How Life360 is hilariously taking a bite out of Apple

Summary

Podcast Summary: On Strategy Showcase – "How Life360 is Hilariously Taking a Bite Out of Apple"

Podcast Information:

• Title: On Strategy Showcase
• Host: Fergus O’Carroll
• Episode Title: How Life360 is hilariously taking a bite out of Apple
• Release Date: June 8, 2025
• Description: Where marketers tell the stories behind the strategies that led to amazing campaigns.

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Introduction to Life360’s Innovative Campaign

In this episode of On Strategy Showcase, host Fergus O’Carroll delves into Life360’s groundbreaking marketing campaign that positions the brand as a family-centric alternative to Apple’s broad appeal. The campaign, crafted by Alto in New York City, leverages humor and heartfelt storytelling to differentiate Life360 from competitors like Apple’s Find My app and Airtags.

Campaign Highlights: “Coat,” “Coffin,” and “Curfew”

1. "Coat" Advertisement:

• Overview: The first spot, titled "Coat," introduces a young boy distressed by his parents' constant fighting over his misplaced coat. As he grows, the coat remains with him, symbolizing Life360’s role in family stability.
• Humor Element: The ad transitions from a dark portrayal of family conflict to a humorous revelation, highlighting how Life360 helps manage everyday family chaos.
• Notable Quote: Fergus O’Carroll describes, “The humor builds throughout the spot until the end when we discover what this is all about” ([00:02:30]).

2. "Coffin" Advertisement:

• Overview: "Coffin" opens in a solemn church setting with a family member speaking about the deceased. The scene shifts to reveal another family member locked in the bathroom, humorously mistaken as speaking from the coffin.
• Impact: This ad juxtaposes tragedy with unexpected humor, illustrating Life360’s ability to handle unforeseen family situations.
• Notable Quote: Fergus narrates the twist, “It's really quite hilarious” ([00:03:15]).

3. "Curfew" Advertisement:

• Overview: In "Curfew," anxious parents search for their teenage son after he misses his curfew, leading to a comical encounter with undercover cops disguised as sex workers.
• Message: The spot reinforces Life360’s promise to alleviate family worries through effective tracking solutions.
• Notable Quote: Fergus comments on the comedic buildup, “It turns out those sex workers are actually undercover cops” ([00:04:33]).

In-Depth Interview with Mike Zieman and Tara Frey

Host Introduction: Fergus introduces his guests, Mike Zieman, Chief Marketing Officer for Life360, and Tara Frey, Head of Strategy at Alto, highlighting their collaboration on the recent campaign.

Understanding the Brand: Life360 and Tile

Mike Zieman on Life360:

• User Base: "We have about 80 million monthly users, almost half international" ([06:54]).
• Core Offering: Life360 specializes in family connectivity and safety, offering location sharing, Tile Bluetooth trackers, emergency dispatch, and more.
• Differentiation: “We compete with Apple on two dimensions: their Find My app and their Airtags versus our Life360 app and Tiles” ([09:26]).

Tile as a Product Line:

• Integration: Tile devices are now marketed under the Life360 umbrella, with ongoing discussions about brand architecture and potential unification ([09:14]).

Competitive Edge:

• Family Focus: Unlike Apple’s mass-market approach, Life360 targets families specifically, offering cross-platform compatibility and features tailored for family safety and connectivity.
• Notable Quote: Mike emphasizes, “We are building a brand that wraps itself around family and creates additional moat through equity” ([23:28]).

Business Challenges and Marketing Strategy

Raising Brand Awareness:

• Challenge: Despite a large user base, Life360 largely flies under the radar. The primary goal is to increase brand awareness beyond word-of-mouth.
• Goal: “Broadening understanding of the company beyond location sharing” ([17:44]).

Strategic Shift:

• Emotional Alignment: Tara explains the necessity to emotionally align Life360 and Tile under a unified family-centric message, moving from mere item tracking to safeguarding family dynamics.
• Creative Platform: The campaign centers on “Family Proofing,” showcasing how Life360 protects families from their own chaotic moments ([25:41]).

Creative Process and Tone:

• Balancing Emotions: Initially, Mike anticipated a purely emotional campaign but was impressed by Alto’s blend of drama and humor, resulting in ads that evoke both laughter and tears.
• Notable Quote: Tara highlights, “Ridiculous stuff happens in families... it felt like a very honest way to land the brand benefit” ([31:18]).

Impact and Performance Metrics

Campaign Reception:

• Internal Reactions: The creative approach sparked strong emotional responses within the company, demonstrating the campaign’s power and relatability.
• Audience Engagement: The “Coat” spot achieved almost a 100% playthrough rate, encouraging a shift from shorter to longer ad formats ([44:13]).

Key Performance Indicators:

• Positive Metrics: Marketing mix modeling and pre-testing indicated successful latent effects and brand positioning improvements.
• Business Growth: Public earnings reports reflect healthy growth attributed to effective marketing strategies ([43:15]).

Notable Quote: Mike asserts, “We believe marketing is absolutely one of the key drivers of that” ([43:15]).

