January 15, 2019 • 34 mins
Who better to kick off 2019 than Rachel Tipograph, Founder and CEO of social commerce platform, MikMak, and 2x guest on Adlandia. Rachel calls in to talk about what’s driving MikMak’s incredible growth (up 350%!) with clients including Bose, L'Oreal, P&G, T-Mobile, Under Armour, Unilever and more. Rachel explains how to stop forfeiting your customer to 3rd-party retailers (it may not be worth trying to beat ‘em, so join ‘em, just smarter), shortening the path to purchase, and how DTC and legacy brands ultimately have more in common than we think (also see Rachel’s WARC white paper on DTC impact on legacy brands https://bit.ly/2TQhYFF). Come for the education in social commerce, stay for 2019’s first #KILLBUYDIY.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
going to have to start making better content. I think
we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
trying to get to substance. How is that? Are you
happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
really is. What's up on? Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen.
(00:29):
Welcome back at Landia twenty nineteen. Happy New year. So
today we are starting off our year kicking it with
one of the smartest people in the industry, Rachel Typograph.
She's back on the show. She is the founder and
CEO of Micmac. Really excited to hear about what she
sees happening in the social commerce space. And I think
everybody's been asking question, is everything that's been happening with
(00:50):
Facebook going to affect my business? Is it gonna actually
make an impact? It has in the media space. We
know that on the publisher side, but is it really
going to impact brand? Are they willing to think about
potentially moving spend off the platform as a result? Will
be interesting to see as somebody who's built her business
around that model, Like has the bottom line been affected
or will it be? Or will it be? And I
(01:11):
think one thing that you and I have talked about, Laura,
that we're super interested in is is there another platform?
Is there another platform? Maybe that's not going to take
the place of Facebook, but do we enter into maybe
a more disintermediated world of social media. Is that happening
or is it the fact that we have big companies
now merging and acquiring other platforms to create massive entities
(01:34):
that may be able to compete with the Facebooks and
the Googles of the world. And you're implying with legacy companies,
which act is very interesting. So we will be right
back with Rachel Typograph and we're back in the studio
(01:59):
with our first episode of with Rachel Typograph, founder and
CEO of mic Mac. Rachel, welcome back to the show. Hi, Rachel, Hey,
excited to be back. So, Rachel, we couldn't think of
anyone else to kind of kick off for us. One
start with who is mic mac? What have you done
(02:21):
and where have you kind of gone from? So mic
mac is the e commerce platform for social video and beyond.
Our business is broken into two parts. We call our
software micmac Attached in its simplest form, it's a vertical
video product details page that can connect to any e
(02:44):
commerce card, so it could be d t C or
third party retailer like an Amazon, Target or Walmart. And
then we have a second part of the business, which
is called micmac Studios. It's our creative service arm. We're
literally all day long. We only do two things. We
either optimize existing assets to get people to hit add
(03:04):
to cart, or we create original content from the ground
up that gets people to hit add to cart. Obviously,
so much has happened since, both within the social space,
obviously advances in technology, more around trust and transparency. How
has the business evolved to be honest? Um, we're on fire.
(03:24):
Last year was the craziest year of my life. Professionally.
Our business grew and the reason being is that all
trends point to mcmac. The reason I say that is
because we live in a world now. We're fundamentally everything
that I've been preaching people finally understand, which is if
(03:45):
you give up your first party data, you give up
your brand. And the way that you capture your first
party today to today is via direct response, Performance Marketing,
and e com and we literally sit at the nexus
of that. You know, the business has grown three and
we're working with partners like Bows, Campbell's Essay, lauder Craft,
(04:07):
Glauria Levi's Mattel, PNG, under Armour, Unilever. I could literally
go on and on um And the reason why we're
signing all of these brands is that a major evolution
in our products since we spoke last is our integrations
with third party retailer cards. So when we spoke in
November two tho seventeen, my business was primarily focused on
(04:30):
working with direct consumer brands, and I began to take
this very contrarian point of view in the market, which
is personally, I don't believe we're going to live in
a world where you go to paper towels dot Com
to buy your paper towels and deodorant dot Com to
buy your deodorant. And as I saw the entire media
(04:54):
landscape and overall retail landscape applaud every single director consumer
brand that came to market, I go, there's gonna be
a point of saturation where there's too many of these
brands in market. Cost for customer acquisition is going to
get too high, and the pendulum is going to swing
the other way. And I felt like the company that
was going to win in the landscape would be the
(05:16):
one that could take all the principles of direct to
consumer brands and apply it to third party retailer environments.
And that's when I began to integrate with Amazon, Target, Walmart, Alta, Sephora,
best Buy, Exporting Goods, pet Co, and my business changed
(05:41):
overnight because the majority of the COM sales today actually
still come from those major third party retailers that I
just went through. And when you're a brand and you
are driving traffic to those environments, you literally only know
three things impressions, click, curate in your overall sales. You
(06:01):
don't know anything that happens after that click or after
that swipe up with us. You now know everything. So
we get these brands that more often than not have
been these legacy brands that are heavily reliant on third
party retailers to drive the line share of their eCOM sales,
and we get them to act more likely to see brands,
(06:23):
meaning they now know the entire customer journey, they understand
the media channel effectiveness, they can measure influencer effectiveness, they
can measure creative effectiveness, they can capture all of that
data in their d MP or their CRM, and that
has been a huge, huge turning point for our business.
And the other part of that, which is directly related
(06:47):
is the evolution of our audience product. So we call
it the micmac Engager audience, and what we have found
with nearly all of our clients is that it's actually
become either the top performing or within the top three
most effective audience within their ad managers. Going back to
(07:08):
like this example of like a c retailers, you drive
traffic to an environment like Amazon. The moment someone arrives
at Amazon product detail page, you've completely lost that audience.
