Samir Balwani 00:00
Hi, I'm Samir Balwani, host of Chief Advertiser. Join me as I talk to industry leaders about their strategies, challenges, and successes in managing their advertising and marketing. If you're looking for more marketing insights and resources, join the Chief Advertiser Community, a network for the modern advertising leader. Go to ChiefAdvertiser.com to learn more on our episode today. Katie Mack, the VP of Marketing and E-comm at eyebobs. I'm really excited to have her. I've known her for a while and we're going to learn so much. Thank you so much for joining us, Katie.
Katie Mack 00:28
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited because we have worked together a lot, so this will be fun.
Samir Balwani 00:33
Yeah, I mean, I know the story, so I'd love to hear your background. How you got there? Just talk to us a little bit more about you and your career path.
Katie Mack 00:42
All right. Well, I always like to start with the fact that I did not take a linear path to get to this role, that I'd say most people in this role have probably been in marketing, maybe majored in marketing, and and stayed in that their entire careers. I have a little bit less of a straightforward journey in that I did major in journalism, but then I started out in the athletic industry with Reebok and Adidas in first events, but then in sales, and then went to a number of different outdoor brands where I was in sales for over 20 years. So the, you know, sales was not necessarily what I wanted to do. I more fell into it because I love the industries that I was doing, but it was, in retrospect, such an amazing foundation for a marketing role because it really gave me a full perspective on go to market and in market and sell through working with all the customers that I did for so many years, and also just learning how to forecast, change, forecast, figure out how to have product mixes that are correct for a location. So that was unbelievably valuable. But at a certain point, I started realizing that I was much more interested in the marketing plans for the clients that I was working with the customers than I was in what their maybe, you know, product mix was going to be for the next two years. And so I started to think, okay, if I were to do a career transition into marketing, what could that look like? And realized that I really probably didn't know enough to go directly into marketing for a brand, because I knew really nothing about how creative is done. Digital media, all of those things. So I was lucky enough to go to an advertising agency that was full service in the on the account side. And so that gave me this really awesome general look at all the different things that go into, you know, into everything marketing, but from an agency perspective, which again, I think is super valuable. I learned about, you know, everything from brand strategy to briefing to how it executes across all different channels. And still, because I was an account, still have the more business view on everything as to how budgets are fitting in and how they're being spent, and then what the success for the client was. So after doing that for about five years, that's when I decided I definitely want to go back on the brand side. I want to kind of meld these two things, these two areas that I've been doing. And so I've been on the brand side in marketing ever since, and I absolutely love it. And I think the somewhat odd path I took to get here is really done. Nothing. But maybe give me a perspective that that some people in marketing don't have, and I'm super appreciative of that.
Samir Balwani 03:24
Yeah, I mean, that financial acumen that comes out of sales is such a unique piece and probably pretty under estimated in terms of like a lot of the other element of it is marketers do a lot of selling and they don't realize it. It's like internal selling, partner selling.
Katie Mack 03:42
And so yeah, and also just the fact that, you know, what we're ultimately doing is selling to the customer. And I think when you're in sales, you you're only as good at what's as what sells through or as successful as what sells through, not just what sells in. And so you do have to constantly be thinking about the consumer that all of your different customers have at the time, the different retailers. And that's essentially what you're doing in marketing as well. So yeah.
Samir Balwani 04:06
Yeah, I love that. So so tell us a little bit about eyebobs. So what is it and why are you so excited about it?