Insights and Conclusions

Strategic Takeaways:

• Niche Focus: By honing in on family-centric messaging, Life360 effectively differentiates itself from broad-spectrum competitors like Apple.
• Emotional Storytelling: Combining humor with emotional depth creates a memorable and impactful brand narrative.
• Creative Risk-Taking: Alto’s bold creative approach demonstrates the value of risk in developing distinctive and engaging campaigns.

Future Directions:

• Global Campaign Expansion: Life360 plans to launch its largest and most global campaign to date, aiming to solidify its position as the leading family connection and safety brand.
• Brand Evolution: Continued integration of Tile under the Life360 brand will streamline offerings and enhance market presence.

Final Thoughts: Fergus O’Carroll commends Mike and Tara for their innovative and effective collaboration, highlighting the campaign’s success in blending cinematic storytelling with practical family solutions. The episode underscores the importance of targeted, emotionally resonant marketing in building strong, recognizable brands.

Closing Remark: The episode concludes with Fergus expressing enthusiasm for the ongoing success and future endeavors of Life360 and Alto, inviting listeners to explore more creative work on onstrategyshowcase.com.

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Notable Quotes:

• Fergus O’Carroll: “The humor builds throughout the spot until the end when we discover what this is all about” ([00:02:30]).
• Mike Zieman: “We think about people. We offer location sharing as sort of our bread and butter” ([07:07]).
• Tara Frey: “Ridiculous stuff happens in families... it felt like a very honest way to land the brand benefit” ([31:18]).
• Mike Zieman: “We are building a brand that wraps itself around family and creates additional moat through equity” ([23:28]).

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This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, detailing Life360’s strategic marketing efforts, the creative ingenuity behind their campaign, and the collaborative dynamics between Life360 and Alto. Listeners gain valuable insights into how targeted, emotionally intelligent marketing can effectively compete with industry giants.

Transcript

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O' Carroll in Chicago. Today we're going to be talking about Life360. Their campaign really caught my eye. Alto in New York City does all of the work. Now, Life360 is similar to the Find My app. You know, Find My App or Find My Friend or Find My Family Member function within your Apple device. Or also like airtags that Apple offers, or Samsung has smart tags, but Life 360 has tiles and the Life 360 Bluetooth app, Bluetooth tracker. And they've been around for 17 years. So way before this technology was offered by Apple. The creative work I wanted to describe to you because it's so, so strong. The first one is called Coat. And it's really fun because the brand has positioned around the idea of family. And what I mean by that is the way they talk about it is improving everyday family life. Now, they look at it as if Apple does not have the ability or the willingness to target family specifically because obviously Apple is a mass brand and it's looking to appeal to everybody. So they're foiling that by focusing on family. And they've been doing that since the very beginning. So what's unique about this work is it has a very quirky, almost dark aspect of humor to it, that it starts off dark and then it becomes, let's call it, more bright or more funny towards the end. So the first spot starts with a. The first one's called Coat. It starts with this young boy. He's listening to his parents fighting in the other room because he has once again lost his coat, which is a pretty common occurrence in families. And as this experience has, we're led to believe it's made an impact on him because for the rest of his life, as we see him grow up, right until the point where he's getting married, we see him in scenes where he never takes his coat off. So the humor builds throughout the spot until the end when we discover what this is all about. Another spot in the campaign is called Coffin. And it opens up where we're inside a church. The coffin is by the altar. A family member is speaking from the altar about the person who's passed away. And then we cut to the bathroom in the church and we begin to discover that someone has gotten. A family member has gotten locked in the bathroom and they can't get out. The handle won't work on the inside of the door. The person decides that they're going to try and call for help. So they find an air vent and they start calling out for help, saying they need help getting out. And obviously this is actually heard by the people who are in the church, and they think that it's the mother in the coffin. So it's really quite hilarious. First, I want to thank you all for coming today. My mother was a great person.

[Mike Zieman]

I know my mother would have been.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Grateful, and that's something I knew she would give you the clothes off my.

[Tara Frey]

Back if you needed that.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

She would do anything for you. Help my mother to love.

[Tara Frey]

All of.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Y' all here today.

[Mike Zieman]

Will always remember.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Mama. Family proof your family. Send an SOS with tile. The next spot is called curfew, and it is laugh out loud funny. So the idea here is that a father and a mother are trying to figure out where their son is. Their teenage son, he has not come home within his curfew. So the father goes out trying to find where he's at. So after trying a number of different locations, he pulls up to the street corner where we see two women which were led to believe are sex workers. And he begins to ask about the fact that he's looking for a teenage boy. And as you can imagine the humor in this, it turns out that those sex workers are actually undercover cops. So this entire thing builds up this crescendo of the fact that life360 can save you from all these chaotic moments within family life.

[Tara Frey]

He's still not picking up.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Oh, go look. This is the last time this kid brings curfew. Excuse me, I'm looking for my son. He's a teenager. Floppy hair, skinny kid. Nah.

