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Marketing Operators
E050: Tecovasgate: Is This Growth Marketing? Plus Product Expansion, AI in Growth Measurement & More
01:14:45
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- [00:00]
Cody
All right, we are back with another episode of Marketing Operators, and it's been many weeks. The man, the myth, the legend, Cody, CEO, father of his second child. I don't know what that's called. You know, a new father of a second child is back. He's joining the pod. Cody, how are you?
- [00:22]
Connor
Yeah, what's up? It's. It's. It's good to be back. I don't know if anybody cares that I'm back, but I'm happy to be back. Happy to be chatting with you guys. So. Yeah, miss you guys.
- [00:31]
Cody
We missed you too. Yeah, I said I was joking earlier that Sophie, our lovely producer, split the tie. We were trying to figure out whether Cody was coming back. And. And. And I won't tell you which of the Connors voted for Cody, but I.
- [00:44]
Connor
Think that Connor, adult guy, probably voted no.
- [00:48]
Cody
Yeah, yeah. We had a lot of great guests while you were out, but really they had big shoes to fill and. And nobody really came close. So.
- [00:54]
Connor
No, I don't know.
- [00:55]
Cody
I was.
- [00:55]
Connor
I'm like, halfway through the. The Aaron episode. That was. That was great. That guy knows what he's talking about. Listen to it this morning at the gym. So that was. That was a really good one.
- [01:03]
Cody
Yeah, he's. He's savvy. You know, one thing that I've learned, Connor and I have been talking way more, and I learned this over multiple episodes, is I am so much more online than you, Connor. I felt like between. That some of the, like, there are like, some deep cuts on the Aaron episode and then the super bowl episode, I'm explaining like, crypto concepts and like, and like, clip farming on social.
- [01:24]
Grace
Yeah, you're telling me about Antonio Brown's like, oh, yeah, you were talking about.
- [01:28]
Connor
Like, Kai Sinat, and I was like, dude, I wish I was there right now. I know.
- [01:33]
Grace
Everything, Connor. Everything Connor tells me. I'm like, he's like, do you know what this is? And I say, no, no, I. No idea. CONNOR giggles and then I go into my asana task list and say, look up, like, insert things that. Connor.
- [01:46]
Connor
Yeah, dude, you're talking about cte. Spn.
- [01:52]
Cody
Yeah, yeah, that's an Antonio Brown reference. That's really good. So anyway, that. That's why it's important you're back, Cody. You're. You're a really important balance to the group. All right, cool. So one thing I wanted to touch on before we get into the episode. We'll spend 60 seconds on this. I am on a crusade to get day to day tracking in Shopify and north beam and triple whale. It's underway. We talked about a couple episodes. Grace Clark was nice enough to join the cause this past week. She's advocating for day to day, year over year reporting. So we're picking up traction. I just want to give her a shout out. I shared it with you guys because I'm trying to. I'm trying to build the alliance, get the groundswell, you know, moving. I feel like we've got some momentum on this one.
- [02:35]
Grace
Grace is fighting the good fight over here and we. And we appreciate you for that, Grace. We do. We really do. So, yeah. Also we have a. Do we now have some vernacular day to day? I think that's good.
- [02:47]
Cody
Yeah, she kind of nailed that. I was like, that just makes way, way more sense. It's clean. What I was thinking is I should really just distill my thoughts and like the vernacular into like a clear ask. Then I'll send that to everybody I've ever emailed at Shopify and see how that goes.
- [03:02]
Connor
Connor, can I ask you a question or did. Did our sponsorship terms change while I was out? Because you're rocking two sponsors right now. It's like a NASCAR thing.
- [03:13]
Cody
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Well, I'm due for a haircut, so the hat's got to come out. So I've got the Motion creative strategist hat. And then House just sent some very comfy loungewear. So I got. I got the crew neck on now, but I don't know if you guys got it.
- [03:29]
Connor
No, I just screenshot it and sent it to Nick and Olivia. I'm like, where's mine?
- [03:33]
Cody
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. Dude, I pulled it out because they sent the crew neck last year too. The. The key to B2B marketing is just send comfy clothes. You get free impressions on the. On the most popular marketing e commerce podcast. It is. It is a bit much though. So if somebody.
- [03:49]
Connor
It looks comfy though. It looks real comfy.
- [03:51]
Cody
No, it's fantastic. Yeah, but if somebody's watching this, you've got all the logos below and then you've got the. You've got the motion cap and the House logo. We're just covering a lot of real estate on the screen. What pixels can be monetized will be monetized.
- [04:04]
Connor
I mean, that is one of your big DTC thesis, right? All of your predictions are just coming true right now.
- [04:10]
Grace
You're making them true.
- [04:12]
Cody
Which was that prediction?
- [04:13]
Connor
I don't know if it was actually one. How DVC brands will monetize more of their real Estate.
- [04:18]
Cody
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why we do the pod. Okay, quickly on my predictions, someone Josh From Nike Strength DM'd me this. I'll tweet it before this episode goes out, but Stephen A. Smith is polling ahead of Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination. Just some, some random headline from some random article, but Stephen A. Smith. Stephen A. Smith becoming a mainstream media figure as a 2025 prediction shaping up really nicely.
- [04:49]
Connor
Two for two so far.
- [04:51]
Cody
Two for two.
- [04:51]
Grace
Good. Good work. Good work over there.
- [04:54]
Cody
Yeah, yeah, that was like, that was kind of a moonshot too. So. All right, we've got a lot to discuss before we get into the episode. We do want to thank our sponsor. We've talked about a bit already, but premier sponsor Motion, Prescient Rich Panel, After Sale and North Beam and House gets the the the crew neck this week. So they get a little bonus Men sa.
- [05:45]
Grace
So Motion just sent us their latest research on how our e commerce brands can make incredible meta ads in 2025. I've shared it with my team at Hexclad as this report is basically the jumping off point to guiding our 2025 paid media production roadmap. Motion, as you know, is the creative analytics and research platform used by brands like hexclad, True Classic, Ridge Wallet, Jones Road Beauty, Viori, and many, many more. And they actually dug into over $100 million in ad spend, surveyed 500 DTC advertisers, and a deep dive with 12 legendary DTC experts to guide this report. Some of the people that contributed are Dara Denny, Savannah Sanchez, Barry Hot, Nick Sharma, Aaron Orendorf, Sarah Levenger, Joanna Wallace, Shadow Hexclad, Hannah Ho and Gil Chamofsky. This is an amazing resource to help guide your 2025 paid media production roadmap. So generally, a lot of creative strategists, a lot of teams, they come up with a lot of hypotheses about what isn't or is not going to work. And then they build ads around it and then they launch it and they use the data to inform whether or not that's working well. What this report allows you to do is instead of starting at ground zero, you're actually able to start at ground level 5 because this report is looking at a bunch of advertisers data and consolidating information about what has and has not performed well in 2024. So as an example, this report concludes that ads are getting longer and longer and longer in 2024. And what does that mean? It means that education is becoming more and more prevalent in ads. There's some very, very natural next steps that that you can action on for your brand based on this information. Another finding that generally ads as a whole under index on taking a comedic angle. But some of the top performing ads, 25% of them had some sort of comedic element in 2024. So what does that mean? Maybe you should introduce more humor into your into your paid media creator strategy this year. Maybe you should introduce more long form educational content into your paid media creator strategy this year. This is a great jumping off point. This is a great document to have pulled up as you're working out your production roadmap for 2025. By referencing this report, you're going to have a much better chance of having higher hit rates because you are leaning on 2024's actual data instead of just your gut instinct about what will or will not perform well. So this is a super tangible piece of research. It is based on over $100 million in ad spend and the surveys of 500 DTC advertisers. If you have not read it yet, this is going to be super valuable for you. I highly recommend reading this or having it open as you're building out your 2025 paid media creative production roadmap. It's just going to give you a much better jumping off point than not having a piece of research like this. So if you want to check it out, go to motion app.com forward/creative trends. That is motion app.com forward/creatual-trends.
