Inside Cozy Earth’s Viral Social Challenge with CMO George Davis

Summary

Podcast Summary: Inside Cozy Earth’s Viral Social Challenge with CMO George Davis

Podcast: Marketing Operators
Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker (absent this episode)
Guest: George Davis, CMO of Cozy Earth
Episode Date: September 23, 2025
Episode: 78

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the creative and operational mechanics behind Cozy Earth’s viral “Bedrock Challenge” — a live-streamed social media event that drove major brand engagement and follower growth. George Davis details how Cozy Earth executed both seasons of the challenge, what made it successful, and the balancing act between bold brand initiatives and evergreen marketing work. The latter part of the episode pivots to a nuanced, in-the-weeds discussion of incrementality measurement and media allocation, as the hosts and guest share learnings from live channel holdouts and attribution strategies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origin and Execution of the Bedrock Challenge

Origins & Inspiration

• The idea emerged from a conversation with marketer Taylor Holiday about the need to break away from tired DTC playbooks and create truly eye-catching content.
  Quote:

  "Everyone’s doing the same thing... Why don’t we go do something different? Try to do something that’s actually eye-catching and that people will talk about."
  (George, 05:29)

Mechanics of the Challenge

• Format: Five beds, first participant to leave loses, last remaining wins the cash prize.
• Season 1: Internal MVP with employees, $1,000 prize, streamed via TikTok Live, allowed bathroom breaks, food delivered to beds.
  Quote:

  "Basically, we just set up five beds and then first person to get out of the bed lost the challenge, and the last person standing won the money..."
  (George, 07:46)

Metrics & Results

• Season 1:

  • 15,000 new followers, 15 million impressions, cost under $2,000

• Season 2:

  • 10 external participants, $25,000 prize, lasted 5.5 days, 70,000 new followers
  • 50 million organic impressions, total reach 84 million, 3 million live viewers with average 28 minute watch time
  • 15,000+ email sign-ups

• Brand Impact:

  "People were invested... we gained 15,000 followers... the anecdotal, like, response that we got from people was the most compelling piece."
  (George, 08:35)

Engaging the Audience

• Contestants faced daily challenges, bizarre food punishments, and nighttime activities to keep things fresh and interactive.
• Viewers were highly engaged, especially at night, and emotionally invested in the contestants.
  Quote:

  "You had people in the live crying... there’s these moments throughout the competition where this brand affinity is growing."
  (George, 16:23)

2. Brand-Building vs. Performance: Measuring Success

• The campaign goal was not immediate sales, but building powerful brand awareness through meaningful, high-impression content.

• Some sales lift was noted during and after the campaign, but attribution is “fuzzy.”
  Quote:

  "If we focus this on sales, you’re probably going to lose out on some of the entertainment factor... we’re going to try to entertain people and... actually build brand here."
  (George, 18:49)

• The amplified TikTok audience led to increased paid media performance and more efficient CPAs, supporting the idea of surrounding the challenge with targeted paid campaigns.
  Quote:

  "If you look at our TikTok metrics over the course of the challenge, the actual paid media efficiency... night and day, better than it’s ever been."
  (George, 20:05)

3. Team Dynamic and Risk Tolerance

• The challenge was a major team distraction but energizing; the chance to “take a big swing” depends on founder and leadership willingness to tolerate risk and failure.

• Internal opposition existed, but the campaign’s success depended on risk-taking from the top down.
  Quote:

  "We are able to have, you know, an appetite for that risk because Tyler, our founder, is willing to take risk and is willing to stand with me if it fails..."
  (George, 34:46)

• The excitement for team participation was palpable, though the sustained workload became challenging:

  "The team loves it. Until you’re four days in working 15 hour shifts and then everyone... starts to love it a little less."
  (George, 38:18)

4. Defensibility and the Next Evolution

• Other brands are quickly copying sweepstakes and social challenges, but Bedrock is particularly defensible because it’s deeply on-brand and uniquely executed.

• Series appears to be compounding over time, with each season getting bigger and more effective.
  Quote:

  "You can’t copy it exactly. You gotta figure out what can be unique to your brand."
  (George, 39:23 & 00:21)

• Future seasons will prioritize even more support through paid media, clearer brand messaging, and possibly brand partnerships/sponsorships for scale.

  "How can we surround this with other paid media efforts in TikTok... But I want to do things like... supporting the main story that you’re trying to deliver with Bedrock."
  (George, 28:51)

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5. Discussion: Incrementality Measurement in Modern DTC

Challenges with True Incrementality

• The team addresses challenges in measuring true incrementality across ad channels, especially for established brands with long consideration cycles and blended media mixes.

• Attribution overlaps cause holdouts to understate channel impact, and short-term tests often lack accuracy. Channels like Meta/Google may appear unprofitable on holdout but still drive meaningful lifts when zoomed out.
  Quote:

  "There’s probably a lot of overlap within that audience. And so if you turn off meta, those people are still going to be served ads from another channel and therefore the incrementality read is going to show lower..."
  (George, 46:56)

Directional Testing vs. Absolute Returns

• With sub-channel or short-term holdouts, focus is shifting to directionality (which cohort/approach performs better) rather than relying on absolute IROAS metrics.
• Longer, more comprehensive holdouts (multi-channel, over quarters) offer truer reads but lower actionability.

"As soon as you start doing subsets of strategies for weeks at a time, I think it gets a little bit noisy and that’s when we’re going to focus on directionality."
(Host, 55:05)

The Team’s Takeaways

• Use large-scale, long-duration holdouts to validate total marketing efficiency.
• Use shorter, targeted holdouts to find directional insights for more nimble channel allocation.
• Accept some ambiguity: not every metric is actionable, but they inform risk-taking and budget decisions.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• The MVP Origin:
  "I picked five employees. Picked the funniest employees we have, put them in a bed. The prize will be a thousand dollars, and we’ll see if anyone watches." (George, 05:29)

• Achieving Impactful Impressions:
  "3 million people averaging 28 minutes watching the stream is absolutely insane... so much watch time spent looking at Cozy Earth social channels for a very branded social campaign." (Host, 15:34)

• Risk and Morale:
  "Big things are going to fail nine out of ten times... What you’re looking for is the 1 out of 10 success rate and hopefully something that can deliver an outsized return." (George, 35:46)

• Brand Building, Not Just Sales:
  "We committed to the fact that... we’re going to try to entertain people and... actually build brand here rather than just try to tie this to some sales metric..." (George, 18:49)

• On Team Distraction:
  "I think it’s worth the distraction. I think it’s worth disrupting the normal business in order to create upside... If you just continue down the current path, it probably doesn’t end well for a lot of us." (George, 23:37)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Topic | |-----------|------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–02:17 | George’s Career Path at Cozy Earth | | 05:09–09:40 | Bedrock Challenge: Origins, Mechanics, Metrics| | 09:56–13:13 | Upgrading to Season Two (Casting, Prize, Scale)| | 14:02–16:53 | Audience Engagement, Brand Impression | | 18:28–21:33 | Sales Impact, Brand Vs. Performance | | 23:10–25:33 | Prioritization, Distraction vs. ROI | | 28:51–31:14 | Season Three Planning, Paid Media Surround | | 34:46–38:34 | Team Dynamics, Risk Willingness, Morale | | 38:52–41:20 | Defensibility, Brand Differentiation | | 45:13–51:40 | Incrementality Measurement, Holdout Learnings | | 54:12–62:54 | Comprehensive Channel Testing, Actionability | | 63:04–End | Closing Thoughts |

