Tinuiti Live 2022 Recap—The New, New Normal: Chaos, Complexity & Change

— Ana Isabelle, Actress, Musician, and Influencer
Kaelin then took a deeper dive into measurement, exploring the areas that are a top focus for Zola, including: incrementality testing, data transparency, and custom analyses.
“Networks do not want these impressions to go unsold. We have been able to negotiate some of the most efficient CPMs that I have seen in years, and it has allowed our brands to more aggressively invest and take advantage of that.”

Welcome to 2022: Now, Can Someone Please Tell Me What’s Going On?

Kaitlyn Caimano and Catherine Kaelin centered their discussion around one of the hottest avenues in advertising today—Streaming. Caimano led attendees through key considerations of streaming advertising, with she and Kaelin sharing how Zola—the wedding company with the fastest-growing wedding registry—has blazed new trails for the brand through streaming video and digital audio campaigns with Bliss Point Media (BPM).
Reality: “We were able to start from a lot of our social assets and repurpose those—build upon that creative based on some of the quick learnings that we were getting in the BPM app of what was succeeding and what wasn’t, and we were able to consistently iterate and improve our creative over time with fairly low production costs.”
 
Rida noted that there are sometimes challenges in striking the right balance between authenticity and professional polish:
— Dalton Dorné , CMO, Tinuiti

Hoffman encouraged brands to do the necessary work to understand the profitability and lifetime value of every item they sell, finding ways to include profitability into the decision-making process regarding item placement/visibility, promotions, and more. Tinuiti Live brings together marketers from around the world for a day packed with captivating, thought-provoking sessions. This year’s event brought a hybrid experience, with 100+ in-person attendees, and thousands more tuning in virtually.

Avi Ben-Zvi and Brooke Cullison discussed the importance of being proactive in adapting your Paid Social campaigns to be ready to shift toward, and accommodate for, whatever the Next Big Thing in Social may be.

To close the session Beutler and Burnside highlighted a few key takeaways: Bough then posed the question: “How do we hack the way we engage with consumers?” He shared the following tips (check out the on-demand session for his real-world examples of each!):
“There’s a saying that goes, ‘you create your own luck’ and I think we really started with a combination of things including supply chain execution, standing by suppliers, inventory planning, and stockpiling inventory stateside that we thought we were going to be holding for years – the demand really came back a lot quicker than we thought.”
To wrap the session, Ellsworth highlighted her key takeaways she wanted people to leave with:

• Chapter 1: Chaos
• Chapter 2: Complexity
• Chapter 3: Change

Cullison shifted focus to the success they’ve seen on TikTok, in particular, kicking off with an example of another influencer partnership with bran_flakezz.
Our client Poppi is revolutionizing the soda category. They are on a mission to disrupt Big Soda and the female-founded brand has achieved exponential growth across retail and Amazon within two years of launching. In this session, Shaun Brown, EVP Commerce at Tinuiti and Allison Ellsworth, Co-Founder / Chief Brand Officer at Poppi sat down to discuss how the company has married brand marketing, streaming advertising, and Amazon to redefine marketing success.

Rethinking Everything in the Face of Chaos, Complexity & Change

Check out this can’t-miss session!
 
[This post was authored by Shannon Mullery and Emily Sullivan, Content Specialists at Tinuiti.] The people (and the regulators) have spoken. The Future of the Web is a place where privacy trumps all. And the good news is there are better ways of getting data than surveillance. Tinuiti’s top futurists and technologists dove into how brands can gear up for the demise of “Surveillance Marketing” and the rise of “Permission Marketing.”

Diana DiGuido, Chief Client Officer, Tinuiti
Cristie Fay, Group Director, Client Strategy, Tinuiti

Reality: “The commitments are very short-term compared to what you might expect, especially on the linear side with upfront commitments. We tend to not have contracts longer than a couple of weeks, so we are able to pivot and continue to be reactive as a business to our performance needs.”
 
Reality: “The commitments are very short-term compared to what you might expect, especially on the linear side with upfront commitments. We tend to not have contracts longer than a couple of weeks, so we are able to pivot and continue to be reactive as a business to our performance needs.”
 
