Intro 0:04

Welcome to another episode of Ecom Experiences, a podcast for ecommerce marketing leaders who want to grow and scale their brands faster. Join us as we interview some of the smartest brand founders and marketing leaders in the industry. Explore the lessons they learned, discover the keys to their success and discuss what excites them most about the future.

Samir Balwani 0:32

Hi, it's Samir Balwani here, host of Ecom Experiences, where we talk to brand founders and marketing leaders about their experiences growing brands. This episode is brought to you by QRY. QRY is a paid media agency that helps brands balance brand awareness and performance marketing to drive predictable and profitable growth, to learn more about how we can help you visit. Weareqry.com I'm really excited to have Adam Gassman, the chief growth officer at Beam here today. He's super smart. Really knows his world. Thanks so much for joining us. Adam,

Adam Gassman 1:02

thanks thanks for having me. Samir, so let's get

Samir Balwani 1:05

started with tell us about Beam. What is it? How did it come to be give us a story. Yeah, it's

Adam Gassman 1:11

a good story. Actually, it's Beam's a functional wellness brand, laser focused on optimizing performance, recovery and productivity for people across a wide gamut of parts. It was founded by two professional athletes who both were recovering from injuries and in a need to optimize and improve and recover a little faster get back for one on the hockey rink and another on the baseball field. This is how Beam was was invented. It has a couple of core products focused on optimizing sleep, which is built off of a belief that sleep is essentially the engine of everything that we do. And if we sleep poorly, we perform poorly. And so it ultimately started with that dream Beams core, core product was clinically shown to improve sleep for 93% of participants in the blind study. So it's not just us saying it in marketing. It genuinely is backed by clinical research. It's super latte, which is somewhat new to new to the market, packed with creatine and adaptogens and nootropics, gives you the benefits of coffee without the downsides. As someone who pre, pre Beam super latte, drank a ton of coffee, especially as we've talked before, recently having a kid, the need for coffee is pretty is pretty important. And so I went from drinking six or seven cups of coffee today to drinking two hearing you say, oof. Yeah, yeah, yeah, bad nights of sleep, coupled and combined with a big workload and very aggressive profitable growth goals, you need coffee to if you're not sleeping properly, which is

Samir Balwani 3:03

awesome. I think you and most marketers would say the same thing. It's just coffee is the fuel that keeps them growing and and it tends to backfire after a while,

Adam Gassman 3:13

though. Yeah, that's where coffee or coffee or sleep. Honestly, since joining BM, I've also like prioritize my health being being surrounded in a culture that that's focused both with eating, working out and my sleep. My sleep has been significantly better since, since I started using some of the products as well. And I don't say that, just say it, but there is a net benefit. I mean, it's mutually beneficial for being, for their employees to be, be sleeping, well, eating, well, that, you know, yeah, well, it's a new body that helped drive

Samir Balwani 3:49

best performance. It's awesome to hear you say that you use the product too, right? Because, like that is such a key piece of actually being a good marketer also is really understanding the product and knowing why it is and who the customer is going to be. So tell us about your role. Who are you at Beam, and what do you do? Yeah, so I I

Adam Gassman 4:11

invested in Beam, actually in 2020 while I was still running marketing at freshly and I was impressed by his product offering. So stayed in touch with the founders on and off, and then post leading freshly through its exit as a marketing leader to nestle in November 2020 I stayed on for about nine months post integration, and then went and launched a consulting agency where I helped a number of startups, one of those BNB, and worked with them at a consulting capacity for about five months, I believe, then came in full time in November, after a conversation with their founders, my role is Chief growth officer, and I think it could be boiled down pretty quickly, to grow as fast as profitably. Be possible. And in doing that, as in growing in the right ways, you know, I've been in environments will grow at all costs where CAC matters and nothing else, and ultimately, you're driving on profitable customers into an experience that you can't live up to with, with great marketing message and great copy. That's just not true. And so being in this environment's also fun. There's it's more rewarding to look at a p&l and see profitable dollars than see a really nice CAC and being unprofitable by millions of dollars and seeing a massive burn number. It's just the other truth to it is the industry, for a long time, is driven by the ass of the people giving them money, and the asks of change. And I think the asks are a little bit better right now to be profitable than, hey, grow as fast as possible. You know, IPO with a ridiculous valuation,