Because our software replaces that product detail page, we now
can collect that audience. We collect that audience on behalf
the brand, and we pass it directly back to them
(07:30):
to live within their preferred ad manager, meaning for literally
the first time ever, they can go retarget that audience
to close the sale. They can use that audience within
their future prospecting media. So that's one of the major
differences between brands that are heavily reliant on third party
(07:51):
retailers and DD C brands right, because the moment a
D two C brand acquires a customer, they now own
that customer. And the high pothesis is the next time
that they go remarket to them, their overall cost for
customer acquisition should be lower and their effectiveness therefore effectiveness
is much higher. Correct some of the portfolio companies, they've
(08:15):
gone all in. It's literally the end all be all.
If you talk to the CMO any brand marketer, it's
a part of their daily lexicon. And then there are
other portfolio companies where you're just overall concerned for their
future because they're not talking that way. What are they
talking about? If they're not talking about this, what are
(08:36):
they talking about? I would say it's all over the map,
But there are certain categories that I absolutely feel are
more standout than others. So, I mean, the beauty brands
are all over it. I would say they're the most
progressive of you know, the overall legacy brands UM, and
then after beauty, uh, you know, consumer electronics, apparel and footwear.
(08:59):
They're definitely ahead of the races, and I'd say we're
it's more of a lad But this is one of
my big best for two thousand nineteen are people who
are within the food in BEV overall grocery category. I
think you're gonna you're gonna see people make leaps this year.
I'm very very bullish on grocery, but it's very new
(09:22):
to them from a customer standpoint. Within grocery, especially with
like perishables, we're all becoming a lot more comfortable never
touching our food before we buy it. So that's more
of like a societal evolution and combined with more plays
(09:43):
within the on demand commerce space. Meeting Yah, I buy
melons in the morning and by the time I get
home from works at my door. Is why I'm getting
very very excited about grocery and two thousand nineteen for
brands to have a different relationship in grocery, that category
is where things start getting really interesting. And also to
(10:04):
me is the opportunity where brands can start working with
when you talk about bundling, thinking about bundling in a
different way, right um, where brands can work together, where
there can be new products actually created with shared kind
of I P or shared data. And you're starting to
see a lot of the portfolio companies think that way,
(10:26):
like the brands of these organizations have been mostly siloed,
and they're absolutely coming together for bigger portfolio plays right now.
You started really focusing on DTC brands. You spent a
ton of time last year with big legacy brands. Who
are you going to put your money on in terms
of really being competitive and being able to push this
(10:47):
new mindset but also new practices kind of into the industry,
they're all becoming one of the same. Meaning, if you
walk into Target today, you are beginning to see all
of the Darling direct to consumer brands available on the
shelves of targets. And the reason being is that one
of the tradeoffs with D two C is that you
(11:10):
begin to experience limited reach and growing costs per customer acquisition,
and if you want to be able to increase your reach,
you end up on the shelves of Target, and the
moment you do that, you are no different than the
legacy brands that you were trying to cut out from
their market share. So we're starting to get a lot
(11:32):
of inquiries from all of those brands because they're like,
wait a second, we've now given up all of our
first party data. How can we begin to reown that
and that's been really interesting, and I would say I've
experienced more and more that over the last six months.
So there's definitely a big undercurrent happening. And with the
(11:55):
legacy brands, so they had that massive distribution. But three
reality is, you know, performance marketing and producing creative that converts.
It's totally new to them. So the amount of education
that we need to invest, both on the brand side
as well as the agency side that services these brands
(12:17):
is enormous. What you're not saying is that brand is
less important. You're actually saying brand is actually more important
as a function to pull through to sale. Oh I
am the biggest, biggest, biggest pertonent of brand. UM. Brand
will lower your cost for customer acquisition. Brand will increase
(12:41):
your recall. UM it is the end all be all
at and in both situations, you're going to need to
do both. Like there's there's literally no director consumer brand
that will not have a wholesale play at some point
in their company's tractorate. One of the things that I
(13:02):
love about you is that you don't just talk to talk,
you walk the walk and inen you developed mic mac
Academy is that the name and the purpose of that
was to actually go out and educate brands about the
use of an implications of working in the social commerce space.
(13:23):
What led you to create that? I decided to productize
the educational arm of what we do for a few reasons.
One is I love it um. It's honestly what energizes me.
It's one of the favorite parts of what I do
at Mick mac Um. Two is there's a major skill gap.
(13:45):
And it's interesting because I personally do not feel any
of this is rocket science. It's more about access. And
if you've been put in a job where you never
were encouraged to go inside of Facebook ad manager and
start buying ads and experimenting and see how it works,
(14:07):
then you live in the darkness. And what we try
to do here at mic mac is explained to everyone.
This isn't rocket science. We're going to teach you the
core principles. We're going to sit with you while you
navigate this new world and allow you to begin to understand,
(14:28):
uh the effectiveness of the partners that you're working with,
including me. Right. So, the more I educate the client,
we're just raising the standards for everyone who's involved. And
what is the skill gap? Because Alex and I talked
quite a bit about the talent and the need to
integrate skill sets that weren't previously needed, let alone train
(14:49):
for right. So, what are the things that you're seeing
that the industry needs to be aware of and begin
to implement? Probably yesterday, I think so over simplify it, uh,
just within like you know, the world that I primarily touch.
Most of these brands, these legacy brands that are readily
(15:11):
available at third party retailers, they've been producing creative and
buying media the same way since you know, the dawn
of television, which is that the majority of their focus
has been on awareness. So spray and pray. Let's make
sure every person under the sun understand what our product is. Secondly,
(15:33):
let's produce creative that can communicate this mass message more
often than not through the lens of television. It doesn't
work online. And what I constantly explain to our partners
is that there's really just three things that I want
you to think about. Campaign objectives, niche, audience targeting, and
(15:58):
creative formats. And so when we sit down with legacy brands,
one of the first things that we have to do
is convince them that a portion of their media cannot
be bought against awareness, It actually has to be bought
against more bottom of the funnel conversion metrics. The second
(16:21):
thing is helping them leverage perhaps internal audience data that
they already have within an existing CRM, or start to
develop niche audiences that they can use in their ad
Tiger day. And then the third is producing creative that
(16:42):
is literally designed to get people to add to cart,
which is a totally different creative muscle. So to boil
down what's missing is honestly just an understanding of what
works within performance marketing. I know that MAC advises and
works on production as well. Are there agencies that you've
(17:04):
been particularly impressed with in the performance space, that is
that are actually creating great creative that pulls through to sale.
