Joe Marston [00:00:00]:
Some brands try and do TikTok and TikTok shop, but they have this really, really strict criteria and it doesn't work and then they think it doesn't work for them. But all the brands that are crushing it on these platforms and the brands that come out of nowhere are the ones that have kind of done something weird and unique. And I think brands need to be a little bit more relaxed. If you're a young brand and you don't have shareholders and millions and billions of revenue, if you can do, like, weird stuff, you're going to stand out amongst all the crowd, like way eas.
Paul Archer [00:00:37]:
Have you ever wondered why some brands grow exponentially, building legions of passionate fans that live and die by their logos and some, well, don't. I do all the time, and that's probably because I'm a massive brand nerd. But I believe there's a secret sauce at the core of every remarkable brand. A formula that sparks the growth of passionate communities, of superfans, building a business and a reputation that will last for years to come. In this podcast, we tap into the greatest marketing minds in the world as they share the exact tactics and strategies used to build the world's greatest brands. Dropping actionable insights every brand builder can apply. My name is Paul Archer and I'm a specialist in brand advocacy and word of mouth. Having consulted for hundreds of brands on a topic, co hosting with me is the wonderful Verity Heard, expert on the leading edge of social media.
Paul Archer [00:01:30]:
It's time to learn and Build Brand Advocacy.
Paul Archer [00:01:38]:
Starting from right to left. Would you like to introduce yourself? Tell us what you do, tell us about the brand you work with and the company you're here with.
Joe Marston [00:01:45]:
Sure. My name's Joe Marston, one of the founders of Soar With Us, we're an E commerce digital growth agency. Call ourselves Creative Growth Partners, work with tons of E Comm brands.
Olly Hudson [00:01:55]:
Sorry, having a bit of a mic battle there. Yeah. I'm Ollie, also co founder of Soar, Joe's Intro, but then alongside that also CMO of JAQ Group. We're a group of E Com brands comprised of four different businesses, soon to be five and just been growing that for the last few years as well.
Sarah Ashwick [00:02:15]:
Great. Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm at L'Oreal and I am an advocacy and social commerce expert and excited to join you guys and see lots of familiar faces today as well. So.
Jimmy Charnock [00:02:27]:
And I'm Jimmy, head of community at Represent Clothing, which is a luxury streetwear brand based just outside of Manchester. Bolton to be exact. But Manchester is much cooler than Bolton. So that's up to.
Olly Hudson [00:02:38]:
Cheers to that.
Paul Archer [00:02:39]:
So creators, community and disruptive content are redefining social commerce. And so what specific tactics for success will take brands into 25 and beyond? We're going to try and uncover those strategies here and trying to figure out how to break through the noise as well because it can get a bit samey. So we all know that the digital landscape is landscape is super saturated. So we're going to try and figure out how it is that these guys are kind of actually hacking the algorithm. How are they making sure that their content is seen by far more people and moving from there. So Oli, going to start with you. How do you create disruptive content that actually captures attention and challenges the status quo on socials?
Olly Hudson [00:03:17]:
I guess you start with the status quo, which I guess is for the last, for many years now has been quite like brand led upper funnel, I guess quite rigid over polished content. And I think a lot of the pieces that you covered around kind of building advocacy and community is kind of flipping that on its head and going more down like a lens of authenticity, more down the lens of kind of behind the scenes and just showing up in a different way, showing up in a more real, more authentic way that people can connect with on an individual level rather than on like a broader business level, which I think has been the trend for many years. We've seen that shift from an agency perspective over the last four to five years from when we first got into the game to now where like that UGC came through and then as you said, social commerce platforms came through and the way you have to show up on there to connect with individuals and get results is just so profoundly different to previous. An example for us and something we advise nearly all of the brands that we work with regardless of point in the journey, if you can do it. It's sort of like a founder led narrative. Like I think the represent do this very well obviously with their founder. But showing up as a founder on platform, showing the journey through the brand from your perspective is a really actionable version of that style of content.
Paul Archer [00:04:51]:
How are you guys doing that at Jack?
Olly Hudson [00:04:55]:
So for one of our newer brands, we're literally building into it a full separate content line around a founder's page. So we'll be doing the brand page, we'll be doing the founders page, we'll be using the founder to funnel people from there to the brand site and activate a complete media strategy, a complete content strategy, a complete paid strategy around them as an individual as well as around the brand and the product itself.
Paul Archer [00:05:20]:
And this is all about, if you think about it, kind of building community from your customer base, like Jimmy. I mean, it's literally your job. I think represent. I've heard of them. They're doing all right. This. How are brands like transforming that attention to get disruptive content?