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Episode Takeaways

• Innovative Brand Play: Cozy Earth’s Bedrock Challenge demonstrates how brands can own viral moments and build community by aligning experiential content with brand values.
• Risk and Reward: To stand out in the crowded DTC ecosystem, brands must be willing to disrupt workflows and embrace (managed) risk.
• Brand ≠ Immediate Sales: Sometimes the best long-term marketing investments won’t show direct sales ROI — but create lasting audience value and improved future marketing efficiency.
• Attribution is Messy, Direction Matters: In a multi-channel world, absolute incrementality is less actionable. Directional tests are often the most pragmatic tool for modern marketers.
• Defensible Creative Is King: The more closely an activation is tied to brand identity and value, the harder it is to copy — and the more it compounds over time.

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For DTC teams, founders, and marketers seeking playbooks for outsized, brand-defining wins — and a candid look at the strategic aftermath — this episode is an essential listen.

Transcript

[George Davis]

So basically we just set up five beds and then first person to get out of bed lost the challenge. We gained like 15,000 followers on that first one and had like 15 million impressions. And the prize was like $1,000.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

We've got a special guest, George Davis, CMO of Cozy Earth. We're going to talk about my favorite social challenge I've seen any DTC brand run. We got some really cool incrementality stuff to talk about.

[George Davis]

You can't copy it exactly. You got to figure out what can be unique to your brand.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

When you get the team to like rally around a one off project that's new, you can just feel the excitement like.

[George Davis]

Yeah. For the team. Loves it. Until you're four days in, working 15 hours.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

With all the impressions that you guys served, did you see any sort of lift in sales during this campaign?

[George Davis]

Yeah, that is the question, dude. Like, I think.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

All right, we're back. Episode 78 of Marketing Operators. We're Cody Plofker list today. But we've got a special guest, George Davis, CMO of Cozy Earth, fellow Utah brand George. Thanks for joining, man.

[George Davis]

Yeah, of course. Excited to be here 100%.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

You know, I was doing, I was doing a little bit of research, my due diligence last night, and I was like, I wonder where George worked previously. And you were like, you were homegrown Cozy Earth talent.

[George Davis]

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I've worked nowhere else. Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

So we got a bunch to talk about. But like, I would love to hear what, like why did you join? And was it at the very beginning?

[George Davis]

Yeah, it was really early on. I was kind of getting into digital marketing and I knew Tyler, or at least knew of Tyler, and I was gonna maybe start my own agency and like for service businesses anyway. And I went and met with Tyler cause I knew his business, did some digital marketing and I wanted to, you know, pick his brain. And we sat down, we had this long discussion and he walked me through what Cozy Earth was and why I was excited about it. And at the end of the discussion he's like, why don't you just come work for me? And I'm like, honestly, yeah, it sounds pretty cool. I would love to. And so I stuck around. I did customer service. To be clear, that's what I did. So I wasn't doing anything important. We had like four people. Two of the four were doing customer support. And then he told me like, hey, as like, you know, if you work here, I'll try to get you in the loop on the marketing side. So you can learn. And so that, that's kind of how I got started. And then slowly more and more of my time was allocated to marketing as that side of the business grew and then eventually full time marketing. So.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Love it, dude. You're going to be like the, you know, the current Nike CEO started as like sales associate and then just became CEO. So give it another decade, dude. You'll be, you'll be, you know, CEO and president of Billion Dollar Cozier.

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah, that's the dream hopefully.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Totally. All right, sweet. Well look, we've got a lot to get into. We're going to talk about my favorite social challenge I've seen any DTC brand run. We got some really cool incrementality stuff to talk about. I'm really bummed Cody's not here. He's going to be jealous when he listens. But before we get into it, I want to thank our SP sponsors, Motion Rich Panel, Prescient Aftercell and Revo.

[George Davis]

Foreign.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Motion is hosting the fourth annual Creative Strategy Summit. The virtual event is free to attend and it is where the best performance creative teams on the planet share what's working. Seriously, I have attended this the last few years and I am really blown away at the reputation and the people that Motion is bringing on and just the quality of the content that these amazing creative strategists are talking about at this event. And we're really going to learn what's working, how they're evolving their creative strategy and the overall bigger shifts in the world of DTC and creative. It's over six hours of programming featuring elite DTC brands and a must attend event for anyone working in paid social. I'm going to be there. Cody and Connor are going to be there. Plus the marketing operators are doing a live podcast episode. So we're really excited about that. There was over 18,000 people registered last year, 5,000 people tuned in live and many, many performance creative teams block out this day and just make this a learning moment for the entire company. And it's been really, really critical and important for guiding our creative strategy. I remember the last few years we've had a lot of a lot of information from the event get infused into our creative strategy in the following few months. Like I said, some of the best, sharpest creative strategy minds in DTC are presenting at the Creative Strategy Summit being put on by Motion. I'm really excited about this list of people. It includes Dara Denny, Sarah Levenger, Mirella Cre, Joe Zelowitz, Savannah Sanchez and a lot more to be Announced soon. Seriously, some of the best minds in creative strategy right now. Plus, if you cannot attend, all the recordings are going to be recorded, so you should sign up anyway, even if you're not able to attend when the recordings are live in real time. So get your free ticket at motionapp.com forward/creative-strategy-summit. It's happening on October 9th at 12:00pm to 6:00pm Eastern Time. Make sure not to miss it.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

So George Cozy's been coming up on the podcast quite a bit because I've been absolutely geeking out on the Bedrock Challenge you guys ran. So people are going to be somewhat familiar, but I would love for you to just give a lay of the land of what the challenge is, maybe a brief history. This is the first year I've ever seen it, but I am under the impression it was maybe the second or third. So give us. Give us the rundown of what it was.

[George Davis]

So Bedrock Challenge, brief history. It actually started I just beat just taking a lot of money from Taylor Holiday in a golf match. And we were driving. We were driving back to the airport or somewhere, and he's like, we're talking about how tired the playbook is and how there's like, you know, everyone's doing the same thing, everyone's focused on the same things. And the. The premise of the conversation was like, why don't we go do something different? Try to do something that's actually, you know, eye catching and that people will talk about. And so I got back to Utah and I sat down, like, okay, let's like, try to brainstorm some ideas here. Probably came up with like 50 ideas. Most of them were absolutely terrible. But the Bedrock Challenge was one where I'm like, okay, there might be something here. Like, it was trending on social. We were talking about trying to tap into a younger audience with some of our apparel items. And I was like, honestly, like, maybe we could do this at like a. Actually, this is crazy. You guys can cut this out of the pod. But we were going to do it at Utah Valley in the courtyard where everything happened last week. Anyway, so that was the original plan, and I was going back and forth with the university trying to figure out logistics, and it was ended up being a ton of, like, back and forth, and they were excited about it. But ultimately I was like, you know what? Screw it. Like, let's just see if we have something here. Pick five employees. Pick the funniest employees we have, put them in a bed. The prize will be a thousand dollars, and we'll see if Anyone watches. And so we just threw them in the. Like, in the portion of the office, and they sat there for a few days, and it went. It went pretty well. Like, people joined in. People were, like, actually, like, enjoying the show and calling in and invested in what we were doing. And we pro. I think we gained, like, 15,000 followers on that first one and had, like, 15 million impressions. And the prize was, like, a thousand dollars. So it was relatively low cost, low lift, just a good MVP version of the show. And that was.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Sorry, that was just. That was that last year, 2024.

