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