[Mike Zieman]

Sorry.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Where is this kid? Excuse me.

[Mike Zieman]

Hi.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

I'm looking for a teenage boy.

[Tara Frey]

Like, underage?

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yes. Fifteen, slim build.

[Tara Frey]

Out of the car, sicko.

[Mike Zieman]

Isn't this your dad?

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Family proof your family with Life 360. It's brilliant work and this conversation is one of my favorites. Recently, I'm going to be talking with Mike Zieman. He's chief marketing officer for Life360 in San Francisco, and Tara Frey is head of strategy at Alto in New York City. You or Alto, I think in New York City. You can see all of the creative work on our [e-mail] it's really terrific to see and it's a great interview. I hope you'll enjoy it. It so the agency Alto got on my radar a couple of weeks back. They got onto the ad age a list nominations. They, among a group of other agencies, have been doing some great work. And I Wasn't aware of them. I went and I checked out their site and I was kind of blown away by the work that they're doing. So I reached out and we're having this great conversation with one of their great clients. And the new work that's come out over the last few months has sort of blown my mind in its originality and its personality. So I invited both Mike and Tara to come on and talk about it. Mike, welcome to the show.

[Mike Zieman]

Thanks for having me, Fergus. Appreciate it.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

And Tara, good to have you on. This is our second time talking. So good to have you back on for a conversation.

[Tara Frey]

Thanks, Fergus.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So, Mike, let's start off and talk a little bit about the brand. So there's, as I look at the work, there's references to two brands. There's one is Tile and one is Life360. Tell us about which is the brand and tell us about the business. Like whom, what is this brand, this business, and then whom does it compete against?

[Mike Zieman]

So Today we call life360 a family connection and safety company. So we've got about 80 million monthly users. We kind of fly under the radar unless people use us, which is kind of an interesting dynamic from a marketers.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

80. 80 million.

[Mike Zieman]

80 million, roughly, yes. God, yeah. And it's pretty global. You know, we're almost half and half kind of us and international. So it's a big company, a big business, a big app. And we like to say we help people stay close to their people, pets and things. So we think about people. We offer location sharing as sort of our bread and butter. When you think about things. We have the Tile device, item trackers, and then we also offer safety services, so things like emergency dispatch and crash detection if you're driving or identity theft protection, et cetera. So that's the kind of company as we articulated today. And we're sort of in service of this mission of really just making everyday family life better.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

And how many years have you been in business?

[Mike Zieman]

A surprisingly long time. So about 17 years life360 has been in operation, but inflected just a couple of years ago, really.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So I didn't even know that that technology for geotargeting items, people, stuff, belongings even existed back that far back.

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah. In fact, Tile was the category pioneer for Bluetooth trackers and obviously Airtag entered and, you know, frankly took a big chunk of market share. But it's still a very active business for the company. But yeah, we've been around.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

And so the 80 million users monthly users have they built over the you said how many years again? 17.

[Mike Zieman]

17. 17.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Has it scaled up over 17 or has it been at sort of a slow growth, coming up to a peak in the last couple of years?

[Mike Zieman]

I would call it sort of traditional S curve. So it kind of grew incrementally for a while, then really started to inflect it just a few short years ago. Yeah.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Interesting. And so the Tile and Life360 you're going to market under one of those or under both?

[Mike Zieman]

Well, the lines are starting to blur. So think of Tile as sort of a product line today under the Life360 umbrella brand. But we're continuing to think about brand architecture and how that evolves.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So and then another question about the functionality, like what are those key functionality differences if they exist between Apple Airtags and other competitors out there for you guys?

[Mike Zieman]

Sure. So think of us, if you want to talk about Apple, we compete on sort of two dimensions with them. So their find My app, which allows people to track things and people and then their airtag device and we have the Life360 app and then tiles. Right. So there's sort of a direct analog between the two, a couple of differentiators. First of all, we're for families. We don't try to be sort of for everyone. And Apple inherently has to be for everyone. So we can build product, utility and sort of a brand around families. Specifically we are cross platform. So roughly half of the people who use our products and services have both Android and iOS devices in the house, which makes sense because oftentimes kids get Android phones even if the parents have iPhones. So there's sort of that nice built in mode of being cross platform. And then there's a bunch of differentiators at the devices tracking level. So for example, our tiles have an SOS button in case you run into trouble. We come in various colors and form factors and have a replaceable battery. There's a whole set of differentiators with regards to the devices as well.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So did you find, when you look back at the history of the business, how many years have you been with them by the way?

[Mike Zieman]

About 15 months.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Oh, so you're relatively new. So if you look back on the business, is this a brand that was built on Android or was it always cross platform?

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah, it was really always cross platform with a little bit of an iOS skew in the US and you can imagine a little bit more balance internationally.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

And so when you look back, because I'm super curious, we'll talk about this with Tara in a Second also, but is there a sort of a behavior and attitude that is associated with a Life 360 or Tile user that you think is different than an airtag Apple Airtags user?