Jimmy Charnock [00:05:36]:
It's a strange one in my sense of community because the guys that I interact with every day kind of, I would say they see through disruptive content, which might not be what everyone wants to hear, but we concentrate more on, like we mentioned the founders as more creators than just TikTok links and that kind of stuff. So I don't particularly focus on disruptive content. We try and focus on authentic content which people can attach to. They might be able to see themselves in it, they might be able to be inspired by it. So rather than disruptive content, it's more about authenticity for us to build a community that will build advocacy for us, them, each other.
Paul Archer [00:06:15]:
And is that disruptive because it's authentic and it sort of stands out because everyone else is so false. So how does that work from your perspective?
Jimmy Charnock [00:06:22]:
I suppose you could say that. I don't want to say everyone's false, but they are in that sense. I guess so, yeah, good point. I'm going to take that back and my appraisal in January. I'm going to say that and hopefully get a pair of eyes.
Paul Archer [00:06:37]:
I mean, the brand itself has just exploded in the past few years. It's more than a brand, it's like a lifestyle. Can you speak to that? How do you, how do you build? I mean, you're selling clothes, right? Everyone wears clothes, but the brand is elevated way above that. Like why do you think that that has worked for you? And so, so many other brands are trying to do that.
Jimmy Charnock [00:06:53]:
I wish I could answer that question succinctly. But yeah, we try and sell, we do sell clothes, but we try and sell the lifestyle of George and Mike, our owners, above the clothes. So we sell what they do. They're in the gym all the time. We've got a gym in the office. We created a gym wear brand off the back of those guys passion. So we again, authenticity is the key. So we've just based everything off their lives.
Jimmy Charnock [00:07:16]:
And then if people want to follow them, they'll follow them. And naturally if they follow them, they'll want to buy what they're wearing. You might have noticed I don't follow the gym that closely, so I just concentrate on the fashion kind of thing.
Paul Archer [00:07:29]:
How is actually working tactically right. You can't just say that, get some cool founders and then you're away. Like what are you guys doing day to day? That is making sure you can kind of elevate that, capture that and actually create a bit of a marketing strategy beyond just having charismatic founders that people want to follow.
Jimmy Charnock [00:07:43]:
The easiest content strategy you might go with is just behind the scenes. People want to know what they're doing. So like you say you can't magic up cool founders and I don't want them to watch this because I don't want them to know I think they're cool, but they are quite cool. But you can't fabricate that Again, I feel like I'm saying authenticity a lot but just behind the scenes what they're doing day to day. So we've got YouTube series. Just anything that a consumer can find out about the brand that is more than what the brand is selling, I think is an amazing gateway into the brand itself.
Paul Archer [00:08:15]:
Is this just innate for represent as a brand? Has this been since day one the way that the brand was built?
Jimmy Charnock [00:08:20]:
Yeah.
Paul Archer [00:08:21]:
Do you think it's possible for brands that don't necessarily have that pedigree from day one to sort of switch towards being authentic doing sort of behind the scenes and everything like that?
Jimmy Charnock [00:08:30]:
I think you can definitely won't happen overnight. I get asked a lot, how do we create the represent community? And the answer is it wasn't me for a star, which is a negative. And you, you can't again, you can't fabricate it. You've just got to go, you've just got to. Time is the only thing that can build a community. That's my answer to how do you build the community? Just put time into people. They put time into you. Give them back.
Jimmy Charnock [00:08:55]:
I was mentioning in the lobby, a lot of our community members came from our customer support channel. So we. I might see one person's name come up over and over again and they might be mourning in our customer service channel. But it got me thinking that. But they're still connecting with us, they're still purchasing, they might be mourning. So they're invested. So we just need to give them some time, put a name to the customer service, which was usually me, and just give them back a bit of the time they're giving us. And then they're now some of our biggest advocates.
Jimmy Charnock [00:09:27]:
They're at every pop up we do, they queue up for hours when we launch new products. We've got a store open in Manchester. People are planning on camping for 12 hours. To get in first. We just give them the time they give us is the easiest and the hardest answer I can give you.
Paul Archer [00:09:44]:
That's. I mean, it's pretty impressive. You got people camping out to go to a store.
Jimmy Charnock [00:09:48]:
Yeah, it's turned into a bit of a competition.
Olly Hudson [00:09:50]:
Oh, really?
Jimmy Charnock [00:09:51]:
Yeah. So we had a pop up in Glasgow in July and people were in competition to camp in front of it, to be the first in. And I had to advise them that as much as I love Scotland and Glasgow, it might not be advisable to sit outside of your life savings at 3am in the morning to buy some clothes. So we actually had to stop people from queuing up.
