Building mainstream appeal while maintaining community authenticity

0:00Roxy Young:When most people think of marketers, they assume that they're thinking in color and storylines. I'm here to tell you, I am not that kind of marketer.

0:09Brett Stapper:Was that love at first sight for you in terms of marketing?

0:12Roxy Young:What I loved is that there are so many different facets of marketing, and I could see myself continuing to grow in many different areas, some of which would be more quantitative.

0:25Brett Stapper:That's what's so fascinating to me about Reddit is everyone uses it for completely different purposes. They would tell you the value they get from it is completely different. We have become

0:34Roxy Young:much more of a mainstream product where no matter what you're interested in, you can find a community for it on Reddit.

0:46Brett Stapper:Proxy, hello. How are you? Welcome to the show.

0:48Roxy Young:Great. Hello. Thank you for having me.

0:51Brett Stapper:I want to ask you about the first product that you ever had to market. What was that first product?

0:56Roxy Young:My first role as a marketer was at The Gap. My little secret is that I actually got a degree in finance. I went to college thinking that I was going to be in science and biology and really wanted to be a genetic engineer. And, you know, I don't know, a couple of years into it, I had a professor tell me that I would probably be much more suited to something where I was interacting with people more instead of working in a lab and got a degree in finance. And then after a few years working in finance, realized that while I loved finance, it wasn't very dynamic. You forecast a few times a year. You do annual planning.

1:40Roxy Young:You close the books. and so went to business school. And then my first job as a marketer was at The Gap. I think during this time, Gap was in its heyday. And one of the most interesting things that I was working on at that time was, I don't know if you remember, but I'm dating myself here, jeans were like$40. And And there was this new trend where there was this premium denim,$100 pair of jeans. It was kind of, you know, taking the fashion scene by storm. And my first job was figuring out how is a brand like The Gap that was known for quality at a good price? How were we going to market a more premium line of denim to align with this trend that was going on?

2:32Roxy Young:And it was very hard. And what we decided is that we were actually going to have to put a different label on it. You know, if you just put the same label, the same Gap jeans and charged$100, people probably weren't going to buy too many pairs. And so we actually had to put a more premium label, talk about where the fabric came from, what the process was to create the look and the feel and the wash. And so it was my first job as a marketer was trying to figure out how The Gap could sell a$100 pair of jeans.

3:07Brett Stapper:And were you working out of the HQ that they have in San Francisco?

3:10Roxy Young:Yes, I sure was. Yeah, I was working out of the HQ in San Francisco. I had spent the first year and a half in a strategy job using my finance skills and had moved into a marketing role shortly after that. And I was like, oh, wow, this is, yeah, this is tough.

3:32Brett Stapper:How epic is that office? I always take my dog there in front. They have like the arrow. I always look over and I've heard it's very awesome.

3:38Roxy Young:The office is amazing. I actually started at the building next door, which is much older and not nearly as cool. And then that new building opened and the roof deck and the cafeteria, totally amazing.

3:55Brett Stapper:And was that love at first sight for you in terms of marketing, like marketing, you know, tackling that challenge where you're like, this is it. Like, I'm going to be a marketer for like forever. Or is it more of a slow burn, slow interest?

4:06Roxy Young:Yeah, great, great question. Yeah. So, you know, I think when most people think of marketers, they assume that they're, you know, just these highly creative people that are like, you know, thinking in color and storylines. I'm here to tell you, I am not that kind of marketer. You know, I'm a super quantitative person. I need validation through data. I want to do analysis. I want to project things. And so stepping into that first marketing role, it was direct response marketing, which, you know, for people who aren't familiar with all the different types of marketing, direct response marketing is the most quantitative type of marketing.

4:50Roxy Young:You have a list of people in a database. You can see all of these interesting characteristics about them. You can figure out where you think their propensity is to buy that next product. And so it is the most quantitative data-rich areas of marketing. And I think what I knew and what I loved is that there are so many different facets of marketing. And I could see myself continuing to grow and evolve in many different areas, some of which would be more quantitative. I surrounded myself with people who are much more creative, much more bold in terms of like how they were thinking. And over time, you know, I've had a long career in marketing, working on it, you know, for over 20 years.

5:45Roxy Young:I think I have gained more creative skills, become more bold, become more comfortable with risk, but still, you know, very much rooted in the quantitative side of marketing. And there are a lot of quantitative aspects to marketing.