Katie Mack 04:15
Well I am super excited about it. I've been there just under a year. And eyebobs is a premium eyeglass maker of both readers and prescription glasses. We do all the different lens types, but really it started out as a premium readers company and it kind of. The founder, Julie Allenson in 2001 created this basically created a category. She basically saw that there was this lack of product available for people who are starting to wear reader glasses that was actually premium and beautiful and actually might reflect your style, instead of the drugstore glasses that are $10 for a pair or, you know, now that you know, Costco has stuff for five pairs for, you know, $25 or something. So she basically looked at it and thought, okay, as this professional who cares about her style, how could she have a product that actually she'd be proud to wear on her face, feel confident in, and have it go with the style of her clothing? So it was truly creating a category. And since then we have expanded into all different lens types. So you can get Prescription and Sun and everything else. But that's what the company founded on. And the thing, one of the things I think I love most is that we've really stayed true to that. That is still our number one customer, and it's really the focus for us. And lucky for us, because of all the zoom meetings and computer screen, people are needing readers at younger and younger ages. So I guess that bodes well for us. But the reason I'm so excited to be with eyebobs now is we have a growth trajectory. Now that basically just feels exciting. There are other players in the market that are, you know, are big now that it's not an unknown category anymore, but I think we're positioned still really well to offer probably the best product that's there as far as quality and look and style. And I just like working with brands that people get passionate about and feel an emotional connection to. And if you talk with which I know you have, but eyebobs loyalists, we call them, they are about as passionate as you can get. So I came from Passion Industries with athletic and outdoor, and I thought that was kind of the, you know, the Mecca for people who get passionate about their products. But you start talking to people about their glasses and you're going to be there for a while. And I love working on any brand that that people just feel an emotional connection to.
Samir Balwani 06:36
Yeah, it's so true. Especially because it's something you're putting on your face, right? So yeah, it has it is a way of showing your who you are. And it's like the most apparent of places. So.
Katie Mack 06:49
Well, one of the things that is, you know, because we're working together. But one of the very first things I did when I came in was to do a brand study so we could really understand, like what is most important to people. And it is interesting because you as a product company, you always expect to hear, you know, quality. Do they work? Can I see better customer service, all of those things. And with eyebobs, all of those things when we talk to people were very much assumed, yes, we know we're going to get that, but the things that came out were way more about how they feel in their glasses, and that they might want to pair during the week that they put on, that makes them feel confident in a meeting. And then on the weekend, they want something that maybe is a little funkier and goes with their style. Or at a restaurant, they might want something that, you know, that old like you put your readers on to read the menu and then you want to take them off. Well, we want to do glasses that people want to put on and leave on. That looks beautiful with your outfit.
Samir Balwani 07:42
So it's so interesting. It's like the functional benefits versus the emotional benefits.
Katie Mack 07:46
Exactly.
Samir Balwani 07:47
Breaking it out from that. I mean, that is, and I do. I love that you guys did a customer research and a very thorough and thoughtful one, too. Because that's a great segue into some of the challenges that we're seeing. So what are you seeing from an advertising standpoint in terms of growth trajectory as we look into 2025? Like, what are the things that you're like, we're going to have to overcome this or we're in the process of overcoming. Yeah. What are those things for? eyebobs.
Katie Mack 08:15
Well, I think, you know, it's a challenge, but not a not how challenge is sometimes a euphemism for a negative thing. But our biggest challenge truly is just brand awareness and getting more people to know about us. I think the biggest challenge in this very moment right now, talking in, you know, almost September of 2004, is being able to afford to get the awareness that you need because of the way so much with digital media is controlled right now with with pricing and access and and you finally think you get something figured out or maximized and then an algorithm will change. And so it's constantly just kind of staying staying I guess relevant enough and present enough that you're getting what as much as you can for the money that you can spend. And then the biggest challenge that will be everlasting, I think now that performance marketing is such a a necessity is how we balance brand with performance marketing, because the two have to work together and you can't. We can say, okay, the spend on performance is really tricky right now, so let's go further into brand. But the reality is you absolutely have to be doing both. So I think the biggest challenge for us right now is how we balance both and and you know, one has clear attribution and one doesn't. So that's a hard that's a hard challenge right now is just like staying focused on the things that you're spending a lot of money on that maybe don't have as clear of attribution. But, you know, in the long run are probably the most important to the brand.