[George Davis]

That was this year.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Oh, that was earlier this year.

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah, that happened this summer.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Oh, okay.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Can you explain the mechanics quick? I think we talked about it a few episodes ago, but it would be interesting to understand, like, how this bedrock challenge worked generally.

[George Davis]

Yeah, so basically, we just set up five beds, and then first person to get out of bed lost the challenge, and the last person standing won the money. And so. And then the other question that's very common is, like, bathroom breaks. They are allowed to take bathroom breaks. Other than that, they can't get out of the bed.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

So what about food? Drink? Are they. Is that coming into the bed with them?

[George Davis]

Yeah. Yeah. So we're serving them food.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Okay.

[George Davis]

You know, it's really not a bad challenge to participate in. Like, we uber. Uber eats every meal. So that. That's kind of how I was born. Anyway, I can jump into season two if you want.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Oh, actually, I have one more question about season one. Like, you said, you guys gained 15,000 followers. Did you have the same live streaming mechanics? And I'd love to hear, like, what other. What other data points did you have that you were like, oh, we might be onto something here. Did you drive 20 million impressions? Like, what.

[George Davis]

Did.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

What. Why did you think of that as success?

[George Davis]

It was impression count and follower count. It was 15 million impressions, which, on a CPM basis for the first challenge, was, like, sub$1, like, really, really cheap CPM. And then, yeah, the follower count grow. And then also, like, I think just the anecdotal, like, response that we got from people was the most compelling piece, where it's like, you have a lot of people reaching out about it, excited about it, you know, asking questions about Cozy Earth. And so, yeah, anyway, that's. Those are kind of the three things we looked at to determine whether or not we should do it again.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

And this is just through Tick Tock Live, right?

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Tick Tock Live and then feed, post.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Got it. Okay. And. And, like, did you have Any costs. I mean you're just, you're just doing this with five employees. Obviously you're getting them food. You're like they're in the office or, or I forget where they were exactly, like for overnight and stuff. But like I imagine you didn't have to like carve out too much budget to put this on, right?

[George Davis]

No, very like it was probably a couple thousand dollars total.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah.

[George Davis]

So it was like, it was very cheap.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

And then you immediately turn around and say we got to do this bigger and better. And that's what he did in August. So like you could also walk through the mechanics of. I know it's more employees or not. They're not employees. There's more people. The larger cash prize. Give us a rundown.

[George Davis]

Yeah. So what's funny is actually like the second season was supposed to be another trial run because we, we had negotiated. I'll call them B list celebrities. Maybe they're A list celebrities now, but this next season was supposed to be all celebrities, which has changed since then. But I was like, before we do that, we need to have another trial run that's a little more legitimate and spend some more money. And so we, we planned season two and we hit. We were like, okay, no employees. We're gonna actually cast for this thing. We're gonna have people apply. We had like 9, 000 people apply, which is hilarious.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

How'd you. How did you put that outbound? Like how did you. Was that just through your owned and operated marketing channels?

[George Davis]

Yeah, mostly just TikTok feed post. And then from there, you know, we, we casted the people that we thought would be entertaining. We got London involved, I think. Connor, do you know London personally or.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

We just started working with him this year.

[George Davis]

Yeah, he's cool. Great guy. So we got London involved and then you know, we decided on what the goal was and you know, what would be considered success for this season. And then we set a budget and it was, it was honestly a ton of work. Like, it's like such a distraction and that's the back and forth I have in my own mind is like, okay, it's successful on like a CPM basis. You grow the follower count. It's really, really hard to tie it to short term sale. I'd love to get your guys thoughts on that. But you know, the, the biggest pain point is just the amount of work and distraction it creates with internally.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Totally. Okay, so season two's ten people, $25,000 prize. I talked about it on the pod. It goes five and a half days. You guys are streaming 24 hours a day there. The. The ten people who participated, I know a number of them had very notable followings. Like, London's got a couple hundred thousand he hosted. There was another guy, local Utah guy, who's got a couple hundred thousand people. Did they all have creators? Like, how did you prioritize who is participating in terms of like, good characters or who would make for compelling characters versus who's providing distribution?

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah. So we thought, you know, we wanted a couple people that could help with distribution, but really it was only Garrett in London with large followings and then a couple of other people dabble in TikTok but didn't have like huge followings, really. We just casted for entertainment factor. Like, you watch the videos of these people, you get on the phone with them, you can tell, like, this person's going to be pretty funny. And so that's. That's kind of how we casted it was, you know, it's a lot of videos to watch. A lot of people that would have been funny. So we ended up just kind of making decisions and it was. I think we actually did a pretty good job. The talent on the show was. Was quite fun.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Dude. I tuned in a bunch of times. I was like, I was really? Yeah, I'm one of those. I'm one of those, like extremely biased consumers over, like, I have no, like, it was obviously good, but me as was leading marketing at a brand. Like, I can't tell. I'm like, oh, is this like fantastic social content or am I just like super geeking out on this new marketing tactic?

[George Davis]

For sure.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

But okay, so we talked about the metrics from season one, season two, much bigger. How many followers, how many impressions? Like, what. What did that look like?

[George Davis]

Yeah, so we had like 50 million organic impressions on season two. And then obviously there's some paid behind. You know, I think total reach, it was like 84 million. So there was some paid reaching. The follower count grew like 70,000, which was pretty significant. We had 3 million people watch the live, which is a lot. And like the average view time was I think 28 minutes for. And I think they have to stay for over a minute to, you know, to count towards that metric. But anyway, people were engaged with it. A lot of people watching. You know, we did run some sales that generated, you know, some revenue, but, like, that wasn't the main focus here.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

So, yeah, that's.

[George Davis]

That's kind of what the metrics look like. From season. We also collected probably 15,000 email addresses over the course of the. Got it.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

So I, I was aware of this through Connor. I didn't. I didn't tune in. My immediate thing that I'm like, that I keep is bouncing around in my head is, what were you guys doing with these people in the beds to make the content engaging.

[George Davis]

Right.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Because it seems, I'm sure you guys had some really fun stuff going on, but on the surface you're like, wait, what? They just brought in, like seven people that sat in a bed for five and a half, 120 hours. Yeah, yeah, right. Like, what are you doing with these people in the bed?