I mean, there are great agencies that we work within performance,
but they're mostly focused on media. Um, what we have
(17:26):
found to be the most effective creative teams are the
internal creative teams. They run with the creative best practices,
there's less ego involved, and they personally are accountable for sales.
This is a huge white space for an agency. You've
and I actually think a really great, really great b
(17:47):
Two B talent needs to come over into this space,
and I don't know if it's come over. It's like
they're there, but people aren't thinking about them like this
because they're in the the you know, the B two
B world is kind of gone. It's like over on
the side. So that's what we do right at MCMAC Studios,
but in complete transparency, Like I don't make money from
(18:09):
mcmac studios. MICMAC Studios is an enabler for my software
and the reason why is that the content space is
so competitive that content has become commoditized and it is very,
very very hard to make big margins on content. I mean,
(18:31):
we saw it in the media landscape this year. Digital
publishers like so uh, it's it's a hard game. And
that's why, you know, we are in service of training everyone.
I'll train agencies, We train internal creative teams to be
able to produce content that converts because wherever the content
(18:51):
comes from, as long as it follows the key creative
best practices that we see day in and day out,
I don't care if I didn't touch the content. We
are just in service of educating the market on how
to do this and how to do it at scale.
But are there things that still surprise you, like questions
that you get asked that you're like moving into, Like
we can't possibly still be asking that question. Yes, I
(19:12):
mean like there's obvious things like well, literally receive creative
where you don't see the product. I mean like you
know this, this isn't an aspirational perfume commercial where the
girl's hair is blowing in the winds in a convertible. Like,
you've got to show the product. Number one, and you
need to show it right away. Number two is a
(19:33):
lot of people are still so hesitant to put calls
to action on their creative. If you want someone to shop,
you've got to tell them to shop. Um, so you
know it's it's all obvious things. Uh, you know, developing
niche creative. So you know we do an enormous amount
of working beauty. Uh, we do a lot of work
(19:55):
these days in hair care. I am curly hair. If
you show me a piece of creative with straight at hair,
I'm a wasted impression. And meanwhile, we get creative all
day long. That that doesn't speak to that sedimentation. Um,
so you know there are obvious things that happened day
in and day out, but there's internal bureaucracies that often
(20:15):
handcuffed my clients from being able to change. Let's talk
about Facebook and talk about you know, your business. I think,
like many businesses, media publishers, technology companies, creators, creators, in
the beginning, we're really dependent on Facebook. I don't think
your business was dependent on Facebook, but Facebook was an
(20:35):
important platform to your business. How has that changed in
the last two years and what's the future uh for
Facebook with your business? But also what are you seeing
and hearing from brands that you work with in terms
of are they going to continue to be on that platform,
are they going to abandon that platform, are they looking
to replace that platform maybe with the platform of their
(20:56):
own or otherwise. So when we opened up and I
introduced mic Mac, you know what I said was were
the e commerce platform for social video and beyond the end.
Beyond part is what's very new to the Atlantia audience. So, uh,
what I began to notice the beginning of two thousand
(21:17):
eighteen was media budgets were getting consolidated. The essentially were
centered around Facebook, Google and Amazon, and CPMs were getting
really expensive and by the end of March of two eighteen,
I began to feel that media budgets were starting to shift,
(21:39):
that partners were looking for other alternative places to place
their dollars to lower that CPM, and partners were coming
to me and saying, hey, we want to use you
in programmatic, we want to use you in paid search,
we want to use you in YouTube, Pinterest, et cetera.
(22:00):
So this summer, uh Mic Math essentially released a feature
that allows our partners to traffic us everywhere. And that's
how my partners use me now. So they put us
in programmatic, they put us in paid search, they put
us in YouTube, they put us in interest, and so
(22:20):
we become the default destination you are l in our
partners digital and social media period. That is what success
looks like for us. And in terms of the Facebook ecosystem,
uh it still has a very strong footing, and the
reason being is that pretty much the only entities that
(22:45):
can rival Facebook in the amount of data that is
available for deep segmentation is Google and Amazon. So that's
the real realities of the dr landscape. And what we
have seen though, is with missteps that happen, I have
(23:08):
seen clients react and typically what happens in those um
reactionary moments is that they will pause their Facebook media,
but then they eventually restarted, so they're not and reallocating
it elsewhere. They're just holding they they hold UM. Sometimes
(23:30):
will reallocate and they'll give some money to Snap or
pinterest UM. But it's a temporary thing. And the reason
why it's temporary is that Facebook is just effective when
it comes to d R again, Like it's really hard
to rival the effectiveness of that platform. And the reason being,
(23:52):
and I think I talked about this in two thousand
seventeen and I remained to be bullish on it, is
that Facebook has had their pixel and market for nearly
seven years now. The amount of audience data that they
have collected compared to the other social platforms that literally
only released a pixel last year, like you just can't compare.
(24:14):
Are there indicators that you've seen in that as we
moved to we ought to be thinking about in terms
of channels or platforms that brands are going to need
to put on their radar quickly, I e. Audio going
into chatting with you guys, I was thinking about, you know,
what are my major predictions for two nine? That's where
(24:35):
we're going and one of them is around alternative distribution. Um.
