When Brand and Performance Marketing Collide

0:00Yulia Popyk:We work for pets, with pets at home.

0:03Andres Figueira:Would you be able to also tell us a bit more about PetCube?

0:05Yulia Popyk:PetCube started about 13 years ago as a company who decided to connect people and pets together when they were not at home at the same time, basically.

0:16Andres Figueira:What has been the biggest challenge in marketing this pet technology to general consumers?

0:20Yulia Popyk:For me, one of the current challenges is performance marketing. It's very difficult to work with brands, but at the same time, we have other channels where we can actually highlight our core features that we want to show as a storyteller.

0:39Andres Figueira:Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Andres Vieira, and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show was brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and a global perspective to every role. And just for our listeners today, we're offering an exclusive 10 % discount on your first hire. All you need to do is visit globaltalent.co, click start hiring, and mention the podcast listener discount when we get in touch.

1:12Andres Figueira:And also with me here today, I am speaking with Yulia Popik, head of brand at PetCube, a company that's reimagining pet care and using technology to keep people connected with their pets. So with that said, Yulia, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.

1:27Yulia Popyk:Thank you so much, Andres. Thank you for inviting me. And I hope we're going to have a good conversation today. Of course.

1:34Andres Figueira:Yeah, no, I'm excited for our conversation today as well. And I would say it's really an honor to have you. And we're really happy that you were able to make it and be on this episode with us. So without further ado, Yulia, would you be able to put the audience a bit more in context as to give us a bit of your background? Tell us in your own brand what PetCube does and maybe how you ended up as head of brand there?

1:55Yulia Popyk:Yeah, so I actually have a good story that can perhaps inspire some people who are switching jobs. I originally come from the sphere of international relations and political science. and after realizing that that's not fulfilling me to the extent that I wanted to I decided to try myself out as a intern in marketing at that time I already had some some amateur knowledge in a few projects that I was leading just for myself as some creative direction and I stumbled upon Backcube. I already knew about the company, but I decided to try myself out and apply. And five years in, I'm here leading the brand, managing a team.

2:44Yulia Popyk:And yeah, it went pretty, pretty good for me. I'm happy that I made that decision. And now I get to work with actually the sphere that I like and the topic that I really care about. So yeah.

2:59Andres Figueira:that's amazing and uh julia would you be able to also tell us a bit more about pet cube like i understand it's reimagining pet care and using technology but like what do you guys actually do

3:10Yulia Popyk:uh yeah so pet cube is a um tech company uh we started as um the company focused uh one of the first ones the trailblazers uh in the market sorry my cat is playing with her with her little toys on. This is what it is to work at PetCube. We work for pets, with pets at home. Yeah, so PetCube started about 13 years ago as a company who decided to connect people and pets together when they were not at home at the same time, basically. It all started with a camera which could record a pet at home when the pet parent, as we call them, this is pretty important for us, we don't call them pet owners because we don't own pets.

4:08Yulia Popyk:They are the living beings. We are parenting them. Where are their parents? I love that. Human pet parents, yeah. So it all started with the cameras, the cameras that can monitor the pet, that can send the notifications, show some insights on what the pet was doing while you were at work. And then it all expanded to this whole line of other smart devices, such as a GPS tracker for walking outside, such as the smart counting for basically a better hydration with filters, with the UV light, etc, etc. And we are also currently in the big process for us. And I think that by the time this podcast will be out.

5:02Yulia Popyk:I personally received a green light to talk about this as well. We are shifting into a sort of software leaning. We are currently preparing to launch our updated new app, which will be with a focus on everything about your pet in one app. Records, vet, trained AI assistant, guidance on the actual health check on your pet, all the data from the devices, all the monitoring that we get, it's all going to be in one app. And we are building this big ecosystem that each pet parent can benefit from. Basically, everything you need to know about your pet, reminders about their vaccines, activity levels, sleep levels, everything that our devices can track are going to be in one app.

6:03Yulia Popyk:And the personalized AI assistant, as well as chats with real vets, because we understand humans, we understand that they love their pets and they don't want just some machine to tell them, oh, hey, you need to get a vaccine. At any time, you will be also able to connect to the real vet who's going to be there 24-7 and just upload a file with your pet and ask anything you want to take better care of them. So that is us. That is our journey, our mission. And we are on the process of just making the relations between people and their pets more cherished, more fulfilling.

