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- [00:00]
A
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B
My whole philosophy is marketing is not a cost center. Marketing is a profit center. And from that perspective, it already creates the constraints of how much budget you should get. You should get as much budget as it adds to the bottom line and contribution. And that's it.
- [00:57]
A
Hi everyone and welcome to the Marketing Vanguard Podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with adweek and I'm thrilled today to be joined by Liebert. He goes by one name, he does have a last name. It's a little bit difficult to pronounce, but Liebert, you are the CMO of Thumbtack and I'm really excited to learn more about you and about your business and about the brand. So welcome.
- [01:18]
B
Thank you. I'm very excited to be here and you're having me.
- [01:21]
A
Yes. Well, I love interviewing folks for this podcast because it does give me a chance to meet new people and frankly meet new people who hold the CMO title. I think the more and more we do this, the more we learn that, you know, the world is vast and the CMO role exists in all different kinds of companies and all different kinds of sectors and there are unique learnings and perspective and expertise that come out of each and every CMO that I have the pleasure of interviewing for this podcast. So great to meet you. Let's start by having you just share with everybody listening. Let's start with your own journey. I would love to have you share with everybody a little bit about your career background. I always like to ask people what they got their educations in because I find more often than not CMOs are coming from increasingly varied educational backgrounds. And then tell us a little bit about the previous roles that you've held leading up to this role.
- [02:16]
B
Now I'm probably going to be on the boring side because to me it was fairly clear from the beginning that marketing would be the talk track. So I'm from Spain, I went to university in Southern France. You may hear a little bit of the accent coming through with French accent and I did economics and while I was in my first year of the at college doing economics, I was wondering what my major would be and I discovered marketing and market research. And I immediately fell in love with the discipline. I love the data side of the economics, but I also love the psychological element of understanding the motivations and drives of customers. And the combination of the two felt like perfect for who I am as an individual. So that was it. I started, I finished my degree, I met a professor of market research. He gave me the opportunity to start my first job in his small consultancy in Barcelona, market research consultancy. I did that for about a year. And from there I decided to move to the UK to learn English from Spain and France. Not speaking English very well, it's like, hey, this is very important. This is a big global world and English is the language that connects us all, right? So I decided to move to London to learn the language. There I was, I got my. My lucky break. After struggling for a year or so doing different jobs unrelated to marketing, I postulated for a job as a marketing assistant at Expedia. And the hiring manager saw something and gave me the shot, gave me the role. And that's when I started my journey in earnest about 20 years ago in digital marketing in marketplace companies, right? And from there it's history. I've held jobs and roles in both branding, integrated campaign, digital performance marketing, all kinds of roles, building really my expertise and background from the ground up, right? So for longest part of my career, I felt very proud of being a specialist, specialist in SCM campaigns, on affiliates, on CRM and email and life cycle, and running brand campaigns and integrated campaigns, right? Then I went from Expedia to ebay holding different manager and leadership positions until one day I felt, you know what I feel like after almost, let's say, 12, 13 years of doing marketing at a specialist level for this big global brand, these marketplaces really focusing on digital performance marketing, I'm ready to take the leap, the leap of leading an org. And that's when I decided to move to the startup world. And that's when I joined Udemy in 2018 to lead the company, consumer marketing practice, right? So I was the SBP of marketing there. I stayed there for five years, grew the company from 250 million to almost 700 million in revenue until Thumbtack came along and I met Marco, the founder. We connected at a very deep and emotional level. And the challenge that Thumbtack presents was too good and appealing for me to pass. And the rest is history. I've been here for two years and very excited about the journey I have.
- [05:55]
A
Awesome. Well, I love that, first of all, I love that you really, your entree into the marketing World was right at that, you know, 20 years ago when Expedia and you said ebay, you know, also spent a lot of time in that era covering what was happening in the online space and the digital marketing growth. Those were the early days obviously of addressable and thinking about like how do we actually track people? How do we understand. Back then it was about ad serving, right? And it was sort of like how do you get the right most relevant ads, you know, banner ads to the right people? Surfing the web.
- [06:25]
B
My first big digital performance tracking kind of project was implementing double click tracking links across all of the digital channels to the first time of deduplication across SEM and affiliates and display campaigns to make sure that we didn't double count. That was groundbreaking in 2006. Back then today is like nobody even thinks about that. But back then it was a big deal.