- [08:43]
Cody
So let's jump into it. Cody, you've been, you've been relatively online on Twitter. You haven't been on the pod, but there's been a lot going on. We're going to cover some of it today. I wanted to talk about to cover his gate is is I, I think a catchy name for it. So Taylor Holiday, our, our friend and kind of shadow member of the pod lit D2C Twitter aflame with a take on this to cove his ad. Do you want me to explain it or do either of you guys want to take a pass at like what happened and just tee up the discussion? Then we could use that as a jumping off point.
- [09:16]
Connor
Go for it.
- [09:17]
Cody
Oh, all right. All right. To Cova's gate. To Cova's is a, is a men's like cowboy boot brand. So the piece of content that Taylor shared was like a very lifestyle oriented. It had a lot of like emotion. It's these like kind of grizzled guys jumping out of pickup trucks going to dive bars, dancing on the dance floor. It is really not product oriented. There's no features and benefits. There's no direct response. There was no like shot. Now CTA is. But it was a really strong, compelling piece of content. It looked like it might have been out of a, an indie film or, or some like, hit AMC show or something. Taylor shared that and he said, simple, simple message. This is growth marketing. Absolute smash at to Covas and everybody as, as most people do naturally, this was, this was a polarizing take. If you didn't get it from my description, this to Cova's ad is, is nothing like you're like standard or like quote unquote, best practice direct response or performance marketing piece of creative. So people wanted to fight about it. You had two camps. Essentially. You had Taylor who was saying, like, hey, this is growing the brand. The product sold out. This is generating affinity and growing awareness. And then you had the other side of the, of the, the other camp that says, hey, you throw this in an ad account, it's not getting any dollars in spending. This thing's got 50,000 views on YouTube and it's got two comments. So, like, what is this really doing? What, what, what. What value do we think this actually created? And I would like to know. Cody, you had a 3200 character response. I counted it because I was like, this is a big tweet. So maybe would you add anything to my description of, of to Cova's gate as it stands and, or can you summarize your response?
- [11:14]
Connor
No, I think I like, I like how you named it. Most importantly, I think that's great just to confiscate. Yeah. You had two camps. The ugly ad and the pretty ad and you know, the growth marketing and Taylor's take. And you know, I, I started my tweet by saying this pains me to say, but Taylor is right here. Because I'd love to argue with Taylor, but I think he's right. I think he's spot on. I think it's one of those DTC little bubble things. So know, there's, there's good takes both ways. I, I do agree with several of the things that Barry Hot said, but. But I think it's one of those things where it's like DTC marketers just get so caught up, myself included in, you know, last click performance, ecom, you know, marketing, that we forget what like oftentimes really drives brands forward. And it's especially at scale. It's one of those things where I don't know how. I don't know if you guys know how big to Kovis is, but imagine they're pretty big. Much more of a brand player, much more of a retail, you know, player. And I mean, listen, Ridges, Rich is number one. Connor, I saw you guys are dropping like a product a week, maybe two products a week. Like, none of us are going to grow past this point without category expansion and product expansion and TAM expansion. And then, you know, like, I can share kind of what we're planning for our big launch, which is what I talked about in my tweet. But I agree with him. That might be a boring take. I know it's a hotter take when we disagree with Taylor, but I think he's pretty spot on on this one.
- [12:40]
Cody
Yeah. So one thing just in response to your tweet. So your point around Ridge was just the idea of, like, product expansion being the value that that's what to Covis is doing here. They're. They're launching new products, new silhouettes, et cetera, et cetera. You think that is like, that's the key takeaway there is just like that. That. That form of like, horizontal expansion?
- [13:04]
Connor
Yeah. I think you and Sean are so much better at, like, analogies than I am. Like, I'm still trying to wrap my head around what local maximum means. I think I finally figured out while I was on break that was. That was my one update. But like, I think Sean, I've heard him talk about, like, floor in the ceiling. Like, that is like the. The linchpin of your growth and your potential is product expansion. And then it's up to the marketing team to tell stories around, obviously to push spend behind it, but. But to have messaging that's going to resonate with people and hopefully resonate with new audiences. And I saw one, actually, it was Shane Roasted said. I think it was Shane. He said. It's funny. Everybody here is focusing on the marketing and the style of creative when they don't realize that. Taylor, what you're really saying is product expansion is how you grow product expansion which leads to TAM expansion.
- [13:50]
Cody
Yeah, totally. I think that's interesting because my two thoughts we've. I think actually Ridge is an example of, one, it kind of supports the story that you're saying. And then two, I think it's one of our largest areas for opportunity. Product expansion as a form of growth or creating more paths to growth. Absolutely true. I think that's. That's pretty clear. And we've done that. We're launching tons of products a week and we're doing, we've done product development in like two very simple ways. We've got category expansion, which are like big horizontal expansions, wedding bands, travel. We're building out tech pretty aggressively. We relaunched phone cases in Q4 last year. We have more coming out next week. We've got a number of new products coming out over the next couple months. So these are like horizontal category expansions. And then what, what ends up being like weekly launches for us is like colorway expansion or silhouette expansion within categories. So all of a sudden we're like filling those buckets of new designs or new styles of wallets or even we think about wallets as everyday carry. And we're launching pens and knives and things like that. So that's one. And maybe To Cova's what, what To Cova's is doing is an example of that. What I think To Cova's is doing really well, which I think is our largest opportunity from a brand perspective is strong brand content that creates affinity in a way that isn't product specific. Like I at least watched that To Cova's video and I'm like, oh, I'm bought into the lifestyle. I'm. I'm bought into the ethos of Tokova's. But maybe it's the new boots that they just launched, but if they're launching and I'm not super familiar jackets in the future or belts or denim jeans or whatever they're going to do. Like it is that level of creative, that kind of. It's the umbrella. It's the umbrella mission and vision of the company that I'm getting bought into as a consumer and that is like super valuable. And that's actually, I don't think we do that well now. I think we have great category expansion. We're super tactical marketers. We can build like doctor Machines around each of those. But we brought on a creative director last year and it's our largest focus this year because we need to like take a step back and like how are we creating that lifestyle, that like more Persona driven content, which the To Cova's at is a perfect example of in order to generate affinity where they'll buy anything from us and then we'll have all the categories that they can actually purchase. So that's how, that's at least how I interpret it. So I appreciated the shout out. I think we are, I think we are doing product expansion well, but from the, the brand and storytelling perspective, I think we're lacking, I'm jealous of, to.
- [16:15]
Connor
Cover Sweepstakes is, I think, one way. And it might not be the classic like big brand campaign, but I do think sweepstakes is a way where you guys created a story, you created a moment and generated, you know, demand and buzz around a talking point that wasn't really there. Right. Like, that was like a growth lever driven by storytelling, you know, so, you know, don't, don't, don't sell yourself short on that one. But I do think there's something to. Which is what we are planning to do. Attach your brand campaigns to a product launch. I think that's probably what is worthwhile rather than just, I don't think it's as impactful as to covis just doing a brand campaign. You know, like there's some value in doing positioning exercises, but I think really when it's, when it relates back to a broader business outcome of a new category, product, channel, demographic, there's a lot of value in it. That's like, it's like all of it together. It's not just one thing. I guess that's what Taylor's trying to say.
- [17:16]
Cody
And they compound, yeah, 100%.
- [17:21]
Connor
It's been really cool to see prescient this year just emerge as one of the leading, you know, trusting solutions for brands to measure their media mix. You know, now more than ever, you know, triangulation, having no source of truth, but really it's best practice to have multiple methods to be able to figure out, you know, what is performing. And one of the things that we love in our toolbox is prescient. But it's been really cool to see a lot of brands onboarding with them and having a lot of success. Onboarding is super quick. It's, it's the quickest I've ever seen from an. Mmm. It's been great for our upper funnel channels. Things like TV and YouTube has really given us confidence and it's very hard to validate and test tv. So they have great integrations. We use Tatari for all our TV buying and so it's the best way that we're able to understand how our upper funnel channels are working. We're not on Amazon, but if you're on Amazon, you can get really cool halo sales impacts of Amazon as well as retail channels. So it's awesome. You can forecast revenue and acquisition costs across all your channels, optimize your media mix to improve your profitability. They've always got new channels coming, which is, which is really cool. It's, it's really played a really big role in us scaling and having the confidence to, to increase our spend in things like TV, both both linear and streaming and YouTube as well. We wouldn't be able to do it without them. So there's a reason why Prescient is trusted by Jones Road Beauty, Hexclad, Holo Socks, Coterie and over a hundred more. And so if you want to be like one of us, like Jones Road, like, like Connor from Hexclad, check out Prescient, which I highly recommend you should go to prescient AI.com/operators to book a demo and see for yourself.