[Mike Zieman]

I think it's just that people associate us, associate us with family use case. Right. So, you know, our core sort of target is suburban exurban mom who's got kids of, you know, phone or drink thriving age. And so when they're looking for a solution in this area, we tend to be the one that comes top of mind first. And, you know, the business was really built on that word of mouth and virality of, you know, parents at the gates of school talking about what they use to just kind of make. Make things a little bit easier in their household. So I'd say that's something that we've really established an advantage in.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

God, it's. It's so interesting because I always love to hear about brands who are sort of challengers to the big behemoths. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think, you know, airt from Apple sort of popularized these. It seemed that way at least it felt like a new thing, right? Maybe it felt like a new device rather than maybe there was a distinction between the product that you were holding in your hand versus the fact that there was an app that you could download as part of that. Is that part of what? Because you guys also have the tag or is it only an app? The tile.

[Mike Zieman]

It's the tile Tile device.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Right.

[Mike Zieman]

So. So what I'll say is tip of the cap to Apple. They're known for not being the first entrant to a category, but then coming in as a second mover and doing quite well. And so they built a nice airtags business, which I don't think is necessarily core to Apple, but it's built a nice sort of market share number. But look, Apple has legions of fans, right? Billions of users who love their products. And so it's not surprising that when they decide to enter a category, they will definitely gain significant traction regardless of what that category is. However, it's sort of weird because, yes, they have a larger sort of denominator in terms of iPhone users that have Find My distributed on their phone by default, but like to think we're the category leader in connection and safety. And we feel like that's evidenced not only by the 80 million users, but the fact that they come five times a day on average to the app to use us. So our engagement really is unparalleled.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

And is it a Subscription model or do you pay for the service, Andy?

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah, so we've got mostly a free user base and they're monetized in various ways, including most recently through ads, through native ads, and then we have.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Call.

[Mike Zieman]

It two and a half million paid subscribers as well.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Nice. So let's talk about Tara. Can you talk about the business challenge that's presented to Alto and in what form did it come in?

[Tara Frey]

Yes, Alto's challenge was very much bringing these two brands together, like 360 and Tile, and doing it in a way that didn't feel, you know, clunky or forced. So we really had to think about how do we make families feel like these tools belong together, like they, like they work together.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Why did you need to bring them together? Because there were. There was an acquisition or there was a merger.

[Tara Frey]

Exactly, Exactly.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So in 2021, these two brands come together. Were they very well known brands, Tara? Were they as independent brands and there need to be a justification for them coming together or did them coming together sort of just signal a new opportunity to promote a broader product offering?

[Tara Frey]

Yeah, you know, like, like Mike said, Life360 is passionately known by those people who used it. And we had a couple at Alto, but those who weren't users, you know, they did not know about it and tended to be on Find My Friends, which is the Apple tracking tile. On the other hand, I know that Life360 actually technically has higher awareness, but we personally and our group had all had all heard of Child.

[Mike Zieman]

If I could just add to that, it's really interesting because there was a complementary geographic footprint between the two brands. So Life360, our highest penetration is in the south, the Midwest, kind of the middle parts of the country. And Tile as a sort of leading technology was far more coastal. And so if you ask people in San Francisco or New York where Terra is, Tile is going to be better known than Life360. If you ask somebody in Dallas, it's going to be vice versa.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So is your goal then to merge these into a new name, Mike, or is it going to remain Life360 with tile as a product brand?

[Mike Zieman]

Nothing specific to share today, Fergus, but.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

What I will say, something is coming.

[Mike Zieman]

Oh, look, we're evolving the brand architecture. We, you know, especially as we continue to grow internationally. You know, it's expensive to support two brands. Right. And so today Tile is a product line and over time the lines will blur more. We will have a single brand and, you know, something that we feel really great about and we've got strong equity to build a off from here.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So let's come back to that business challenge. So. So Mike is the business challenge. I need to come up with a way to communicate both of these brands. Or how would you describe what the. The objective was?

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah, I'll start a little bit more zoomed out, which is that we're weird. And we're weird because again, you know, we have 80 million users, but if you don't use the product, you're not aware. Right. It's very different than, hey, I don't use peloton, but I know what Peloton is. Right. So I, I've never worked at a company that had that Dyn. I don't know of too many companies that are as big as we are who still fly under the radar. And so it's like, okay, we need to create awareness. We have this amazing word of mouth engine and the company, we're very blessed because I don't need to go use Instagram and Google to make sure the company grows. It will grow. It's figuring out how do I complement word of mouth with paid marketing and sort of other forms of marketing outside of word of mouth. And so broadening understanding of the company is job one. And then broadening understanding of the company beyond location sharing would really be job number two, which is what a lot of the work that Alto has been doing the last nine months for us has been all about.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So then, Tara, for you, when you guys get underway, what type of planning work did you feel you needed to do?

[Tara Frey]

Yeah, well, Mike's team had a good amount of brand and consumer research, actually. And when we looked at the brand health data, it showed Life 360 already had a super strong emotional tie with family. But Tile not so much. Life 360 also has, or I should say, yeah, has a really strong social presence, especially on TikTok. They were actually at each breakout brand winner for best social media presence. Shout out Brittany and team.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah, that's great.

