has passed. And you can see exactly when it expires, which is also there. But just in case it rubbed off or for whatever reason. And that took a tech stack to build and that took ops alignment and that took quality and safety team. And it was like, well, why are we doing this? It's because it's another layer of showing and telling to our customers that their formula is safe and they deserve that. And so it's been a really great, beautiful synergy between the entire org to get things like that off the ground. And there's more of that coming, which we're really excited about.
- [68:41]
C
Extremely cool. Yeah, that's a fun example.
- [68:44]
A
So you guys have done a lot of really cool campaigns that we've talked about, Touched on a few. Are there any upcoming ones that you are excited about or not?
- [68:52]
B
Well, Cody, let's talk about it. While we love, there's always this thing that you know, when we talk about. Yes, about.
- [69:02]
C
For those listening. For those listening, we should describe what
- [69:04]
B
Cody's holding up as Cody is holding a Jones Road Times Bobby Sleepless Nights kit, which is first year on the pod incredible SKU that we have been secretly cooking up for the last, what, seven months or so. And I love this so much because I think what I love to do is show up in places where baby brands have never shown up before and tell me a baby brand that's done a collab with an amazing beauty company before. And I love trailblazing on that front and thinking about unique partnerships because in a lot of ways, Cody, I think we're serving a similar parent. I know not everybody that comes into Jones Road is in that new mom stage, but a lot of the Bobby moms are Jones Road customers and we feel that synergy. And so it's like, what can we do that's fun and exciting together? That makes sense. And so we've had so much fun working with the Jones Road team on this and it's going to be a really fun campaign. And I need to say here and now, the sleepless nights kit does not guarantee, by the way, to fix your sleepless Night. That's the whole joke. But we hope that it helps make you feel a little brighter the next day.
- [70:13]
A
Well, it's actually interesting to hear Connor asked you to talk about the mission and your guys values because one of the things we're really doing with this campaign is we really believe as a makeup company that we're not here to fix anybody or we're not here to say like, hey, you can cover, like, you look perfect. Like we're trying to be super realistic. And so it's interesting to hear after working with you guys to hear that like one of your things is like, hey, we're going to give it to you straight.
- [70:36]
B
Yeah. Oh, we love to give it to people straight. And we're. The first thing we're saying with the sleepless nights kit is we're not giving you a good night's sleep. We can't do that. That's up to your baby and you. You guys need to figure that out together. But I do think that having a bit of tongue in cheek and again, speaking honestly to parents is always what they want to hear. When you're all experiencing the same thing, the story comes together pretty easily. And that that enthusiasm that we have amongst projects came through on this too. It's like, yeah, of course we should do something with Jones Road. So it's unexpected, It'll be fun for our customers, it'll be fun for yours and we hope people like it.
- [71:11]
A
Yeah, it's unexpected. I think there. But there's a ton of similarities and synergies and I think how both brands think about, you know, their marketing and, and communicating and talking to their customers as well.
- [71:22]
B
So.
- [71:22]
A
Yeah, and I always think it's fun
- [71:23]
B
when people are like, what is, like, what is Bobby doing? Like, it's so predictable to show up with a stroller company or the car seat company or the bottle company. And those partnerships are, you know, of course they need to exist. But to show up with such a formidable beauty brand like Jones Road just feels fun and unexpected and I love that you got to leave room for the unexpected.
- [71:42]
C
A Bobby Ridge minimalist wallets.
- [71:44]
B
Yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah, we get a lot of like, we're like, huh, should we do this partnership? Like, maybe that's a little too weird. I don't know.
- [71:51]
A
Yeah. Do you guys have like a vetting criteria or like things that you.
- [71:56]
B
We do. We have a bit of like a, like in a partnerships funnel. I mean, you can only resource so many in a year, right? Our team is pretty tight on that and our Budget is not what we wish it was for partnerships, but I think it's like the top of the funnel. Unexpected, exciting, fun, experiential, buzzy. Right. Culturally relevant. You have to leave space for that. And this is where it's like you're building the brand. Are you building. Do you know what's the ROI on this? I'm not quite sure yet, Cody, but I've been asked a million times. Okay, just so you know, we're gonna
- [72:27]
A
figure out by me. Just throwing it out there. Not by me.
- [72:30]
B
And no, not by you. Trust me. And then I think there's. There's the consideration partnerships that you can offer to your. Maybe your loyalty in your subscribers. Maybe it's a gift when they graduate. There's different ways in which we try to unlock that. We have our Babyliss partnership, which has been a wonderful partnership for us over the last year. And then I think there's, you know, the bottom of the funnel type partnerships. Maybe it's like a gift with purchase with your starter bundle or that Black Friday Cyber Monday deal. And so leaving space and time and budget and resourcing for all three of those and not just the bottom ones is really important to me.