Paul Archer [00:10:12]:
That's mad. Yeah, that is mad. Do you shift gears a little bit, Sarah? I mean, you had a big launch with youth to the people on TikTok recently. What were your key takeaways from that? Talk us through how that came about and then what were your key takeaways from that?
Sarah Ashwick [00:10:27]:
Yeah. So we've been really lucky to be the first brand in Europe to launch on TikTok shop. One of our luxury brands, or higher price point than the normal and new to the people, is a very, very cool vegan brand. It's all about community. And actually we were super, super lucky that our advocacy team had already built this amazing TikTok first brand. So we'd already got this amazing authentic community that we could start working with. So that was kind of point number one, was perfect. We'd already got these great creators that we could tap into.
Sarah Ashwick [00:10:58]:
It's a really makeup dominant space. TikTok and TikTok Shop. So we looked at what product would make most sense because it's vegan skincare. So actually our hero product was the cleanser. So again, that was like, okay, that makes sense. I can take off makeup. Let's kind of tap into the area that we know is so dominant there. We then also had the opportunity to lean into expertise.
Sarah Ashwick [00:11:22]:
So obviously L'Oreal's got many brands and actually a lot of our brands had already been on TikTok shop for two years ahead of us. So people like Nyx and Garnier and L'Oreal Paris had kind of been and done and made quite a few mistakes and things like that, which helped us actually mitigate doing those mistakes ourselves, which we were also in a really lucky position so we could actually speak to them. They told us their secret winning formula for success they'd been working on for two years. So that really kind of made us have that catapult into being able to launch more speedily and more successfully. And we also lent into expertise in the form of an external expert who's in the crowd here today. Shout out to Pete. So if anyone is looking for help as well, I'm sure he's available to talk to you later. But it's important.
Sarah Ashwick [00:12:05]:
Obviously we can't be expert in everything. We understood how to build a community, we understood how to build advocates, but actually now trying to convert was very different for us. So it was really important to kind of build that network, to kind of learn from as well. And then I guess the biggest learning, which is a really obvious one I'm sure to everyone, but actually was to have fun. It was so easy. When you're actually now trying to sell a product, we suddenly have got a, a brief that's a real script of all the ingredients and all the benefits and you must apply it in this way and you completely lose people. Actually our original community is so authentic and so disruptive and so inclusive. They create beautiful and really fun content and actually allowing them to have complete freedom and come to us with much more kind of bonkers and disruptive ideas completely perform so much better.
Sarah Ashwick [00:12:58]:
And I think it's so obvious to say that now, now that that time has passed and we've done that, but I think that's a really big learning. You can be so almost hell bent on trying to shoehorn in every single angle of why that product and why someone should purchase it. You almost lose the whole point of what TikTok stands for, which is entertainment, fun, disruption, thumb stopping content. So they're probably our biggest learnings and I guess we're still in the middle of our journey with it all. So we haven't completed our findings yet or come up with our perfect recipe for success, but we're on the process.
Paul Archer [00:13:28]:
Of doing it beyond having fun. You did say you have a secret, secret, secret. And I've actually spoken to everyone here, they've all promised not to tell. Can you give us a bit of an insight? Yeah, they're all ndi, I promise. What, what else stuck out, stuck out for you guys?
Sarah Ashwick [00:13:45]:
I guess the big thing for us would be that although we got this amazing community, they were already talking about our products, they already loved our products, which is great if we then wanted them to talk about our products in order to sell the product. Actually a lot of them didn't have enough following to have enough traction to actually get that sale over the line. So I guess one of probably the secret pieces that we've learned Is media boosting plays like a massive part in success on a platform like TikTok shop at the moment, you need to get more eyeballs onto that content. You need that to be immediate as well. So it was really keeping an eye on which pieces of content started to perform immediately, having that agility to then boost that content and repeating that process. So again, in a dream world, you're doing that on a bit of an always on. You're always creating new content, you're always boosting it and that kind of pattern continues and that's probably the most successful way. But I guess most of us know that we don't have endless budgets to always do that.
Sarah Ashwick [00:14:41]:
But yeah, that's pretty my biggest learning in terms of the recipe for success I'm allowed to share.
Paul Archer [00:14:47]:
Oh, well. Was there anything that surprised you about what content started performing that you were boosting that you would never have thought that you would be boosting?
Joe Marston [00:14:55]:
Now?
Sarah Ashwick [00:14:55]:
I think it kind of came in two ways. Some of the people that we had looked at the data that we knew were top performers immediately were absolute, like gold top performers. They were the ones that were selling and because again, they've been doing this for a good few years now, they know what works and they know how to get the sales coming in. So that was kind of an obvious one almost. We expected them to perform and we probably paid them a bit more because we assumed that they would perform. And then, yeah, I guess it was just back to that fun nature. Like we had one of the guys like going on a date with the cleanser and it was like, I've got this new guy in my life and. And it really like made you want to keep watching the whole way through.