- [06:54]
A
It was a big deal and I love that you. It's just a really good frame of reference for folks who lived through or led through that period. It does take you back. It was a really transformative time. I mean, I think. And by the way, we like to think about right now, every time in marketing is a transformative time. I would argue, you know, right now, obviously AI is completely upending things, but there have been in the last 20, 30 years, there have been massive upheaval and that was one of them. So it's very interesting to think of that being kind of your, the genesis of your marketing career. I love that you also have, you know, sought out startup brands. Sought out. What was it about the startup brand space that appealed?
- [07:32]
B
I think at some point in my career I could have continued working in large global brands, public companies and that would have been an absolutely fine choice. But I really felt like I'm a builder at heart, right? So I'm a entrepreneur who never built his own company, but really loves and thrives stunning things from scratch and building and designing and seeing the evolution, right. So I really wanted to have that experience, right? And crafting, designing a marketing function from scratch. And that's what the opportunity of joining UDEMY was, right? They had a growth hacking group of people who were basically chasing the next big unlock, but they really hadn't figured out scale or systems or processes or how do we go from these 250 million and how do we get on our way to a billion dollars? You need a whole different set of talent, Martech. Discipline, governance, right. Campaigns. And that's what really drove me to the startup. Obviously being in a startup you have different challenges, right? And One of the challenges, like you have less resources and scarcity of resources is a real thing. So you need to basically adapt a lot of the things that you can do based on a much smaller set of resources. To me, that's a challenge that I embrace and, and I love because again, it forces me to think really hard on what's the most important thing that needs to happen and prioritize accordingly.
- [09:07]
A
It's interesting because I do think this concept of marketing budgets are always squeezed and have been again also for years, that there's never enough money, arguably. But the concept that creativity loves constraint and some of the best ideas come out of environments where your resources are constrained is something that's coming to the fore. I recently interviewed Vineet Mehra, he's the CMO of Chime. He actually proposed to the CMO community that they get into a new role and they don't ask for more budget, they ask for less. To see what you can do with fewer resources and see how that drives innovation. You obviously work, you know, stepping into a startup environment that's already tailor made for you. But I also love the fact so that that constrained environment, but also that huge rich opportunity to actually be. I love that you said you're a builder and you want to be part of the actual making of the stuff is super exciting and I would argue it's not for everybody. So the fact that you know that about yourself and that that's something that you seek out is, is very interesting. Tell me now about Thumbtack and for people who aren't familiar, talk a little bit about as a company and what its journey has been.
- [10:10]
B
Thumbtack's a two sided marketplace. Our whole reason of being is based on the insight that Marco Zapacosta, our founder and CEO, had in 2010. It's like, why is it so hard to hire a plumber? The home services industry is extremely fragmented. It's hyper local. There's a lot of players, right? And being a homeowner, I don't know if you're a homeowner or not, but if you own a home, even if you rent a home, there's always something that needs to happen around the home, something that you need to repair, something you need to improve and maintain, right? And very often you're faced with a lot of uncertainty. How much is it going to cost? What is it that I need to do? Who do I need to hire? How long is it going to take? Can I stay at home or do I need to leave when the work is done? There's a ton of questions and generally the customer journey is really convoluted. They ask friends and family, do you know a guy? How should I do this? They go to online forums, they have group chats asking each other support and so on. And often it leads to procrastination because you get very unsatisfactory answers and you end up like saying, you know what, this is too complex. I don't know what I need to do. I don't know if I get the right price or not. I'm going to wait until. You cannot wait any longer and things break and then you're in emergency and things cost a lot longer. So our mission is to solve all of that. We want to be the partner for every home need that our homeowners and pros need. Right. For the homeowner clearly being that partner, that helps them get to the accomplishment, the resolution of their home needs. And for the pro, we're here to help them grow their business. We're their most profitable marketing channel. We invest a lot in bringing the right customers highly qualified with a clear need for a pro and connecting them with the best pros in the area. That's really what the business about.
- [12:09]
A
So you're based in San Francisco?
- [12:11]
B
Yes.
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A
Okay, tell me where is thumbtack found? Across the country. What is it in some different markets? Is it primarily everywhere?
- [12:19]
B
We're a nationwide brand with digital. So as a platform we're very pervasive. Right. We have pros pretty much in every city around the country and we have homeowners everywhere. So we have more than 10 million projects that are being done on a, on an annual basis and we service the the entirety of the US So really it's being a digital platform really makes it easy to be available and everyone.