So we're seeing this across the board. Uh, you know,
cost per customer acquisition is getting really high, and a
lot of the mains popular consumer categories and so now
you need to diversify. And so I think social is
(24:56):
going to remain to be a really strong play. Um,
but in it's not just going to be Facebook. I
do think that Snap has made an enormous amount of
investments in their d R ecosystem last year that is
going to begin to pay off this year. I have
to say, we continue to see amazing results within YouTube,
(25:19):
So I'm super bullish on YouTube, and I think that
they've done a lot in terms of investing in brand
safety that a lot of people are going to start
shifting dollars back there. Um. I think that we're going
to begin to see that messenger is actually going to
replace our email inbox. So in terms of customer attention,
(25:40):
loyalty and all the traditional ways you used to convert
someone via email, I do think it's going to move
to messenger. To finally, because we've been talking about this
for four years, do you think finally do you think
nineteen is the year This happens. Yeah, you're going to
see it in a really big way within the SMB market.
And and once we all start to experience that more
(26:02):
and it becomes a more part of our daily life,
it will then infiltrate the large brands audio. I see
you know, continued d our investments in audio. Everyone that
I speak to in terms of advertising on podcasts continually
says how strong it is for their business, and so
(26:26):
I do think that people will start to begin to
invest more in that uh space, especially from a programmatic lens.
And then in terms of voice, um, you know, voice
will continue to infiltrate search and will be the place
for recall. And then you know, we just touched upon
(26:47):
this um. But in terms of the alternative distribution lens,
you know, I am very bullish on third party retailers.
I think that as Amazon makes investment in their private
label business, it forces as other retailers to think about
attracting smaller indie brands in a different way, and that's
(27:07):
going to create a lot of interesting warfare. And the
stronger that your brand equity is, the better it will
be for you to negotiate with these large retailers, because
they want your brand consignment. I just think that from
a societal standpoint, we're looking to reuse, recycle and old.
(27:29):
What's old is now new again, um And the first
place that you can look at this isn't within the
sneaker market. And I think that you're going to start
to see a lot of interesting brand plays happen within
consignment in a way that we haven't thought about before.
And I actually think it's going to allow eBay to
begin to become more relevant. And you talk about a
(27:49):
company that's sitting on an enormous amount of first party
data with actually a really interesting advertising business. For me,
that's exciting. And then I think that we're going to
start to see commerce really start to scale in more
alternative spaces like coworking spaces and airlines. Sky Mall was
the original major retailer, and I think that uh as
(28:14):
we continue to see travel increase, especially amongst gen Z
and gen Y, and you look at the use you know,
airline mobile apps and the amount of time that we're
spending on planes, I truly believe that there's a major
major retail play that's gonna be resurging within that environment.
That's a massive opportunity for airlines. I do think there's
(28:38):
gonna be you know, other big swings that happened two
thousand nineteen that are outside of distribution. Let's talk offline though,
Like when you think about out of homegoing digital, I
think out of home, especially in two thousand eighteen, has
become super relevant. The thing about out of home though,
is that I do most people buy it through that
awareness lefs so being able to connect that within the
(29:01):
DR ecosystem that's going to require partnerships between clear Channel
and Facebook and whoever. UM. I would be interested to
see if that happens. I hope it does happen. UM.
But I also think that what we saw in two
thousand eighteen and we'll see more of in two thousand
nineteen people using physical stores through the lens of out
(29:22):
of home. Yeah, we have been talking about how certain
brands in particularly in the New York market, have literally
been built in the subway. Like when you think about
the awareness factor, but then the ability to demo or
try or sign up to buy or preview whatever the
case may be. UM, there's just too many steps removed
(29:42):
at this point. But again, how tech and social commerce
can potentially play UM a role in consolidating that experience
I think is a real opportunity in I do think
that two will be the year that every single physical
store will understand that it's no longer a distribution channel.
(30:06):
It is a place to have your greatest brand expression
and deliver on a service that you can't deliver on
within the digital world. Yeah. And a you know a
retailer that I I just have so much excitement around
right now, And I just never thought I would say this.
It's Cold. It's a female CEO, and she's just so
(30:29):
open to making radical changes. You know, this summer they
announced you can come to Cold to return your Amazon packages. Ah.
I think we're going to see more retailers um begin
to adopt that type of mentality, and for me, that's
really exciting. So is it fair to say will be
(30:49):
the year of radical change in retail? I think obviously
we say that every year, but the bar continues to raise, right.
We're all seeing people increase their competency within this space.
And I do think that every single time that Amazon
(31:10):
makes a move, there will be other people who benefit
from being the alternative solution. Yes, so, Rache, you know
the drill killed by d I Y what would you
kill by do yourself in I would kill the metric
of row as being the only thing that matters at
(31:32):
the end of the day. I believe that's incredibly shortsighted.
I would buy a company like Channel Advisor or quotient um.
Quotient was formerly known as coupons dot com. So uh,
these are companies that have been the historical players within
(31:55):
shopper marketing. And if you can't tell from my business,
I believe that shopper marketing is incredibly sexy and I
would buy them. And in terms of D I y honestly,
if I could sit down with every traditional brand marketer
and spend one hour teaching them how to do performance
(32:15):
soudual marketing, I would do that myself. Well, how about
we do that together in as a special micmac at
Landia pop up. I love that idea. Rachel, You're the
best happy we know. We will be talking to you again. Thanks, Rachel,
than you, bye bye. So Rachel, thank you so much
(32:39):
for coming on, always insightful, always inspirational, calling out the
key things that we need to be thinking about, particularly
in the retail space as we kick off the new year.
Rachel again keeps pointing us to brand and bottom funnel
activities are together. What she's learning from, you know, all
(32:59):
of the legacy and DTC brands is that they may
have more in common than they ever thought. So I
think that there's a huge opportunity for us to reinvent
how brand plays in certain spaces and how you really
own that cart experience, both physically and digitally. And I
(33:20):
think if you're sitting and listening to this episode on
the publisher side or the agency side, there's a massive
call to action around thinking about what your creative solution
is to support brands in the performance space. The fact
that she couldn't name one, one, not one creative agency
that is stepping up and producing content to really capitalize
(33:43):
on the success that she's seeing on places like Facebook
in a way that she believes is the future. It's
like huge opportunity and a huge opportunity. Rachel didn't leave
us with her email address. We know she'll be cool
with us dropping it. So it's Rachel at mcmac dot tv,
and she would like us to say m I K
M A K dot TV. So nineteen we're back, a
(34:05):
whole new year of exciting conversations with some of the
industry's most inspiring practitioners. More Places, More Spaces nineteen. You
don't know what's gonna hit you, but first, big thanks
to our producer Dana, all of our friends and family
at Panoply. We'll be back in two weeks. Mm hmm.