Samir Balwani 5:56

it's healthy business fundamentals, right? Like it's going back to just, how do you build a good business versus one? We talk about arbitrage a lot, and so on the meta side, there's been a lot of like, Facebook arbitrage. You could just grow a brand based on how much you spend in meta. And then for fundraisers, there was a lot of interest rate arbitrage. When interest rates were really low, you just threw money at it, and you had all the time in the world. You could keep throwing money at it, and now the interest rates aren't low anymore. You can't arbitrage it. You got to get back to business fundamentals. They

Adam Gassman 6:28

they're they're not low. I and I, and in some level, there's two parts to it. One, it's, it's strange that that was seen as is good business fundamentals, because, in a way, it's fake, and once you pull all the money back, that the growth stops. I think that's challenged. The other thing is, like, what's interesting about meta is the people who would succeed on meta today are very different than the people who would succeed on meta some years ago, I think some years ago, getting a smart data analyst who kind of understood copy and how to target, that's all you really needed. Creative to a degree didn't really matter, as long as long as it was decent. Today, the data analysts are super analytical. Are good, but if they have no creative chops, they're going to foul. Or you are working at a company with a ridiculous creative team or and that understands performance, and so you're given everything you need, but it still breaks down the necessary conversation that needs to happen between growth performance, like whatever you're going to call it marketing and creative. Everyone has different acronyms or terms to understand, like why things work and why they don't. And I think that's one of the things that Beam has also prioritized. It's like is we've onboarded a couple of new people to build out this, this growth function within, within the company. It's really to prioritize creative analytic capability and also just smart growth marketers, but prioritizing that they really understand what drives creative to work, not just, Hey, I did. I got Facebook CAC down 10% and when you do a deep dive, they kind of don't really understand, or can't explain. How'd you do it? Yeah,

Samir Balwani 8:10

so I'm curious if we could kind of lean in on that. So when you guys are looking at creative and looking at Creative performance, specifically, how are you guys breaking that down, what are the pieces that you're looking at? How do you even define what creative performance is when it's a black box for most people? Yeah,

Adam Gassman 8:31

I think that's where you you you have your internal leading indicators in tools, how you're looking at engagement, hook rate and what people are doing, post, post at ad creative, and you're also using qualitative testing tools, especially when you're spending aggressive amounts of money, to understand what consumers think. I think, I've learned a couple of times that what I think is often wrong given my biases of working within a company. There was a campaign. We launched it freshly that I was so bullish and so excited to launch. It was a two week promo that I thought was going to hit it out of the park, and, like, I only talked to one person about it, I thought it was going to be great. It absolutely bombed. And then Facebook comments, it was like, nobody you know, their interpretation of what that copy and what that campaign was was very different than mine. And so I think it's really important to be running a lot of qualitative tests, and that could be both your customers and that could be outside or in market demo, like outsiders, not never purchased in market for your product, that can give you an understanding. I think that's really, really critical. I think understanding why creative performance is a mix of both quantitative and qualitative insights, because quantitative tells you what happened, qualitative tells you why. And I think when you don't both, you're kind of make a lot of broad assumptions that often tend not to be right. Yeah,

Samir Balwani 9:51

it's interesting, because when we're when I was at American Express, the beauty of it is you had a media buying team, and you had a brand creative team, and. They would come to the table, and the conversations between the two of them was always what led us to great creative because brand, creative team wanted brand and wanted beauty and wanted this, like essence to it, but didn't always drive performance. So the PErforM, the marketing team would come and be like, Hey guys, that's this is what we need. Here's what we need. And and I felt like that tension between the two of them led to the probably some of the best outcomes. Did it always lead to the most effective performance creative? No, but it led to a performance creative that allowed a brand to actually come together beyond a discount code or, you know, a starburst on it, like the there still needs to be this like brand element to your creative so how do you guys kind of manage against that? Yeah, I