Caimano then explained that BPM typically sees even stronger synergistic effects with higher-reach media. BPM takes a branded performance approach that is a “strategic combination of performance-based media, which is much more focused on user-acquisition and efficiencies, and brand-based media, which is really going to focus in on brand health metrics, and on reach and awareness.”

The Next Big Thing In Social Is Coming (Is Your Brand Prepared for Whatever it is?)

This is a must-watch streaming session packed with great information, insights, examples, and data. Be sure to stream the on-demand session!
 
Steve Hoffman—who leads the Retail Procurement & Sustainability practice as a Partner at McKinsey & Company’s Chicago office, and has served more than 50 retail and consumer clients across more than 15 countries on operational issues throughout his career—was the perfect fit to lead the ‘Change’ keynote.

Bonin Bough, Chief Growth Officer, Triller
Hayet Rida, Influencer and Creative Strategist, Meta
Ana Isabelle, Actress, Musician, and Influencer

— Zach Morrison, CEO, Tinuiti

With the breakneck, pandemic-fueled growth of the last few years in the rearview, 2022 is shaping up to be the Year of the Ecommerce Catch-22—big online growth doesn’t always result in big margins in today’s climate. Skyrocketing online sales have gone hand-in-hand with costs rising equally fast. And as retailers face a potential impending global financial turndown, it’s crucial to recognize that digital growth alone is not a true measure of success, rather profitable digital growth.
“TikTok is shaping the marketing funnel. In terms of collapsing the marketing funnel, consumers are seeing creators talk about these products and then they are pressing the purchase button right away.”
“SMS has been a magic bullet for us. It was an opportunity to connect with runners in a more deliberate and thoughtful way.”

• Liquid I.V. has always had a performance-first mindset
• They have invested greatly in their DTC, and understand the importance of owning first-party data, being able to directly attribute their media spend and its impact
• Their biggest awareness play to date was their House of Hydration at Coachella, which earned 1.6B media impressions
• Liquid I.V.—a consistent early adopter themselves, whose customers are also early adopters—has a ‘testing mentality’ with a leadership team that is supportive of plans to try new things and test their impact
• Diversification of media mix that doesn’t over-rely on any one channel is essential

At Tinuiti, we’ve made it our mission to help brands navigate each facet of the marketing universe, and at this year’s Tinuiti Live, we aimed to help attendees make order of the chaos, navigate the complexity, and get out in front of the change.
 

Stolt posed the question, “how did you survive during this time of difficult challenges in the apparel industry?” Sutton explained…

— Brooke Cullison, Sr. Acquisition Manager, Liquid I.V.
“We’re talking to brands about how they should show up on this platform, and really unlearn the antiquated marketing approaches and trying to teach brands how to lean into the parts of TikTok that really make the platform unique.”

• Influencers are the ones driving trends on social media, testing new features and platforms first, so it makes sense to follow their lead
• Establishing strong relationships with influencers can help your brand keep tabs on what’s hot now, and what will be hot next, with the insider knowledge they can offer
• Working with creators allowed Tinuiti and Liquid I.V. to efficiently scale spend by more than 700% from June to October 2021. They also saw a 48% increase in ROAS from Q2 2021 to Q3 2021

Reality: “Media costs themselves were actually much more reasonable than we expected. The BPM team has worked hard in terms of negotiating great competitive rates, which initially enabled us to see success on a sort of evergreen streaming approach, but has also in more recent years enabled us to unlock some really splashy premium opportunities that we, in 2017, never probably would have really considered.”
 

Another example Hoffman offered is incentivizing shoppers to use a debit card as it carries a lower transaction cost for the seller.