Samir Balwani 09:48
It's really interesting that you you say that. So I was talking to Alyssa, our head of media, and we were chatting about performance versus brand. And obviously that's you know, that that is our core expertise kind of balancing those two. And it was really interesting because she was like, I love performance because it's really easily measurable and it's really straightforward. But that is clearly changing these days. And it's becoming a harder and harder thing. And it's kind of forcing this conversation around brand marketing and bringing it back into the forefront. Yeah, I love eyebobs for that. Right. Because the product is so good. You definitely feel as long as people knew about it, they would buy it.
Katie Mack 10:31
And yes, and we know that as long as they buy it, then they'll buy more like the the loyalty we have is unbelievable. But you do have to get people to first know about it and then try it. Yeah. Yeah.
Samir Balwani 10:43
And it goes back to your sales expertise, right? Like, what is that objective objection that the person has that you're trying to overcome? And how do you do it in mass. Right. Like that is always the hardest question.
Katie Mack 10:54
Yeah. Especially because the mass means you're speaking to a number of different objections because people will have, you know, different reasons for not being ready to buy or not purchasing or taking a little bit longer. So how do you make sure that you're hitting enough of the, you know, slight barriers to just clicking through and purchasing? In a way that can speak to enough people that you actually see, you know, consistent growth.
Samir Balwani 11:16
Yeah. And so we talked about this earlier on where I said the best marketers do a lot of selling and don't even realize it. Yeah. The hardest part about brand marketing is the time it takes. And you just said it too. It takes a while for people to actually go through the sales cycle and come to the other end. How do you sell that through to senior leadership, your board? How do you help them manage that and stay the course, because obviously you don't want to do is kind of flip flop back and forth because then you'll never get. The growth. Of brand. So how do you help manage that conversation?
Katie Mack 11:50
Yeah, I would say you manage it by having it often. It sprinkled into literally every, you know, monthly financial call that I have every single meeting because there can be a tendency if you're not in marketing to see maybe your performance marketing is starting to be you know, your your Roas is is slightly off or the CPM seem really high or whatever it is, they can see some of those things and then think, okay, so that's not working as well. Maybe do less of that and do more of brand. But the reality is brand doesn't work without, you know, that machine going to to get people there to see it. So I think it's having the conversation often, but also there has to be education in it all the time too, as we all have our areas of specialty that there's no reason to, you know, head of a board or a CFO should be necessarily in the weeds on on understanding digital marketing, but at the same time, it's important that they understand, you know, if we're in a big acquisition time, it's going to cost us more and you're going to see less for it in the short run. And so there's an element of trust to, you know, to get people to understand you do know what you're doing. You have to get to the people first. They're going to have a longer journey. You're going to see more people come to the site and not convert for a little while. And then hopefully the momentum starts and they they can trust you by starting to see that what you are putting in place is starting to work. But I'd say that's the hardest part, is just making sure that everybody understands the plan and then reiterating it over and over.
Samir Balwani 13:16
I mean, I think that that's where going back to your superpower around forecasts is really important, because you can see, like, how this is going to play out over time, and you can point to it to people and say, this is what's going to happen.
Katie Mack 13:31
Yeah, I think the hard part though is I don't I'm almost I don't know if anyone has a superpower in forecasting because you can take all the information in the world. And as you know, like this year, everything is kind of flipping on its head, where things at the beginning of the year that you thought might work at least a little harder right now aren't working quite as hard. So maybe maybe it's more of a knowledge about forecasting and how you have that. No.
Samir Balwani 13:58
It's true. I mean, that's the hardest part. Yeah, I, I tell my team because we obviously do a lot of forecasting and we do a lot of media forecasting. And I tell them, you know, our goal is to be as accurate as possible. If I knew you could be perfect every time. We'd just play the lottery. Every time. Like.
Katie Mack 14:14
Exactly. Exactly.
Samir Balwani 14:17
You know, forecasting is like telling the future, and you got to just be able to read the tea leaves as best as possible and give, you know, perspective and hope.