- [18:56]
Cody
Connor, where do you land on the to cover discussion?
- [19:00]
Grace
I feel like the, the main point that Taylor was trying to get across that and this is also what people that disagreed with him were like arguing against is that like Taylor was trying to say growth marketing does not equal direct response marketing. And then a lot of people came in and were trying to say the opposite that oh this isn't direct response. So how could this be a growth marketing channel? You look at go to to cover his website. I bet they have a really long consideration period. I'm looking at a $345 pair of boots right now. I'd be shopping for a long time. And I also bet that if you were to go do a little bit of a deeper dive into their Facebook ad library, I would bet that they have this product that they're showing in this, in this more brand oriented ad also represented in, in their Facebook ad library with some more direct response components. I don't know, I haven't looked but I'm just guessing that that's part of their stack. Like this is a full funnel strategy. It's brilliant. It's a full, it's absolutely full funnel. They are showing this very brand oriented, you know, very vibey video to create a feeling and emotion with the viewer towards their brand that hopefully gets someone to visit their site at some point and then I guarantee they're going to get funneled into this more direct response, you know, middle bottom of funnel ad library and hopefully convert, you know, six, nine, 12 months away. Like this is not an ad you measure on on a one day click. It's not an ad to show to people that are in market. It's an ad to like creative feeling towards their brand and then you know, convert them probably on a much different piece of creative down the line. So I absolutely agree. This is growth marketing. Know growth marketing does not equal direct response performance marketing. We took a similar strategy when we launched Aprons. Like we, we produced assets for every channel, you know, we produced assets that are. Were highly produced, more brand oriented. We didn't, we to went like very brand. Like they. To the point that they didn't mention any value props. So we basically have this like 60 second Gordon spot about the apron that is like very tongue in cheek. It has a lot of humor in it. It's also value proppy. So it's a little bit, you know, more on the direct response or down the direct response on the spectrum towards that end. But I totally get what, what to Covis is doing here. They're building a full funnel strategy and I, I think it's awesome.
- [21:24]
Cody
I think that's, I think that's a great take one in terms of it being growth marketing. This was brought up a couple podcasts ago. But like I was making the point like brand marketing, the best brand marketing is just growth marketing measured over a longer timeframe. Like, like you want to be growing the brand. Like no good brand marketing is like literally just some video that nobody watches. And I think you kind of hit on that point which is like yeah, 100% agree. And then the second one, you're totally right. I haven't seen their Facebook ad account library but we were looking at some of their TV spots. So to Covis has 15 second TV spots. You can find it on ISpot TV or whatever. It's literally UGC. I love it. It's like so it's like they're running this on linear TV and streaming and things like that.
- [22:11]
Connor
That's so ironic because people are like produce video like that doesn't do well on social. Why are they putting that on social? And it's so funny. They go the other way and have UGC on tv.
- [22:20]
Cody
Yeah. And I, I tweeted this and I ended up deleting it because I was like, I don't, I don't have the time to really be a part of this conversation. But I thought it was so ironic too. I. And I, I think it's fantastic. Like it is a horizontal and then just in the middle you have like a 9 by 16 video and it's someone at the store. No, it's a woman. It's a woman filming like her boyfriend or her husband and she's encouraging him to pick out the boots. She's like very organic. Feels really good. She's like, those look so good on you. We should totally get them. You deserve it. Whatever. To covis.com at the end. Like really just fantastic social creative that they're. They're now Running dude, you should, you.
- [22:55]
Connor
Should, you should tweet that and be like this is brand marketing.
- [23:01]
Cody
But yeah, Connor, no, you nailed it. I mean it is like that is they, they are not building their business exclusively off of videos like everybody was discussing. They have a full funnel strategy and it is a matter of getting people bought into the brand and the affinity and then like all sorts of statics and UGCs and whatever else to fill out the funnel.
- [23:19]
Grace
Can you imagine if the covers was just like you know, offer, offer, offer value prop, value prop, value prop. I bet they would be 50% the. The business they are. If all they were trying to do is roll out creative to people that is really meant for people that are like in market at the point of conversion. That would be an absolute disaster for them.
- [23:38]
Cody
Totally. And I, that was so. That was actually the last point that I had for this was the nuance. It's like the nuance that basically ends the whole conversation. So nobody, nobody wants to like really acknowledge it is that certain type of. Certain types of brands are just playing different games. Like I bring up Nectar here too. Nectar. It's fantastic brand, Incredible outcome. Best D2C company from my perspective is not filming videos like the Tobos video. They know that's not their game. They're actually running what you just said Connor. They are closing all the time. They've got an offer on always on lots of statics. They are incredibly doctor focused. They're not running ads without features and benefits and an offer. They're not running ads without the like six hour timer and the, and the spin to win pop up and stuff like that. Like they know what game they're playing to Covis is playing a different game. They know that at this point they, they need to be building brand affinity. And there's a couple things that go into that. One is just the type of product like I think they, they have to be more aspirational. They're selling very expensive boots. So I just want to acknowledge that like the people who are like fighting for their life trying to defend their media buying business or whatever saying that you don't need videos like that are likely serving clients that, that are not. They are not playing the game that to Covis is playing. And then the other bit of nuance is like another dimension is that those, the game that a brand is playing can change over time. I think if day one to Covid showed up with the video that, that we're talking about and I encourage everybody to go watch it, we could link it in the show notes they wouldn't be a brand. Like they were probably more doctor to start like you have to figure out how to generate purchases. You have to be direct response. You have to build a cash flowing business. Now they're doing nine figures a year. They've got a bunch of stores, maybe they've got retail like distributions, different consideration times are different and therefore the game that they are playing is different. So I just think there's like all these different sort of nuances that we have to acknowledge. And that's what's so comical about the discussion. Kind of to begin with, the whole tweet felt tongue in cheek like this is growth. Marketing is a, is just fantastic. It's so simple. Clearly requires more nuance.
- [25:45]
Connor
So much that's.
- [25:47]
Cody
Yeah, yeah, that's the king everyone.
- [25:49]
Grace
The king of getting Twitter fires rolling. Taylor Holiday with a, with a, with a master class and his own craft here.
- [25:55]
Cody
A home run for sure.
- [25:57]
Grace
But by the way though, like this is why tools like MMMS and incrementality tests exist because to go to COVAs, they can absolutely use those tools to go in and, and actually quantify whether or not a video ad like this is a worthwhile investment in certain channels using those tools. So there's still ways to, to take those tools and design experiments to validate, you know, and quantify the effectiveness of an ad like this. You know, just because it's a very brand forward ad. I'm curious, maybe they, maybe they're not doing that. Maybe they are. I think, you know, there's obviously various levels of like performance marketing sophistication at certain brands, but they could absolutely go in and be like, hey, we're gonna run a holdout test in our CTV channel. We're gonna make sure most of the budget's going behind this ad specifically. Or they could even just do a holdout on that creative specifically. They could probably get a really strong mmm read on the channel and be able to back into like what ad is getting the most spend. Like they could absolutely quantify this, this ad or at least directionally.
- [27:02]
Cody
Totally. The other thing that like a, a brand of to Covis's size is, I'm looking up, it doesn't look like they're in retail. So they, they have owned retail and they go D2C and let's just say that that's the case. But for a brand of that size, like there's just so much value that you can get from beautiful creative like that. Like I was actually going to bring up the point if they were selling into a Nordstrom's or whatever. It's like yeah, you go into the Nordstrom's seasonal buy meeting and you start with that video like that. That can have an influence on how many doors you're opening or what that buy order is. So it's just like. So when you're creating that campaign, that seasonal campaign or the product launch campaign or whatever it is like you have to think about it from an omnichannel or like a multi use perspective. You have this hero video. I'm sure they got cut downs out of that. They got static assets. They can build wholesale catalogs, they can build emails, the whole thing. So anyway, I think I bet that team knows what they're doing.