Sarah Ashwick [00:15:34]:
So you've got that duration of viewing through because you assumed he was going to like reveal who he was actually dating and he was actually talking about a cleanser. So it was all a bit. A bit crazy. And we're like, oh, I don't know about that. But you kind of have to trust these guys. Obviously, they're the experts. Again, as we said, that's why we needed to pull in all these different areas of expertise. We are newer to this area of trying to get that immediate conversion, whereas they've been doing it a lot longer than we have and on a much varied braces basis with so many different brands and different categories, you have to trust them that they are complete and utter experts and you have to listen to them as well.
Sarah Ashwick [00:16:07]:
The most insightful things that you learn from that and they are telling you all these, like, amazing kind of nuggets of information that can really help shape your next decisions and what you do next.
Paul Archer [00:16:17]:
Is there a line, Is there any kind of content that you wouldn't be.
Sarah Ashwick [00:16:20]:
I mean, obviously, even though this brand in particular is vegan and it's cool and it's LA and it's disruptive, we still are part of L'Oreal. So you do always have, in the back of your mind, you've got to be keeping. Keeping a bit of an eye on the way it plays out. And obviously you have that opportunity usually to look at the content before it goes live, if it's been in a paid kind of capacity. No, I think on that one we definitely have pushed a lot more boundaries and that's been really nice as well. It's been really refreshing to work on a brand like that because that is kind of what people want right now. And I think some of our older, more known brands could obviously take quite a lot of a leaf out of that book in a way. So, no, for now, we haven't been in the situation we've had to say, oh, no, that's felt a bit too risque.
Sarah Ashwick [00:17:01]:
We've kind of managed to sneak. And I guess also just to caveat that because it's a lower brand awareness brand of ours, you can get away with a bit more because not. It's not on, like massive billboard yet and it's not on TV adverts yet. It's not so known, it's not a household name yet. So we can be a little bit more playful, which has been great.
Paul Archer [00:17:20]:
Interesting. I mean, a vegan skincare brand coming out of LA sounds.
Sarah Ashwick [00:17:25]:
It's very cool. Very cool founders too, which we'd love to get hold of.
Paul Archer [00:17:29]:
How did you use trend squads for that? Because I know that this is something that you. You were looking into. Were you able to use your founders for that? Was that something that's separate to it?
Sarah Ashwick [00:17:37]:
No. So that's separate and that's almost a bit of a strategy. Again, pretty should be talking about. Let's talk about it. Hey, they're all signed in NDA, so we're all good. Everyone go away and do this afterwards. But basically, that's just coming back to that piece about agility again. Obviously, we know on platforms like TikTok, a trend can come in, it can mature or it can disappear within the space of 48 hours.
Sarah Ashwick [00:17:59]:
Actually, if you've already got a pool of talent that you work really closely with, you've already got amazing relations, relationships with, you can kind of set the scene and say, look, would you be interested in working with us on an ongoing basis? We'd need content creator within 24 hours. We'd need the rights to be able to boost it within the next 12 hours. If you've got a pot of people that you already have that relationship with and you're ready to go, you can just really tap into those opportunities so much quicker. And obviously that's so critical for the platforms as everything is moving so speedily. In the past, we've had things where we've had so much process in place, which is the nature of obviously such a massive of global company, that you just cannot get things through almost the red tape quick enough. So you've spotted something, you've got the content created, but you're desperate to maybe boost it, and you just don't have the kind of process to get there in time. And you've missed that opportunity. And I guess if you're doing it on your own and you're entrepreneur and it's your own brand, you don't have those things.
Sarah Ashwick [00:18:55]:
It's not a factor that you have to take into consideration. You can be immediate and you can just jump on things and take a risk. But I think that's a big piece that we've really learned as well to kind of really adapt our process, make sure all our teams know to be speedy. Let's shave down those like five days of turning something around into 24 hours and at some point that 24 hours is probably going to become 12 hours. So really kind of challenging the process in order to be there and be relevant.
Paul Archer [00:19:22]:
Hey, it's me again. This podcast is sponsored by Dual, which is my company.
Paul Archer [00:19:28]:
Actually.