[George Davis]

Like, yeah, dude. So, like, I have to. I have to shout out the team at some point on the show because, like, we have a team behind us, obviously, and they planned every detail because it would be very boring just to sit there and watch people sit in bed. And so every day there's challenges. You know, there's two challenges. We were doing, like, terrible food for lunch. Like, terrible food. Like, contestants were, like, nearly throwing up. And so, you know, there's. There's activities happening every night. We, like, spun a wheel with, you know, punishments on the wheel. But honestly, like, you get the right personalities and they're just sitting there, like, chatting and, you know, doing things like, for some reason, dude, and I'm not joking, like, the first time we did it, the most engagement on the live was like, at like 10pm when the lights are off and everyone's kind of sleeping and, you know, people for some reason, like, watching. There's a lot of weird people in the world. But anyway, that we. We obviously had like, challenges and things to keep. Keep the viewers engaged.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah. Okay.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

What really stood out to me, and I mentioned this earlier, is that it was so brand first. Like, a lot of people do social campaigns that are like, really native, but it doesn't feel as branded like this. Being in your office from the Cozy Earth social pages seemed extremely valuable. And then the second thing is, like, 3 million live viewers is a ton of people. You know, it's not the entirety of America. Right. But, like, with the average watch time of almost 30 minutes, it's like just this insane. I don't think we talk enough as marketers about impactful impressions. Yeah, 3 million people averaging 28 minutes watching the stream is absolutely insane. That is so much watch time spent looking at Cozy Earth social channels for a very branded social campaign. That's where I was like, oh, yeah. This just seems like you made an extremely impactful impression on a. On a huge amount of people.

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I agree with your point. Like you know, we can serve impressions all day long through paid media etc, but like it's not super impactful but you know, you had people in the live crying, you had people like, seriously like a lot of people, like there's these moments throughout the competition where there's this, this brand affinity that you know, is growing. So yeah, I agree with you. 100 like it feels like a much more valuable impression than the normal paid impression.

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[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Okay, cool. So one thing we talked about, which I'm curious, your take on because I wasn't sure where it landed was obviously we were talking about what value you guys see in it. A ton of impressions. A ton of impactful impressions. You're gaining social followers. Fantastic. What were the tactics or. And where did it land relative to expectations around driving revenue from the campaign?

[George Davis]

Well, to be honest, like, going into it, you know, we had to be very clear on what we were trying to do. Like, I don't think this was an attempt. I think, as you know, we're all conditioned as performance marketers to tie everything we do to a sales sales metric, which is okay, and I think that's appropriate in most cases. But going into this, it's like, if we focus this on sales, you're probably going to lose out on some of the entertainment factor. You know, if the whole show we're just like harping on, hey, buyer, product, buyer, product, buyer product. Like, people might not want to tune in. Like, imagine if Survivor or some game show is like just constantly trying to sell some product as part of their show. So I think we committed to the fact that, hey, we're going to try to entertain people and create, like, you know, take real estate in their mind and actually build brand here rather than just try to tie this to some sales metric and add a discount. Now, we did do some of that at the very end of the show. We had like a sale after the show was actually over and we were just cleaning up and it. It did okay, but it wasn't like, you know, it's. It's definitely not a sales tactic in my mind.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Cool. So. So love the goal being brand building. We don't talk enough about that, I don't think. But I'm curious, like, with all the impressions that you guys serve, did you see any sort of lift in sales during this campaign?

[George Davis]

Yes, we did. There was sales lift. And honestly, like, post challenge, there was a lot of lift and we can't, like, totally tie it to the challenge, but we definitely think there's value in, you know, reaching that many people and building. And then the other thing is, like, the next challenge we'd run is going to be right before Q4. So, like, the intention is to generate a ton of awareness, you know, more than double the impression count from the last show and then hopefully you capture some of that awareness in Q4. And I think for this to be successful from a sales Tactic like you can't make the show so focused on selling the product, but you can surround the show with, you know, strategies that sell the product. So you know, for example, like it's hosted on TikTok. A lot of the impressions are coming from TikTok. Like we need to build a really robust strategy for our TikTok paid media that's like adjacent to Bedrot but selling the product to those people who have now become aware of the brand. So that's something we're focused on. And if you look at like our TikTok metrics over the course of the challenge, like the actual paid media efficiency, night and day, better than it's ever been, really, really strong performance in TikTok over that period of time. So I, you know that that's, that's how I'm thinking about it. Like I don't want to turn the show into just a complete, you know, just focus on sales.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Right.

[George Davis]

But I do think you can build out strategies that surround the show and hopefully convert that awareness into transactions.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

So do you think that was, do you with the TikTok performance, do you think that was you're reaching people through the, the challenge. They're, you know, naturally people are going to go and visit your website and then you're hitting those people with ads and you're converting them. Is that what you think was happening?

[George Davis]

Yes, I do think that's what's happening.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Okay. And then you mentioned list growth. So you said what was the number? I think you said like 15,000.

[George Davis]

It was 15,000 people.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

So what did, what did, yeah, what did that flow look like? Is like how, how are people, how are you pushing people to sign up for email, sms? And then my, my follow up is did you plug that list into like any sort of customer data platform to actually track revenue or just klaviyo like segment and track revenue from that list over time?

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah, we have again like not crazy impactful. I know. If, have you guys ever ran any like listen, list growth from non email overlay sign up?

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Sure. Like way back in the day.

[George Davis]

Yeah, like it's just, it's usually not super effective. Like the consumer that goes to your website and signs up for a discount is typically ready to purchase.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

What was the mechanics of this? You're saying like a, like on, on the platform email Capture, like on TikTok email capture?

[George Davis]

No, basically we people signed up to either participate in the challenge, to vote on who was going to win the challenge or to like enter a giveaway. So you know, they're not signing up for an offer, per se. Yeah. So I think, I think the. I, you know, we are tracking that group, but I will say, like, when you compare the, the value of an email address comp to like, emails coming through your signup overlay, it's going to be much lower.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

I'm curious. I'd like to, I'd like to hit two points. And then we got a really cool incrementality discussion I want to hit. The first one is you talked about distraction versus, like, evergreen work. It amazes me you guys did this just this past summer, then again at such a high scale, and now you're talking about season three is going to go live in the next like six weeks or something. Like.

[George Davis]

Yeah, like two weeks. Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

How are you prioritizing it against, like, you know, your, your creative team making Facebook ads?

[George Davis]