3 Ways Brands Can Prepare for the Next Big Thing in Social

• Invest in your relationships with influencers, and don’t be overly prescriptive, keeping in mind that their audience follows them for a reason, and they know best what will resonate with them. Cullison noted: “The more you help them understand your brand, the better that content you’re going to get back from them is going to be.”
• Know, understand, and follow your community. It’s important not to rely on Gen Z employees to help you understand how platforms like TikTok and Snapchat work; make time to use these platforms yourself, no matter your age. Create interesting and fun content that’s native to the platform. Cullison encouraged brands to look “at the channel understanding the content, and how your audience will engage with that content.”
• Take a full-funnel approach, understanding that all your marketing efforts work together, and shouldn’t be executed on or analyzed in a vacuum

“While performance and culture will continue to be at the core of Tinuiti, I think one thing we learned over the past two-and-a-half years is that change is the only constant. And that is really what the theme of today is going to be about—the chaos, the complexity, and that change that has come, and we’re calling it The New, New Normal.”
“We’ve been on TikTok just over a year and we have over 1 billion views and it’s because we’ve really been utilizing it authentically.”

Red Light. Green Light. Supply Chain: How LT Apparel Group Triumphed on Amazon Through Operations

Catherine Kaelin, Director of Growth Marketing, Zola
Kaitlyn Caimano, CIO, Bliss Point Media, Tinuiti
 
Zach Morrison, CEO, Tinuiti
Dalton Dorné , CMO, Tinuiti

Rida shared that when she receives an influencer marketing proposal, she views it through the lens of not only an influencer, but a marketing expert at Meta.

“We saw iOS roll out the App Tracking Transparency function last year, and that has had a major impact on the ad effectiveness of platforms like Meta. Now, couple that with visibility. There is very little visibility in these markets; they are called walled gardens for a reason. You can pull back very little raw data, which makes it difficult to measure, pull into your marketing mix model, and dedupe across your portfolio.”
— Audra Beutler, CRM and Loyalty Manager, Brooks

Bough explained how many companies today are looking for that one person to come in and be a change agent, but in many successful companies, everyone is a change agent. He highlighted how that during the pandemic, one thing we all realized is that we are capable of change because we were essentially forced to.

Isabelle later noted that when a brand pitches an influencer campaign without room for collaboration or negotiation—expecting her to execute precisely on their proposal without any room for discussion—she isn’t interested.
— Why do you want to use influencer marketing?
— What are your success benchmarks/KPIs?
— Who are you trying to target?
— What are you trying to say?
— What is the budget?

• Product Planning – Am I doing business the Amazon way?
• Inventory Planning – More is not more: put your best foot forward with SKU consolidation
• Aligning Product Mix – Build an assortment specifically for Amazon
• Marketing – Consider marketing on Amazon and test, test, test
• Negotiating With Amazon – Terms could be negotiable (if you have the right person in your corner)

Zach Morrison and Dalton Dorné welcomed in-person and virtual attendees with a reminder that Tinuiti Live was returning to a physical stage for the first time in three years, and that our last in-person Tinuiti Live is where we officially announced our name change to Tinuiti.

 
Next, Hoffman explored four imperatives organizations should follow on the path to profitability:

Influencer Marketing: An Inside Lewk from Meta & Influencer @anaisabellesite

Kaelin walked attendees through Zola’s primary streaming goals:
Bonin Bough, one of the most awarded marketing executives in the world, kicked off the first keynote session of Tinuiti Live 2022 with unmatched energy and enthusiasm. Bough dove into his idea of the “hack-on-omy” where he examined how to create value by breaking things and reinvention – this could be anything from your organization, processes, or yourself.
— Allison Ellsworth, Co-Founder / Chief Brand Officer, Poppi
Isabelle then took her turn in the interviewer chair to learn more about Rida’s experience working on both sides of the influencer relationship.

Hoffman then shared how McKinsey tackled answering that very question, and their findings, including:

Next, Kaelin discussed some of the myths about streaming that were quickly debunked as they ventured into the space.
 
“When planning ahead and looking at where your wins are, you can figure out what’s giving you the best ROI—and Tinuiti helped us do that.”
Beutler also covered how Brooks grew their buyer personas and how storytelling became a crucial part of their strategy…
In the three years since that announcement, we have continued to focus on our culture, people, and delivering for our clients, and have more than doubled in size, surpassing the 1,000 Tinuitians mark.
If you’re interested in influencer marketing, this is a must-watch session. Be sure to check out on-demand!
 