Paul Archer [00:19:28]:
Duel is the leading brand advocacy platform used by the top retail consumer brand brands, including Unilever, Charlotte, Tilbury, Elemis loop and about 50 more to manage, measure and scale their advocacy, member, affiliate, creator and brand ambassador operations. The platform offers unparalleled scale for complex brands. By automating 9 out of 10 of the standard advocacy management activities and allowing them to focus on arming their advocates. With the right tools to tell the brand story and drive social commerce, they can grow faster for less. We only work with 15% or so of the brands we speak to, but we try and add value in many other ways, this podcast being one of them. So if you are a brand that's interested in this, maybe a large consumer retail brand, Ideally you're doing 20, $30 million as a minimum, and you're pretty advanced on Social and you need to know what the next stage is then please get in touch. Email me. Paul Tech that is P A U L.
Paul Archer [00:20:25]:
Or Google Dual Doc Tech Joe I mean we've learned what it's like for L'Oreal, which we're all I think quite familiar with that brand. Your roster you work with, it's kind of a who's who are the hottest brands coming up at the moment? Like it's a phenomenal group there. Like you're seeing it across a bunch of different industries, a bunch of different brands. Like what are the biggest industry trends that you've noticed that have really started to hit in, in the past few months?
Joe Marston [00:20:49]:
Maybe not surprising, but definitely TikTok shop in terms of how fast. Almost like a mass panic from brands of trying to get something sorted. Especially sort of Q2, Q3, you know, people suddenly realizing that Black Friday is around the corner. The start of the year it was we were kind of putting things in place, expecting this mass demand, but then it was kind of a slow burn and then it's just a big panic from a lot of brands to get something out there. And I think it comes back to that everything what everyone's been saying like authenticity, but the fact that I think there's been a lot of like loss of emotion in buying decisions, especially in E commerce. It's quite an emotionless buyer journey all the time. People just go into websites, browsing, clicking buy on something that catches their eye. People are really wanting more of a social and a more of a connection when they're, when they're buying.
Joe Marston [00:21:45]:
So getting that trust from somebody that seems like a real customer is a real customer hopefully most of the time. On TikTok Shop, it's been a massive opportunity for brands and I think it's because you know, in the kind of economy we're in right now, it's actually presented an opportunity for a lot of people to have a career in being an affiliate and a creator. There's that's awesome thing it was, you know, when I was at school, I wanted to grow to be like a footballer. Kids are now being, wanting to grow up to be like creators and influencers, which I think is quite funny. And you know, some of the creators we worked with a brand, Liquid London, he did something like 30 or 40,000 pound in affiliate commissions. Just some random guy. He had like less than a thousand followers when we got him to do some work for us. So I think this combination of customers, consumers seeing this opportunity to get more involved with brands, you know, it's rapidly increasing in terms of how many creators there are and how many fillets there are and then brands noticing that the first mover advantage is very important here and it's not going to be as big of an opportunity in 12 months.
Joe Marston [00:22:54]:
You know, TikTok will increase the cost, they will reduce reach, more brands will be on the platform. So really trying to jump on that quickly I think is quite important.
Paul Archer [00:23:03]:
What do you think is going to happen in Black Friday when every single brand and every single creator is all shilling their wares at the same time? Is it just TikTok's going to fall out over and everyone's going to migrate away?
Joe Marston [00:23:12]:
It's going to be a scary period. I think it's going to be hard to use TikTok and social media in a way that we're used to. It's just, yeah, people are going to be chilling everything, I think. And you know, every single year it starts earlier and earlier in terms of Black Friday. But from a brand perspective, it is still the wild west. It's still so open. Like the amount of conversations I have with pretty well known brands that haven't even got an idea of how TikTok Shop Works presents massive opportunities. There's more like nimble, flexible, faster moving brands.
Joe Marston [00:23:46]:
Like, if you can do that, it sounds like L'Oreal, obviously huge brand are acting as if they're more of a younger, nimble brand. But you know, if I was a brand owner in today's world, I would be putting a lot of effort into getting something activated on TikTok shop.
Paul Archer [00:24:02]:
For those brands that aren't doing it, and particularly what aren't native in this world like represent and. And it's a little bit harder to sort of retrofit. What's your beginner's guide? What are the first few steps that you say everyone needs to do?
Joe Marston [00:24:15]:
Product and pricing strategy is really important to begin with. You have to give people an incentive to buy on TikTok, especially when some brands may be on like Amazon and you've got to compete with prime next day delivery. So using things like product bundles, bundling up products together, offering specific discounts, urgency discounts, I mean, all these, all the usual things that you would use on your website. Just applying it specifically to TikTok, we found work really well. TikTok are quite heavily subsidizing a lot of brands. I don't know if you've seen this, but customers will get a discount and brands will sort of get full margin, which is quite an interesting opportunity. TikTok is almost forcing TikTok shop to work. So, yeah, make sure you're pricing your product.