Yeah, that is, that is the question, dude. Like, I think, you know, we did this challenge and it took the video team away from meta ads for two weeks. Right, right. Like, and we were. They were posting 30 tick tocks a day, like here from 8am to 1am like, anyway, so it totally took away from the meta, you know, creative volume that we're working on. But I think for me, it's like you prioritize. You prioritize what's able to create some sort of outsized return over a long period of time. And so I know what the expected outcome is if we continue to run meta ads and we continue to, like, do business as usual. What I don't know is, like, and I'm not, I'm not just talking about bedrock here. I'm talking about other big swings that we're working on that exist within the business that we're hoping can become something more than even bedrock was. I think it's worth the distraction. I think it's worth disrupting the normal business in order to create upside. Because I think, you know, you guys would probably agree with this. Like, we operate, most of our businesses operate under this assumption that if you spend a dollar, you get X return. And that return has gotten gradually worse over the last few years for a lot of brands. And so if you just continue down the current path, it probably doesn't end well for a lot of us. If the return is diminishing and we're all just doing the same dang thing, every single. Everyone's optimizing their meta accounts, everyone's talking about the same things. It's probably not a great path to be on. So for me, it's like, totally worth the distraction to go try to disrupt what we're doing. And again, I'm not saying like the 50 million impressions is worth disrupting the meta creative flow. What I am saying is maybe it will be in a year. Right. So that's how I think about it.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Yeah. So, okay, so I, I absolutely love that answer. It's almost like, you know, you have to value the stock of a company on like its discounted future cash flows. Like that. That's almost what we're talking about. I've said it in a much more boring way with our new categories where it's like we might need to spend 40% of our time trying to grow wedding bands when it is 8% of our revenue. And it's like, and that's not because that's a good trade off today, but it's because a year and a half, two years, three years from now we have a big wedding band business. And that's what you're talking about. But in more creative way, I think, with the bedrock challenge.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Well, we're, we're thinking about that, that too with like new products, right? Like we're, we have some new product categories coming out that lend themselves to new audiences, new partnerships, all sorts of things that, you know, initially our thinking was, well, if the, if the business unit of that product or that product category isn't working, well, it's not working. But in reality we could launch a really engaging ad promoting that product using the brand partnerships that lend itself to that product. We might never sell a product that we're actually promoting, but I still think that could be a high performing ad for us that's generally good for our marketing stack, which is very different than we were thinking about it a year ago where it was just like, what's the blended revenue, blended efficiency? Is this product actually driving a sale on that ad? It's like, well, I want that. But if that ad has a 30 higher, you know, whatever in platform KPI you care about, like, that's still good for your marketing stack. So we're actually starting to build more acquisition around products we probably wouldn't have in the past, which is kind of what you're, what you're saying here too, George, is like, this can be a moment that diversifies our, our Facebook admix even better and like, and like contributes to it or, or your TikTok admix. And you're already, I mean you're already seeing that happen. It's, that's, that's only going to happen more on a, on a longer tail as you do it more and more and people are like looking forward to your next challenge in season four, five, six and so on.

[George Davis]

Yeah, for sure.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

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[George Davis]

Yeah, I think season three there was a. There were a lot of learnings in season two as everyone that watched could tell. It was like we thought we had it dialed in. You start the show, it's actually very hard to execute anyway. Lots of learnings. I think the main thing for me though is like really being thoughtful about the surrounding strategy rather than just like focusing on the actual competition itself. Like get that buttoned up, make sure that goes well. But how can we like surround this with other paid media efforts in TikTok and I and I think it's easy to put a bunch of ads live and like spend a lot of money on TikTok and they'll probably perform okay. But I want to do things like the brand message we're telling while we do Bedrot is like it's Actually the antithesis of Bedrot. And this is from our CEO, so I have to give him credit. But he basically, it's like, it's funny because Bedrock, you know, the reason bedrock is essentially teenagers hiding in their room and not wanting to have human to human interaction and doom scrolling and doing whatever else. And you know, we as a brand believe, like, we don't really want that. We want, you know, family time, you know, people interacting with their families. We want human to human connection. And so Bedrock, the contestants are kind of forced to do that. And so the message we're trying to give is like, we want to make the world a better place. And you know, you see the story with Kat who won and the money was very meaningful to her and there was like other really, really heartfelt moments on the show. And so I think what you have to surround the challenge with is other ads that support that message while also still selling the product. So you know that that's the strategy more so than just, hey, put a bunch of ads, you know, put a bunch of ad spend behind in TikTok, like, figure out how to like surround it with ads that support the main story that you're trying to deliver with better odds. So that's, that's my main focus for this next one is like, can we turn this into a large amount of sales?

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Totally. And then to your point, like, if you guys, from an impression standpoint, it was season 2 was 5x bigger than the summer. Like if you can get multiples off off season two right into Q4, like you're doing that in October. Like, again, it's like hard to attribute, but, you know, it seems like a fantastic idea to just drive 150 million impressions just before everybody's going to be in market.

[George Davis]

Exactly. It's got to do something. And I think again, like, you have to at some point transition away from like measuring everything. And what's funny is like, I talk to a lot of people and there's a lot of brands nowadays that are like, oh, you know, we want to go back to being brand heavy or brand focused. And I'm like, okay, cool. Why? Because performance isn't working as well as it once was. And so everyone in their head is like, let's, let's, let's do the brand thing again. And anyway, I won't dive too deep into that. Maybe we can talk about it later. But I do think there's a transitioning happening right now in our world where performance is becoming tougher and tougher and so people are looking for the magic bullet. And they're like, well we probably just need to become a stronger brand. I think there's nuance to that. But anyway, yeah that's. We. We assume if you generate 150 million impressions and meaningful impressions of that like it should have some impact in Q4.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Kaiser one more question about are you doing any, any brand partnerships with this? Because I could see like all right, we have a brand that's doing. That's like supplying the like the pajamas people are wearing. All right, we're uber eating everything. Uber Eats is a partner of this and like now your distribution assuming like depending on the size of the brands can become much greater because now you have Uber Eats and Jambies and whoever else promoting which is. That's something we want to do with our, with our sweepstakes at some point. Like let's have like these airlines co like co sponsor a brand it and like give them a reason to promote it to their audiences. I feel like this is a good like a prime opportunity to have like a bunch of co branded or at least brand partners like getting promoted in this.

[George Davis]

For sure. We're working on it. I think you know, it's difficult. Like we want to actually sell sponsorship sponsorship packages to other brands. We don't want to just like trade food because like it anyway. So we're working through that. We have sponsorship packages we're trying to sell.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Is that like a CPM based like like we'll guarantee you this cpm.

[George Davis]

No, it's not. It could be. I think, you know, that's something we're probably going to try to learn and figure out how to best construct for this for this next season. But right now I think it's like a base fee to sponsor like challenges etc. Okay. So anyway, yeah, we're looking at that. If anyone's interested. Hit me up a couple of other notes on Bedrock. Are we, are we moving off of it because.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

No, let's do going.

[George Davis]

I just want to. I just want to call it a few things. I had a few people approach me at Beanstalk and they're like we're trying to figure out how to do this. You know a lot of. I think there's a lot of brands like talking about replicating it which I think is great. I think it's fun. I think this is kind of the direction a lot of brands are going to have to move. Like there's so much noise. You have to figure out how to cut through the noise. And obviously this is one way to do it. There's a million ways to do it. I will say, like, you know, there was a moment. There's like a. There's, like this. There's. There's people internally that hated the idea that were like, this is stupid. It's really disruptive to what we're trying to do here, and you guys shouldn't be doing this. It's a big distraction. And it was happening in our office, so it was. It was a very big distraction. And so in the back of my mind, I'm like, this could fail. Like, this could really fail. And for season two, I actually sat down with the team and we had a meeting beforehand, and I'm like, guys, like, this is about to go live. There is a relatively high likelihood that 10 people join the live. You know what I mean? Like, there's no guarantee anyone's going to watch this or care about it. And so I think, you know, my, My thing is, like, we are able to have, you know, an appetite for that risk because Tyler, our founder, is like, like, willing to take risk and is willing to stand with me if it fails, which I don't know if a lot of founders are that way. Like, we easily could have embarrassed ourselves with this challenge. And, And I think his willingness to take swings and, and stand with the team if it did flop is what gave me the confidence to actually follow through with it. So that's. That's one point that I think is important, is, like, founders listening and people that are, you know, you all wanted. Everyone wants to do cool things, but you don't realize that cool things are going to fail nine out of ten times. And so I'll just call that out and then, yeah, I think. I think that's it. I just wanted to. I just wanted to encourage all the founders to, you know, support their teams.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

And I love it. I've talked about that a bit. I think people also overweight the negative impact of flopping, where it's like, if it flops and only 10 people join, well, only 10 people even tried. Like, there's really, There's. We totally overweight the downsides of things.