Katie Mack 14:26
I think understand then what what changes from when you did the initial forecasting, what is changing and just keeping track of that in real time, how it's affecting, you know, that forecast because yeah, we could all do that. You know extremely well from the beginning. Then we wouldn't even. There would be. There would be no mystery in what we do. Yeah. And there's a lot of mystery.
Samir Balwani 14:45
I yeah. So I love that you guys have put together a really comprehensive strategy, went through customer research. We worked with you guys to put together a great media strategy, but a full marketing strategy as well. And the as the VP of ecom, how do you actually build a team? What do you think about to take strategy to finally execution. Like how do you go from idea to action.
Katie Mack 15:11
Yeah. And I think I'm in the same boat as every brand that I've worked with and probably all brands, which is no matter the size of your company or brand, you're always going to be working with a slightly smaller team than you'd think would be ideal in a slightly smaller budget. And I've told my team this like, I know you always think like, oh, the bigger brands, they can spend more money. Well, they're also having to have, you know, bigger results because of that. So I think we're all in the same boat, no matter what size the company is. For me, the most important part in building the team was making sure, first of all, I consider external team to be as important as the internal team. So I'm super particular on the partners that we work with externally. And like many, you know, marketing people, I like to work with people that I've worked with before that I know I can really trust. And so query is part of that. And I feel super happy. I've spent the last year kind of adjusting the partners that we have in every area, so that externally I feel like we have the best, you know, expertise coming in. And then on the internal team, I just think it's really important that people have their areas of specialty and that we've got enough people that have expertise in high level or maybe a little bit more experience in things like, you know, running, running ecom and running growth marketing, but then having strong people below that that can learn and learn. Learn from the, you know, the directors in my case, but then also feel like they have enough empowerment to to execute and feel like they are having some say in what we're doing and how we're doing. Because if you've got a small team, which we always all do, everyone has to feel some sense of being able to make some decisions and have some input in in order to, I think, do their best work and really be on board. So right now I couldn't be more excited. I feel like we finally have like super strong internal team, external partners that know what to do. And then and just one more note on it. I think as far as like getting down to the execution part and how you do that really well, I think it has to come from not just a clear strategy overall, but briefing for your individual, whether it's quarters, campaigns, whatever it is. But I'm a huge believer in super thorough briefs and doing them early enough that then everybody who's executing on it then has time to both ask questions, make some mistakes and and execute.
Samir Balwani 17:33
Yeah, I think briefs are such an important piece because it's that vision setting and expectation setting for people, right. Like, you know, we're going through holiday briefing with you guys right now actually, and it's hey, this is what success looks like and this is how we're going to get there. And then, you know, to your guys credit, you give us enough room to color outside of the lines as needed. But because what the brief process is such a delicate balance of, hey, here's where I want to go without telling you how to get there. So that way really fresh, great ideas can come out of the mix.
Katie Mack 18:13
Yeah. I mean, when you're looking at, you know, as, as a, when you're inside a brand, you're lucky that you get to know every single thing about the brand and probably the competition within your area. You know, you get really, but you do lose some perspective on what's happening in the greater market because you're so focused. And so that's where the external partners, the vendor partners, are so valuable in what they're seeing in other areas. And so if I ever briefed an agency and they didn't come back with the coloring outside the lines and have some ideas that we hadn't thought of or ways to think about even splitting a budget up or something that we hadn't thought of, I'd be super disappointed because I, I just look at it as our partners as being like a huge part of what's keeping us relevant and kind of at the forefront of new technologies, new ways of doing things, all of that.
Samir Balwani 18:58
Yeah, I mean, that's that's like the key piece of the mix, right? That's like our job, right? Like like like otherwise, you know, we always talk about and this is just an aside on like for agency owners in-housing is always a fear, right. Like why would you bring media buying internal. Why wouldn't you bring full creative teams. Internal. Well, the reason why is because then you just start talking your own language all day long and you miss out on, you know, the innovation that, you know, beauty has that could impact optics or fashion could impact optics. And so there's a lot of that. So yeah, I, I think that there is this like really important balance around being able to bring innovation but then not innovating for innovation's sake though. And I think that that is the trap that a lot of agencies fall into, where it's a new idea, a new idea, and it needs to bring them back to reality.