[Tara Frey]

Very fun. Very fun. So we had the opportunity to scrape that and learn from what people were already posting and tagging and saying about this brand. And it was all very much centered on parenting and teens and being part of the family. Again, Tile not so much. So the first thing we realized is life360 and tile had to emotionally align like its competitors. So we mentioned Apple, Airtag, also Samsung Smart Tag. Tile had really just been about finding lost things. Wallets, keys, luggage. But families, they're not just worried about their stuff. They're worried about their people. And that really opened up this opportunity to align tile with Life360 by leaning really hard into family in a way that, as Mike mentioned, a brand like Apple really can't do that.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So Mike, when you come in, had Life360 previously been marketing and if they had, what was the message?

[Mike Zieman]

Yes, Life360 had definitely been marketing. I would say it was a little bit, sort of scrappier, a little bit more lower funnel in nature. With the exception of one or two campaigns that they had run prior to my time at the company. It was a little bit more G rated, I would say, and sort of made people feel good. But I would also say there was an ongoing set of great social proof in social channels where they demonstrated here's how the product is really helping people, keeping them safe, even saving lives.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Would you describe that as being sort of fear based or more optimistic? We had a show last week on insurance brands. We were talking about the way insurance used to market itself based upon fear and creating uncertainty and now how dramatically that has changed now into more entertainment and branded assets. What was it like before you came? Was there. What was the tone?

[Mike Zieman]

It was very. It wasn't fear, it was very much love. Right. So for example, the platform was circle the ones you love. Right. And a circle is the term we use for the group or the family that you create, you know, within the app. So it was very, yeah, very lovey, I guess is the ethic by what you say.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So Tara, what did you learn about the audience? Because I had a sense that there's a different psychology in an Android buyer than an Apple iOS user, iPhone user. And I'm just wondering if it's the same here. Is this an audience that has a certain attitude towards this topic that you could play to better than Apple? Because Apple doesn't, doesn't really market this other than it's a technology. It's not wrapped in anything that I can think of in terms of an overall specific message. Or am I wrong?

[Tara Frey]

Yeah, no, I mean what we were able to do, I don't think it was Android versus Apple as much, but we were able to go all in on family and we saw there was this cultural shift happening. We kind of jokingly called it trauma dumping. So if you think about it, social media used to be all Instagram perfect family moments and TikTok like completely blew that open. You would see posts like, here's a photo of my kid's birthday party, like five minutes before he, you know, vomited on the cake. Or I, I thought my kid was napping. Turns out he was giving my dog a haircut. Like, people are just so much more honest and, and funny. And it's just made it clear we didn't have to portray like an idealistic or I guess unrealistic family life. We could really show how Life360 and Tile are these things that can help you deal with everyday chaos.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So I'm thinking how. And that's what I'm super curious about sort of unpacking here you have this behemoth. Is it your sense that your target isn't aware of Apple even if they're on an iPhone or they aren't aware of that technology, or is it something else? Are you feeling you just need to tip them over the edge by giving them a message that they resonate with.

[Mike Zieman]

So I don't think about like a frontal assault on Apple one to one. I think about we have a certain audience and we will serve that audience incredibly well. And that audience, I. E. Families is big enough where we can grow massively to become a huge company without taking on and trying to get a billion plus users like Apple has.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Sure.

[Mike Zieman]

And the way we do that, again, it's product and brand. Right. So we are building a product that serves families better than what Apple is building, period. And we are building a brand that wraps itself around that and creates additional moat through equity and family.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So then, Tara, when you've done some of this planning work, what do you come out of it feeling recommending?

[Tara Frey]

I mean, how we got to the platform is, you know, the recommendation was pretty simple. Again, instead of just trying to bolt them together with some functional message, we wanted to emotionally like unify them under a bigger truth about families. And a lot of it just came from us at Alto, talking as parents, as siblings about all the sort of disasters that happened in real family life. And what happens is you start to realize it's really less our stuff that needs protecting and it's more ourselves that we need protection from. Because like every family has, you know, a spacey kid or like a grandma that wanders off or a teenager who is always breaking curfew. And that's where this idea of family proofing really came from. That you don't just need protection from the outside world, you kind of need protection from yourselves. And actually our creative platform, Family Proof youf Family, was the line on the creative brief, the words of a brilliant strategist. Not me. And our, our creatives were smart enough to recognize a great line and they just let Their imagination sort of run with it. For Tile, that strategic shift was really from tile protects your stuff from loss or stuff. To Tile protects your family and like their stuff from themselves. So we ask creatives to think, you know, less like never lose your TV remote again and more like, you know, dad can't be trusted with anything smaller than a suburban, like stuff like that. Like little quirks about your family that we could really take to absurd extremes.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So, Mike, why did you go to Alto in the first place?