- [73:07]
A
Marketing operators, I want to challenge how you think about post purchase. Most brands treat it like a feature or an afterthought. They don't even think about it. They think about as an app, quick upsell toggle. But if you zoom out, post purchase isn't a tactic. It's a system. It's your cart, your checkout logic, your one click upsells, how you increase AOV revenue per session, profit per session. It's your confirmation page. It's all of that system together. The entire flow determines how much incremental revenue that you can make per order. That's why Rocked After Sell isn't just an upsell tool. It's a design system for the full post purchase experience. From cart to thank you page. Instead of stacking five different apps that barely talk to each other or don't talk to each other because we've had that problem before, ROKT After Sale gives you one unified system, a smart cart and checkout offers. One click post purchase upsells and thank you page Monetization with ROKT thanks. One system. No bloat, no duct. Taping tech together that doesn't speak nicely. Together. And here's where it becomes very strategic. Beyond the 30% revenue per visitor lift, ROKT After Sell opens a monetization layer that most operators haven't fully priced into. Their units. Unit economics with Rock Network products, run the math on your own volume. At 50k orders a month, that's 15 to 25k in pure profit. With rock banks at 100k it's 30 to 50k. I'm not great at math but I love those numbers straight to the bottom line as well. Every month from a page your customer is already landing on won't affect conversion rate. Just free money you can pocket at the end of the month. No inventory, no operational lift, no contracts lock you in. And this is not just for shopify native brands anymore. Whatever platform you're on, rockdafter sells, supports it. You're not boxed in and you're not waiting for a migration to start capturing this profit. If you're serious about building a durable brand, the question isn't should we test upsells? It's is our post purchase flow architected to extract full profit from every order? We're already running marketing operators. Listeners can activate Rokthinks and get the full AfterCell suite for a year or grab an extended 60 day trial. To test post purchase performance go to aftercell.com operators. Build the system once and let it compound. All right, we're going to do some rapid fire questions now. We're going to end this. It's been a great episode. We're going to end this with 10 questions. Just want you to go Kim. Rapid fire. Don't even think about it too much. You'll do great. All right, number one, you get a desert island dashboard to manage your business. What three metrics. You want to get three metrics that you can take with you.
- [75:17]
B
Trust consideration tiers.
- [75:22]
A
That would be a first. That would be the first time we've had that answer. All right, no, no comment. We'll just go straight to the next one. You also get to take one book or resource. But it cannot be business.
- [75:34]
B
It cannot be business. No, like not. Oh, sorry. Okay, I'm going to go with Responsible Marketing by Lilla Bakari.
- [75:45]
A
Sounds a little businessy.
- [75:46]
B
It's a little businessy. Okay, I'm. I, I'm so bad. I. Sorry.
- [75:55]
A
Let's keep going.
- [75:56]
C
Let's go. Let's.
- [75:57]
B
Okay, you want to know why? I'll tell you why. Because I don't time to read any books. I'm running a marketing team at a fast paced company. So I start a book, I get five pages in and then you know what? I it collects dust on my bedside table.
- [76:09]
A
That is why I feel that I'm
- [76:11]
B
so asking me what book I'm reading.
- [76:12]
A
I could not tell you last time I finished the book. I totally get that. All right, how about this? Because you'll know this one. What is one contrarian belief about marketing that you have that other marketing people
- [76:23]
B
think you're crazy for a contrarian belief. Oh, I just don't think everything needs a data point. It just doesn't. And that's okay. Like, let it rip sometimes.
- [76:38]
A
Agree with that. I agree with that. Definitely concern in today's day and age, but I agree with that.
- [76:42]
B
Yeah.
- [76:44]
A
For you. What is the single most important word in leadership?
- [76:46]
B
Empathy.
- [76:48]
A
What is the single most important word in business?
- [76:52]
B
Leadership?
- [76:55]
A
Good, good one. What is the best meal of the day and why?
- [77:00]
B
Best meal of the day is probably my girl lunch of like many snacks with many dips at any time that I nibble on for a couple hours slowly.
- [77:12]
A
Love it. Love a snack plate. What is right now? What do you think the most overrated growth tactic is?
- [77:20]
B
Okay. I think an overrated growth tack is over. Over testing, wasting time, testing everything doesn't need to be ab freaking tested. Okay? It's a waste of everyone's time. If you know, you know, just go ship it, move on, sally forth.
- [77:38]
A
All right, I like that one also. Maybe that's one of your controversial ones. Maybe you saw us coming. But last question. What is the most underrated tactic?
- [77:46]
B
I think it's still underrated, but I think one of the most underrated tactics is unleashing your no name customers as UGC content creators at scale.
- [77:58]
A
I love it. I love it so much. Well, this was great, Kim. Thank you so much for coming on. You crushed it. You crushed this 10, by the way. You had nothing to worry about. You had a little upset with me about the book question, but all good. You crushed it. You've been an incredible partner on the sleepless nights kit and I'm so happy to have you on here and be able to learn from you.
- [78:16]
B
You too. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. Connor, Cody, y' all are the best.