Adam Gassman 10:44

think everyone has a voice in the room. I think there are a couple of things that are important in this conversation. And I think, like, having been on both sides of it, I've been like, I've thrown matches to the fire as a lead from brand and brand and growth conflict often a driver of it, that brand didn't matter, and thinking brand is stupid to being someone who just has a lot of respect for building, you know, a really great brand that people care about, but often resonate to. I think the things that are really important in that conversation is that there's a mutual level of respect. And I don't always think that that's there. I think it's very easy for brand marketers to come into a room and say, the creative sucks. I want to elevate it. And then when you say, what does elevated mean that there's not really, there's not really anything behind it. It just samples a word without backing it. On the counter to that, there's a lot of like, really close minded performance marketers that hear the word brand and go, that's that's stupid and a big waste of money. What's it going to do? I think there is the word the future of marketing, and I have this conversation with a former colleague, is like performance branding, which is accountable brand metrics tied to performance numbers and leading indicators that the efficacy of brand marketing, and I think that's ultimately really important. What do we do to ensure, at the end of the day, it needs to drive results, and we need to know what the results are going to be that may be a massive increase in branded search queries that that we can build a derivative of what that's going to do for revenue down, down the line, we're not, I know most businesses, just fundamentally are not in the position to spend two, two and a half million dollars, or $5 million to to To grow aided and unaided brand awareness and see how it is in a year, year and a half. I think what's great about the internet is you go launch business and kind of build it smartly. What's been a little challenging is like, hey, we need to do these, like, massively big things that that the legacy brands have been doing for decades, and kind of think about it on a, like, three year plan, but for us, like, we just don't have that that same runway to think about things for three three years. And maybe that's the wrong way to think.

Samir Balwani 13:15

I think you're actually thinking about it the right way, because I think the for like, large businesses, they've got a budget against it. They can do these, like big engagements, but I think for mid sized businesses, they've got to really think about how their performance marketing is also their brand marketing. And you know, you're going to run performance marketing, 90% of people are not going to purchase, but they're still being engaged with an ad, and that's a brand touch point. All said and done, we do a lot of regression analysis against our media spend with our brand search volume on a day by day basis, but we can see like where it fluctuates, and try and align it with the campaigns that are launching. So we can come back to the table and say, Hey guys, this campaign worked really well. Like this evergreen launch, this product launch, did really well. This discount did not do well because it led to people just searching for coupons or discount codes versus the brand searches. So we get a chance to kind of do that, but that's what I'm excited about on the marketing perspective right now, of this focus less on direct sales and the focus on the 1% of purchasers it's hard to say, All right. Well, instead of this 1% of people that are going to purchase right now, let's not forget about the 90% or 99% of people that are going to purchase sometime in the future, or just weren't ready for us today, how do we kind of engage them and keep them warm over time? I've been talking a lot about creative and media. What other challenges are you seeing on the Beam side, like when you're looking at marketing over the next year?

Adam Gassman 14:42

Yeah, I think, I think it's a great question, you know, and some are, some of the challenges are very typical, the platform challenges. Everyone's having challenges with Facebook right now. I think CPMs are sky high. I think, you know, you just heard Facebook's earnings yesterday. Day before, talking about cost of advertising has gone up. I think Facebook is also at risk of entering a period, like a stage of cost where TV makes more sense linear in CTV. I think those are pretty typical of the challenges. I think the way we've combated that is Beam has a pretty healthy mix, and CAC can always get lower, but we are not as dependent upon Facebook March, where a ton of a ton of businesses or CAC rise like we actually sort of our profit like our efficiency improved pretty, pretty dramatically, which is testament of some of the work we've been doing within the funnel, and also testament to the channel mix. I think the other challenge is just at least Beam exclusive is Beam's champion SKU drives decent percentage of business. It's what Beam's known for. And one of the risks we have and working on as a marketer is not letting our champion SKU cannibalize all of the other formats that we have and all of the other pain points that we saw for customers, across recovery, across productivity, with super latte. If you ask someone to purchase Beam like what Beam is, most of them are going to say it's a sleep brand. And that's something that is a challenges marketer that we got to, that we got to work on, I think again, in this world of more expensive CAC, more competition growing as profitably as possible requires us to make decisions. Slow growth where it doesn't make sense, increased growth where it does prioritize certain key customer segments over others, that where they deliver profitable dollars and help boost overall auto rates in in shorted payback period. So over, over other things, I think they the other part is, and this is probably something for all companies, is prioritizing the right things, um, over over the things that don't move the needle often the day to day, gets prioritized over the things that are really going to move the needle. And I think we can always improve, but are doing a really good job in prioritizing the big ticket items that we think ultimately move the needle and make the business as profitable as