Joe Marston [00:25:01]:
Strategy incentivizes people to shop on TikTok shop. I would then say, like really trying to be as aggressive as possible with what you offer to affiliates. If you can operate, break even for a few months to kind of build up reviews, build up orders, it will allow you to attract more and more affiliates because affiliates themselves are looking and you know they're getting spammed by hundreds of brands a day. If they're seeing that all the brands in their inbox are offering them 50p a sale, if you can come in and offer them five pound a sale, even if that maybe isn't the most profitable strategy for you in the first few months, you attract loads of affiliates, you get more and more exposure, you get access to this mass creative testing opportunity, you know, getting hundreds of people, thousands of people posting your content, all these fresh ideas, you know, real customers as well. It's hard to get that same level of scale of creative testing anywhere else, really. If you were doing that with paid ads, it would cost a lot of money. So making sure that affiliates choose you over other brands and if you can do that for a few months, build up a lot of orders, build a lot of trust, then you maybe strip it back, focus more on profitability. But if you can get yourself top of mind and top choice for affiliates, you'll get a lot of momentum.
Paul Archer [00:26:19]:
Colby from Grown Alchemist has flown into Mum's iPad, was asking about what's the most compelling reward and then you mentioned 50p to £5. But everyone's got margins. You can't necessarily erode it too much. Like, yes, a bit of generosity sounds like a great way to get started, but are there anything else they can do? What are the perks that work that's beyond that, that, you know, can make sure you stand out outside of in.
Joe Marston [00:26:40]:
The TikTok shop infrastructure. Something that we're testing with a couple of brands is creating a creator or affiliate community where you actually offer competitions to the creators or affiliates that get, you know, the best performing videos or make the most money. Simple things like that, you know, getting and actually communicating and getting your creators and affiliates to communicate with each other because most of the time everyone wants to help each other and it will help the brand. Some things like that be outside the box, but I think we've seen the easiest thing to do is just offer a really good commission. Most of the time, affiliates will look at who's going to give them the most reward basically.
Paul Archer [00:27:20]:
Coin operator at the end of the day.
Joe Marston [00:27:22]:
Yeah, I mean they. So some creators, some affiliates do do this and it's, it's not long term. They're going to burn out their accounts but they can only post maybe once, twice a day before they really annoy their followers. So they have to be really selective with what they post. So you have to try and do everything you can and trying to generate like a. Build a personal connection with your creators as well and offering them exclusive brand deals if they do really well, offering them bespoke affiliate rates if they seem like a perfect fit to your icp. Just be more thoughtful with it. Don't just spam out the same message to every single person and expect you to get really good results.
Paul Archer [00:27:58]:
An entire generation with ring lights coming up to be affiliates just to be burnt out in their accounts because they've been shilling too much product. Still on that TikTok theme, we mentioned Liquid London previously and you did huge amounts of revenue through those guys. We TikTok shop recently. Can you talk us through a little bit that how did you make that happen and actually tell us the story?
Olly Hudson [00:28:16]:
Yeah, we launched Tick Tock Shop probably about four weeks after we launched the brand and we, we managed to go from like a couple of hundred pound a day to I think we peaked at like 55000 a day in revenue on Tick Tock Shop in about three weeks and then we got banned because we were doing two from, from the platform which is another story entirely. And please tell us that story because.
Paul Archer [00:28:39]:
Let'S just get into that.
Olly Hudson [00:28:40]:
Yeah, we broke their, we were using their fulfillment. Broke their fulfillment and then got. Got banned for taking too long to fulfill products even though they were fulfilling it for us. So we had to work through that. We were starting from a very low base. It was a fairly new brand. We're very performance CAC driven in everything we do. So we laid out that kind of pricing margin commission strategy based on a unit economics target and really kind of cast a wide net then with affiliates.
Olly Hudson [00:29:11]:
And I think what Joe said around creative volume and creative strategies is true. Like we cast a wide net both to generate a lot of volume on TikTok but also to use it as our first data point of like right. What is going to drive people to take action and buy when we put this in front of them and how can we then use that data? So how can we use the hooks, the creator demographics, the message, the solution? Set up the cta. How can we pull that across to every channel. So yeah, we did about, I think we gifted about 7,000 products in the first two months. We got back over 10,000 pieces of content. The first guy that Joe mentioned had made one video on TikTok before and did 130 grand in organic sales in two days. From the video he just.
Olly Hudson [00:30:03]:
I know if I'd looked at his profile I just would have been like, we're not going to work with him. And it just, but we just were like, we'll just work with everybody for a week and see what happens. And he actually sent a picture to our customer service about a week later of a Mercedes he'd bought and was just like, thanks, thanks.
Paul Archer [00:30:18]:
No way.