Full disclosure. Our opinions are our own.
I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
going to have to start making better content. I think
we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
trying to get to substance. How is that? Are you
happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
really is. What's up on? Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen.
(00:29):
Welcome back at Landia twenty nineteen. Happy New year. So
today we are starting off our year kicking it with
one of the smartest people in the industry, Rachel Typograph.
She's back on the show. She is the founder and
CEO of Micmac. Really excited to hear about what she
sees happening in the social commerce space. And I think
everybody's been asking question, is everything that's been happening with
(00:50):
Facebook going to affect my business? Is it gonna actually
make an impact? It has in the media space. We
know that on the publisher side, but is it really
going to impact brand? Are they willing to think about
potentially moving spend off the platform as a result? Will
be interesting to see as somebody who's built her business
around that model, Like has the bottom line been affected
or will it be? Or will it be? And I
(01:11):
think one thing that you and I have talked about, Laura,
that we're super interested in is is there another platform?
Is there another platform? Maybe that's not going to take
the place of Facebook, but do we enter into maybe
a more disintermediated world of social media. Is that happening
or is it the fact that we have big companies
now merging and acquiring other platforms to create massive entities
(01:34):
that may be able to compete with the Facebooks and
the Googles of the world. And you're implying with legacy companies,
which act is very interesting. So we will be right
back with Rachel Typograph and we're back in the studio
(01:59):
with our first episode of with Rachel Typograph, founder and
CEO of mic Mac. Rachel, welcome back to the show. Hi, Rachel, Hey,
excited to be back. So, Rachel, we couldn't think of
anyone else to kind of kick off for us. One
start with who is mic mac? What have you done
(02:21):
and where have you kind of gone from? So mic
mac is the e commerce platform for social video and beyond.
Our business is broken into two parts. We call our
software micmac Attached in its simplest form, it's a vertical
video product details page that can connect to any e
(02:44):
commerce card, so it could be d t C or
third party retailer like an Amazon, Target or Walmart. And
then we have a second part of the business, which
is called micmac Studios. It's our creative service arm. We're
literally all day long. We only do two things. We
either optimize existing assets to get people to hit add
(03:04):
to cart, or we create original content from the ground
up that gets people to hit add to cart. Obviously,
so much has happened since, both within the social space,
obviously advances in technology, more around trust and transparency. How
has the business evolved to be honest? Um, we're on fire.
(03:24):
Last year was the craziest year of my life. Professionally.
Our business grew and the reason being is that all
trends point to mcmac. The reason I say that is
because we live in a world now. We're fundamentally everything
that I've been preaching people finally understand, which is if
(03:45):
you give up your first party data, you give up
your brand. And the way that you capture your first
party today to today is via direct response, Performance Marketing,
and e com and we literally sit at the nexus
of that. You know, the business has grown three and
we're working with partners like Bows, Campbell's Essay, lauder Craft,
(04:07):
Glauria Levi's Mattel, PNG, under Armour, Unilever. I could literally
go on and on um And the reason why we're
signing all of these brands is that a major evolution
in our products since we spoke last is our integrations
with third party retailer cards. So when we spoke in
November two tho seventeen, my business was primarily focused on
(04:30):
working with direct consumer brands, and I began to take
this very contrarian point of view in the market, which
is personally, I don't believe we're going to live in
a world where you go to paper towels dot Com
to buy your paper towels and deodorant dot Com to
buy your deodorant. And as I saw the entire media
(04:54):
landscape and overall retail landscape applaud every single director consumer
brand that came to market, I go, there's gonna be
a point of saturation where there's too many of these
brands in market. Cost for customer acquisition is going to
get too high, and the pendulum is going to swing
the other way. And I felt like the company that
was going to win in the landscape would be the
(05:16):
one that could take all the principles of direct to
consumer brands and apply it to third party retailer environments.
And that's when I began to integrate with Amazon, Target, Walmart, Alta, Sephora,
best Buy, Exporting Goods, pet Co, and my business changed
(05:41):
overnight because the majority of the COM sales today actually
still come from those major third party retailers that I
just went through. And when you're a brand and you
are driving traffic to those environments, you literally only know
three things impressions, click, curate in your overall sales. You
(06:01):
don't know anything that happens after that click or after
that swipe up with us. You now know everything. So
we get these brands that more often than not have
been these legacy brands that are heavily reliant on third
party retailers to drive the line share of their eCOM sales,
and we get them to act more likely to see brands,
(06:23):
meaning they now know the entire customer journey, they understand
the media channel effectiveness, they can measure influencer effectiveness, they
can measure creative effectiveness, they can capture all of that
data in their d MP or their CRM, and that
has been a huge, huge turning point for our business.
And the other part of that, which is directly related
(06:47):
is the evolution of our audience product. So we call
it the micmac Engager audience, and what we have found
with nearly all of our clients is that it's actually
become either the top performing or within the top three
most effective audience within their ad managers. Going back to
(07:08):
like this example of like a c retailers, you drive
traffic to an environment like Amazon. The moment someone arrives
at Amazon product detail page, you've completely lost that audience.
Because our software replaces that product detail page, we now
can collect that audience. We collect that audience on behalf
the brand, and we pass it directly back to them
(07:30):
to live within their preferred ad manager, meaning for literally
the first time ever, they can go retarget that audience
to close the sale. They can use that audience within
their future prospecting media. So that's one of the major
differences between brands that are heavily reliant on third party
(07:51):
retailers and DD C brands right, because the moment a
D two C brand acquires a customer, they now own
that customer. And the high pothesis is the next time
that they go remarket to them, their overall cost for
customer acquisition should be lower and their effectiveness therefore effectiveness
is much higher. Correct some of the portfolio companies, they've
(08:15):
gone all in. It's literally the end all be all.