Adrienne Lahens, Global Head of Operations For TikTok Creator Marketing Solutions at TikTok, highlighted how people are coming to TikTok to be entertained and how the app has made it incredibly easy for people to create on TikTok. She also highlighted how valuable working with creators is for brands and how brands who partnered with these creators saw a 26% lift in brand favorability and a 22% lift in brand recommendations.

“We have crisis fatigue; we have been dealing with “unprecedented changes” since the beginning of 2020—from the pandemic, to ecommerce spikes that changed businesses and how they met those demands, to the war on talent, inflation, supply chain issues, and all the stuff that’s happening this year. But it’s really important in times of crisis to be very strategic, and to play offense where we can. And we have done exactly that over the last few years at Tinuiti.”

Bough ended his memorable session driving home the point that the best way to predict the future is to hack it. This is a session you won’t want to miss—be sure to check it out on-demand.
 
Bough ended his memorable session driving home the point that the best way to predict the future is to hack it. This is a session you won’t want to miss—be sure to check it out on-demand.
 
— Kaitlyn Caimano, CIO, Bliss Point Media, Tinuiti

• The difference between creators and influencers, and why it’s important to think of them in different ways when choosing partners for your campaigns
• The “likeness effect”
• How influencers can allow themselves to evolve, exploring new niches, and reaching new audiences by sharing different aspects of their lives with their followers
• How to balance what you can and can’t share about certain projects as an influencer, while remaining interesting and engaging your followers through varied updates
• How influencer expectations can vary by country and audience
• Why it’s important to recognize influencers as “whole people,” and not just associate them or their potential reach with very specific niches
• The value of working with influencers with different backgrounds and POVs
• How creators can leverage social capabilities to harvest audience insights

The brand-based and performance-based media work together to achieve incremental reach, and a synergistic effect in your own campaign, and broader marketing portfolio. This is an approach they applied successfully in working with Zola.
 

Bliss Point Media provides clients with insights they can validate externally, giving them the necessary confidence to secure more budget to scale their streaming campaigns. BPM provides clients with a web-based app they can access at any time to understand how their campaigns are performing at the campaign level, network level, device level, and more.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go! A Lifecycle Marketing Victory Story from Brooks Running

— Kaitlyn Caimano, CIO, Bliss Point Media, Tinuiti

Richard Sutton, CEO of LT Apparel Group and Phil Stolt, SVP of Retail Operations of Tinuiti sat down for a fireside chat highlighting how over the last 2.5 years, so many brands have struggled with lots of start-and-stop to keep operations running and supplies in stock. They discussed supply chain woes, skyrocketing costs, scarcity of raw materials and components, and how many businesses have struggled with decreased YoY revenue. Luckily, this was not the case for LT Apparel Group, as the brand saw an average of 63% growth on a large eight-figure annual Amazon business during the COVID period.
Expectations: Creative costs would be significantly more expensive than search and social
“We were on the platform early—we weren’t trying to be perfect with our content; we were having fun and figuring it out like everyone else was back in the beginning of 2020. And that really helped us because we had a baseline to test against. TikTok rolled out an early version of their Creative Marketplace that we jumped on immediately, and we were able to then measure that performance lift that creators’ ads gave us, which was a proof point for us to double down.”
— Kaitlyn Caimano, CIO, Bliss Point Media, Tinuiti
 

Next, Ellsworth explored the various digital channels Poppi has welcomed into its marketing strategy over the past two years in business…
Next, Ellsworth explored the various digital channels Poppi has welcomed into its marketing strategy over the past two years in business…
Duncan then explained the journey influencer marketing has been through over the years. She described how it used to be a fun new method for brands to test and how it’s table stakes for many marketers today. Duncan also covered how brands are utilizing influencer content in many different ways from a paid perspective (social, OTT, etc.) and an owned perspective.
Other highlights from this must-watch discussion include how Liquid I.V. leverages Snapchat (and its augmented reality edge over other platforms) for a full-funnel approach, and Reddit (a unique and too-often-overlooked channel that can help you tell your brand’s story from a different or deeper angle), to ensure they’re always speaking authentically to their audience on whichever platform they choose to engage.

• Don’t be afraid to try
• Infuse yourself in your customer’s daily life
• Stay relevant with content
• Understand the customer you want to attract

“If we don’t have the strategy in place and understand what numbers are we are trying to achieve, we are building our house without a foundation.”