- [12:45]
A
There are other players in the category. How do you think about the white space that you stepped into and sort of what were you seeking? What was the company seeking to solve for?
- [12:53]
B
I think for me the key differentiation point is like for us is about solving customer pain points. Right. Our industry, the home service industry is a traditional lead generation industry. The industry provide context to the professionals and then they call the homeowner and they close the rate. We are in a very different mind space. We want to put the customers, we put the customers in charge. We tell them based on what you know from you and based on what we know from the pros, these are the best pros for your job in your area. And we give the customer selection of 1, 2 or 3 pros they can contact and that relationship really is deeper because the customer's already been doing a lot of research. We provided a lot of information, we understand what their problem is and then we connect them really at the point of I really need to hire someone now. And then we connect them with people who are available, who have the skill sets and have signals that they, they're ready for that job. Right. So we provide a lot higher and stronger connection at that point. So it's less about, hey, here's a lead. We charge you for that lead. It's more about really leading to a job. And our, our promise to our pros is like not leads, jobs. This is what we are emphasizing and we really want to, to help the pro growth because that's what long term scalability is all about. Right. Trustworthiness on the homeowner. So they know that we're there for them to solve their problems and for pros that they have a trustworthy and reliable partner to grow their business.
- [14:33]
A
Sure. When you stepped in, you said two years ago, you've joined. Two years.
- [14:36]
B
Two years, yeah.
- [14:37]
A
When you joined, where was the company in its journey? How old was it?
- [14:41]
B
So we're 17 years old now. So it was 15 years. In 2024 we crossed a $400 million revenue mark and we're profitable. So we're at that point where we're still a pre IPO company, but we are mature. Right. And we're well into our profitability. We're. We don't depend on external fundings to. We are in control of our undestin and this is what's exciting and that connects to the scarcity of resources. And what you mentioned about Vinit, the CMO at Chime resonates with me very much because my whole philosophy is marketing is not a cost center. Marketing is a profit center. And from that perspective, it already creates the constraints of how much budget you should get. You should get as much budget as it adds to the bottom line and contribution. That's the constraint. If and when we deliver more value to the business, then budget scale with the business, but not in spite of. Right. So I'm often confronted with the conversations around shouldn't we be investing more aggressively in brand to build the brand? And I'm like, yes, I totally agree. We should be investing in brand and brand investments have a different payout profile in terms of the timeframe than more direct to consumer kind of campaigns. But all of them need to be measurable and connected to the P and L. And if that's not true, then the Investment should not happen because what you're doing is you're eroding your P and L. And for a pre IPO under $500 million company, every single dollar counts. And the conversations I have with my CFO are about that trustworthiness, that reliability. He knows that I'm not going to be wasting the company's resources. Every dollar we put out there matters.
- [16:40]
C
Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's audience targeting. You can trust made simple. Learn more@experian.com Adweek that's exp e r I-a n.com Adweek.
- [17:11]
A
And I mean for you to be the one who's championing that is, it's pretty significant because it's ordinarily it would be the CFO coming and pushing and saying why, why, why? But you're actually using that as like the front that's sort of taking the lead. That philosophy is as a cmo, you're actually adopting that and sharing that and making that the priority, which to your point, it does probably engender a lot of trust on the part of your CMO in you and your CEO because you're making that the requirement. I would argue maybe that is not the norm everywhere. So what has been the thing that's caused you to think that way?