Olly Hudson [00:30:19]:
So people are making serious money through this. And like when you. And a lot of. I think that's the thing with TikTok is like you can try and provide like apply like thought process, exact science to the platform, but it is just like a bit nuts, like what works and it's very hard. And since then we've started to like move our best affiliates into incentive driven programs, engage them in events, incentivize them to work harder for us and we'll work harder for them. But in that first few months we really did just cast a wide net and use it as a bit of a learning experience.
Paul Archer [00:30:54]:
I see it a lot with brands we work with. There's like a real generational shift and you've got someone who runs brand and they are like, I must control my brand. It must look exactly this way in my aesthetics. And no, no, you can't post this. I need to approve every single piece that you do because they come from an old school PR world and that's how it's done. But what you're talking about there is the way that it's working for a brand is you're just, you don't, you don't know what's going to work. What's interesting about TikTok is the algorithm is entirely meritocratic.
Joe Marston [00:31:25]:
Yeah.
Paul Archer [00:31:25]:
Is that it's not about my following. That guy had no followers and then bought a Mercedes from, from a start, standing start from it. So. And there was no way that you were going to sort of select them. Like is there a point where you have to kind of pull back control over your brand or is actually the way the Wild west now is that you do not control your brand. Your brand is what people say is.
Olly Hudson [00:31:45]:
Yeah. I think there's a brand performance debate. It's like the, the biggest debate that I have with creative teams Performance teams, brand teams like that. It's like a Venn diagram and the magic happens in the middle of that diagram. And you constantly, the teams are constantly trying to pull you in either direction. I think, like, you can't, you can't just continue to say anything. You will get like negative brand sentiment over time. I think if you're, if you're a brand that's already a significant scale, there needs to be more consideration on how you execute, how it plays into a broader trading strategy, as well as how the content plays.
Olly Hudson [00:32:21]:
I think the thing, the benefit you do get with TikTok shop is like when you boost the ads, it's coming from their profile, not yours. So there is a bit of a disconnect and that's marginal. But yeah, you do have to, I think, keep some control. You do have to, from a boosting perspective for sure. It's kind of difficult with affiliate because once you've sent them the product, they can post what they want, you can't stop them. And if that viral video goes viral, you have no control over that initial message. And that's something you just kind of have to accept.
Paul Archer [00:32:53]:
How affiliates always works. I think this is the kind of thing that brands forget is that they've been doing affiliate marketing for the past decade and they've not been able to control what the Daily Mail had in their sidebar of shame before they link to you on their full recommendations or anything. This is just how affiliates are. Anonymous keeps popping up here on Mum's iPad. And there's a lot of thoughts for you, Jimmy. Like, when it comes to community building, generally people are like, yeah, yeah, you've got cool founders, we don't. What can we do? Like what, what do you, what do you offer your community that others don't like? Is it like you can meet them? Are you doing VIP things? Obviously you got them kind of camping out, they're pulling on you, but what are you doing to push?
Jimmy Charnock [00:33:31]:
So, yeah, we do a lot of in person activations. So I think 2022 was the first time I did. I called it a community day, which was actually stolen from another passion of mine, which is gaming. So if a new game's coming out, they'll invite the top 100 fans of that game to come and play the game, basically, and then they'll make UGC about it or whatever. So we actually did it in an Everyman in Manchester and it was early access to the upcoming collection, which was spring summer 23. It was a Q and A session with our founders and it was our CEO, which was. He was brand new at the time, did his pitch that he did to the staff, path to the community members. So it just basically made them feel like they were part of the crew, which basically are now.
Jimmy Charnock [00:34:15]:
So my CEO knows a lot of the same people I do by name. If they come to events, Spenny, our CEO will greet them by name. We do the pop up shops, sample sales. We've got our store in Manchester which is opening tonight, which means I have to fly immediately after this because it got pushed back a week because we wanted to put concrete on the walls. Who does that? I don't know that.
Paul Archer [00:34:39]:
It's great. Concrete's vital on the walls.
Sarah Ashwick [00:34:40]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Charnock [00:34:41]:
The builders were like, you know that's not going to be ready in time, don't you?
Paul Archer [00:34:44]:
Anyway, so dedication to brand aesthetic there.
Jimmy Charnock [00:34:46]:
Yes. So we've got a private opening for community tomorrow, which is shopping experience, free product. Nothing crazy on the free product. It's just like if you buy a candle, you get some branded matchsticks. We've got key rings and we've got a competition for a football shirt which we've made because it's in Manchester. We've got another community day in our brand new hq. So it's in person events because we're an Ecom brand first. Our first store was opened in LA at the start of this year.