If you talk to the CMO any brand marketer, it's
a part of their daily lexicon. And then there are
other portfolio companies where you're just overall concerned for their
future because they're not talking that way. What are they
talking about? If they're not talking about this, what are
(08:36):
they talking about? I would say it's all over the map,
But there are certain categories that I absolutely feel are
more standout than others. So, I mean, the beauty brands
are all over it. I would say they're the most
progressive of you know, the overall legacy brands UM, and
then after beauty, uh, you know, consumer electronics, apparel and footwear.
(08:59):
They're definitely ahead of the races, and I'd say we're
it's more of a lad But this is one of
my big best for two thousand nineteen are people who
are within the food in BEV overall grocery category. I
think you're gonna you're gonna see people make leaps this year.
I'm very very bullish on grocery, but it's very new
(09:22):
to them from a customer standpoint. Within grocery, especially with
like perishables, we're all becoming a lot more comfortable never
touching our food before we buy it. So that's more
of like a societal evolution and combined with more plays
(09:43):
within the on demand commerce space. Meeting Yah, I buy
melons in the morning and by the time I get
home from works at my door. Is why I'm getting
very very excited about grocery and two thousand nineteen for
brands to have a different relationship in grocery, that category
is where things start getting really interesting. And also to
(10:04):
me is the opportunity where brands can start working with
when you talk about bundling, thinking about bundling in a
different way, right um, where brands can work together, where
there can be new products actually created with shared kind
of I P or shared data. And you're starting to
see a lot of the portfolio companies think that way,
(10:26):
like the brands of these organizations have been mostly siloed,
and they're absolutely coming together for bigger portfolio plays right now.
You started really focusing on DTC brands. You spent a
ton of time last year with big legacy brands. Who
are you going to put your money on in terms
of really being competitive and being able to push this
(10:47):
new mindset but also new practices kind of into the industry,
they're all becoming one of the same. Meaning, if you
walk into Target today, you are beginning to see all
of the Darling direct to consumer brands available on the
shelves of targets. And the reason being is that one
of the tradeoffs with D two C is that you
(11:10):
begin to experience limited reach and growing costs per customer acquisition,
and if you want to be able to increase your reach,
you end up on the shelves of Target, and the
moment you do that, you are no different than the
legacy brands that you were trying to cut out from
their market share. So we're starting to get a lot
(11:32):
of inquiries from all of those brands because they're like,
wait a second, we've now given up all of our
first party data. How can we begin to reown that
and that's been really interesting, and I would say I've
experienced more and more that over the last six months.
So there's definitely a big undercurrent happening. And with the
(11:55):
legacy brands, so they had that massive distribution. But three
reality is, you know, performance marketing and producing creative that converts.
It's totally new to them. So the amount of education
that we need to invest, both on the brand side
as well as the agency side that services these brands
(12:17):
is enormous. What you're not saying is that brand is
less important. You're actually saying brand is actually more important
as a function to pull through to sale. Oh I
am the biggest, biggest, biggest pertonent of brand. UM. Brand
will lower your cost for customer acquisition. Brand will increase
(12:41):
your recall. UM it is the end all be all
at and in both situations, you're going to need to
do both. Like there's there's literally no director consumer brand
that will not have a wholesale play at some point
in their company's tractorate. One of the things that I
(13:02):
love about you is that you don't just talk to talk,
you walk the walk and inen you developed mic mac
Academy is that the name and the purpose of that
was to actually go out and educate brands about the
use of an implications of working in the social commerce space.
(13:23):
What led you to create that? I decided to productize
the educational arm of what we do for a few reasons.
One is I love it um. It's honestly what energizes me.
It's one of the favorite parts of what I do
at Mick mac Um. Two is there's a major skill gap.
(13:45):
And it's interesting because I personally do not feel any
of this is rocket science. It's more about access. And
if you've been put in a job where you never
were encouraged to go inside of Facebook ad manager and
start buying ads and experimenting and see how it works,
(14:07):
then you live in the darkness. And what we try
to do here at mic mac is explained to everyone.
This isn't rocket science. We're going to teach you the
core principles. We're going to sit with you while you
navigate this new world and allow you to begin to understand,
(14:28):
uh the effectiveness of the partners that you're working with,
including me. Right. So, the more I educate the client,
we're just raising the standards for everyone who's involved. And
what is the skill gap? Because Alex and I talked
quite a bit about the talent and the need to
integrate skill sets that weren't previously needed, let alone train
(14:49):
for right. So, what are the things that you're seeing
that the industry needs to be aware of and begin
to implement? Probably yesterday, I think so over simplify it, uh,
just within like you know, the world that I primarily touch.
Most of these brands, these legacy brands that are readily
(15:11):
available at third party retailers, they've been producing creative and
buying media the same way since you know, the dawn
of television, which is that the majority of their focus
has been on awareness. So spray and pray. Let's make
sure every person under the sun understand what our product is. Secondly,
(15:33):
let's produce creative that can communicate this mass message more
often than not through the lens of television. It doesn't
work online. And what I constantly explain to our partners
is that there's really just three things that I want
you to think about. Campaign objectives, niche, audience targeting, and
(15:58):
creative formats. And so when we sit down with legacy brands,
one of the first things that we have to do
is convince them that a portion of their media cannot
be bought against awareness, It actually has to be bought
against more bottom of the funnel conversion metrics. The second
(16:21):
thing is helping them leverage perhaps internal audience data that
they already have within an existing CRM, or start to
develop niche audiences that they can use in their ad
Tiger day. And then the third is producing creative that
(16:42):
is literally designed to get people to add to cart,
which is a totally different creative muscle. So to boil
down what's missing is honestly just an understanding of what
works within performance marketing. I know that MAC advises and
works on production as well. Are there agencies that you've
(17:04):
been particularly impressed with in the performance space, that is
that are actually creating great creative that pulls through to sale.