[George Davis]

Well, it's embarrassing at a personal level. Like, everyone's so concerned about, you know, they tie their name to this project, and then when it flops, it's not about the business outcome. It's more about me personally. So I think you have to have a supporting cast that's that. That understands when you take risks like this that are outside of the conventional wisdom, it's probably going to fail most of the time. But what you're looking for is the 1 out of 10 success rate and hopefully something that can deliver an outsized return to what you're used to.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

I mean the risk, the risk on this is a lot less than like, I don't know, running a $250,000 holdout test on some new channel and you get an iro as read. That's like 0.8. You're like, holy, we just torched a bunch of cash. Or. Or the inverse, which is like we just ran like a 50% holdout on a pretty big test and it worked really well. Well, we just missed out on like half the country's performance. Like that has much more risk than for sure. And now it's like that's the risk that no one sees though, right? That's the performance marketing performance of the business risk. That's like behind the scenes versus the, the, the public risk that you're talking about. But like probably not a ton of. There's only upside in revenue with your activation. You could maybe argue like you're. Since you're pulling some of your team's resources away from doing performance marketing, there's a little bit of like performance risk, but not really.

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Relatively low risk on the business outcome. Obviously we spent some money on the season two.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah.

[George Davis]

So you know you're at risk of losing all that money. But like you said, we blow through so much money in these paid media efforts. And so you're right. Like the business outcome relative to other things that we're doing is relatively low risk. But on a personal level and team morale level, it, it's relatively risky, you.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Know, but the team wants to do cool stuff. Like it's crazy. It's crazy. Like the inner. Like I noticed this too at hexcloud. Like when we, when you get the team to like rally around like a one off project that's new, like you can just feel the excitement. Like the creative strategists, it's not. They want to do new things and fun things versus just always keeping the, the paid media content flywheel going which like I think you can bake in fun, exciting swings for the team that. Doing that too. But like this is the stuff. Like when we did our sweepstakes last year for the first time, everyone was like super excited about it. It was the first time we did it. Everyone was super creative and like you could just feel the, the energy of the team was really, really good. And I assume it's, it's the same thing with, with you guys like, oh, I get to go do something new for, for the next month. And like, it, it's, it's exciting and it's the first time we're doing it. Like, team loves that.

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. The team loves it. Until you're four days in working 15 hour shifts and then everyone, and then everyone kind of starts to love it a little less. But yeah, I definitely think it's fun to disrupt the normal workflows and do something that's a little more exciting. For sure.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

You know, one thing that, that's come to me while we're talking about it is social challenges. Generally, we probably see more of them to your point, like people coming up to you at Beanstalk and being like, I want to do something like this. I heard from another brand, the exact same thing. Hexclad Ridge both doing sweepstakes. Sweepstakes are going to quickly become played out.

[George Davis]

Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Like, it's going to be harder and harder to differentiate ourselves. I'm looking at it now. There's like at least four or five other hundred million dollar D2C brands giving away cars this summer. And it's like, okay, Ridge is going to have to try really hard to continue to make that unique and impactful. Whereas Bedrock challenge, way more branded, way more owned. It's very close to the product and kind of mission of the company. It's just more defensible. And even when not only will it be harder for other brands to emulate such a like high scale social challenge, but it'll have to look so much different.

[George Davis]

Different. Yeah, you can't, you can't copy it exactly.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Yeah.

[George Davis]

So it is, it is more defensible. But yeah, it's funny like somewhat. You guys did the car thing and now everybody's doing it and it just, everyone kind of swarms to the latest idea, which is fine. But I do think like there's, you gotta, you gotta figure out what can be unique to your brand.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah. That's the boat then, right? It's like anyone can run the sweepstakes, but the moat is. What are you, what are you winning? Like, you guys are the own, like the only brand that's gonna be able to do this. Like bedrot chat. I mean, not, I'm sure other brands could rip you off, but now it's gonna be very clearly obvious if they rip you off now. The same way that like if a cookware brand was like, hey, we're giving away the culinary experience of a lifetime, it's like, well, you could clearly rip that off from Us. I don't know, Connor, if you feel the same, like, I've seen a lot of brands doing the cars now. Do you think that is like a rising tide for you, or do you think it's just noise now and it's actually hurting you guys?

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

No, it probably has some negative impact. I still think there's such a long Runway on what we're doing and, like, it's one of the reasons why we gave away. It's. It's one of the reasons we gave away the Cybertruck last year is we knew we kind of had to escalate the sweepstakes. If we were just giving away a Hennessey velociraptor like we did in 2022 and 2023, then, like, it wouldn't become more impactful over time. Whereas, George, I feel like your social campaign, the Bedrock challenge, like, you guys can change the mechanics and functionally make it more impactful, but also it will just compound over time. Whereas if we did the exact same thing for six years in a row as every other D2C brand is also giving away, you know, whatever, defenders and raptors and things like that, ours would become less impactful. And we know that. But that's like, that's the whole game. Everybody's on, like, a downwards moving escalator and you just have to be creative as to how to keep up.

[George Davis]

For sure, for sure. All right.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

I think we covered Bedrot really well. Thank you. Because I was looking to go deep on it with someone. So the big reason we wanted to have you on.

[George Davis]

All right.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Can I ask one more question about Bedrock?

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Who's your, like, ideal influencer to have on the Bedrock Challenge? Or do you have to keep that hush hush?

[George Davis]

Well, dude, it's hilarious. I've been, like, in very. We've been negotiating with our ideal influencer.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah.

[George Davis]

And it's like kind of at the final stages, but at the same time, like, there's a chance that we just. We just don't do it. So I'll probably keep it hush, hush, just because nothing's been signed. But I. I do think, like, there are some people that demand attention and because they're not necessarily doing a brand endorsement, like, or we're not, you know, they're not just opening our product and we're not like, anyway, there's less association with the brand itself. They're just participating in the challenge. We feel like we can go with a wider net of people and just try to get people that will pull eyeballs and, and yeah, be entertaining on the show. So I'll let you know, bro, like in the next day or two, I'll know if we, if we have the person we want. So.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Look, we all know it's Pete Davidson.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Hey, man, don't steal, don't steal our thunder. Come on.

[George Davis]

Do you guys work with Pete?

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

He was in our super bowl ad. We did a bunch of extensions. So, yeah, we've been, we've been running that campaign all year. And yes, it's going pretty well.