Saying ‘I Do’ to Streaming: How Wedding Company Zola’s Leap into Streaming Paid Off

“Here we went from a cookie that hadn’t changed in 60 years to having created new value by breaking things, breaking our model, breaking our approach. And something that started as tiny as a Facebook post ended up driving personalization, then our new ecommerce strategy… We changed our mindset and we began to break how we see the world.”
— Allison Ellsworth, Co-Founder / Chief Brand Officer, Poppi
3. Implementing automated email – Beutler explained how building out automation emails was a crucial way for Brooks to engage their customers with personalized and timely emails, based on a recent action. This strategy helped Brooks re-engage with customers beyond the purchase. They implemented emails like post-purchase, win back, and a re-engagement series (abandoning cart, abandoning browse, post-purchase automation after buying shoes, apparel or run bras). This tactic contributed to a significant YoY revenue lift.
This year’s Tinuiti concert was bigger and better than ever. If you couldn’t attend the in-person event or the livestream and want to learn more, check out the on-demand sessions. If you’d like to chat with any of our team members about topics covered at Tinuiti Live, contact us today for more information.
 

• Streaming Advertising is Growing
• Streaming Advertising Can Be Measured
• Zola: A Streaming Success Story

Streaming Advertising is Growing

• Ad prices have increased on Meta (33% CPM increase) and Google (12% CPC increase), comparing Q1 2022 to Q1 2021
• Google and Meta are excellent performance drivers, but it can be risky to reserve the majority of your performance marketing budget to these alone due to their monopolistic auction environments that continue to command higher spend
• These higher advertising costs have been largely driven by pricing increases and privacy-related changes

As the Web morphs into a privacy-first place, brands are going to have to pay for attention. And it doesn’t matter what the value exchange is—whether it’s crypto, coupons, or NFTs (and more), what we do know is that data will be scarcer and more valuable than ever.

Expectations: Zola anticipated CPMs would be in the – range

• In addition to pricing increases and privacy-related changes, we are also facing increased competition in the landscape, underscoring the importance of portfolio diversification
• It is estimated subscription-based OTT will reach 2.15B subscribers in 2025
• 2021 was “a year or irreversible change” in the streaming space, with adults in the core demo (ages 25-54) nearly evenly split between Live TV and Streaming Video (weekly hours of watch time)—with streaming only continuing to grow
• Streaming was the focal point at the upfront presentations that concluded a few weeks ago, with very little focus on prime time scheduling, the previous focus
• Netflix and Disney+ will begin rolling out ads in Q4 2022 as part of their new subscription-tier structure
• It’s estimated that AVOD (advertising-supported video on demand) viewership will reach 164M by 2025
• If brands haven’t yet explored streaming, the time is now. After a year in a high-demand seller’s market, we have moved into a buyer’s market with more available ad inventory. This ad availability has been driven by some of last year’s major advertisers reducing their spend in 2022 due to inflation, supply chain issues, and other concerns
• Streaming is “an incentive-based market.” To not take advantage of it now while it’s a buyer’s market would be “like having a 40% off coupon” and deciding to “wait and pay full price”

Expectations: Zola anticipated CPMs would be in the – range
Expectations: Zola anticipated CPMs would be in the – range
Reality: “Measurability has really been the key to our success in this channel. We’ve partnered very closely with BPM and leveraged their proprietary methodology to have user-level attribution in the streaming space.”
Audra Beutler, CRM and Loyalty Manager, Brooks
Jacquelyn Burnside, Senior Manager, Lifecycle Marketing, Tinuiti

Zola: A Streaming Success Story

 
Next, Hoffman walked attendees through the importance of really diving into, understanding, and optimizing your fulfillment process to improve profitability, analyzing buying and returns costs and trends down to the item, category, and promotion level.
— Catherine Kaelin, Director of Growth Marketing, Zola

— Adrienne Lahens, Global Head of Operations For TikTok Creator Marketing Solutions, TikTok

Getting measurement right was already difficult before IDFA and other privacy changes, but in 2022, it can seem nearly impossible for many marketers to determine where to put their money, and which channels are returning the most value at the top and bottom of the funnel. What tools and KPIs brands can count on in our privacy-by-default world? All this and the Metaverse isn’t even here yet!
— Brooke Cullison, Sr. Acquisition Manager, Liquid I.V.
 