Katie Mack 19:58
Yeah, exactly. And and there is always something new to try and like, you know, some of it sticks and some of it doesn't. Yeah. And so I think that's, you know, you've got to be willing to try new things. And you want agency partners that you feel like have vetted it just enough to know, is this the time for our brand? There are some brands that are early adopters and that they're going to they should and do jump on all of the earliest things with our brand and with our consumer, because, you know, our consumers are consumers a little bit older in the, you know, age because they obviously need to. Need glasses. So like 40 and up. We can probably wait just a little bit on some of the, you know, hot. Trends to see if we should be doing it or not. So yeah, I mean it is the probably the number one important resource for us is external agencies for that kind of thing.
Samir Balwani 20:45
Yeah, that's really interesting. When you are looking at your campaigns and looking at your marketing and advertising as a whole, how are you measuring that success? There's a lot of questions around, okay, well, how do we measure brand success? How do we measure performance success? You know, how are you guys looking at that?
Katie Mack 21:06
I mean, we Have our short term measurements for everything, just like everyone does. If I'm really measuring success, though is looking at, I say, higher level metrics over a longer period of time. So maybe I'm going to sound like the old sales person that I was, but I'm ultimately measuring success is, you know, revenue change. Because if you follow, if you follow the weekly or monthly metrics for social paid, you know, any of that, you can kind of go crazy because you start to see, you know, you have ups and downs, or you might have one campaign that completely tanks and you get in your head about, you know, why that's not. But so really what I look for overall, which is hard to do in real time because you're, you know, but is that overall trajectory. So you might actually feel again, right now we're in a big acquisition phase. So we have some metrics that if I were to look at as short, you know, that are more short term, it would be a little bit frustrating because they are longer. They do take longer to last or longer to to see the positive effect. So when I'm looking at things, I try as much as possible. I feel like my directors are the ones stressing out about that more day to day. I will look at things bigger picture to see. Okay, but overall, are we are we gaining customers? Are we seeing conversion? At what point are we seeing the conversion and in the process, how many times did they have to come to the site before? Because otherwise, you know, you can definitely get in your head a little bit too much.
Samir Balwani 22:33
I love that answer because it also goes to this perspective I have around leadership, and that the more senior you are, the longer view of time you need to have. And so like a new manager may look at this week or this month, and then a director should be looking at this month, this quarter. And the senior lead should be looking at this half this year. And and having that perspective around things. So you can actually see trends and impact change over that time period. Right. Because that's how you make big changes.
Katie Mack 23:06
Yeah, exactly. And I think especially if you're in a growing I mean, all brands obviously need to be growing. But if you're in a growth phase trying to go from a company like ours that has great loyalty from the people who know about us, but not enough people who know about us. So we're less into how many. You know, we're not a big enough brand that it's you already know about us. So what are the new messages you wanna say? It's like we're literally in the phase of, like, introducing ourselves to, you know, probably half of the audience right now that we're that we're speaking to when we're out there. So if I was looking at things from a short term basis all the time, it would start to feel a little bit like, literally like things aren't working when the reality is they are. They just need a little bit more time.
Samir Balwani 23:46
Yeah, yeah. And I love that because like we get to see those, you know, upticks in reach and in brand impressions and brand search volume. Like there's all of these green sprouts that we can look at and say we're on the right path and kind of help arm your team with that too. So at least then you can keep that long term view. But know that, you know, you're hitting the the milepost to get to where you need to go.
Katie Mack 24:11
Yeah, because sometimes the milepost can feel really far away when you have, like you said, maybe a bunch of green check marks, but then the ones that you're paying most attention to, which might be the rate of growth or your conversion rate or something. Those still seem somewhat in the red, and it can start to seem like, should you throw the plan out and do something different. But you know, for the most part, I'm a believer in this from creative content to your marketing plan, but it's consistency and kind of sticking, sticking with the plan.