Jimmy Charnock [00:35:13]:
Previous to that we were all online. So any form of physical. Physical contact sounds weird, but that's kind of what it is. Any form of in person event that people come to, they will come to if they love your brand. So you don't have to have cool founders, you just need cool ideas and just execute them.
Paul Archer [00:35:30]:
And to be entirely vegan, if you're in la.
Jimmy Charnock [00:35:32]:
Yeah. And go on a date with a cleanser.
Paul Archer [00:35:37]:
All right. So I mean, we're kind of Closing down on 24 right now. Approaching 2025. Just going to go through each of you to close this off. Starting with you, Jimmy. What trends you seen emerging or what do you think is going to be the big thing for brand and community in 2025?
Jimmy Charnock [00:35:53]:
Good question. Following on from that, it's the in person events. There's a beauty brand called Refi you've probably heard of, which is Manchester based.
Paul Archer [00:36:00]:
Why is it Manchester brands are killing at this thing
Jimmy Charnock [00:36:03]:
Because we're fucking cooler than you lot. Sorry. They're annoying me a bit because they're doing better than me in their community space. I think their flu.
Paul Archer [00:36:13]:
It's because they're not in Bolton yes, probably that.
Jimmy Charnock [00:36:16]:
Actually we're not friends. They flew X amount of people out to Mallorca just to as a community week, just to celebrate them, get some content from those guys. So I think it's just thinking outside of the box, taking online communities offline in person and just sharing, sharing whatever you can behind the scenes in person. Content sounds easy. It's not.
Paul Archer [00:36:44]:
It's a lot of graph to be authentic.
Jimmy Charnock [00:36:47]:
Yeah. Inauthenticity being authentic.
Paul Archer [00:36:50]:
Yeah, put the slog in.
Sarah Ashwick [00:36:52]:
Mine's probably more like internal. On our teams, I actually controversially tell my teams to keep scrolling. So we're often like don't scroll so much and we're obsessed with our phones. But actually the more you can be really in that platform and see what platform updates are coming and what new features and what creators and what your competitors are doing, even to the point when we were trying to get our TikTok shop off the ground, we really needed like our legal team to be on there and understanding what that journey looked like and making purchases and our IT team and everyone kind of goes, oh, I know what TikTok is and I know what TikTok shop is. But I do genuinely believe like genuinely purchase something, have that journey because it just helps you have that conversation so much better. And I actively encourage all my teams to get on the phones and keep scrolling. I think it's so important.
Olly Hudson [00:37:36]:
I was going to say what Jimmy said, but I think we are seeing that trend across our clients. I think there's a real craving in society for community. You can see that on a brand level. But even run clubs, all of these things that are just booming at the moment. It's like we went online through Covid and now I feel like there's a real. You see the trends on people looking for meetups at events, regardless of whether it's brand size. I think that's going to continue. Then I think that authenticity, I think that like behind the scenes that founder led, like a lot of the fastest growing brands are the ones that are really pulling back the curtain and in that authentic way and giving people an insight into like the operations and actually what makes them tick on an authentic level.
Paul Archer [00:38:24]:
Nice.
Joe Marston [00:38:25]:
Probably to add to that, I would say do more like weird and unique things when it comes to marketing. Like people always speak about if anyone has a serial brand called Surreal, their marketing is really, really cool. And we worked them for a bit and everything's a lot. All the traditional and online ads and TikTok all works way better if they have something else unique going on and people speaking about them. And I think too many brands, it all links back to the, to the TikTok thing as well. Like some brands try and do TikTok and TikTok shop, but they have this really, really strict criteria and it doesn't work and then they think it doesn't work for them. But all the brands that are crushing it on these platforms and the brands that come out of nowhere are all the ones that have kind of done something weird and unique. And I think brands need to be a little bit more relaxed.
Joe Marston [00:39:15]:
And if you're a young brand and you don't have shareholders and millions and billions in revenue, if you can do weird stuff, you're going to stand out amongst all the crowd. Way easier.
Paul Archer [00:39:26]:
Take the risks. Well, that's brilliant. A lot of principles that seem to be shared throughout this as well, which I really like. That's been fascinating. A huge, huge thanks to everyone. So Joe, Ollie, Jimmy and Sarah, thank you very, very much.
Paul Archer [00:39:43]:That was another episode of Building Brand Advocacy, the world's top brand building podcast. To find out more about Building Brand Advocacy and how this podcast is part of a bigger plan for our brand building cookbook, then make sure to search for Building Brand Advocacy in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are fine. And make sure that you click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks to Juul for sponsoring. To find out more, go to www.dual.tech. that's D U E L dot T E C H. And on behalf of the team here at Building Brand Advocacy, thanks for listening.
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