Samir Balwani 17:08

possible long term. Yeah, it's interesting. You said something at the beginning of this around meta CPMs rising and looking to linear TV at one stage. And I would almost say it's a two fold issue. Meta CPMs are rising. Targeting is getting less so now it's just being seen as a brand awareness channel or a broad channel. Anyway. It's entering a different competitive set than you know, where you would normally say, all right, Google, super targeted. I'm willing to pay ICPMS because I know I'm reaching the right person. Now, meta is more of a broad channel, all right? Well, not TV, direct to mail, print, all of these other things come influencers, sponsorships, all of these other options come in. And while they may be less targeted or a different form function, if the cpns and the final numbers all work out it, it may not make sense to kind of spend as much in meta anymore. Yeah,

Adam Gassman 18:00

I agree. I also think why there remains a duopoly, and you factor in Amazon too, depending on your product offering as well. Still, I think what the future looks like in marketing is way more fragmented channel mix than we have had in the past. Probably the last 10 years, I've been in businesses where Facebook makes up 70% of really the drive of it, and I think we're gonna be in a world where you have a lot of channels making up a percent or two, you're going direct to businesses to help promote, rather than having all of it concentrated in a few publishers or a few platforms, and maybe that's a healthier way for marketing than it is to be solely dependent upon one or two channels, and they make an algo change and all of a sudden your business is at risk in a day.

Samir Balwani 18:51

Yeah. I mean, I think we started the conversation with talking about de risking and arbitrage to begin with. And so I think that you're exactly right. Like, you know, you as a business owner, you look at it, you go, I want no single product or no single business to be more than 20% of my income. And yet, as marketers, we've been comfortable saying, hey, 60% of our revenue comes from Facebook. Like this is fine, and now it's all falling apart, and everyone's freaking out. And so it's almost like hindsight 2020 if we could have diversified and found other ways earlier on in derisk, we'd been in a better place than we are today. So I agree. I think healthy media mixes in the future are going to be great. So as you look ahead, we talked a lot about challenges. As we look ahead, what are you most excited about? Where are you seeing the innovation that kind of you can't wait to play, play with or mess around with?

Adam Gassman 19:47

I think first, let's just talk Beam first internally. I think the new product formats that are gonna be coming to market in the next few months really expand our tam pretty aggressively. Help us have a. A bigger mode to play on, and also just a bigger audience. I think, I think that one's pretty important. I think two is, is the continued use of AI to make us better marketers. And in no way would I ever say I'm an AI expert or anywhere close to it, but in making us far more productive as marketers and also expanding, if you're at least using it right, expanding our capabilities with AI as marketers. Some of us suck at writing copy. We just don't have that talent. I mean, you could write pretty good copy with AI, so like you just got, you just covered for one of your main weaknesses. Some of us don't really know Excel that well, okay, you just simply go, go into one of those platforms and say, Hey, I need to do this. What's, what's, what's and so it's like the tools are within your disposal to be the best version of yourself as a marketer, honestly, or as an employee. If you take it, there's no reason not to. It's probably what Google was 10 years ago. To a degree, it's like, you had a question. Don't ask it. Just go Google it. Now you have a problem. Like, there's probably you could solve it. Like, look, the copy is not the best copy you'd ever write. But like, when, when you're stuck, and you're stuck and you just can't figure out what that next line should be like, that's where it's like, Oh, that's great. Okay, I can do it. And so I think those are the two things that I'm probably the most excited for. We're working to get live on TV. I think TV will be a really big and a big channel for being long term once we get TV right, and my hope is we get it right real fast. But having spent a lot on TV, it's not always successful. Right out of the gate, you got to test and learn, figure out your day parts, figure out your channels, messaging, and also the right attribution, and especially having that ladder up ultimately to one, one source of truth, which TV complicates pretty aggressively we're gonna have to work on