6:01Brett Stapper:And is that how your coworkers or colleagues would describe your marketing philosophy? Like if we did a poll and said, yeah, how would you describe Roxy's philosophy of marketing? Like what would they regurgitate back, do you think?

6:13Roxy Young:People often refer to me as a pragmatic brand marketer. When I first started my career, there was a group of, there was a whole team of brand managers. And I remember I always was like in awe of them. but I was a little afraid. I was like, oh my gosh, am I ever going to become a brand manager? These are people who have amazing instincts and they go with their gut and they kind of have a vision and a sense of where the brand should go and how it should evolve. I'm over here and I've got all this data to make my decision. And I think I have evolved into a brand marketer. I think if you asked anyone, they would say, yes, Roxy has worked on some of the world's largest and most iconic consumer brands.

6:58Roxy Young:She's a brand marketer, but still incredibly pragmatic in terms of how I approach growing and building a brand and thinking about a brand. And I think a lot of that goes back to my quantitative roots and how my marketing career grew and evolved. I didn't start at an ad agency developing funny lines of copy and pitching radical ideas. I started in a much more quantitative space and have kind of grown to become a brand marketer, but very pragmatically. So I think pragmatic brand marketers is how people would characterize me.

7:39Brett Stapper:You mentioned iconic brands there. So I'm not going to spend the whole episode here. We talked about we'll do a different episode about Reddit. But as a very active user, like I do screen time tracking, I present to my wife. I'm at like 10 to 15 hours per week on Reddit. So I spend a lot of time on Reddit. What was your experience like? Because you were there for eight years almost?

7:59Roxy Young:Yeah, eight and a half years. I'm so fortunate in that I've had phenomenal experiences in many different brands. You know, I started at The Gap. I worked at Netflix very early on, you know, Sephora, which if you're into fashion and beauty and makeup, like, you know, Sephora is definitely up there in terms of a beloved brand. But most recently was at Reddit. And, you know, when I when I think back to that experience, you know, I would be lucky to have another experience as amazing as as my experience at Reddit. I started at Reddit in 2017. 2017, we were a few hundred people with really big dreams and aspirations about what Reddit could become.

8:43Roxy Young:And I remember one of the questions that I asked shortly after I got there, you know, is, do we want Reddit to be mainstream? At that point in time in 2017, you know, Reddit was really well known for gaming communities, programming communities, some politics, memes. But we had a long way to go if we wanted everybody to be able to find their home and find their community on Reddit. And that was one of the first questions that I asked that we talked about as a leadership team, which is, you know, what is it going to take and do we want for Reddit to be a mainstream product where anybody, no matter what they're interested in, no matter what language they speak, no matter where they are in the world, can find their home.

9:38Roxy Young:And it was a long journey. But I think, you know, when you fast forward to today, Reddit is a far more recognized brand around the world and so many different interests you can find now on Reddit. We had this running joke early on that if there was communities talking about the royals and the royal wedding and the royal gossip, then we would know that, you know, that was a sign that we had made it to a mainstream product. And I'm happy to say that there's a lot of conversation around, what's happening with the royal family on Reddit. So I think over that eight years, through so many different things and the work across so many different teams, we have become much more of a mainstream product where no matter what you're interested in, you can find a community for it on Reddit.

10:32Brett Stapper:That's what's so fascinating to me about Reddit is like my wife uses it, my mom uses it, my sister uses it. Everyone uses it for completely different purposes. They would tell you the value they get from it is completely different, but it's just awesome to see. If you look at, you mentioned a lot of iconic brands there. Are there any similarities that you see or you can say, well, all these iconic brands that I was part of, they all do this when it comes to money?

10:55Roxy Young:Yes, yes, definitely. You know, I think that the through line there is if you want to be a brand that stands out and has deep meaning and connection with consumers, you need to know who you are and what you stand for. And you need to have a lot of conviction around it. And you need to act it out and bring it to life every day through all of your different touch points. You know, I remember when I was at Netflix, we were trying to create this category of online movie rental. If you probably don't remember, maybe you're too young, but the way that people got movies was they would go to a blockbuster on a Thursday or a Friday and they would go into the store.