- [28:02]
Grace
Should we have the to Cova's, should we look, should we go to LinkedIn and find someone from to Covis to have on the show?
- [28:08]
Cody
Yeah, totally.
- [28:10]
Grace
Doing some outdoors.
- [28:11]
Connor
I do think that's right. I think you, you guys like hit the nail on the head. Only two things I'll say and again this is no like no critique. Like it's a beautiful campaign. It's a beautiful thing. There is a way to like some of the feedback and I don't know if I even care about it. Like it's probably the least important part of like taking the same messaging and kind of weaving that across channels in a little bit more of like a, like a native way because it's again I don't, I don't think that spot was create. Like that was probably a TV ad that's probably on YouTube. Maybe it's in meta reach campaigns but it's not right supposed to crush on Instagram or TikTok and it's a piece like that isn't going to do very well. But I do think there's a way to take that same message and that same like feel that you want people to have and then partner with creators who can do it in a much more of a lo fi socially native way and then do it across paid social. Like I think those are like the really masterful campaigns when they, when they do it that way.
- [29:03]
Cody
Yeah, I think, I think that's a great point. I don't think this is the only way to do it. I, I wouldn't even argue. I said earlier that this is our like this is Ridge's biggest focus this year is how do we like better activate these like brand campaigns. But I wouldn't even want it to look like that. I would hope it would land closer to what you just described. Cody where we can have like in essence and then we can, we can kind of articulate that essence in more social native ways.
- [29:28]
Connor
Yeah, that's what we're planning for our, our, our April launch which is our big one of the year. The other thing I, I agree with Taylor, what he said. I think he's essentially saying like head of growth is kind of a misnomer for DDC brands. Like that was like a SAS term that kind of got brought over from, you know, to, to dtc and usually it's like a director of growth, director of, you know, paid social. But like really growth is everybody's job and it's the CEO's job is Taylor's take. And I kind of agree with that in a lot of ways. Like even we're going through like a new KPI setting process and like trying to think about individual teams goals is different is hard because it's like, okay, do you hold ahead of growth accountable to acquisition numbers? Like what if there's a product miss? Right. What if, you know, what if there's other things related to it? But I'm trying to, I'm actually using that as a constraint and I'm thinking about going to other teams, going to the product team and saying, hey, if you were responsible for growth of the business, what would you do? Like what would you suggest? What are your levers going to the brand team and say you're not the head of growth. If we couldn't run ads.
- [30:31]
Cody
Right, right.
- [30:31]
Connor
What would you do to grow the brand? Who would you partner with? What activations would you do? And I think almost get everybody thinking like ahead of growth and having their channel or their department be, you know, much more strategic about what's actually what levers they can pull to grow the brand. Because I think a lot of times it's like, all right, you know, brand is as soft. There's no accountability to growth of the business. It's just, we're just making pretty stuff and our job is just to make it on brand. But like I don't necessarily believe in that. Influencer team should be. How are you going to grow the brand with Influencer?
- [31:01]
Cody
Totally. Yeah. And I feel like that is a, like I feel like this was more of a thing in the industry two or three years ago where growth teams would be kind of constrained by the brand team. It's like, oh yeah, our brand team would never approve this. So we can't run ads that way. We may have like over corrected to like, oh my God, everybody needs to do sticky note Ads and have crazy offers all the time and then, and then in reality and then again especially as you become like a nine figure plus brand with like different forms of distribution and partners it just, yeah, it becomes way more comprehensive. I like that take.
- [31:40]
Connor
So we switched CX softwares right before Black Friday. Normally wouldn't be the best decision but we were looking at Rich Panel and it was just so much better than what we were using. Our contract was up and honestly it was, I'm so happy we did. It was the first time ever that we made it through Black Friday and holiday period with no ticket backlog and I really owe that to Rich Panel. First of all it's, it's cheaper, it's, it's way less work. We cut our costs compared to what we were paying before by 50%. It's the first AI platform I've seen that's really built with AI in mind. We're not even fully maximizing what we can do with AI yet so I can't wait to see how much more efficient we can be. But it's really the first one I've seen that's built in this new era of, of commerce and AI tech. It's you know, already being used by over 2,000 brands like us, like Ridge as well. One thing that's been really cool, we were able to leverage a lot of their automations and routing so our, our average response time went way down when we switched them. Our efficiency with AI went way up. We also just implemented their, like their self serve help desk. Reduce our tickets by 30% without affecting anything. We're, we're able to take care of 60% of those interactions without actually having to route them to a person. So obviously there's financial components to that that have been really helpful. The team is great. I see our team going back and forth with the Rich Panel team all the time in Slack. They all, they want feedback, they want feature requests. You're just not going to get that from some of the old legacy players. So it's going to be cheaper. You're going to have better use of AI that everyone's trying to catch up on. The UX is way better. The tagging is better, it has the best analytics suite of any of the tools I've used. So we're super happy. So if your help Desk costs are too high, if you're not thrilled with your outdated software that is, you know, you feel like is robbing you, I highly recommend you switch to Rich Panel. You can reduce cost, reduce ticket volume by 30% and honestly that's pretty conservative. Highly recommend you get a demo and see for yourself. Go to richpanel.com to check it out.
- [33:29]
Cody
Cody, can you talk any more about your, your product launch in April and how you guys are prepping for it?
- [33:34]
Connor
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I think maybe hope maybe like to covis, who knows we had, we had shoot last week. But you know, starting with product launch and you know, being strategic about what's missing in your, you know, your, your product lineup and maybe a part of the market that you know, you're not, you're not currently capturing. So for us we have a pretty big complexion product launch that we think is going to do a really good job reaching some people that maybe don't love our current foundation. And it's a big one. You know, it'll be eight figures for the, for the year. So biggest launch of the year. And so to do that we want to pull out all stops. Like we tier things. I think you guys do as well. But this is like a plus plus, right? So it means like all of the stops. Like because we try to have like different playbooks for launches. A B tier, you know, maybe gets us. It just gets some static ads, no new landing pages, few emails. C tier is like just emails, just a social post. Right. And so this is like a, A plus plus. That means all of the stops. So we shot. So first, the biggest thing, this creative brief is probably like a 50 page creative brief that we have. We have product positioning, all of the product marketing. Here's what exists in the market, here's how it's different, here's a copy, here's what we're positioning. And then also we have this brand campaign that we're launching in parallel. We're actually launching it early. And it's. We're trying to have this very cohesive message that will have across channels. To me that's what a brand campaign is where it's the same thing. It supports a business outcome and it's across channels. And the way you're going to measure it is no last click anything.
- [35:04]
Cody
It's.