[Mike Zieman]

I wanted to sort of evolve the company to take some bigger risks with regards to marketing. And again, I think one of the great things about the team and our amazing VP of Creative was that they were very scrappy. They did a lot with a little particularly in sort of the quote unquote, non working part of the marketing budget. And I wanted to show what was possible if we invested a little bit more and kind of brought in partners that could help sort of take us to the next level, make us uncomfortable. Yes, in terms of the work, but more so in terms of the investment in building something that we felt really great about and would really kind of strike the evocative chord that I know video and film in particular can, which is kind of what we've leaned into. So yeah, met a few different agencies and we were really inspired by sort of the risk taking profile that Alto had. And I knew that that's where we want it to be. I very much believe we should make people laugh or make them cry. I say that all the time. There's sort of the clinical middle in between those things that just is camouflage or gets lost. And so I felt like Alto could really help us find one of those ends of the spectrum. And by the way, our product gives us permission to do that. Right? The product saves lives, right? Literally. And it's a. There are so many delightful stories that we see across social and, you know, reviews and things like that. So illuminating them is super important.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

You know, it's. It's in as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking of the, the again we talked earlier about this, the shift in insurance, but there was also that shift that came from home security systems that it used to be the same idea, fear based, risk based. You protect your yourself from an intruder, a potential intruder to then it tilted into humor. And I think a lot of those sort of digital based brands began to really kick the ass of some of those big established brands. So I'm wondering with you, did you come into this with a sense of what you might want to do tonally in the work when you joined the company.

[Mike Zieman]

So to be very honest, I had thought when we briefed in the initial campaigns with Alto, I fully thought we were going to make people cross cry and something very emotional and beautiful and touching. And then I was pretty shocked with what came back. And I like, just very honestly that night was thinking, huh, I wonder if I need to totally veto this. And kind of reverse course and sat on it and started to come around to it and through additional conversation thought, oh, okay, this idea is really powerful, we need to nuance it. But I think we're onto something here. And if anyone's seen our sort of code coat video, it is. It's very, very emotional in lots of different ways. Definitely does not start off as funny. It's funny only at the very end.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yes.

[Mike Zieman]

Which is very different than what I had anticipated going in.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So why did you feel that you wanted that type of emotion, the cry.

[Tara Frey]

When.

[Mike Zieman]

I don't know, I think back on some of the ads. Well, first of all, I'm a huge fan of cinema. Like, I go to the theater and like tear up both when things are funny and when they're sad. I guess I'm emotional and sensitive in that way. And so I knew that one of those two would be what we should pursue. Do you remember that the Google Ad, the dear. I'm trying to remember the name of it. Sophie, Dear Sophie. To me that was such a seminal moment kind of earlier in my career where I'm like, oh, wow, that's what's possible through marketing interest.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Because you, you spent time at Google. So you were there for all of that.

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah, yeah, Well, I was at Google after that. But I still like this. It's funny, like, this will age me. But the two seminal moments kind of earlier in my career, you know, in terms of learning what great work was, that was one on the touching side. And the Dos Equis most interesting man, when that came out as the other one. Yeah.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So great. So great.

[Mike Zieman]

Oh, like these are amazing. And like the Dos Equis one in particular, like you could never. That would have failed every pretest, I imagine possible. Right. So I, we wanted to live on both sides and I just thought, I guess if I'm being honest, that maybe the company, I'm the new cmo, maybe the company would be. Maybe it's safer to go with kind of the more loving based approach and touching. And so I had to sort of then sort of take myself out of that thinking and really approach it with a fresh Perspective.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So, Tara, why did you guys not go at the emotions? That type of emotion. The tears, let's say. I don't know how you want to. Well, I have to say it's emotional anyway, but it's a different type of emotion.

[Tara Frey]

I have to say, first, we all so clearly heard what Mike said. Which he already shared with you at our first lunch when we met him on a roof in midtown. And he did say, either make me laugh or make me cry, because anything else, you're literally just throwing money away way. And he also said to scare him. I'm not sure if you remember that part, Mike. So we brought him a funeral and a sex worker. Well, technically, an undercover cop and a traumatized child.

[Mike Zieman]

Yes.

[Tara Frey]

So why. Yeah, I think because ridiculous stuff happens in families.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah.

[Tara Frey]

You know, things that may not seem funny at the moment, but, like, when you look back, they're. They're. They're pretty funny. Like, you know, your kid loses his coat three times in one winter. You. You lock yourself in a bathroom at a funeral. You accidentally proposition an undercover cop because you're looking for your son who was meant to be home an hour ago. It felt like just a very honest way to land the brand benefit that they brought to us. You know, know, this peace of mind for families because, you know, you're. I think families are always like, one lost coat away from a meltdown. I personally wish that my mom had had life360 in tile back when I was a kid. I lost up all the time, and it definitely. When we got home, when dad got home, it. It led to some good old family drama. You know, I distinctly remember one birthday, I had this, like, Velcro wallet. It had, like, Morgan Mindy on it or maybe Ziggy. And it was packed with all my. My little $5 and $10 birthday bills for my aunts and grandparents. And we went to the mall because it was the 80s. And somehow instead of throwing out my Haribo gummy bear wrapper, I must have thrown out my wallet, because I came home, and in my little bag, I had a gummy bear wrapper, but I didn't have my wallet. So I personally could have definitely used some family proofing. I just think it's such a truth that the creatives brought to life so.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Beautifully wild imaginations as you're describing, that I'm reminded of the fact that when I was a teenager, I actually made a bike. Trying to make. Make this brilliant bike, kind of a custom bicycle. And I finished it. I drove it down to the community center in our neighborhood. I ran inside to get a friend of mine and I came out and it was stolen.