I mean, there are great agencies that we work within performance,
but they're mostly focused on media. Um, what we have
(17:26):
found to be the most effective creative teams are the
internal creative teams. They run with the creative best practices,
there's less ego involved, and they personally are accountable for sales.
This is a huge white space for an agency. You've
and I actually think a really great, really great b
(17:47):
Two B talent needs to come over into this space,
and I don't know if it's come over. It's like
they're there, but people aren't thinking about them like this
because they're in the the you know, the B two
B world is kind of gone. It's like over on
the side. So that's what we do right at MCMAC Studios,
but in complete transparency, Like I don't make money from
(18:09):
mcmac studios. MICMAC Studios is an enabler for my software
and the reason why is that the content space is
so competitive that content has become commoditized and it is very,
very very hard to make big margins on content. I mean,
(18:31):
we saw it in the media landscape this year. Digital
publishers like so uh, it's it's a hard game. And
that's why, you know, we are in service of training everyone.
I'll train agencies, We train internal creative teams to be
able to produce content that converts because wherever the content
(18:51):
comes from, as long as it follows the key creative
best practices that we see day in and day out,
I don't care if I didn't touch the content. We
are just in service of educating the market on how
to do this and how to do it at scale.
But are there things that still surprise you, like questions
that you get asked that you're like moving into, Like
we can't possibly still be asking that question. Yes, I
(19:12):
mean like there's obvious things like well, literally receive creative
where you don't see the product. I mean like you
know this, this isn't an aspirational perfume commercial where the
girl's hair is blowing in the winds in a convertible. Like,
you've got to show the product. Number one, and you
need to show it right away. Number two is a
(19:33):
lot of people are still so hesitant to put calls
to action on their creative. If you want someone to shop,
you've got to tell them to shop. Um, so you
know it's it's all obvious things. Uh, you know, developing
niche creative. So you know we do an enormous amount
of working beauty. Uh, we do a lot of work
(19:55):
these days in hair care. I am curly hair. If
you show me a piece of creative with straight at hair,
I'm a wasted impression. And meanwhile, we get creative all
day long. That that doesn't speak to that sedimentation. Um,
so you know there are obvious things that happened day
in and day out, but there's internal bureaucracies that often
(20:15):
handcuffed my clients from being able to change. Let's talk
about Facebook and talk about you know, your business. I think,
like many businesses, media publishers, technology companies, creators, creators, in
the beginning, we're really dependent on Facebook. I don't think
your business was dependent on Facebook, but Facebook was an
(20:35):
important platform to your business. How has that changed in
the last two years and what's the future uh for
Facebook with your business? But also what are you seeing
and hearing from brands that you work with in terms
of are they going to continue to be on that platform,
are they going to abandon that platform, are they looking
to replace that platform maybe with the platform of their
(20:56):
own or otherwise. So when we opened up and I
introduced mic Mac, you know what I said was were
the e commerce platform for social video and beyond the end.
Beyond part is what's very new to the Atlantia audience. So, uh,
what I began to notice the beginning of two thousand
(21:17):
eighteen was media budgets were getting consolidated. The essentially were
centered around Facebook, Google and Amazon, and CPMs were getting
really expensive and by the end of March of two eighteen,
I began to feel that media budgets were starting to shift,
(21:39):
that partners were looking for other alternative places to place
their dollars to lower that CPM, and partners were coming
to me and saying, hey, we want to use you
in programmatic, we want to use you in paid search,
we want to use you in YouTube, Pinterest, et cetera.
(22:00):
So this summer, uh Mic Math essentially released a feature
that allows our partners to traffic us everywhere. And that's
how my partners use me now. So they put us
in programmatic, they put us in paid search, they put
us in YouTube, they put us in interest, and so
(22:20):
we become the default destination you are l in our
partners digital and social media period. That is what success
looks like for us. And in terms of the Facebook ecosystem,
uh it still has a very strong footing, and the
reason being is that pretty much the only entities that
(22:45):
can rival Facebook in the amount of data that is
available for deep segmentation is Google and Amazon. So that's
the real realities of the dr landscape. And what we
have seen though, is with missteps that happen, I have
(23:08):
seen clients react and typically what happens in those um
reactionary moments is that they will pause their Facebook media,
but then they eventually restarted, so they're not and reallocating
it elsewhere. They're just holding they they hold UM. Sometimes
(23:30):
will reallocate and they'll give some money to Snap or
pinterest UM. But it's a temporary thing. And the reason
why it's temporary is that Facebook is just effective when
it comes to d R again, Like it's really hard
to rival the effectiveness of that platform. And the reason being,
(23:52):
and I think I talked about this in two thousand
seventeen and I remained to be bullish on it, is
that Facebook has had their pixel and market for nearly
seven years now. The amount of audience data that they
have collected compared to the other social platforms that literally
only released a pixel last year, like you just can't compare.
(24:14):
Are there indicators that you've seen in that as we
moved to we ought to be thinking about in terms
of channels or platforms that brands are going to need
to put on their radar quickly, I e. Audio going
into chatting with you guys, I was thinking about, you know,
what are my major predictions for two nine? That's where
(24:35):
we're going and one of them is around alternative distribution. Um.
So we're seeing this across the board. Uh, you know,
cost per customer acquisition is getting really high, and a
lot of the mains popular consumer categories and so now
you need to diversify. And so I think social is
(24:56):
going to remain to be a really strong play. Um,
but in it's not just going to be Facebook. I
do think that Snap has made an enormous amount of
investments in their d R ecosystem last year that is
going to begin to pay off this year. I have
to say, we continue to see amazing results within YouTube,
(25:19):
So I'm super bullish on YouTube, and I think that
they've done a lot in terms of investing in brand
safety that a lot of people are going to start
shifting dollars back there. Um. I think that we're going
to begin to see that messenger is actually going to
replace our email inbox. So in terms of customer attention,
(25:40):
loyalty and all the traditional ways you used to convert
someone via email, I do think it's going to move
to messenger. To finally, because we've been talking about this
for four years, do you think finally do you think
nineteen is the year This happens. Yeah, you're going to
see it in a really big way within the SMB market.