[George Davis]

It'd be a good one. That's hilarious.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

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[George Davis]

So let me frame this up. So basically the problem is, you know, you, you run your business, you have relatively positive results on a blended basis. And initially, so we started running, we ran conversion lift studies with Meta before we signed with House and now we're running these GEO holdouts with House and we get the read back from Meta and it's well below our AMER number and obviously well below our MER number as well. And we're like, okay, meta sucks. Let's, let's run a test on Google. We run a test on Google, it's well below those numbers. We run a test on. You know, pretty much every channel or GEO holdout is possible and not a single channel is exceeding or even close to our AMER target or number that we're actually hitting within the business. So it leads us to the conclusion that, you know, especially with signal based channels and Connor, I mean we texted briefly about this last night, but I do think there's a lot of overlap and so, and our media mix, I'd be curious to hear your guys's. But like our media mix is relatively diverse and we're spending a lot of money in channels that aren't Meta, that aren't Google. And so the thinking is like specifically for signal based channels that they're all working to identify consumers that are wanting to purchase bed sheets, for example. And there's signal that's being fed into these channels that shows that the consumer is ready to buy this product. Obviously signals coming from different places for different channels, but they're probably, there's probably a lot of overlap within that audience. And so if you turn off meta, those people are still going to be served ads from another channel and therefore the incrementality read is going to show lower because you're still, still capturing that consumer. Does that, Is that clear? I could probably explain it a little better.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

What do you think, Connor?

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah, I think that is clear. So you're saying even though you turned off those ads, you're still driving an incremental conversion in the, in the holdout cell because they're still getting hit with a TikTok ad or a Google Ad or like the Facebook ad they saw before the holdout started. They converted from that two weeks later into the holdout. And that's why. So the, so the Delta's not.

[George Davis]

Not.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Not that different is what you're saying, right?

[George Davis]

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah. Well, and that's like, that's fundamentally the challenge of doing like, you can't, like, that's, that's the hard part about doing h. Like a full channel level holdout with like, all right, we're gonna spend in sale A, we're not gonna spend in cell B if you're spending in that channel across the country, like headed into that test because it's not like that spend didn't happen before, before you started the holdout. And like, obviously that spend has some sort of half life and like, like re. Like, you know, delayed value realization 100. That's why we don't really do that with our existing channels. It's like whenever we're testing like, we're doing like BAU span versus scaled up. Because to your point, it wouldn't work if we just dec. If we said, hey, we're going to hold out CTV now during this test, it's like, well, we've been spending on CTV for three years. It's not like that just goes away just because we decide to hold out a set of DMAs during the test.

[George Davis]

Best. Yeah, for sure.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

I brought up the example from Father's Day for us about holding out doing a holdout just on our promo ads for Meta because I think that's the best example of. It's like it. Not only could you be polluting that holdout from non meta channels, but if we're spending, if, if our promo ads are only 15 of our budget, you have 85% of. Of your dollar spent on Meta can also pollute that holdout. And it's just really hard to be confident that, that, that you're getting any sort of clear readout as to incrementality, like an incremental rows for that period. So my two thoughts. I'll go with the first one because it builds off what Connor said where we want to move towards a place especially for these more like if we're testing subsets of strategies, we just want to test incrementality directionally. So the other good example I have from the last couple months is for our Ring business. We measured the incremental return of men versus women and then we set up the test was we targeted men, we targeted women and we held it out and we did the holdout and this is just on a subset of campaigns within meta so there's still other ring spend being deployed. Now what we got from that because we did the holdout is we did, we did technically get an incremental ROAS on men targeted ads but it was well below our AMER for ranks. It was well below our target and that's an exam. It's another example of it's such a small subset I don't think it's quite accurate in terms of the total impact of those ads. So what I care about is actually just the relation of men versus women and in hindsight I wouldn't have held out anybody and I would have just said well am I better off targeting men versus women? Do one of these have a higher incrementality factor? And we want to move more of our this is over the last four months or whatever more of our incrementality testing to finding relative wins versus like total wins of a given channel.

[George Davis]

Makes sense.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

There's also yeah, we're the same way. We're looking at it directionally and that's like that's why we set up up when we set up our view content test and I'm curious if you guys have tested into any of this as well. George but like we are testing into non non purchase conversion events and the way we set it up was we set up a three cell for the exact same reason. It's like sell A is bau spend sell sell B is BAU spend plus enhanced spend into view content cell C was bau spend plus the same amount of enhanced spend into purchase for the exact reason we're like this isn't to be going think especially if you content in our consideration period it's not going to give us like a total net read if we run that test for two and a half months. But at least I can then confidently say during this moment in time that next dollar if I'm deciding to put it into view content or more purchase I was very clear that we should put it into view content. So like we created that very intentionally to have that that like contextual comparison. And I don't, I don't know if if what your consideration or like what your AOV is George but for us too we're never going to get the full net read read on performance from a two month test or a month and a half test. Like it's just not, this is not really how our consideration period works. So another reason to, to make it like a directional, a directional comparison which I think is like every single attribution methodology, right? Like that's how an MTA works. You're not like, you don't actually think your, your return on ad spend is a 0.7x but like directionally it's helpful. But do you, do you feel like that's the case with your brand? George? Like, do you, what is that AOV band? If you can share and like consideration window.

[George Davis]

Our AOV is like around 230, obviously not as expensive as you guys. But like the consideration period is, is relatively long. So yeah, I do think there's some flaws in the six week test.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

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[George Davis]

I will. Have you tried running like a six month holdout?

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

We haven't. We're gonna like we're about to. I think we're gonna launch some pretty long ones though like in the next few weeks and let them run through Black Friday Cyber Monday on some of these channels that I want to take a big bet on in 2026. I'm like the only way I'm gonna really be confident to take a big bet on this is if three or more month holdout test. So we're, we're, we're kind of headed that direction I think.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

You know, if I could add one thing because that was actually the second point that I was going to make. The idea of using incrementality for like directional results I think is a little more nuanced the way we're trying to. The instances where we want to get a total incremental readout are for longer tests because I think that becomes more accurate over time and just like bigger tests.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Right.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

So we do a 5% holdout out on the entire quarter for all of.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Our paid social channels together.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

So like the more, the more comprehensive it can be and the longer it can be I think the more accurate that like total IROAS readout can be. But as soon as you start doing like subsets of strategies for weeks at a time, I think it gets a little bit noisy and that's when we're going to focus on directionality.

[George Davis]

Interesting. I guess. Two questions Connor, because we're about to do a holdout for all of our digital channels over the course of the next six weeks and just see what the incrementality is of all of them combined. Assuming that the overlap is convoluting the results, result of the iroas, what do you, how do you action off of that? Right, so let's say we, we hold out all of our digital channels. It comes back, it turns out that, you know, digital as a whole is actually more incremental than any individual channel. What's next?

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

You just pat yourselves on the back, just.

[George Davis]

Yeah, we're good, we're good. Keep doing, keep doing. I guess, you know, one option is just maintain media mix and scale budget across channels equally. But I don't know, I, I guess I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

It's a good question. We did the same thing last year where like we had a couple, like, we, we ended up holding out the entirety of it. And honestly, it doesn't give you a lot to do, right? I mean, you might feel more confident in that mix. In an ideal world, you're like, you're actually testing mixes where you could do a holdout. Then you have one segment of the country that's receiving 40 YouTube, 60 meta, then another 40%, that's getting 60 meta, 40% YouTube or whatever I just said the inverse of like, that obviously is way more actionable. And that's the same thing that, that's like a key part of the discussions that we've had internally around these like, subpar IRO as readouts from like subsets of strategies where it's like, even sometimes you get. And it's like, okay, well what do we do? We don't know what it is relative to our evergreen ads during this Father's Day period. So I think it's important to do every once in a while to validate, but otherwise you literally can't do all that much else because you don't have. You don't. You don't it. Relative to anything else.