[Tara Frey]

Oh, it's so sad.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

It was really bad. I was like, are you kidding me? And if I had an airtag on it or if I had one of your tiles on it, I would be able to find that. But yeah, you're right. There are those times in your life that I think everybody can relate to, no matter what generation you from.

[Tara Frey]

Yeah. And you remember them. The second thing I will say about tone, and we've already sort of touched on this, without Apple's budget, I don't even know what x, what 10, 20, 100 they spend compared to our media spend. We had to be bold, right? We had to win on tone and tapping into this dark, funny side of family life. Most brands just play it way too safe to even touch that. And I think, you know, kudos to Mike and his team for realizing we have to do something that again, makes people really laugh or really cry.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So Mike, did peace of mind come from you guys? I love that line, peace of mind for families.

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah, I mean, it's what we're known for already. We rate very highly on that attribute. So easy to sort of lean into that. I want a broader, broaden it to improving everyday family life because there's safety and peace of mind aspects, but there's delight and there's other things that we can, you know, we can make family life cheaper and better and more delightful, et cetera. So we're going to broaden it. But yeah, that's, that's kind of where we're at today. You know, I'll also say that I'll just share here that when we first showed some of the work, there were very strong reactions at the company meeting where we, and I, you know, like, I totally get, get it and people, you know, people will see things in the work that might be relevant to them individually. Right. And that might create a strong reaction. So we, we had several follow up conversations where we did have people in tears and, you know, weren't necessarily huge fans of the work internally. And I think that the hard thing for us and for Alto is we, we don't want to be like provocative for provocative sake. And we want to find that line between being evocative and being offensive and always be on the right side of that. And that's a really hard thing for, for any creative or agency to deliver on.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

So where, where would the, where would the tears come from? Because I, I didn't find that for me I didn't find tear. That type of emotion.

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

But it was provocative, and it was very. It was. It is very compelling, as people will hear shortly.

[Mike Zieman]

I. I think, you know, for people who had a certain. And by the way. Well, I won't go there, but people who had a certain dynamic in their household growing up, a different emotion than people who maybe didn't. Yep.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, there is. And so you've deliberately sort of merged sort of drama and trauma with humor in this Tara. Like, that combination, it's hard to pull off. And there is something sort of cinematic about that. You guys were able to blend that together. Was that. That natural for you guys, or was that a tough. Tough sort of space to navigate around?

[Tara Frey]

This work was in presentation one. There were two campaigns in it. And that. I think the next day. I mean, Mike, it sounds like you had a pensive night, but the next day we moved forward with it in terms of bringing it to life. You know, strategists don't go to shoots, but just a brilliant creative team. The guidance of. Of our chief creative officer and founder, Hannes, and a very talented director, Steve Asen. He did a lot on, like, Old Spice dollar Shave Club. They just threaded that needle beautifully. Yeah, it's cinematic. It starts off dark, and then it's funny. Just a beautiful job.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah, totally agree.

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah. And I think it's. You said cinematic and, like, to me, like, we should be making films, right? And sometimes they're called commercials and what have you, but really, we're trying to make a film about the company and the product and kind of what we stand for and what we offer families. And that's why, like, a lot of debate happened internally around, like, hey, we should, you know, if you run this on social. And there's no live360 bug in the first five seconds, like, people won't know it's us. And I was okay with that. And I know we lost some potential brand awareness and recognition by people who might have sort of, you know, thumbed past or skipped on YouTube, you know, too quickly or whatever, but I would rather have the challenge of, you know what? Like, let's try and draw people into the point where they want to watch to the end. And sure, we reveal the brand at the very end, but, you know, that's a film. It's not a film. If I start with life360 in this kind of intro and then kind of transition into the story, you're right.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

That. That's going to. That's going to generate an immediate thumb? Yeah, most likely it could be, yeah. So for you guys, did the merger sort of trigger this need to have a larger investment in marketing?