11:45Roxy Young:and nine times out of ten, the movie that they wanted was not there. It had already been checked out. And so you were, you know, ending up coming home. It was a disappointing experience with some movie that you probably didn't want to watch, but it was the only thing that was available. And Netflix was trying to completely change the category. And the proposition was you can have a subscription. And with this subscription, you can have unlimited movie rentals and we'll just mail them to you. And we're never going to be out of stock. Whatever you want to watch, you will always have it on hand because you can have multiple DVDs at home and you can just be sending them back to us.

12:24Roxy Young:And then we'll replace it with the next one in your queue. And so early on, we knew that we wanted to stand for high quality service with a broad selection of merchandise, which in this case was movies, at a reasonable price. and we explored all of these different propositions, like which one was the most important? Was it price? Was it always having the movie that you wanted? Was it really fast returns and shipping? But we knew that we wanted to be this high quality, ever-present utility in your life. and we were very clear about it in all of our communications, in all of our messaging. We were very thoughtful about the look of the brand, the mark of the brand, the red color.

13:33Roxy Young:If you remember those envelopes that people would send, this red color stood out so you would always be able to find it, you know, in your stack of mail. And so if you contrast that with, you know, a brand like Reddit, we had these brand values where we wanted to be candid. We wanted to be brilliantly absurd in terms of the way that we communicated. And those are two really different brands. But they were true to who they were. They knew who they were and they were true to who they were. And so, you know, I think the through line there is knowing who your brand is and why and being very thoughtful about how you present it is one of the key ingredients to creating this everlasting, meaningful brand for consumers.

14:31Brett Stapper:And what was the journey like or the process like to get to that point? Was it just like, hey, with like a small team and then the next day it's done? Massive discovery process. Like take us behind the scenes on, you know, the iconic brands here. How do you do it?

14:46Roxy Young:It's a lot of work and it's very thoughtful and very deliberate work. And what it usually looks like is it's usually a marketing team paired with research, either internal or external research, and then a group of cross-functional people who are going to help ensure that the marketing team, you know, isn't going totally out in left field. And so behind the scenes, what that looks like is you're sitting in focus groups and you're listening. You have to be a really good listener. I mean, I remember back in the early days of Netflix, you know, we were traveling around the country and we were sitting behind the two-way mirror and focus groups were happening.

15:36Roxy Young:and you're sitting there and you're just listening to what people are saying about your product, your experience, your product, their experience, the look, the feel, and you're trying to connect all of the dots on what are the commonalities, what are the most important things that we're hearing. And you take all of that and you put it together and then you test it again. And then you see, okay, is this resonating? And you can see today, I mean, in the last year, we've seen several examples of brands trying to rebrand or reimagine themselves and consumers are having a really strong opinion about it.

16:23Roxy Young:So the behind the scenes on listening, identifying common patterns, developing new things that then you're going to test, ensuring that your cross-functional business partners are validating the things that you're doing. All of those things take a lot of time. But I think most importantly, you have to have conviction as well. Consumers are always going to have opinions. Sometimes they're going to be a little different. You're going to do a lot of research and you're going to recalibrate and retest and you're going to try and address those things and anticipate those things. But you also have to have conviction.

17:11Roxy Young:I did a rebrand. I hate even to use that word rebrand because it implies that something is wrong and you're redoing it. I prefer to use the term evolution, but we evolved the brand when I was at Reddit. And Reddit was 18 years old. And a lot of people become very accustomed to the way that Reddit looks when they're using the product. And we evolved it and we had to evolve it because the analogy that I like to give is like, imagine if you opened your sock drawer and like you couldn't find two matching things. You know, our brand after 18 years had become really disjointed. We had all these different things that looked a little different.

17:54Roxy Young:We didn't have a whole cohesive system. And, you know, we embarked on a year-long project to evolve and build a stronger foundation that could carry us internationally around the world and could take us into the future and could adapt and evolve for 3D. and it was a scary process because ultimately you're going to put it out in the world and people are going to have opinions, but you definitely have to have conviction that all the things that you've done and the reasons why you're doing them and the decisions that you made were right for where you want to go.

18:32Brett Stapper:What do you think? And we can name them, we can not name them, but that too, you mentioned them.

18:36Roxy Young:I'm going to expect them to find it to be automotive company and that tried to do a rebrand and then a restaurant.

18:42Brett Stapper:What do you think they got wrong in those efforts?