Samir Balwani 24:39
Yeah, I think that's actually the biggest mistake a lot of people make is the inconsistency of kind of shifting stuff. You know, tactically on the media side, shifting things messes up campaign creative, messes up campaign learnings. But there's also this element of like, you just need a density of advertising. You need to hit a critical mass of reach before you kind of I've been in this for long enough now where I've got I've had the pleasure of watching a lot of brands kind of go through this, and it it is like pushing a rock up a hill and the back half is pushing it up. but then you hit this point where you just hit that tipping point and the hill, just the rock just goes straight down the hill, and you got to watch the trajectory as it accelerates over time. Yeah, it's amazing what people think it takes to push that rock. People think it's I need a really flashy, you know, brand campaign. Like something huge, something something that's going to break through, or I need a ton of money or I need to. I need to bring in a celebrity endorsement in. And the reality of the situation is it's consistent budget. Yeah. A message that resonates. A simple message. It doesn't need to be anything. Yeah. A good product, enough inventory, and then a plan that keeps you consistent over time. And that's and like if you just do that you'll get to where you need to get to.
Katie Mack 26:03
Yeah. Because I've definitely worked on brands where you get the flashy, you know, 32nd AD that used to be so huge that, you know, and now and then what happens with that now is it all gets broken down into five seconds. 10s, you know, it all gets parceled out anyway. And it's how do you have you spent all this money to get that? And then where's the money to make sure people see it more than once or twice. Your budget can go quickly. So I think now and, you know, I think the biggest thing, probably a few years ago, if you'd asked most people in in marketing, what's your biggest pain point? It's how do I get enough content to be out there? And I think everybody's of all very quickly into like how to get a lot of content. And if you've got good partners, how to do that in a pretty efficient way. And and so we're understanding how to get video faster and have all the different assets. And now it's just a matter of like, how do you have a plan that you can have all this creative and put it out there, like you said, consistently enough, long enough?
Samir Balwani 26:57
I think the I think of things in a pendulum and we get to go like back and forth on the swings because I feel like it's really hard to get to the middle. And I agree with you. I think we're at this stage where we're like, hey, we need we need more content. We are content starved, right? Like, there's so many media platforms, so many channels and content staff. I feel like we swung so far the other way for a lot of people. It's like there's so much content, but 90% of this is not great content. Yeah. And it's it's all over the place. And and even then it's like it's minutia differences like, oh, this button is red instead of or we've got this overlay that's this font size. And we're going to count that as a new piece of content. And and I almost just want to be like no, let's go to the middle. Let's create really meaningful content and test big changes.
Katie Mack 27:43
So like because the testing once people it became, you know, like are you testing. What are you learning from your testing. But it did get to be such minutia, like you said, the red button or the yellow button or something. And that stuff might be important, but it really, I think, comes much more into like, is your brand standing out in some way on all of these things? So even if it's a somewhat boring banner ad or something like, are you standing out a little bit and is it consistent with everything else that's out there, instead of just treating that as like, that's your total performance. Non-design it doesn't need that. That can be very sterile. And then you've got brand. It's like, how are you melding the two so that they actually all look like they hang together versus treating them like one's creative and one's not?
Samir Balwani 28:26
I mean, I would challenge that if somebody is listening to this podcast and wants to do this activity, it's a lot of fun. Print out all of your ads, put them up in a room and just walk around and say, how do I feel about this? Yeah, and hang together. All makes sense. Yep. Like they're a very distinct line where we went from brand to performance. Yeah. And then the other one, if you really want to take this a step further, you can go to the Facebook's media library, look at your competitors, print theirs out and put it into the mix and just say.
Katie Mack 28:57
This is a good this might be a fun activity for our next internal marketing meeting.
Samir Balwani 29:02
And just get rid of the logos and be like, all right, well, whose ad is this? Is this ours or a competitive set? And how do we stand out? So that's the kind of stuff I like to push back on our partners because like, you know, again, we're a media buying agency. We don't do creative, but we get to see a lot of creative, and we get to see a lot of creative across the site.