6:50Andres Figueira:My goodness, the whole plan for the app that you guys were making, that is incredible, Yulia. I'm imagining there's this fitness band that's called the Whoop. It tells everybody their sleep level, their activity level. I'm imagining something like that for pets where we're going to have super fit dogs and cats and we'll all be knowing how much exercise they need to do.

7:12Yulia Popyk:I mean, they don't know that we are planning to do this for them, but we want to show them the best because they deserve it.

7:21Andres Figueira:I love that. And Yulia, in your experience, since you entered PetCube until now, how has the journey of creating the brand, you as head of brand, pardon the repetitiveness, how has that felt or have you evolved since you entered?

7:38Yulia Popyk:So PetCube already had a pretty strong brand, I would say, is one of the first smart pet tech companies. We have established that ground with a pretty bold color, with a good naming, with a good slogan. So the brand was already good. But of course, it needed some adapting to the current realities. I came into the position after COVID happened. So there were some switching changes. For example, if we used cameras when people were out at work, suddenly everyone was at home, what do you use the camera for? And so we sort of expand the brand now, not just to the smart hardware, which we were focused on before, but to this whole ecosystem that is around your pet.

8:33Yulia Popyk:And I mean, I work as a marketing generalist as well. I understand a lot of processes of how email marketing, content marketing, PR, communications, everything works. So that is what brand is for me. It's this whole big system, both the product, the storytelling. And for me, see, that's her. She's a Ferrari. Yeah, for me, for me personally, as a brand person, I am specifically working with the building of consumer trust when it comes to a very emotional subject as pets. and where anxiety, human anxiety and technology and emotions around loving and caring for someone who cannot do this for themselves in a way.

9:28Yulia Popyk:I mean, obviously, 100 years ago, they were hunting prey and not just getting obese at home. But now here we are, and this is how we can expand expand on this.

9:44Andres Figueira:I understand then you also work with marketing so what has been the biggest challenge in marketing this pet technology to general consumers when it involves something as you mentioned as important as their pet and it involves a great layer of trust and that the products you guys have and what you offer actually works.

10:01Yulia Popyk:Yeah for me one of the current challenges that I understand and work with and have experience of but that I'm still trying to crack with my professional mind as a mostly brand communications person is performance marketing and performance marketing for me is just it's it's very difficult for performance marketing to work with brand because they just function very differently for performance ads you need to have very bold, bland, or blunt, I would even say, creatives that can catch the person's eye. You can use red font and just make some highlights and the image doesn't have to be necessarily polished and very like within the design system that we're using.

10:58Yulia Popyk:So it's difficult sometimes to implement the brand in marketing, such as performance marketing. But at the same time, And we have other channels such as emails, socials, blog, influencers, etc., where we can actually highlight our core features that we want to show as a storyteller. But yeah, performance marketing is a very interesting section of this whole.

11:30Andres Figueira:And Julia, do you have an example you could give us of a campaign you made or something that you, a process that you implemented that went very well in difference to a challenge?

11:40Yulia Popyk:the case of how we decided to launch our previous product which was the pet cube fountain um it was less than a year ago um we have created this whole set of offline events and we have invited a bunch of people to our so-called pet cube fountain ceramics studio because our fountain can be bought. You can choose the basin of the fountain in two different materials. It can be either stainless steel or ceramic. For the ceramic, we decided that it would be cool for people to customize it for themselves. So we had to ship a batch of unglazed ceramic, which was very fragile to be moved around. I mean, when it comes in a packaging, in a box, it's already polished, it's baked.

12:41Yulia Popyk:There is a whole pottery process. And for this project, we had to ship a bunch of those basins, super fragile. Some of that were broken by the end of the trip, to the pottery studio that we were collaborating with in New York. And this is where actually the set of events happened. It was a launch campaign where we were inviting people, regular people, to just come by their fountain and customize it for themselves. We also had a little influencer event where influencers were doing it, filming it and showing it. It was prior to the next events where people could register to. We spread QR codes around cafes, around pet cafes in New York.