- [35:04]
Connor
Is this product launch successful? Right. Like it's really kind of all one this product and brand thing together, but really trying to get who we're trying to reach, what the avatar is, what, what the message is. I can't share, you know the specifics. But it's a product that's supposed to be really easy to use. We're trying to show it be used in people's lifestyles. And so we have four specific Personas that we think this product will do great with. And I think somebody said it on Twitter, but they're like, you should watch the videos and be like, oh, that's me. Like I resonate with them, you know. So we're trying to find those people. So we've got moms, we've got entrepreneurs, stuff like that. People that are busy on the go. So we've got. We shot TV ads when we shot in November actually. Um, and we. We've never shot TV ads for a brand new product before. That's how confident we are in this. Um, and then we just did a shoot last week where we're also trying to push the needle, be a little more creative. So, you know, photo, obviously all of our e comm email, but bunch of out of home. We're going to do our biggest out of home buy ever. Again, trying to really start with what, what is the product, what is the message? And then what are the channels that we're going to activate it on. We're going to go 50k in New York City and actually measure it with house. I'm pretty pumped about that. So it'll be decently big at a home buy, but really just trying to get the word out there we shot more. So we actually didn't plan to shoot on tv kind of like you said about to covis we planned. We. There's like a really good local production company so we had them help with the shoot and they brought their cameras and so we're actually going to be able to turn these into some TV spots again. But we kind of did like very like day in the life lifestyle shoots showing people use it while they're getting ready with their kids or going to the gym or stuff like that with all those Personas. So I'm pretty pumped about that. That'll be organic content. I don't know if you guys ever get like the element ads, like the electrolytes where they show like different like firefighters or crossfitters. Like I love just like picking a Persona and just showing like a firefighter doing firefighting and then like at the end they happen to open an element or stuff like that, there's like storytelling and I think we'll be able to edit the assets where some are just branded, just storytelling and then some have a little bit more of like a doctor product focus, call to action at the end of it. And we're going to do it in a way where we're going to hopefully have the same message across organic social YouTube web e comm. Press. Right. We'll go hard on press. We're actually going to launch this brand campaign a week before the product launches to hopefully get some press out there, but trying to have a very similar cohesive messaging. And then we'll use them on paid social tv and then we'll have the same messaging, but we're partnering with creators who will pay to create content and post it, and we'll use it on Owned, where they're doing the same thing and they're showing day in Life and stuff like that. But it'll be much more in, like a socially native TikTok form, if that makes sense. So that's the plan. That's, you know, what we've been working on for months. We'll see if it's successful, we'll see if it works. But yeah, our biggest launch of the year. So we wanted to pull out all the stops and not just be boring and be like, okay, we have this product launching. Here's what it is. Like, that works for a B or a C launch, but not for our big one of the year.
- [38:04]
Cody
Yeah, dude, that's crazy. And that's in April.
- [38:06]
Connor
Yeah, that's in April. We need IT income soon enough.
- [38:09]
Cody
Do you guys. Yeah, dude, I'm stoked for you. Do you think you'll, like. Do you see this? You think you'll be able to acquire new customers with this product like, two years from now? Do you think you'll have like a miracle bomb funnel and fresh new product?
- [38:25]
Connor
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this will be like an incremental, like 10% of our business, you know, something like that. Yeah. Forecasted, you know, eight figures, first year. It's similar to probably our second best product, but a little different part of the market that it serves. That's the hope. I may be wrong, but we. We will see.
- [38:44]
Grace
Cody, can I ask. Can I ask you a question on the. On a component of this, a planning component. So when you're thinking about a new product like this, Very exciting, by the way. You know, we haven't had anything that's like, to that level, I wouldn't say in the last couple years, but I think we do have some things on the roadmap that are gonna be really exciting. Are you starting with, like, all right, you're starting with this, an A plus plus launch. We think we can acquire new customers with this. We think we can drive LTV with this. Great. And then are you saying, are you, like, backing into the budget from the tactics you want to deploy or Are you more so saying, hey, I think that this can turn into like this much revenue. So I'm comfortable spending like this much in non working media spend to build a funnel. And then you're basically saying, all right, like whatever it is, let's say it's half a million bucks or a hundred thousand dollars, let's go deploy that in the best way possible. So are you starting with like the number and working backwards to the tactics or starting with the tactics and then being like, I know I want to produce like a high production value spot and like paid social statics and like do this influencer activation and like starting with the tactics and then backing into what you think the budget would be to do that?
- [39:56]
Connor
Yeah, that's a good question. Now starting with like the revenue, the business, you know, impact that we think this is going to have, our, you know, demand planning team has, you know, it'll be this many millions for, for the year and then it's obviously, all right, what are we going to do? Hopefully we can beat that. But it's like, okay, I don't want to go and invest, you know, into this out of home, into this production, to these TV spots if it's going to be, you know, 500k additional revenue for a year, which might be like a very small shade extension. Right. So like we're not going to do it that. So I think it's trying to tie, you know, marketing strategy to financial outcomes and then trying to kind of, here's, here's a lot of the feedback I've given my team is in the past we've been like, all right, we should do out of home or we should do this thing. And I'm like, no, what's the story we want to tell? Let's get the message first. Let's get the message, let's do it cohesively and then let's figure out how to activate that and then we can talk budgets. So I think that's it is what's the story that we want to tell actually, even before, Sorry, who do we want to reach? Right. I think that's it. So like, what's the product? What's the business outcome in the product? Who is it for? Who are the Personas or who's the Persona? What's the message that we want to tell that we think is going to be compelling to them? And then we can kind of figure out where to activate it, where we think makes sense, and then obviously budget from there. But we're also trying to be as efficient as possible with it. And I think we do a pretty good job. I'm sure you guys do as well. Where, like, how can you shoot things for paid social, organic, social, econ, tv, all on the same shoot as much as possible. Obviously not everything is going to work everywhere. But do you guys do the same? I'm imagining.
- [41:29]
Grace
Yeah, yeah, definitely trying to repurpose. I, I really resonate with your, with your note about, like, starting with the message and then like, following the intuitive path. Like, what's the, like, how do you make that message cohesive? Because that's what we do with the super bowl, right? Like, you have this, this message that, that is the hero spot. And then the question becomes, how do you continue that message in a, in a way that makes sense, in a way that's congruent across all your channels, in a way that's like, in no way disjointed. So that's, that's really the. I guess I wasn't thinking about it that way at the time, but that is in retrospect, the, the way, like the path we took to decide how we want to activate on Organic Influencer and how we want to build out the website and how we want to have like, the paid social extension was all, all about congruency in the message and making it all make sense.
- [42:19]
Connor
Dude, I might need that meme page.
- [42:21]
Grace
Hookup I got you.
- [42:23]
Connor
Let me know. Yeah, no, I think you guys crushed it. I mean, you guys had the offer around it. You had the TV spot. I've seen different edits of that same footage on TikTok. I haven't seen any of the influencer stuff, like, firsthand, but I've seen people talk about it, so. Yeah, I think you guys crushed that.
- [42:36]
Grace
Yeah, thanks. I, I, yeah, I thought you just like, you're putting it a really, like, it's really coherent how you're explaining it with, like, start with the message. Like, don't, don't square peg, round hole, anything. If you start with a message, it's a pretty good. And you follow that along the entire, you know, mapping of the funnel. Like, chances are you're probably not going to do anything you didn't need to do and it won't be disjointed.
- [43:00]
Connor
My favorite one, I think I talked about on the podcast once before. So, Bobby, where Shereen used to work, they did one. If you guys know there's a YouTube chef named Molly Bass. Do you know her? Yeah, it's like she used to be. Bon appetit.
- [43:14]
Grace
Wait, hold on, hold on. Pause real quick. Yeah, I just knew a digital creator that Connor didn't know. An Internet thing that they were.
- [43:22]
Connor
Because it's her food.
- [43:23]
Cody
Yeah. Yeah.
- [43:24]
Connor
Oh, she makes some very good food. She's got some great cookbooks. She's. She's awesome. She's so. She's got a really loyal following. She did a lactation cookie ad in Times Square. It got taken down because it was. She was like showing her boob or part of it and stuff. So they. It got taken down and then. So whoever on the brand team at Bobby had the idea. Bobby's like a formula company for. For kids was like, let's sign Molly Baz. Let's do. Let's do a campaign with her. So they kind of. There was no product launch, but they still took this moment right, where they're like, hey, this is a way to get attention, like manufacture conversation. So they essentially did a Times Square ad with Molly Baz, put it up in there. That got a ton of press. That was. That was super pressworthy. So just tons of earned media people talking about it. And then. And then I think they did an excellent job activating all of their channels. So social. They shot content with her video content both on Owned Social, talking about the moment and what happened. And it was much more of a brand thing because there was no new product attached to it. Earned. So Molly posted it on her own stuff, either some. Some collab posts or posted on her own. It was on E Comm. They ran some ads. I think that was a. One thing that maybe fell short. I thought they could have gone a little bit harder on like the. The paid social. But it was just so cool to see this moment and all of the earned media that this created and all the conversation, but just across pretty much every channel that you have. So I was super inspired by that. I think Hexclyde did a great job with it. And so that's what I think is super impressive. Where I think sometimes marketers think like, oh, this is a brand channel. This is a growth channel. But it's kind of like, how do we have this moment and this message that gets distributed across all of our channels?
- [45:10]
Cody
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- [46:25]
Grace
Oh, yeah.
- [46:27]
Cody
All right. So I actually said that we should talk about this. This Motion premiere sponsored. This isn't a sponsored segment necessarily. I think we're recording this February 25th. Reza told me they're launching it Thursday. So in a couple days on the 27th. This will come out in a couple weeks. So we're, we're filming this before any of the like, official language comes out. But we've all done demos separately. Connor, maybe do you want to take a pass? Or Cody, about what the funniest.
- [46:56]
Connor
So I think we're all, I'm in the ba. I got the beta. So I open it up. Right now we're talking about this to Covis ad. All this arguing. I open it up. The first workflow. Ugly ad finder. Very hot.
- [47:06]
Cody
Okay, so explain, Explain what's, Explain what's going on because maybe people won't. Won't have caught it at this point.
- [47:12]
Connor
All right, so my understanding, yeah, Motion, our sponsor, this is not a sponsored one, but I know we've all done demos with Reza where they are building AI agents. And so, you know, my understanding of a vertical AI agent is essentially, you know, AI that actually does things for you. So it's not just a chat, but it actually can kind of go and interact with data and do actions that you want it to do. So we're, we're considering why we hired a new creative strategist. So we had, I had them meet with Reza and Evan and the team and actually like show a Lot of Connor found out she knows yours actually came from. Came from same agency, Connor Hexcloud as well. But we had her meet with Motion and kind of just show like what our workflow is, how she iterates, how she analyzes data, stuff like that. And theoretically they can build any of that workflow and automate it. And if there's something that you can give the AI the inputs or the workflow and it can kind of create logic for it, they can theoretically automate it. So I know that Motion is starting with a few of the, you know, really respected people in the space. I know that. You know, I've got one with Barry, they've got one with Jess Bachmann, they got one with Darren Denny. I think Alex Cooper might have one. I think they're working with, with that guy Jimmy. I know you guys know him, but I. That's what I know. I haven't played around that much, but I think it's awesome. Anything I missed there?
- [48:32]
Cody
Yeah, like, I think that's. I think he did a great job explaining it. It's just really fascinating. What Reza told me, which I really liked, was he really sees AI as a way to, I have it written down here, turn labor into software. So like he Talked about, like SaaS originally was like enabling workflows. You're like putting workflows in the cloud that you can collaborate on, stuff like that. This is like, hey, if you have an SOP that you would give to a junior Creative Strategist, theoretically you can give that same SOP if you have like thought through granularly, what are the decisions and actions that you need to take in this process? If you can define it in that way, you can basically map it out within Motion's agent building tool. And then instead of hiring your third or fourth or fifth junior Creative Strategist, like a lot of that stuff can get automated. And I just thought that that was one. I think it's obviously super cool what they're doing. I think it's really cool for the industry. I was looking at it and I'm like, I just love more workflow automations like this. Other places, they're obviously sitting on top of all of our ad creative and, and performance data. So you're able to build out workflows around that. But like I could see a year or 18 months or two years from now like the same thing living within Shopify. Like, I just think it's a very interesting and early example of how we might be dealing with AI agents. So that was that was my big takeaway. Just that labor into software transition made a lot of sense to me. And two, I thought this was a great example of it.
- [49:56]
Grace
I, yeah, I thought it was. So I just met with them on Monday. So it was very, it's very fresh for me. What we're doing now is we are connecting like we're getting our creative team, our paid media team connected with their team just so we can brief them on like, hey, here's our weekly process for analyzing creatives. Like here's the report that we pull, here's how we're using motion in it. And again the idea is that we can go in there, build an AI powered workflow and now that report is like the click of a button away and like that's a, that's a time intensive report to pull. There's obviously like human error that can become involved when you're doing something like that every week. So the idea is that yeah, they can take some of your evergreen workflows and turn them into these AI workflows basically. And then the one that they showed me that is like the example is one of the examples was the, the DARA workflow. So basically the DAR workflow is you can, you can come in so you click on like their, her AI workflow. You see like top creatives here. And then you can like actually click on the ad and tell the, the AI to analyze the ad and it's actually going to look and give you like qualitative takeaways at the certain elements that might be making this ad work. So you know, like as you can imagine, again that's a very time intensive process and it still requires a person. Like I don't think that's replacing anyone. It still requires a person to like ingest that information and then go decide what they want to do about it. Like okay, great. Like first off, do I agree with what the AI agent is telling me about why this is working? If I do, then what are the next steps I take? Like do I go and iterate, do I go make some net new concepts that are using some of these elements? So I don't think it's necessarily like it's not erasing the strategist in any way, but it's like real. It's a really powerful tool that I think will just allow people to send spend more time on strategy and less time on hey, like here's the top 10 ads from last week. I need you to write three bullets on like why you think each is working. Like it's a. It's. It was instantaneous and you know, it's, it's. I could see how it can be really powerful. So we're excited to dig in and, and like, try to build some of these, you know, manual workflows that are based on what we're currently doing or not. We're build some workflows around what we're currently doing manually and try to make it, you know, powered through these AI workflows. Right?
- [52:16]
Cody
Because like Dara's, Dara Denny's agent, she's like, she has written down and soped and kind of codified the way that she thinks about creative. She's described that to the LLM. The LLM can then look at the, the AD Creative frame by frame and like categorize it in a way that she would. And then it can do the analysis based on like, oh, you're ugc, you know, whatever, really rudimentary examples here, but like your UGC content is outperforming your high quality content. And I could figure out what is ugc, what is high quality and then do an analysis on whether there's some difference in performance based on that dimension, which is super, super cool. What I thought was funny, Reza said this to me. I wanted to bring it up word for word. I think I wrote this down because what I just said was LLMs will be able to like, basically re. Categorize or like understand what's happening within a piece of creative and then do analyses like, based on those different attributes. So, so Reza said that we will be broken free from the chains of naming conventions because we won't have to sit there being like, this is a UGC ad. This is, this hook. This is, you know, this is fast paced. This is voiceover. This doesn't. You don't need any of that. The LLM will look frame by frame and listen to the audio. And if those are the things you care about, you could theoretically categorize them and then do analyses based on that. So if this all works, if this is the future of AI, it might be also the end of naming conventions, in which case that's scary. I don't know.
- [53:42]
Grace
The backbone, the backbone of Ridge is going to be broken in half. What?
- [53:46]
Connor
Come on.
- [53:47]
Grace
That can't happen.
- [53:48]
Connor
Yeah, no, like, so I met with somebody today, just a director of growth somewhere, and they do a really good job with, with Creative and what they're launching. So I just want to learn what their team was like and what their process is like. And they kind of had like a Flow chart built out in figjam. But there was a bunch of logic that they're you know, like rules that their creative team had which is like, all right, if it hits these metrics scale, if it's this range iterate. And like they had a flowchart built out like with all of that logic that could, my guess is easily become an agent that just does it automatically. Because like we just had one from our new creative strategist just like this one winner take off and got, you know, 20% of the spend in our account. And like as pumped as we were, it was crushing. Like I'm like crap, this thing is going to fatigue if we don't do something about it, you know. And like I want to have, I want us to have this and I don't know if you guys do. But like this automatic process which when certain numbers get hit and it spends this much in a day like that just triggers some notification something where it's like boom, you got to go and iterate on this, you know. And so I think that that could be almost something that AI could do better because you know, that's easy for a person to kind of just miss that. But if there's this thing which is just like boom, this, this is like an alarm, this is a red flag. Like this ad is really declining or this ad is really scaling, like you got to go do it. I think that would be a really cool one. That would be really helpful to us.
- [55:03]
Cody
Yeah, totally. Like, and, and, and I think like once we're put into this headspace, because I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective but like if you give yourself the, if you want to use these like in house built vertical AI agents around your performance creative, it forces you to think about all of the ways to do the role at like a really granular level. If this, then that like um, and, and, and I was, I was describing this as like the bottoms up where it's like we are in the ad account, we are looking at performance across certain dimensions. We are noticing trends and then based on that performance we have follow ups where it's like, oh, we should iterate on this. This stuff is underperforming. Videos are overperforming. A lot of our budgets going to statics. Like let's change those things. There's like all sorts of like just decision trees that branch out from that and it's as simple as like oh, if this creative is crushing, like let's identify, let's ideate. Why is it like the message is it the format, is it the hook, is it, you know, something along those lines? And then like, yeah, how do you, how do you fully exploit that idea? This is like I've also talked about exploration versus exploitation. How do you identify what's working and then exploit that as quickly as possible? And that's a process that theoretically just be codified. And it's like to your point Cody, like if this is triggered then we do these things and the team basically does that. Now I've said like I want to be detecting those things, I want to be super aggressive when we find ourselves in that situation, but maybe Motion's just going to automate it in, in a year and a half we'll have the Connor McDonald bot that, that, that does creative exploitation.
- [56:39]
Grace
So North Beam just released this new attribution model called Clicks and Views Enhanced and I am really excited about it. I think it is really, really game changing for brands of view heavy channels like TikTok. So I want to explain first what is the difference between this new model of attribution and North Beam's other models of attribution? North theme's other models of attribution are probabilistic and they're probabilistic because they're doing machine learning to make their best guess about where purchases, where revenue is coming from. What's different about this Clicks and enhanced views is that because they're working directly with the platform, it's now deterministic. They're actually able to connect a real impression to a real purchase. Which just means that ultimately this data is, is real data. It's not model data that has really serious implications. What it means is that now instead of only getting a 24 hour look on view based attribution, you now get just as long of windows that you're getting on clickspace. So now if you go into, if you go to Clicks and Views, you'll notice that no matter how long you extend the ClickBase window in Northbeam, that view based always stays at one day. When you now go into the clicks and enhance views, you'll notice that whatever time window you're selecting is for views and clicks. So now in TikTok you can actually measure a conversion 30, 60, 90 days from that impression, which again is really important for brands that have a lot of top of funnel happening through videos and really important for brands that have longer consideration periods or that conversion often is not going to happen within that first 24 hours of seeing that video. I was just looking at this last night. I was simply selecting the same period of time and clicking back and forth between the 90 day click one day view and the new enhanced clicks and views window that has 90 day click 90 day view. And the amount of attribution in ROAS increase and revenue increase that I saw was, was really, really insightful and I can't emphasize enough how important this is for channels that don't garner a click as much as a Facebook or Instagram ad or Google Ad and are a lot more video view heavy like TikTok. So right now the clicks and views enhanced only covers TikTok and it's still in beta. But this attribution model is rolling out to other platforms very soon. If you want to check out the incredible results of the TikTok beta and just information on it in general, check out North Beam's landing page at northbeam IO Clicks Dash and Dash views enhanced. Who do you think is like I think this is going to be revolutionary. I think this is the emotion just continues to build a best in class creative analytics tool. You know I know like a lot of the like prescient is really you know driven by AI and how that they, how they run their models, you know Rich panel, same thing like they're using AI to power a lot of their, their customer service. Are there any others that stick out to you all or to each of you as you know e commerce technology companies that are you know leveraging AI in just an insanely value added way. Because when I saw Reza show me this like this, this seems like pretty, pretty game changing and I'm pretty like bearish anytime I hear AI because I feel like for the longest time people were trying to like inject AI into everything because it was the new buzzword and it's fun to see it like become really value added in a lot of different ways now.
- [60:16]
Connor
So just for the listeners, like I promise this isn't planned. This is not just like a sponsored episode but I'm going to say one of our sponsors Rich panel now I had a me actually came out to, to lunch last week and they're just doing like a, like a customer tour to kind of meet with a lot of customers which I thought was really cool and dope but I think they do a great job. I think they've kind of been built you know with that in mind. I know like when we originally had the demo and Connor and I both signed up like that was what we liked. So I think they're doing a really good job. It seems like a lot of the Other competitors are starting to copy them and obviously everybody's adding AI on whether it's a buzzword or not. But I think they're doing a really good job. It's, it's great. We're using AI on 70% of some form of AI. Even if it's an like a prompt or like something gets reviewed by a human, it's not automatically going out by itself but it's on, you know, 70% of things, you know. So I think that's, I think that's awesome. I think it's great. It's getting better all the time. It's learning from it. So I think they're, they are another one. There's a few others I've seen. Connor, have you guys been using Icon to make ads? Are you still playing with that?
- [61:19]
Cody
Yeah, Icons, Icons, a really unique tool I think we had, we haven't had. It's not like it's not providing like the, the, the far and away best winners in the account but we've got, we're like AI is generating ads that are getting spend within meta which I think is just incredibly. Yeah, yeah. What comes to mind for me is like well what are the, what are the software tools or services or whatever that are just sitting over important data? Like Motion's in an interesting position. They have insight into all the creative, they have insight into all the performance analytics. You can like do a lot there. Then Moshe's. Sorry. Reza's vision is that they'll connect into more best of best in class tools. You look at someone like a rich panel, obviously all of your CX interactions, incredibly valuable like set of data. They can build some really unique tools on top of that and then they're connected into all of your social platforms. On Cody and I's 2025 prediction episode I talked about Postscript. They're doing some really unique stuff with their AI powered messaging. They have a ton of conversations happening all the time and they are sending a bunch of messages so they can ideate and it's text based medium so it's like really well suited for kind of AI to play a role. Those come to mind for me I'd love to see more analytics tools do a better job. Like everything Motion's doing is fantastic. I'd, I'd love to do that within a Google Analytics, a North Beam, a Shopify, something like that.
- [62:45]
Connor
What would you want?
- [62:45]
Cody
Because you can imagine. Oh well we just talked about all these like decision trees right. Where it's like there are so many decision trees. If you Just look at like your business level data. Are we above or below projections? Are we up or down week over week? Like is Amer, you know, above or below projections? Where is MER at? So therefore what's returning customer revenue? Like? There are so many data points that like we're all very familiar with and our jobs are basically to synthesize all of that into like setting priorities and AI would just be. I don't know if it'd be better, but it could at least be more comprehensive and like automate a lot of that. And in the same way that motion might tee up a creative strategies to be higher leverage, we could use better business data that is like teeing me up every single morning or every single Monday with last week's performance. A lot of that right now. Like that's what my team puts together. I'll give you a per a very simple example. I've actually sent you guys this deck before. But like our paid media team, which is like the closest we have to like a growth team I guess we'll look at in the US by category are we above or below projections? And then depending on if we're above projections and above efficiency, then we can spend more. So then you look at the channel level, what's over underperforming and then you can set a budget recommendation. Like we are growing over efficiency and TikTok's performing really well. So let's scale there. Like that is a very simple set of decisions that our team manually walks through now and then puts together those recommendations and that could just be codified and delivered to me Monday morning rather than someone spending a couple hours on Monday putting that all together.
- [64:18]
Connor
Yeah, for sure. I agree. And they could probably do a better job because there are so many. There's so much nuance. Like it's not like, oh, when MER is below target, you always cut back. It's like, well it depends on AME R and it depends on contribution margin and volume and there's. There's so many potential targets. So. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean I think I will probably do the media buying as well. Not just give you the insights, but then it'll also be able to go and do the thing probably.
- [64:42]
Cody
Yeah, that'd be. That'll be pretty sick too, I think.
- [64:46]
Grace
Yeah, I, I was going to real quick say based there, you know, pression actually does something that's not too indifferent from what you just described, Connor, where you can basically go into it and say like if you have the, the first part of the analysis which is hey, we're above MER target, we're above revenue target. Thus we want to spend more. If you can basically take that, that dollar number, plug it into pressure and say, hey, I want to go and spend another $200,000 per week on ads. And then it's gonna, it'll give you a recommendation based on the MMM readouts. Right. Where you want to put that. So I actually like the, the part that it's just like the first part's not automated but like once you've made that decision that we're going to spend more or spend less, you can go and do that and it'll give you that, that that channel read, which is interesting.