[Mike Zieman]

Yes, this was a step up, but it wasn't a dramatic step up. This, this year we're going to spend a bit more, which will be the biggest and most global campaign we've, we've ever run. And it's, you're right, it's not Apple sized but for us it's, it's a big deal. So, you know, first I wanted to gain trust with the company, the executive team and the board that hey, we have a system. We're going to create demand, we're going to do things that don't drive an immediate response in service of this family equity and becoming known for everyday family life. And everyone is fully aligned. And I feel very confident that if I don't see, well, if I see very immaterial visits to the site and the app tomorrow when we launch this campaign, that I'm not going to fear for my job.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah, yeah. Because that's gotta mean that you've got a C suite of people who genuinely believe in marketing. Right. Because to not only go in and who appreciate the value of a brand because a lot of, I mean I know you're at 80 million, so you've already scaled up to a very strong degree, but I think you see an awful lot of growth opportunity ahead of you. But you're not a startup, you're maybe scale, scale up. And so it seems to be that scale up brands tend to come to a point where performance, lower funnel work isn't working as well as it used to and therefore there's more of an eye on the brand and how do we build the brand to create future demand and all of the latest theories on that.

[Mike Zieman]

You're hired, Fergus.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah, right. Is that sort of where your head was at? Was that where the company's head was at? Which is that we really need to lean in on marketing.

[Mike Zieman]

Now if you go ask 10 people what their favorite brands are, almost all of them will be evocative storytelling brands.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah.

[Mike Zieman]

Like just, just go try it. Right. And other approaches can lead to growth, but it's far less of a moat. And I knew that we could create goodwill from marketing that would create a stock premium. Right. So that, that's kind of what I'm, what I'm after with the approach. But I am spoiled because I have a CEO and a boss and a board. Board who deeply believes in what I'm trying to do. And I vetted that before I joined the company. And in that way, it's a marketer's dream, right, because you have the support. You have a CFO who's supporting you, which is really important. And I have this amazing sort of fallback of word of mouth and virality that I'm trying to compliment, not trying to make up for a lack of. If that makes sense.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Yeah, it's terrific stuff. And I've got to ask you where I think you touched on a little bit earlier. Where did your taste for great work come from? I mean, you said you worked at Leo Burnett back in the day. Did it start there or was it more? I've got to imagine it came out more in Google.

[Mike Zieman]

Well, I was at Netflix, too. I've seen a lot. I've been really. So I started my career in the halls of the Leo Burnett building. I was on the Starcom side, so the media side, but every floor I'd go to, yeah, there was the Jolly Green Giant, and then there were the. The Rice Krispies folks and Tony the Tiger and then the Marlboro Man. And by the way, when you went to the Marlboro floor, there was a lot of smoke. I don't think that was legal. But anyway, so I was around greatness. Right. And Leo's essence. Right. And, you know, I would say it started before that, though. But they.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

But they were never brands that did work like this. They were very traditional CPG brands.

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah, I think so. Well, Allstate. Allstate had started some of their work, and actually the campaign I loved most during that era was Altoids. The really strong mints had a tagline of curiously strong. And Burnett and Starcom found a bunch of smokestacks in cities to wrap with curiously strong and their little icon and smoke coming out of it. And I'm like, oh, that is just brilliant. They're buying what's not for sale. That is such a brilliant, you know, approach. But honestly, Fergus, it goes back to my love for. For movies, right? And I love feeling the feels, and I think rate marketing should. Should do the same.

[Tara Frey]

How lucky are we, Fergus?

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Amazing, isn't it? That's great. Listen, as we wrap up here, let's talk a little bit, Mike, about. I know it's all new because the first phase of the work aired in October 2024 through February 25th. Then the second phase that you talked about, lunches tomorrow. Tomorrow, which is at the end of April here or whatever it is, the 1st of May or something like that, you're not going to see substantive big brand shifts. But are you seeing some sort of KPI movement that's making you feel comfortable that this is the right thing going forward?

[Mike Zieman]

Yeah. So, I mean, we triangulate with various measurement tools. Again, I'm not looking at next day subscriptions or anything like that, but we do have marketing mixed modeling. We do, do. I do post sort of creative pre testing, if that makes sense. I don't want it to shape the work, but I want to understand how it performs according to certain diagnostic measures there. So we saw some really good stuff through ispot testing and then, yeah, through that source of truth marketing mixed modeling, which is tracking sort of latent effects. We're very happy with what we've been seeing. I think we delivered an outstanding branding campaign for tile in Q4. You can see our public earnings, since we're a public company, to see how the business is doing and growing, which is very healthy. And we think marketing is absolutely one of the key drivers of that.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Love it. Tara, anything you'd say about the impact or the components of the comm strategy that you think is particularly good?

[Tara Frey]

Yeah, a couple of things. So the 60 second code spot had an almost 100% playthrough rate and the media team actually said we should shift from 15s to 60s, which as you know, basically never happens. So that was like a real vote for storytelling. You know what Mike talked about and I think for us, just a nice reminder that people don't hate ads, they just hate bad ones. And check out some of the YouTube comments. There's some, some total gems on there.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

Thank you guys so much. It's Mike Zieman. He is chief marketing officer for Life360 in San Francisco. And it's Tara Frey, who's head of strategy at Alto in New York City. Thank you guys. Really, really enjoy this. Great work and you guys are a great team. It's great stuff coming from all of this. Appreciate your time.

[Mike Zieman]

Appreciate you both.

[Tara Frey]

Thank you. That was fun.

[Fergus O' Carroll]

And we will see everyone on the next episode.