• Diversify channel mix
• Reach an incremental audience
• Access efficient CPMs

Shaun Brown, EVP Commerce, Tinuiti
Allison Ellsworth, Co-Founder / Chief Brand Officer, Poppi

Creative Costs

In addition to building on more tactical abilities, Tinuiti has also been focused on DEI at all levels. Today, we have the most diverse leadership team in the industry, and our organization at large is 61% female.

Media Costs

Expectations: Measurement would be more of a challenge due to the variety of devices used in streaming, and the inability to track last-click data
Ben-Zvi noted that when he was thinking about which Tinuiti client would be ideal for this session, to discuss how they have evolved their social program in recent years, Liquid I.V. was the first that came to mind.

Commitment Requirements

Morrison passed the mic to Dorné to share more about what to expect from the sessions ahead. Dorné noted that our team kicks off planning for Tinuiti Live events by tapping into the most common questions clients ask, and this year, the overwhelming question has been, “WTF? What is actually going on, and what am I supposed to do about it?”
Be sure to check it out!
 

Measurement

— Audra Beutler, CRM and Loyalty Manager, Brooks
Andrew Richardson, SVP, Analytics & Marketing Science, Tinuiti
Liz Emery, VP, Mobile + Ad Tech Solutions, Tinuiti
Cullison then explained how Liquid I.V.’s sophisticated marketing strategies help them focus on both performance marketing and awareness branding for a full-funnel approach.
In this session, we heard from Tinuiti Amazon heavyweights Phil Stolt, SVP, Retail Operations and Nancy-lee McLaughlin, Sr. Director, Search & Enterprise Services. They covered tips on employing integrated tools as well as strategic operations to accelerate the connected experience across Amazon and all Retail Media.

• Zola saw an 85% increase in response rates when viewers have been exposed to branded ads and performance ads
• Zola saw a 50% increase in net new audience reached in their most recent campaign

Brooke Cullison, Sr. Acquisition Manager, Liquid I.V.
Avi Ben-Zvi, VP, Paid Social, Tinuiti

This is What an Integrated Amazon Strategy Looks Like – Breakout Session

Caimano also discussed that granular targeting options in streaming are more advanced than many realize, with the ability to reach audiences based on age, gender, income, location, and more, while maximizing efficiency.
She shared the story of a brand who reached out to her for product promotion, and had already decided they wanted two in-feed ads, one Instagram Reel, and two Stories. After determining they turned to her with awareness goals, she let them know that based on her own data, she drives higher awareness in Stories than Reels. Rida proposed re-scoping the project to better align with her strengths and their goals, but they were set on moving forward with their original plan, despite her data-backed insights.
This year’s sessions centered on the ways we must all adapt to ‘The New, New Normal’ to realize success today. Consumer behavior has shifted, privacy restrictions have had major impacts, and many industry professionals have found themselves in uncharted and tumultuous waters.
— Hayet Rida, Influencer and Creative Strategist, Meta
 

Permission Trumps Surveillance: Measurement in a Murky World

Cullison shared:
 
Kaelin kicked off by explaining how people use Zola, and the incredible results they’ve seen since launching in 2013, helping more than 2M couples plan their weddings, “starting with their engagement through newlywed life.”

As the pandemic served as an accelerant for online commerce, the Amazon ecosystem evolved quickly to make the offering even more robust – and for some marketers – even more complex. Amazon has innovated not just to help companies sell – but build their brand through Video, Streaming TV, DSP, Stores, Posts, Measurement and Amazon Marketing Cloud. To grow a successful brand on Amazon in 2022, it’s not enough to just run ads. You need to understand the entire customer commerce journey.
Hayet Rida and Ana Isabelle brought two uniquely valuable perspectives to the influencer marketing conversation. Rida is a Creative Strategist at Meta, with an active second career as a fashion, beauty, finance, travel, and lifestyle influencer. Isabelle—who recently starred as Rosalia in Spielberg’s feature film version of West Side Story—is an accomplished actress, musician, and influencer.
— Avi Ben-Zvi, VP, Paid Social, Tinuiti

Retail Media Strategy: How Poppi Revolutionized the Soda Category in a Complex Market

“It felt really nice to be able to represent my people, and to know that a brand was looking for people like me to just go out there at Times Square, and celebrate life, winter, alcohol…to me it was success in every way. The event was rewarding, and all the moments of doubting myself — “Can I do this? Am I going to be a good fit?” — were put to rest.”