And and once we all start to experience that more
(26:02):
and it becomes a more part of our daily life,
it will then infiltrate the large brands audio. I see
you know, continued d our investments in audio. Everyone that
I speak to in terms of advertising on podcasts continually
says how strong it is for their business, and so
(26:26):
I do think that people will start to begin to
invest more in that uh space, especially from a programmatic lens.
And then in terms of voice, um, you know, voice
will continue to infiltrate search and will be the place
for recall. And then you know, we just touched upon
(26:47):
this um. But in terms of the alternative distribution lens,
you know, I am very bullish on third party retailers.
I think that as Amazon makes investment in their private
label business, it forces as other retailers to think about
attracting smaller indie brands in a different way, and that's
(27:07):
going to create a lot of interesting warfare. And the
stronger that your brand equity is, the better it will
be for you to negotiate with these large retailers, because
they want your brand consignment. I just think that from
a societal standpoint, we're looking to reuse, recycle and old.
(27:29):
What's old is now new again, um And the first
place that you can look at this isn't within the
sneaker market. And I think that you're going to start
to see a lot of interesting brand plays happen within
consignment in a way that we haven't thought about before.
And I actually think it's going to allow eBay to
begin to become more relevant. And you talk about a
(27:49):
company that's sitting on an enormous amount of first party
data with actually a really interesting advertising business. For me,
that's exciting. And then I think that we're going to
start to see commerce really start to scale in more
alternative spaces like coworking spaces and airlines. Sky Mall was
the original major retailer, and I think that uh as
(28:14):
we continue to see travel increase, especially amongst gen Z
and gen Y, and you look at the use you know,
airline mobile apps and the amount of time that we're
spending on planes, I truly believe that there's a major
major retail play that's gonna be resurging within that environment.
That's a massive opportunity for airlines. I do think there's
(28:38):
gonna be you know, other big swings that happened two
thousand nineteen that are outside of distribution. Let's talk offline though,
Like when you think about out of homegoing digital, I
think out of home, especially in two thousand eighteen, has
become super relevant. The thing about out of home though,
is that I do most people buy it through that
awareness lefs so being able to connect that within the
(29:01):
DR ecosystem that's going to require partnerships between clear Channel
and Facebook and whoever. UM. I would be interested to
see if that happens. I hope it does happen. UM.
But I also think that what we saw in two
thousand eighteen and we'll see more of in two thousand
nineteen people using physical stores through the lens of out
(29:22):
of home. Yeah, we have been talking about how certain
brands in particularly in the New York market, have literally
been built in the subway. Like when you think about
the awareness factor, but then the ability to demo or
try or sign up to buy or preview whatever the
case may be. UM, there's just too many steps removed
(29:42):
at this point. But again, how tech and social commerce
can potentially play UM a role in consolidating that experience
I think is a real opportunity in I do think
that two will be the year that every single physical
store will understand that it's no longer a distribution channel.
(30:06):
It is a place to have your greatest brand expression
and deliver on a service that you can't deliver on
within the digital world. Yeah. And a you know a
retailer that I I just have so much excitement around
right now, And I just never thought I would say this.
It's Cold. It's a female CEO, and she's just so
(30:29):
open to making radical changes. You know, this summer they
announced you can come to Cold to return your Amazon packages. Ah.
I think we're going to see more retailers um begin
to adopt that type of mentality, and for me, that's
really exciting. So is it fair to say will be
(30:49):
the year of radical change in retail? I think obviously
we say that every year, but the bar continues to raise, right.
We're all seeing people increase their competency within this space.
And I do think that every single time that Amazon
(31:10):
makes a move, there will be other people who benefit
from being the alternative solution. Yes, so, Rache, you know
the drill killed by d I Y what would you
kill by do yourself in I would kill the metric
of row as being the only thing that matters at
(31:32):
the end of the day. I believe that's incredibly shortsighted.
I would buy a company like Channel Advisor or quotient um.
Quotient was formerly known as coupons dot com. So uh,
these are companies that have been the historical players within
(31:55):
shopper marketing. And if you can't tell from my business,
I believe that shopper marketing is incredibly sexy and I
would buy them. And in terms of D I y honestly,
if I could sit down with every traditional brand marketer
and spend one hour teaching them how to do performance
(32:15):
soudual marketing, I would do that myself. Well, how about
we do that together in as a special micmac at
Landia pop up. I love that idea. Rachel, You're the
best happy we know. We will be talking to you again. Thanks, Rachel,
than you, bye bye. So Rachel, thank you so much
(32:39):
for coming on, always insightful, always inspirational, calling out the
key things that we need to be thinking about, particularly
in the retail space as we kick off the new year.
Rachel again keeps pointing us to brand and bottom funnel
activities are together. What she's learning from, you know, all
(32:59):
of the legacy and DTC brands is that they may
have more in common than they ever thought. So I
think that there's a huge opportunity for us to reinvent
how brand plays in certain spaces and how you really
own that cart experience, both physically and digitally. And I
(33:20):
think if you're sitting and listening to this episode on
the publisher side or the agency side, there's a massive
call to action around thinking about what your creative solution
is to support brands in the performance space. The fact
that she couldn't name one, one, not one creative agency
that is stepping up and producing content to really capitalize
(33:43):
on the success that she's seeing on places like Facebook
in a way that she believes is the future. It's
like huge opportunity and a huge opportunity. Rachel didn't leave
us with her email address. We know she'll be cool
with us dropping it. So it's Rachel at mcmac dot tv,
and she would like us to say m I K
M A K dot TV. So nineteen we're back, a
(34:05):
whole new year of exciting conversations with some of the
industry's most inspiring practitioners. More Places, More Spaces nineteen. You
don't know what's gonna hit you, but first, big thanks
to our producer Dana, all of our friends and family
at Panoply. We'll be back in two weeks. Mm hmm.
Full disclosure. Our opinions are our own.
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