13:29Yulia Popyk:um obviously share the invitations on socials and emails and other channels um it was it was really cool it was um we got comments like is is the pet cube fountain ceramic studio coming to miami coming to san francisco on west coast so um yeah i'm i'm really happy that we got to do that And it was a cool way to introduce the product and make it even more personalized. Because when it comes to pets and just taking care of them, it's obviously a very personal approach for everyone. Sometimes people walk them longer, feed them less. It's all up to you. And what if you can make even their fountain that they have to drink the water from every day just colorful with fishes?

14:23Yulia Popyk:Like people were drawing fish or like their favorite colors or favorite items. Sort of like to stimulate them to come to the fountain more and drink more. But I don't know.

14:34Andres Figueira:I love that. And that is such a cool idea. And the fact that it creates like a mini community for a moment. and they gather in like with this pottery place that you guys partnered with. And it also, it helps really represent the fact that I understand that pet parents also have these, I was going to say children, but they have their pets. And the fact is that these pets, they all have an identity. They have their own personalities. So that way they're able to exemplify that through painting the ceramic basin. And that idea is amazing. Like I would die to go to a little workshop where I can, well, I don't have a pet of my own, but I would love to have a cat someday.

15:16Yulia Popyk:Honestly, it's going to change your life. I was just on a vacation this past week. And the only thing I missed from my regular life was my cat. But, you know, with all this cuteness overload and all of this is very, very sweet. We love pets. It's maybe I'm jumping on to your next question. I don't know, but just a brief.

15:40Andres Figueira:No, go ahead.

15:41Yulia Popyk:It is a tech company, and we are here very heavily focused on the product itself, which comes with a lot of engineering, with a lot of testing and analytics. So, I mean, the facade that I'm working with, the brand is obviously personalities, pets are cute. but behind that there is this the tech machine that is actually working no of course and in

16:10Andres Figueira:terms of branding and how the the company looks i would also vouch for the fact that in order to be simplified and have all this cuteness overload as you mentioned in these nice workshops you need to really trust that the products you guys are offering work because that way you can just make the people not have to focus on how much it works but rather how much they're enjoying it because it works and they don't even need to give it a second thought. But with that said, Julia, have you felt that in the marketing of the products you guys make and sell, do you have to really specify all the technicalities that they incorporate and what makes them work to the consumer?

16:45Andres Figueira:Or is it more of a simplified general approach and they'll buy it just because it works?

16:50Yulia Popyk:I think that, I mean, I'll start with a very simple example. It depends on the device, for example. For the tracker, which tracks more in terms of activity and it's right on the fur, the skin of the animal and has the sensors that can detect more information, then we can, from the marketing side of things, give more explanation on what it actually is tracking. um we have also found that for trackers specifically um people walk people go outside people track their own walking uh distance during the day and people just love data that is related to their health specifically so in terms of the tracker um yeah we do we do a lot of wording which is based on the technicalities, the number of satellites that we're using up in the sky to collect the data for the GPS.

17:57Yulia Popyk:For camera, it's usually a little bit different. But again, I mean, with different creatives, with different topics, content ideas, you can choose different styles. But for example, with cameras, we can work on the emotional side of things because we understand that we just sort of need to help to reduce people's emotional load when it comes to I'm a bad pet parent because I left them at home by on their own and I just don't feel good about this I'm anxious what are they doing there so then we can work with another side of the things which is hey you can actually see what they're doing don't worry like it's like right pointing at them One of the cameras is like turning all the way around.

18:44Yulia Popyk:It's like going up and down, pen tilt rotation. So you can actually see what's going on. And with the tracker, you can know how many steps during the day they made. But also with the emotional side of things, because people usually get trackers because they fear that the animal will be lost or will run away. uh we get a lot of responses um my dog is a runner so we know that people already have some some situations that freak them out and obviously with the tracker we also have a functionality which is called lost dog dog mode which uh instantly like notifies and tracks the precise location where the dog is right now it has like alerts um if you can see like even if it's the dark time the night time it has the like fluorescent lighting so we can with two side of things

19:42Andres Figueira:where do you guys sell all these products like can you buy them worldwide through your website or do you have specific regions where this is available for people yeah so we are mainly and