Katie Mack 29:19
And you guys do care about creative, which is a difference of query than a lot of media agencies. And, you know, that's why I like working with you. I think that the days of creative not being able to care about media performance and media performance, saying someone's just going to feed them creative like that, those days are gone. And that's why I think finding partners that actually care and can have conversations about both is super important. As you know, our creative agency and internal team depend very much on the opinions of what your team is suggesting for what would work and not work in the different channels. They can maybe create it more in a more polished way than what your team could, but your team knows what's needed, and that's super important that everybody can kind of talk talk in a similar language.
Samir Balwani 30:03
Yeah, and I'll give the team a Pocket Hercules a shout out because they're fantastic. They are have been such a great partner when working with you guys. So yeah, it is a I am of the mindset that there needs to be a healthy tension between your creative agency and your media agency, and that's how you get the best output. Yeah, totally. Because otherwise you end up with exactly what we talked about, where it's brand creative, that looks beautiful and polished, and then performance creative. That is ugly ads, which performs well. But I am of the mindset that you can have pretty ugly ads. Yeah. And just have a short term impact on sales and a long term impact on brand position.
Katie Mack 30:44
Yeah, and this is True for email and everything else as well. I mean, a lot of companies, it's like we'll have a brand email that goes out once a month that's beautifully designed by a designer. And then everything else is kind of considered a performance email. Well, as a customer, I don't understand that you're doing performance and brand emails. Like, every email I get from you should have something a reason to open it. A beautiful look so it runs across, not just in, you know, the paid space, which I know we're talking more about, but in in all the marketing touch points of having cohesion there.
Samir Balwani 31:12
Yeah. No, I love that. All right. My last question for you. You've been in advertising for a while. You've been in marketing for a while. What's a key lesson you learned something that people can take away.
Katie Mack 31:26
I, I think the main thing I'm going to say, I feel like I learned this mainly in sales and then carried it forward with me. And it's going to sound super generic, but you know, there's a lot of conversation right now about brand First and getting back to brand. And what is your brand. And brand is important. We went through through, you know, people got to the point of less brand, more performance. But I would say it's it's just keeping in mind who your consumer is all the time because your brand is as healthy as you are relative to your consumer. And that consumer could be a consumer you don't have yet or a consumer that you have. So whenever the conversation becomes it's brand first, I think it's consumer first. And again, I know that sounds somewhat generic, but what is their journey? How is it changing and why would they want your product? Because if we speak about our brand, our brand should be what our consumer wants it to be. You know, how are we talking about quality? How are we designing? Where are we in the market? How are they? How are they being talked to by us? What images and imagery are they seeing? So again, I know it's probably like as one on one as you can get, but I think that many, many brands are going when they're thinking brand right now, they're thinking brand first. And it's who they see themselves as. And I just constantly have that feeling of like, but who does your consumer see you as or want you want you to be? So I think that's my biggest learning is just always consumer first.
Samir Balwani 33:06
I love that. Yeah, I think that's so important because if you lose sight of it, then you're going to build something that nobody wants. You're talking to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you so much for joining us today, Katie. If someone wants to find you online, where can people learn more about you?
Katie Mack 33:22
Well, eyebobs.com. Obviously we have to check out all of our beautiful products. And then if people want to reach me, I'm on LinkedIn. And so they could definitely message me. And I'd love to hear from other people and start conversations about how they're doing things as well, or answer any questions from younger people who are coming up. Love I love, love, love mentoring, you know, younger people. So if if those people are in your demo, Samir, I'm happy to reach out and do some mentoring. But yeah, just like reach out on LinkedIn.
Samir Balwani 33:52
Amazing. Thank you so much. And to our listeners, don't forget if you have questions about what you learned today, I invite you to join us at Chief Advertiser Community. Go to Chiefadvertiser.com to learn more.
Katie Mack 34:01
Thank you. Great. Thanks, Samir.