- [17:46]
B
I've seen the other side of it, right? I've seen companies who've taken gambles, CMOs who've taken gambles in big high production brand campaigns and then struggled to justify or show the return on investment. Right? And it's like, okay, so what did that do for us? Well, you know, it drove a lot of awareness and so on, but really struggling to put an ROI behind it, right? And then it's trained the relationship with the cmo. It erodes the trust on the whole function. And my premise has been flipping that paradigm on its head and saying, you know what, it might take longer, but I'd rather have a marketing practice that is engendered on trust, on connection to the bottom line of the company and understanding of what the different levers drive and earning the right to go further up the funnel and take bigger bets. And in fact, thumbtack, we're investing pretty heavily in our media mix on top of the funnel and we're doing it in a way that is P&L Friendly. And one of the big campaigns that we launched last year was we call a local market strategy. I mentioned earlier that thumbtack, or the home service industry is a hyperlocal, very fragmented industry. And running big national campaigns works to a certain extent. But where the battlefield is, where the contention happens is at the zip code, city, region level, where a homeowner doesn't care that Pemtech has 300,000 pros in nationwide. They care that we have the one or two pros that can come today to do the job in the home. And same thing applies to pros. They don't care that we have 20 million customers. They care that we have enough customers for them to grow their business in their area. So using that premise, in that core reality of our industry, we're focusing more on these bigger push from a brand perspective, from a higher reach and higher frequency, from a media buyer perspective at the local level. So we started, we had the hypothesis in 2024 that if we invested above and beyond our rational profit maximization point at the local level within a given timeframe, we would see a impact on our revenue versus our control groups. And we proved that hypothesis right. We went from four cities to 10 cities, and we're expanding that playbook. And within that playbook, we're adding more traditionally branded techniques like out of home, local activations, podcast, and so on. That allows us to build the brand, but in a very financially responsible way. If we make a bet on a media mix that's a bit more branded and we don't see the payout, it doesn't break the company, because the investment is not hundreds of millions of dollars, is hundreds of thousands, maybe a million dollars. Right? And then we can absorb that with our broader performance engine that really is delivering the impact to the piano the way we want it.
- [20:59]
A
So interesting. We won't be seeing a Super bowl ad from you anytime soon.
- [21:02]
B
Not right now. But we're investing. This is the interesting part. We. We're buying a ton of NFL ads, right? So we're present, and we do a lot of programmatic buying. We're on the streaming, so we do a lot of tv. We just launched what we call our standoff TV ads. It's basically on the premise of, like, uncertainty and how complex things are. And we added a bit of humor of someone staring at a living room after a children's party, birthday party, and the mess that's in there and the person feeling overwhelmed and putting their phone out and say, yeah, you know what? I'm going to call a pro because I cannot deal with that. This is too much for me. Right. Then I don't know even where to start. So we are investing a lot on that connection. Right. Using that customer insight around. Owning a home is very complex, has a lot of uncertainty, and if I don't get the right help, I might not do it or might not do it. Right, right. And Thumbtack is here to help me. So we invest a lot on that. But super bowl ads, I mean, I don't see yet potential ROI from that very expensive by the minute or by the second kind of media buy.
- [22:09]
A
No, for sure, for sure. But again, that discipline is. You've got that discipline in check there. So that's great. I appreciate that. It just takes me back. It was easier when it was just yellow pages. You had a book and it only addressed your area, your town, and you only got a listing based on who was actually in your town and vice versa. So it's almost like we've gotten so much more complex and you're trying to take the complexity back out of it.
- [22:36]
B
Exactly. And I think that's a great, brilliant point that is at the core of our differentiation and value proposition. We're not a directory. We're not a place where you come and search 1050, 100 pros. We're marching service. We understand you, the homeowner, deeply as much as we understand the pro. And we match you with the right person and the same thing. Pros with the right job, the right homeowner. And that's where AI is starting to make a real difference. Before, the matching was happening, really at the structured data level. Right. You need to really understand the needs and the categorization of a homeowner problem and, and the kind of jobs and the checklist that a pro ticked when they onboarded in your platform. And that created some limitations. With AI, you don't need structured data. AI interprets troves and troves of data and allows us to do better matching between pros and homeowners. And I think that's a such a amazing area of progress and innovation that will allow us to not just deliver the value that we're delivering today, but just go above and beyond and really get to that promise we make to our pros that we're not providing them with context, we're providing them with jobs.
- [23:57]
A
I love that you mentioned AI and you're actually mentioning it in the context of the product, but I'm not divorcing the marketing from the product because it's.
- [24:07]
B
One and the same.
- [24:08]
A
It is one and the same.
- [24:10]
B
I think the biggest driver for brand equity and consideration and awareness is strong product market fit. The better experience you deliver to your customers, the more they will remember you and the more they will come back, the more likely they are to come back and use you in the future. So if that's broken, then it doesn't matter how much TV advertising, how much out there you are, you will break faith with the customer and they will not come back. So having that strong experience, really delivering the value and using that to then craft how you talk to customers, right? I mean that's a core part of our go to market value props, right? It's convenient, we're reliable and we help you achieve the things that you need to achieve. Right. Those are three core value propositions. And then product is all the reasons to believe. Underneath we have AI for matching. We are now launching a AI chatbot that allows you to really show a picture of a stain on the ceiling and ask the AI what's going on here? Is it the plumbing? Is it painting? Is it roofing? What should I do? Can you connect me with someone to help me? Right, so all of these added value features then turn into go to market messages and connections really with a customer, reasons to believe and show the value we bring to the table.