— Crystal Duncan, Head of Partnership Marketing, Tinuiti
“You want that authenticity, but creators are also stepping up their skillset; they’re stepping up how they edit videos. Now, creators are hiring their own teams to make sure that they are telling your brand story in the most visually-appealing way.”

• Put the Brand First – From Amazon packaging to can labels and social – always brand identity first over ROI.
• Be Authentic – Everything does not have to be perfect, the consumer is demanding us to be authentic and true.
• Be Disruptive – Do things differently.

Lastly, she thanked our sponsors, and shared that relaxation and refreshments had been built into the schedule for in-person attendees, thanks to a Sound Bath with Poppi, and a happy hour with Google.

• TikTok – Ellsworth highlighted that TikTok was how the brand first started leveraging digital media and how breaking through on this channel was a big driver of Poppi’s success. Ellsworth created her own personal videos telling the story of the brand and authentically connected with consumers. To this day, Ellsworth herself is still the highest converter in sales (and they even ran a campaign with J Lo!).

Rida asked Isabelle to dive a bit further into her definition of success from an emotional perspective, as opposed to measuring things like clicks, likes, and saves. Isabelle doubled down on the importance of authenticity, and the value of brand and influencer collaboration—”letting the brand influence you, but don’t let them tell you who you are.”

“LT Apparel was one of the few apparel clients that actually had a successful outcome on Amazon during the last 2.5 years during COVID, and it’s because of the operational background that they built over the last 6 years. Since then, they have become a top 3 brand inside of Amazon in kids and baby apparel.”

• Cross Channel Marketing – From TikTok, Poppi then moved to more traditional marketing including paid, search, email/sms, all the way to OTT ads. Their Email/SMS- list has grown over 200k in 1 year from TikTok alone!
• Brand Creative – Ellsworth also shared how they want their brand creative to create emotion. Whether it be on the can itself, on social media, or on Amazon pages, she highlighted how their aim is to create a memorable brand experience throughout the path to purchase.

“LT Apparel was one of the few apparel clients that actually had a successful outcome on Amazon during the last 2.5 years during COVID, and it’s because of the operational background that they built over the last 6 years. Since then, they have become a top 3 brand inside of Amazon in kids and baby apparel.”

The Ecommerce Catch-22 of 2022: Solving the Paradox of Growth and Profitability in Online Commerce

Their conversation centered on 3 primary topics:
— Adrienne Lahens, Global Head of Operations For TikTok Creator Marketing Solutions, TikTok
“It’s sight, it’s sound, it’s motion; it’s a fantastic complement to some of these less rich forms of media. And our clients time and time again are seeing these synergistic effects in the data, and you have access to this in the app. The median client on our roster has seen a 13% boost to their results when we observe multitouch effects. The 75th percentile sees a 23% boost, and we’ve seen TikTok in particular—when seeded by awareness on streaming or TV—really feels that impact of the synergistic effects.”
Zola’s streaming partnership with BPM began in 2017 when they decided to expand beyond the walled gardens of social and search.
“There are a lot of things that retailers and brands can do that actually are lower cost, and perhaps even better experience. One example would be the idea of BOPUS: Buy Online, Pick Up In Store. I think it’s a really underutilized asset that most retailers have. Right now it’s pretty clunky; but really, it gets you into the store, it reduces the cost of fulfillment…it can actually improve the overall customer experience because you can get an item faster when you want it.”
— Phil Stolt, SVP of Retail Operations, Tinuiti

• While the pandemic created an opportunity for increased online sales, there was a great deal of uncertainty about how to manage the associated costs
• There was also difficulty determining how to manage the lifecycle costs, or lifecycle value
• The total cost of fulfillment is rising

“When it comes to data, it’s nice to have but sometimes you have to go with your gut and if you can put the brand first and marry it with performance marketing, that is going to be the key.”