- [65:32]
Cody
Yeah. And that's what an MMM does, right? It has, it has all the channel data. It has like assumed cost curve. So it knows if you want to spe, what's the optimal way to do that across all your different cost curves, across all your different channels. So yeah, there's like, that would play a role in there. Like theoretically Prescient would need some more like business level stuff. Prescient doesn't have. I don't really know. I don't use it. But like Amazon data and new customer and returning customer, like I'd want to aggregate it. So it's like, that's why it ends up feeling to me like there's gonna be some really cool stuff sitting over data warehouses. Cause it's going to be so bespoke by brand so that maybe there's a motion like agent tool in the future that sits over your data warehouse and then plugs into motion and pression and north beam and you know, whatever, so that you can map out these like workflows and you're like, if this is happening, then go to, go to my MMM and tell me how to spend an additional $200,000 or whatever.
- [66:26]
Grace
Yeah, that'd be cool. I would, I would love to be able to go into like a CDP and be like. Instead of going into the actual like templated place in the CDP where it's like, hey, if you go to market, like if you want to market basket analysis, you go here. If you want to look at like LTV by product cohort, you go here and you start to pump in the filters. I would love just to be like chat GPT style, be like, hey, like tell me in the last six months, everyone who's bought a 12 piece set, like what are the next most. Three commonly brought individual SKUs that are in the same order. Okay, that's one breakdown. The other Lens is. Well, what are the next three most popular SKUs for the second order that were not included in the first order and if I could just like give it a prompt and then it could visualize it for me that would be like the same way you can go to chat GPT and be like, hey, design me a, an image that includes like a, a historical looking building and it's on like a farm, like a farm somewhere and there's a chicken in the background and it's spits out like an image for you. Like if you could do that with like a CDP or really any data analytics tool that'd be really cool.
- [67:33]
Connor
It does exist. I can't, I can't say how good it is but there are definitely some like text to SQL prompt stuff. Oh, I love that. I don't know exactly how good but yeah, I mean I, I think totally like that functionality because I think code stuff is a lot easier than like design. So I think that one will be really easy. So I think that's great. A few others I think like forecasting it's kind of same as media buying. Like there's a lot of manual things that have to happen is like, all right, well we, we, you know, here's our historical. But then here's this launch and here's a recent trend and then here's day of the week and things like that and like a lot of manual things that take time but it's also like there's either guesswork or you're doing it manually. All right, well we have a launch and it's a B launch. So let's compare it our Lyft when a normal B launch and let's look at how the revenue is split over time. All right, on launch day we're at 100% and then second day drops down 20% and like that is something I could probably just do all of that. There's so many like manual little inputs and I feel like you know, for forecasting it could be really helpful and powerful. And I think like Conor, you said like anything with data like I think and I've seen, I don't know if you guys have seen but Meta actually gave grants to a few creative agencies to build softwares. So I think I've seen some cool stuff. One of the agencies we're working with for like review analysis and I know you can do that with ChatGPT, but I think you know, it. Part of the problem with working with GBT is like you have to kind of connect all the data it's not in there. So you have to kind of create GPTs and do it. But I think if you have it, you know, connected and in places, review analysis because like, for example, our creative strategist is great, but it took her two weeks to, you know, do her initial audit where she's looking through all the ads, all the research, stuff like that, you know, and I find that agencies will do that when you start working with them and then a lot of them won't continue it just because it's a time suck. But it's obviously so important. So I think, I think that one is, is cool and, you know, will continue to be cool.
- [69:32]
Cody
Yeah, 100%. And that's what, that's what, that's why, I think again, that's why I wanted to talk about this motion AI tool at all is because it's a cool, unique example of this like vertical where I'm sure they didn't develop an LLM right? Like under the hood. It is probably OpenAI or sauna or something like that. They just have the data that it's sitting on top of and like, rather than you downloading all your Facebook ads and throwing them into Google Gemini or whatever, like, it's happening right where you're doing your analysis now. And I think that's really cool. So a lot of this stuff, what you described, Connor, can totally be done. It's just a pain in the ass. You got to export the data, you got to import it. It's like, yeah, it should just be always on, always running and like, just happening more effortlessly. So, yeah, excited for the future. You know, this came to mind. This was other news that I was kind of interested in. Do you guys have a take on Klaviyo's product development?
- [70:20]
Connor
I do, I do.
- [70:23]
Cody
Okay. Do you want to talk about it? We can also not go here, but we're talking about, we're talking about tooling updates and I thought the Klaviyo one last week was interest, like super interesting.
- [70:33]
Connor
I think, I think one of my predictions that hopefully will come true is I think we're going to, from this year is we're going to see, you know, SAS consolidation. Brands are going to want to cut costs and, you know, it's, it's only going to make sense. So I think it makes sense theoretically having, you know, a cdp, which is essentially to me, correct me if I'm wrong, it's essentially having a gorgeous or rich panel in Klaviyo. So it's like your ESP that you send Emails from is the same software that you're using. I also think there's a lot of data sharing between them that could be really helpful. And also, you know, I think when TAM gets maximized, you know, or you hit the limits of Tammy, hit your local, local maximo. Like you have to then just charge more or go product expansion to the same audience. So it seems like that's what they're trying to do. My guess is it won't go super well. I don't think Klaviyo has done a great job with product releases. It doesn't seem like SMS is widely adopted or reviews. I think they've just lost their, they've just treated customers poorly. I'm just going to say it, you know, but with all the price increases and I just feel like their, their brand reputation isn't great right now. And you know, with. So with that being said, I don't see that this adoption going super well for most D2C for them. What do you guys think?
- [71:48]
Cody
Do you have a perspective?
- [71:50]
Grace
I don't have a take. I, I would need to go and reread it.
- [71:53]
Cody
Yeah, my take is similar to Cody's. The, the way SMS has been rolled out. I mean they were years late to SMS and they're like that was, that was, that should have been like totally in their wheelhouse. I said for a really long time like they're an esp. They're the closest thing really any brand has to like a CRM. Like that should be the place where we're like enriching customer profiles with additional data for better segmenting. And then they kind of have some of these tools where you like push audiences to Google or to Facebook but those don't get used all that often. So this idea of like them building out the customer hub and like embracing that role a little bit more is like long overdue I think. So I'm excited that they're doing it. Rolling in the CX tooling and like the, the things like that makes total sense. Like that should all live under one umbrella. So I'm excited about the future. I've always been bullish on consolidation to the point like I was wrong. Like we just haven't seen consolidation. I was bullish on consolidation six years ago. I thought like Privy was really cool which was, you know, your pop up, your ESP or SMS all in one in one product suite. Maybe we begin to see it now. I don't think from Klaviyo it comes with cost savings. That's why I wouldn't be bullish on.
- [73:04]
Connor
It for like you still might see consolidation. Do you? 20, 25, 2026. You think we'll see it?
- [73:11]
Cody
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Actually, you know, like even what Motion's doing with their like their like creative swipe file, like they've got creative inspiration now, like they're going to build out more tooling there. I look at someone like a postscript, they're doing cash back, they're doing sms. Like I think eventually they get into more of a product suite. They, they actually, they really believed the whole time that it wasn't the time for consolidation. They could have launched, they could have acquired some small ESP like many years ago and they stuck to sms. I think that probably changes and the Fondue acquisition was an example of that. So I think we're trending in that direction is my basic answer. Because also I think the winners, like the quote unquote winners, the E Comm SaaS, brands that have gotten adoption and scaled are all going to find themselves in the position that Klaviyo is in where it's like if you want to continue growing revenue, you have to just monetize in new ways and that will come from new tools and I think brands will benefit from it. Just like easier connectivity. I think we'll be able to build better customer journeys and better site experiences when just more things are rolled together. So I'm excited about it and then I just think it'll make business sense for everyone else.
- [74:15]
Connor
Absolutely agree. And especially with how much easier it's going to be for companies to build software.
- [74:20]
Cody
Yeah, 100%. All right, that's a wrap on another episode of Marketing Operators. Thank you as always for joining. Thank you to our sponsors, Motion, Prescient, Rich Panel, aftercell and northbeam. As always, make sure to share with your friends, family, colleagues, post it in your slack. We appreciate you listening and looking forward to talking next week.