[George Davis]

Yeah, that's kind of how I'm feeling.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

How, how do you feel about the, the point I made earlier about like there's the risk, right, of not getting performance in your holdout DMAs. So like when you're doing like a whole media, like all, all of paid digital holdout, are you doing like a pretty low holdout to ensure you're not like risking getting performance out of those DMAs?

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

I, I mean, I can take that one like that, that is a risk, right? Like if you, if you hold out 20 of the country on all of your social channels for the next six weeks and it turns out iRose is good. Well, you missed out on the revenue you would have generated for 20 of the country. So I, you always have to consider that. I guess, I guess the one thing I was going to say was you could do a, you could do a holdout on all your social channels, get a negative iroas and then feel more confident to actually pull down spend and see how that looks.

[George Davis]

Yeah, that's, that's the outcome that we're hoping, you know, not hoping for, but if it, if it comes out and it is that, then you do have a clear course of action. You could also just use the, I mean we just talked about how the reads are directional so you could get the read back as a total and so, okay, our digital mix as a whole is X incrementality. Then use the directional reach to, you know, scale budget.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Right. You also could do the same thing next year. Year like you could just turn that, operationalize that and say, hey, the six weeks going in October or whatever, we're going to test all of our channels and you will have unlocked ideally a bunch of learnings over the next 12 months and then you could get a readout next year that's probably a pretty decent like, for like comparison and say we're better or we're worse or whatever.

[George Davis]

Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

So yeah, it's, it's a really interesting idea, but I, I'm glad you brought it up just because we've had a lot of very similar conversations as to when and where to think about a total iroas and then when and where to think about just like directional testing. And Connor, I thought you had a bunch of really good examples as to.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Where you guys are using it directionally. Yeah, well, even, even, even your point, George, of saying like if we're going to do a whole paid digital channel holdout and if the IRO as isn't like profitable or at the level we want it to be, then you could scale down your, your, your whole media spend. Even that. Just knowing hexcloud as a brand and our consideration period, that even would scare me because I could see our finance person being like, like, wow, like this two month holdout on all of our channels, we definitely should scale down. But I, but my reaction would be, well, we're hurting our future performance if we do that. And this is still not a net readout on all of our digital channels. So even that one is like, yeah, I guess it really depends on your, on your like consideration period. If you're selling like a $45 first order AOV product, then yeah, you could probably make that conclusion. But for like a $250 first order AOV or 400, it's like even that would be like a scary move for us to make because I think we'd be hurting ourselves, you know, 12 months and, and longer from, from that time period for sure, I guess.

[George Davis]

How do you, how do you validate that though? I mean, we talked about extending the duration of the holdout test, which I think is one path. But I, I guess. One question, Connor. Like, during cooldown periods, like post holdout, do you see drastic change in the incremental roas? Like are there a lot of people you, you do? Okay, so that's it.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

But we intentionally, the way that we design most of our tests is we have a demand generation period and then we have a like conversion funnel clearing period. So it's like we just ran a YouTube holdout test. We ran. We, we did the holdout for like a month and then we very intentionally ended the holdout and had the observation window through our end of summer sale to get like a good read on it.

[George Davis]

It.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

I think there's ways you can model it. Like you could go in like one of the metrics I've been looking at more is roas lift in north beam. So it's like just whatever the, whatever the attribution window you're set in the growth and return on ad spend to ltv Roas, you could maybe in theory like apply that, right? If you're like, all right, we get 2.5x lift in YouTube, maybe you could like apply that 2.5x multiplier to whatever your iro as is or whatever the incremental order number you got and like, like back into it that way. I mean it's not perfect, but it could maybe get you closer to the, the net read of that channel versus the directional one.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

And Connor, you, because you talk a lot about the consideration period of Hexclad and I think you guys just have a bunch of data from the post purchase survey, right, that says, hey, I've, I've been, I first, you know, learned about hexclad 6 months ago or something.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Am I, am I?

[George Davis]

Yeah.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

But it's crazy though because like we get like it. We very much skew like very long consideration in our self reported post purchase survey. But once someone hits the site, we actually get them to convert very quickly. So we have people that will like know about Hexclad CR ads. For months, years not visit the site. They finally visit the site and then they actually convert pretty quickly after they visit the site.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

So. Okay, awesome. Going back to George's question around total channel holdout, you're going to get some sort of incremental roas. If it's good, you can feel confident and maybe scaling. You give yourselves a pat on the back. Fantastic. You feel you can feel good about that. Mix that, that's the, that's the other point that I was going to make is like a really important piece of like what that readout will be is what is the incremental roas of this distribution of spend across channels. And then if it's bad, I brought up, I, I brought up reducing spending. Connor brings up a good point around that could be really detrimental long term. At the very least, you know that you probably have to make more significant changes. And I guess we went through that November and December of last year. It's just an example for meta, but like we got really poor incremental readouts from meta, so we knew, we knew we had to make really significant changes. So it like at least gave us. Your original question was how do you action that? It's like depending on where it lands, you just know the severity of the issue and like the, the, the, the, you know, magnitude of the actions you need to take.

[George Davis]

For sure. 100. Yeah. If we get like a terrible read back then, you know, back to the drawing board. Everything, everything is being considered so cool.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

All right. I think that was really fun. Anything else you guys want to talk about?

[George Davis]

I don't think so.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

That was great.

[George Davis]

Great.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

That was. I thought that was a. Yeah, that was cool.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

Maybe our biggest swing mid episode ever. Like, I, I just can't think of two different things in like bedrock talent, social brand building versus like really nuanced incrementality discussion. It was super fun. George, thank you for coming on.

[George Davis]

Yeah, yeah, of course. Guys. Connor, let's. Let's hang out sometime. Nice to meet you, other Connor.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Yeah, nice to meet you, George. I got, I'm, I'm still waiting for my invite from Connor Mack to come hang out in Salt Lake, so.

[George Davis]

Yeah, come on down, bro. We gotta. Where are you at, Conor? Connor.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

I'm in Denver, so not too far.

[George Davis]

All right. We can probably make that happen.

[Host 2 (possibly Connor Mack)]

Are you a skier? Snowboarder?

[George Davis]

Not really. Sadly. I'm from Arkansas, so I, Yeah, I don't, I didn't never get into skiing or snowboarding. This is my winter. I'm gonna try it, so. All right. All right, boys. All right. Fun chat. See you guys.

[Host 1 (possibly Tyler or Cody Plofker)]

All right. Thank you again for listening to another episode of Marketing Operators. Thank you to George Davis from Cozy Earth for joining super fun discussion. As always. Thank you to our sponsors, motion Rich Pat panel, prescient after sell and revo. As always, like, subscribe, leave a comment, tweet at us. We appreciate it, and we'll see you next week.