Samir Balwani 22:05

that's awesome. I agree with you on AI. I think for me, from an editorial standpoint, it's like the first word is the hardest. So if you've got the idea, and at least it gets you and you can start editing from there, like, what? Why not? Right? So, yeah, I think that's super cool. Last question for you, Adam, what advice would you give a new marketing director, you know, for the first 90 days?

Adam Gassman 22:31

Yeah, I think, I think it's a good question. So I'd start more at the high level than a little bit more tactical at the high level. I'd say, Never stop learning. I think one of the worst things I've ever done is getting sucked into, like, the day to day of a job and stopping learning. And I think it stops me from thinking more creatively and more strategically. So I think that's one thing. I think the other thing is trying to stay ahead of the curve, rather than, like, being on time for the curve, like you use tick tock as an example, whatever happens with it or not. But like the people who are on tick tock three or four years ago did very well for themselves. Is, is, is, is something else I'd say. I'd say, the other thing that that has been a learning for me and have been helpful is, is realizing the best and worst days as a marketer always come to an end. No trend lasts forever. And I've been in bad trends and I've been in good trends. I think the other thing to do from it is, in your good trends is when you should do your most aggressive testing, because you're the you're you're the most apt to take on significant risk for you to innovate. I think the second part of that is during the best of times, is when you should plan for the worst of times, versus when the best of times come to an end. And that's been really helpful for me, as I is, is is having a manager at a point constantly obsessed with looking around the corner, which was foreign to me at the time, is is really important, especially in the rapidly changing dynamics that we see within marketing over the last couple couple of years. That doesn't mean that you're going to be able to plan for a pandemic, but in other ways, you're better prepared, I think in a more tactical way, I think it's really important, especially if you're a marketing director and not leader, is to kind of balance coming in and getting some quick wins right out the board, right off, right out of the gate, to kind of gain some respect and appreciation for your insight, but also taking in and being respectful of what's of what's been done thus far before, before coming on board and learning the business, the worst thing to do is to rush to get started, not understand the business, and you're running all these ads across the board, and you don't even really understand what the products do or are. How the business functions properly. Those are things that that I think are most important. And I think the one thing is any team member, especially coming into startups that grow rapidly and go through several transitions, is coming in and being super respectful for the work that everyone has done to that date that helped you get paid your salary. Because I do think oftentimes new people come into businesses, and their first line of strategy is everything that been done to date is not very good and is, is is bad or looks bad. And it's very easy to do that from afar, and people assume you know you're talking about, um, you get much further coming in and saying like this is great, but have we tested this and and showing a sign of respect, because it wasn't for those people? You wouldn't, you wouldn't be at that company. Yeah,

Samir Balwani 25:49

and it's interesting because it's, it's a concept of, like, point A to point B may not be the same as point B to point C, but parts of it may. And so it's, it's a, you know, as a we'll look at accounts, and we'll clients, and then, of course, the person think is, oh, we gotta change all of us, right? Like, yeah, this is totally wrong, and we gotta fix it and and then you gotta peel it back and be like, no, wait, actually, this was working. This was working. This was working. We can incrementally grow in these areas, but let's not, you know, ruin what's been working so far in the process, and I think it goes holistically across everything completely cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Adam, it was really awesome to have you. If someone wants to find you online, where can people learn more about you?

Adam Gassman 26:34

I just used LinkedIn. Cool.

Samir Balwani 26:36

Thank you.

Adam Gassman 26:38

Thank you. This is a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Outro 26:49

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