- [25:37]
A
What would your team say about you as a leader?
- [25:39]
B
I hope they say that I'm a servant leader. That puts one of the realizations like I stopped doing marketing a long time ago. I'm not a practitioner anymore. I'm an enabler. I'm someone who really provides a team with a direction, with a vision, with a goal and then do everything I can to enable them to succeed. They are the ones who are coming up with a great campaigns. They are the ones who are setting up the models to optimize better the campaigns. They're the ones who are building agentic systems to really automate and personalize better our experience, our campaigns. Right? They're doing all of that. I am here to help them succeed, remove any barriers, provide the resources they need and really enable the success. So hopefully they'll say that about me.
- [26:30]
A
I love that. Three things that get you excited as a CMO and three things that give you pause or concern as a CMO.
- [26:38]
B
Is building great teams and not just marketing teams, it's the cross functional teams. It's getting marketers and creatives and channel specialists to work with PMs, data science, data scientists, applied scientists, engineers, finance. I really see the marketing growth Discipline as a big cross functional team. And you need to have a players and great team dynamics across all the functions. That's talent. Right. Is unlocking that growth for the company, not just for marketing. And great ROI on a and being that profit center as I mentioned. And the third thing is really, as you said earlier, we're at the cusp of AI, we're innovating this. There's a bright new world ahead of us and we get to defining, we get to play in that how marketing and how business evolves. And I couldn't think of anything more exciting than being part of that and figuring it out.
- [27:43]
A
That's awesome. Things that causing you concerns, the things.
- [27:46]
B
That cause me concern is like listen, are we moving fast enough? I have real FOMO for anything that has to do with being ahead of the curve. Right. Where our resources are drivers for creativity, but they're real constraints as well. Right. And I see competitors and having resources and during a lot of that and my question is always like, are we doing enough? Are we going fast enough? Right. Customer obsession. Do we know enough of our customer? Are we doing enough to get the insights? Did we really crack that core insight or is there something else there? Right. So that continuous question and obsession about are we doing enough about customers? And the answer is always no. There's always you can do more. Right. And what's enough? I think those are the top of mind ones.
- [28:34]
A
Love it. Last quick question for you. That is who's next? Who's another CMO that I should have on the podcast? This can be somebody you know really well or it can be somebody that you admire from afar.
- [28:46]
B
I think he is probably the absolute opposite of me as a cmo. Who is a brand? First cmo Nick Brandenburger. He's the CMO of Mammut, the mountaineering sports brand. He and I used to work together at ebay and we've taken parallel tracks in our journey, but we approach marketing from a totally different perspective. And I learn from him all the time in terms of branding and how to think and how to design and craft a brand. There's no one better than I know of him on teasing out customer insights and turning those insights into real interesting campaigns that deliver value. And obviously I'm more the data guy, right. And really the systems and the product. So I think the two of us would make a phenomenal CMO together because we come from the two extremes of the spectrum.
- [29:44]
A
Well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to invite you both to our marketing Vanguard Summit in Chicago in May because I would love to get the two of you up there and.
- [29:51]
B
You can do like, oh, that would be fantastic.
- [29:53]
A
See CMO on CMO interview.
- [29:55]
B
Oh, that would be awesome. Yeah.
- [29:57]
A
Yeah, love that. So we'll get that done. Listen, thank you so much. This has really been a pleasure. It's, it's been wonderful getting to know you, getting to know the way you think as a CMO and a business leader within your org, and learning more about Thumbtack and what makes it different. So thank you so much for being here. Look forward to continuing the conversation with you another time for sure.
- [30:17]
B
All right. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me.
- [30:20]
C
Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Ad Week Podcast Network and Acast Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting Adweek.com podcasts stay updated on all things Adweek Podcast Network by following us on Twitter Dweek Podcast. And if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send us an email@podcastdweek.com thanks for listening. Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences. There's no more doom scrolling. It's audience targeting you can trust. Made simple. Learn more@experian.com Adweek that's exp e r I A N Com Adweek.