Among the ways Tinuiti has grown more powerful in our capabilities in recent years is through two important acquisitions—Ortega Group and Bliss Point Media. Dorné noted that acquiring Ortega Group helped launch Tinuiti “beyond advertising on Amazon, to full, end-to-end channel management.” The Bliss Point Media acquisition launched our Streaming+ practice, providing our clients with “an incredible way to find new customers” today.
Among the ways Tinuiti has grown more powerful in our capabilities in recent years is through two important acquisitions—Ortega Group and Bliss Point Media. Dorné noted that acquiring Ortega Group helped launch Tinuiti “beyond advertising on Amazon, to full, end-to-end channel management.” The Bliss Point Media acquisition launched our Streaming+ practice, providing our clients with “an incredible way to find new customers” today.
Among the ways Tinuiti has grown more powerful in our capabilities in recent years is through two important acquisitions—Ortega Group and Bliss Point Media. Dorné noted that acquiring Ortega Group helped launch Tinuiti “beyond advertising on Amazon, to full, end-to-end channel management.” The Bliss Point Media acquisition launched our Streaming+ practice, providing our clients with “an incredible way to find new customers” today.
“The success they’ve seen on social the last few years has just been unbelievable to watch. They’ve really pivoted toward a fully-holistic paid social strategy that encompasses diversification of platforms, different creative placements, and things of that nature. Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about how they achieved that success.”

Integrating Influencer: Traverse the Funnel. Bridge Channels. Unify Measurement.

“When we’re doing this, we really lean into transparency—that is the differentiator here. We are passing back our data to the client; we are strongly encouraging that they leverage incrementality testing, and then passing that data back to them. We are very focused on privacy, so everything is encrypted and hashed in accordance with the regulations of the market, and aligned with our network partnerships.”
— Bonin Bough, Chief Growth Officer, Triller
— Kaitlyn Caimano, CIO, Bliss Point Media, Tinuiti
To close out an epic Tinuiti Live 2022 Diana DiGuido, Chief Client Officer and Cristie Fay, Group Director of Client Strategy at Tinuiti gave attendees key takeaways from the jam-packed day.

1. Creation of an engagement loyalty program and welcome series – Brooks went from a more traditional loyalty program to providing runners with exclusive content and advice from their team full of coaches, trainers, and nutrition experts. Beutler explained how Brooks Run Club dug into engagement and focused content tapping into the human side of their brand. During this time, they also incorporated a welcome email series so new runners could easily find content on how to get started in the sport.

— Richard Sutton, CEO, LT Apparel Group
— Richard Sutton, CEO, LT Apparel Group
— Hayet Rida, Influencer and Creative Strategist, Meta
Crystal Duncan, Head of Partnership Marketing, Tinuiti
Adrienne Lahens, Global Head of Operations For TikTok Creator Marketing Solutions, TikTok

The Final Take—We Told You What’s Going On. Now what?

Steve Hoffman, Partner, McKinsey & Company
Expectations: Zola anticipated they would need to make sizable upfront commitments and have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars before they saw results
During his session, Bough brought up interesting points around messaging (which many organizations are slow to move on) including the following stats:
Phil Stolt, SVP, Retail Operations, Tinuiti
Nancy-lee McLaughlin, Sr. Director, Search & Enterprise Services – Amazon & Marketplace, Tinuiti

• When it comes to Amazon, you need to make sure from an operational standpoint that you have a solid foundation.
• Put the ‘fun’ in functionality for your digital connections – connect authentically with your customers on new levels.
• Streaming is the answer – if you are not investing or testing into this channel you absolutely should start.
• Influencer marketing is performance marketing- harness the power of creator content.
• Social diversification is key – your audience is engaging on multiple platforms – are you?
• Consumers crave authenticity – define your voice and know who you are as a brand.
• Invest in your measurement framework – measurement is getting harder with a privacy-focused world but we still have meaningful tools to lean on.

Check them out below: