S14 E2: 5 Tactics to Make Your Brand Unforgettable (with Jerel Blades, Head of Growth at TUSHY)

0:00Nik:Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nik Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nik.co slash email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, all so you can unlock your next$100 ,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.

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2:22But yeah, I'm Jarrell. I'm the head of growth at Tushy. But yeah, I would define myself as like an obsessive, obsessive growth marketer and operator. Just like obsessed with the adrenaline of growing businesses of all sizes. You know, I've grown businesses from one to 5 million, five to 10, 10 to 15, 20 to 25, 25 to 50, 50 to 100 million plus. And the challenge is never the same. And I think that's the fun part of like the puzzle of growth. So yeah, that's me.

2:55Nik:And okay. So, so before we dive in, I'm curious to get your take on the separation between direct to consumer and other e-retail platforms, like whether it's Amazon, Walmart.com, you know, any other sort of marketplace, how are you, are you one are you do you help grow those e-retail partners and two how do you view the split or like you know where the focus should be yeah i think um i saw something i think sean from ridge had said this it's like stop trying to fight amazon like that that fight is is done they won um i think maybe like if you asked me when i was first starting marketing and was like pulling the levers of like the churn and burn you know meta 80 of spend mix and just looking to drive dot com sales i would have said well you know just focus on d2c but i think the consumer now in 2025 like i think a lot more about the mental availability and then the physical availability and then like where people are accustomed with shopping um so certainly for us like a tushy many people don't know this but like half our business is on amazon and half is on dot com and we've done a bunch of measurement studies and we found that like there's very little cannibalization between the two.

4:13And the reason why is, you know, if you're an Amazon shopper, you're an Amazon shopper. Like, I think I'm like my mom, when I think about that customer segment, it's like, if she can get it tomorrow on prime, she's stacking up a cart with a puzzle, like arts and crafts for her kids, some, you know, maybe some downy wash in there, like paper towels and, and then like maybe like a phone case. Right. And that's like what she's accustomed with shopping. So I think it's really important now to think about those distribution channels and to be where your customers are actually shopping to achieve that mass scale.

4:48Nik:Do you guys actively run like a lot of, or when you're running advertising on, you know, dot-com or e-retail sites, are you actively measuring incremental sales on the other? Yeah, I think that's a mandate, especially if you're, you know, if you're going from mid to eight figures, nine figures, you're probably spending a lot of money at that point, right? So it's non-negotiable. It's table stakes. So you've got to be able to understand the impact of the marketing channels you have active. So for example, we're constantly measuring the lift, most importantly, of our top of funnel channels on Amazon.

5:25And let's just stick with Amazon because that's like the most significant marketplace we're on. We found that there is a higher incrementality factor or sales lift factor for Amazon when we are running ads on linear TV. And then it's less so for connected TV. And then it's like less so for meta. And that's like the latter. But when you think about it, it makes sense, right? We were running linear TV on like Fox News, ESPN. And you think about the viewership, though diverse, like the people who still have those linear TV cable boxes are typically like the people that I described, like my mom, um and if my mom hears this she's probably would think that i'm inferring that she's old my mom looks great um and she's very active and lively um but yeah like she's the type of person that's watching linear tv so the incremental sales lift for that type of consumer seems to happen more so on amazon than like a meta for example but like full suite of tools like we have the sales lift numbers for meta for google for linear tv for connected tv for both our dot-com shop and for Amazon so we can understand like the runoff in, you know, efficiency and spend and total business media efficiency ratio.

6:37Nik:And then do you do that too? Like, cause you guys are in so many retail stores. Do you, even though you're focused on online, do you also factor that in? Yeah, for sure. And I would say that we definitely are working on tightening up measurement there so far as like connecting everything together. Now that our media mix is just a lot more mature and diversified. And obviously now that we're spending more, but I think it's at that point, it's like obviously incrementality studies, but then there's also like brand studies. There's like recall, like we're now signing up with a track suit to begin to tackle the questions of like, you know, brand sentiment.

7:14So the measurement just continues to get tighter and like you pull more tools off the belt as you add more sales channels. But I would definitely say that's like a challenge because for us, it's like, we want to be extremely surgical about understanding every dollar we spend, like where that could actually be, you know, driving impact, whether it's on our.com or an Amazon store, Walmart, or in a, you know, brick and mortar location as well.

7:37Nik:That's cool. TrackSuit is, uh, such a cool company. Like what they do, what companies normally do for, you know, a million or$2 million a year, or even a couple hundred thousand dollars a year that they do for like pennies compared to that. And it's basically like this always on like brand tracking, right? And you can kind of look in and see if you have like a viral TikTok, what that does for brand impact, sentiment, recall, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And it's, it's going to make us so much sharper because it's not like we haven't been measuring it, but you basically try to use proxies to get to the same type of conclusions that they're making probably with, with way more speed and accuracy.

8:13Like we've got obviously the main culprits, we've got meta and we've got Google, and then we've got the app love-ins and the TikToks and you add like Amazon ads in there, you add connected TV, you add linear TV, then you add TikTok shops now. And then you add, you know, our product seeding program, influencer send out viral Instagram videos, our organic social is pretty, is a well-oiled machine now and definitely creates lift. So you add all these different variables and it's like, you do need advanced measurement at some point for that for that part of it but like for people who are watching this who maybe are not at the stage of like signing up with a track suit or you know signing up with an incrementality partner like a quick way to start that i'd recommend is like if you can figure out a way to track your branded search volume like it's definitely directional right and so it's very tricky to do in google ads because like it's it's a function of your spend like if you you know it's not like uh you have like unlimited spend, hopefully flowing through your branded search campaign.

9:17Right. So you can use that just as a directional, we use like search trends, we use Google ads, but we also, Amazon has a pretty robust, like branded search volume and keyword query measurement tool that can allow you to understand, okay, like, does my branded search volume go up in this month? Like the month after we just launched our linear TV campaign, like all those things are directionally helpful before you can get to that point, obviously, of working with some advanced tools.

9:42Nik:All those channels you just mentioned, are those all the channels that you are basically like looking at and overseeing on a daily basis? Yes. Do you have any sort of way of where you're like looking at everything in a macro view or like a mission control or a cockpit? Like what does that kind of setup look like? Yeah, that's a great question. There's a couple things. Like we use Northbeam obviously to sync up as many of our like channels that can integrate into the platform and digest data to get it into our MTA solution. Right. And then we use obviously MTA for like intraday decisions. We use MMM for more of the funding of different channels.

10:23And that obviously doesn't happen on like a day-to-day basis. You need more data for that. That can inform like monthly budget allocations. But like ultimately at the end of the day, what's most important to our business and it should be for pretty much every business is contribution margin. So it's like, how do you ladder those intraday metrics paired through MTA paired with the like funding decisions through MMM? Like, how does that actually translate into a contribution margin outcome for your business? So we have like a robust, like, I love to say it's literally a Google sheet. I mean, it takes forever to load because there's so many inputs.

11:00But we can see on a day-to-day level across all sales channels, laddering up into total business, what our snapshot is contribution margin per day, how it's trending through the month. Obviously, we have a contribution margin target that we are optimizing towards. And obviously, to get deeper into the actual unit economics of it, that should be functioning against your fixed cost hurdle. And so you need to currently be understanding the profitability of your business. So I like to say we use these different tools, but ultimately it should ladder up into something, whether it's a master sheet that your team creates or like an Iris finance or, you know, any of these other finance cockpits where you're actually seeing that daily contribution margin and being able to track it accordingly.

11:45Nik:So, okay. So coming off the back of tracking every dollar, you guys launched a massive out of home campaign and it was all over Times Square. You have, there's a bunch of trucks that still are going around the city today. How do you think about measurement and, you know, like what those dollars are doing? I assume that you're not going for conversion rate on the dot-com there. So how do you think about that? Yeah, that's a million dollar question everyone is asking for these fun type things. I would say there's still a good amount of measurement involved. We work with a partner and a lot of people don't know this, but with the trucks, let's let's focus on the trucks for a second.

12:25Like these trucks are driving around New York city through the end of November. Some of these trucks may be delivering things. Some of them may be empty. But the psych, the psychology behind it is that for the lay person walking on the street is like these trucks, I keep seeing like they're delivering, like, I don't want to curse on this podcast, but I mean, this is tushy, but a shit ton, a shit ton of tushies. Like, so it creates this, like this feeling of this movement, right? Like, okay, like, am I like, should I, should I be getting into a sheet? Right. So that's like the truck. So far as the measurement is, there's actually a good amount of technology involved.

13:03Like the site is pixeled. So whether you kind of like buy into the measurement or not, there are metrics you can get by geo-fencing. The trucks essentially have a tracker. They have GPS routes. They ping the RFID on your phone. It's tracking that whether, I mean, obviously you don't know exactly if someone like for sure saw the truck, but it's definitely directional. if you can verify that that ID that is then stitched to their IP address at home visits the website, right? And then, you know, picture like a traditional pixel and all the events that it would track. So there is some measurability there.

13:34It's not just like a shot in the dark. But when you pair that, obviously, with all the things I mentioned before, so far as like brand search, those what people are searching. So it's not just Tushy, but it's like specifically the tagline of the campaign. If you can begin to measure that, and even if it moves up like slightly and it compounds over time, you're beginning to see like a combination of events, hopefully that are happening from these phones that pinged around these trucks. You're starting to see, um, search intrigue begin to lift, right? You're starting to see that on Google. You're starting to see that on Amazon.

14:07And these are actually things that we have been seeing, right? So it's very hard to be like, like it was for sure that, but I do like to be clear that there are tools on the belt to begin to understand it. It's not just like pay an expensive fee for some trucks and like take the shot and like pray that it works, you know?

14:24Nik:Yeah. It's funny. Like I think it's, the percentage is like 15 % of devices around New York city. It might be higher in other places, but most people here have iPhones. So like 15 % of devices are opted in. And that comes when people download free apps or games or whatever, they're selling the data. And so like, if I'm on the street and a tushy truck passes by, you now know the route. And then you can basically pull device IDs based on my, you know, my video game pinged something, uh, for the, for whatever. And, uh, they're all selling the data, but that's how it works. And it's crazy. And you're so right that like you see some directional lift and it's usually a much bigger impact, especially like on social, you guys crush organic social.

15:09Nik:And I feel like there's, um, there's a lot of people who post the tushy stuff on organic social from the out-of-home too yeah yeah for sure and just one one other note on that just before we move on it's like there's like a million holes you can try to poke particularly like picture new york city right so nick's phone is on the 100th floor of this tall building but like the truck drives by it's like the geofencing tack is good enough to not like ping um vertically up because you can't like really say that nick even though he was in the area and his phone made ping something that he was like on ground level to see the truck so there is like an advanced science suit and as as nick mentioned like you know if you've been able to location services you're pretty much fair game for all these types of things um but yeah to move on to the organic part like you want to create these remarkable experiences so that you know there's a there's a talkability around it um and that is really the fuel of tushy it's such a But like, if you remember, like, well, not if you remember, but like, like you're having a very challenging conversation where you're trying to convince people to clean their butt better when they're used to cleaning their butt one way for like 20, 30, 40 years.

16:21And it's a very challenging mission. And it's often taboo because you're not really talking about what you're doing in the bathroom all the time. It's the only way to kind of create this movement is to make it talkable, is to create disruption, is to bring these conversations to the forefront. And sometimes you just got to break through the wall and like do the most crazy shit. Yeah.

16:40Nik:I think too, like we're so done with this. Like, you know, we're for everybody, everybody come, you know, we're the, we're the, we're like everybody's favorite. Like, I think it's gotta be provocative and that's the only way to cut through the noise, especially nowadays where there's so much content being put out at like an insanely high volume. There's also now so much just AI generated content that is flooding platforms too. The only way to cut through the noise is to say something provocative. that's going to get people to stop. Yeah. What's more human than like taking a shit? At least AI hasn't gotten there yet.

17:12Hopefully I'm sure it can, but you know, it's, it's a very human experience that you're trying to like make more palatable for people to understand. Yeah.

17:21Nik:And, and then can you leverage like the out of home stuff? Do you guys leverage it anywhere else? Like a social, I assume you do, you know, is there anything you do with creators? Is there anything like, does your retail team go and try to leverage that? Does the influencer team try to use that to go get bigger influencers? Like, are there other ways that it gets leveraged there? Yeah, luckily, like, we have built up, many people don't know this, like, Tushy's been around for 10 plus years now. There's a lot of brand equity behind the name. And as a growth marketer, and I've worked in projects that had like zero brand equity, and it's just like dollar and dollar out Facebook, like dialing up like low AOV products and just gamifying meta.

18:00but like a growth marketer's dream is to like apply really solid growth marketing foundations to something that has meaning and has brand equity. Like that's a perfect like a combination. So luckily so far as like, you know, influencers, celebrities, creators wanting to work with us, it's like we've been around and we have enough content out there like on YouTube, on Instagram and Facebook. We've, you know, we're on SNL, like they're in segment that we were on like in 2020 during the toilet paper versus shortage. So a lot of people like believe in the movement and understand that. So I would say that like the out of home campaigns definitely help with that, but are not necessary in that relationship.

18:39For anyone out there listening, I would, I would say develop your brand framework first and stand for something and be meaningful and have that be the way before out of home to like get to retail, get to creators, influencers, but certainly it does validate our product in the mainstream for retailers. And that's like the next challenge for us. It's like, when you want to get into a bunch of doors and national retailers, they want to know, obviously that you've got a brand, that you've got a community, that you've got loyal shoppers, um, that some of them will even ask for your TV records to see if you're airing nationwide campaigns.

19:18Um, a lot of them want to know that you're big enough to support these stores, um, uh, regionally, right. with out of home. So it certainly does matter. And having like a really talked about campaign can be that, you know, step into the door for many people to validate their concept to those retailers.

19:36Nik:Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like another thing that's so interesting about Toshi that like enables you guys to do so many of these things is your creative production is always next level. Like there's never a bad looking photo or video or the product's never, you know, set up the wrong way. Like everything is so meticulously done on the creative side. Does that, does that like compared to working with brands in the past where maybe creative isn't such a front thought, is that a game changer from a conversion and a storytelling and like a UX standpoint? Yeah. And I would give all credit to our amazing, uh, senior director of brand and our senior design director.

20:16Um, like it is a very interesting, I think I talked about this in another segment on a different podcast but like brand and performance is always like this weird like it's hard to have a good relationship because like you know from growth you whatever i want the next best thing that's going to drive x amount of lift in the ad account unlock this new audience allow us to scale like and it's like i don't care if this is like an ugly ad or like a super premium product render but when you're like counterbalanced by guardians of brand i think it's a nice relationship because you always want to think about memory structures.

20:52And so I always bring up this example with Tushy. It's like when we were going like heavy problem solution, we would essentially like take a fruit or like a peach or something that looked like a butt and like spray it off to show like, you know, the product benefit, right? We're not going to like take a real asshole and like spray it on camera and simmer it on meta. But that was our way of like visualizing the Tushy difference, like between wiping and washing. So I won't say that like we've completely eradicated that concept, but it's come out of our media mix a little bit because the guardians of brand are like, do we really want that to be the memory structure that people think about like, you know, down the consideration line of like a product that is trying to get more premium.

21:37So like, I'm sure we'll talk later about our innovation and really exciting things that we have coming. But it's like, as we deliver reliable products for people's homes in and outside of the bathroom, in our new product innovation roadmap, it's like, how do we get that feeling of trust and professionalism and expertise that would come with like a Dyson and an Apple, right? And it's probably not by doing a fruit wash, right? So yeah, I just go back to, I think it's always good to have that balance because brand is that long-term thinking and then oftentimes growth is kind of scapegoated as being like, you know, the team that is like, So small increments of a result-oriented team.

22:21So it's good to have that balance between that long-term vision and intraday optimizations of the ad account, if that makes sense.

22:28Nik:Yeah, totally. Brands like Third Love, Liquid IV, and NeuroGum all swear by instant. They've tripled their email revenue and some, like Karen Kane, even see a 5x increase. Why? because AI can build hundreds of versions you'll never have time to make. While you're running your brand, Instant is running the experiments, figuring out what works, and then continuously optimizing to keep conversions growing. BFCM's over, and your next growth run starts now. Grab a demo by December 31st and get 50 % off your first 60 days at instant.one.sharma. And another thing you said that's interesting is like, maybe even an exercise of understanding what is to come on the product roadmap is a really good exercise because it even from from a shorter term marketing you know initiatives like it forces you to think about okay is this customer that i get today is it going to buy a second and third time also or am i just doing something that's going to get them just in today yeah for sure and that's where our innovation roadmap is going.

23:35We are a company that pretty much at the moment has to function as a first-time profitable order company to scale. And so we've got our unit economics super dialed in, but we're not at a point where we can put like a target CAC against a customer lifetime value that we feel like super confident behind that isn't like our AOV, our first-time AOV and our customer lifetime value is like right now, almost embarrassingly similar. Right. And it's not because we're doing something fundamentally wrong. It's that we're building durable products. We're in a durable market right now. So, you know, we're trying to scale like penetration of households, get, you know, bidets into every single household in America, hopefully by the time we're done with our mission.

24:23And like the excitement around the opportunity is that only like seven or 8 % of homes in the U.S. have bidets in them. So if you're looking at a growth equation, it's like, if we can continue to, you know, spearhead this mission of like washing, not wiping and, you know, having this cleaner solution, like theoretically, we could just continue to penetrate as a durables company against the rest of the market. However, we know that the quicker way to scale would be to do that and to also work on retention and customer lifetime value. So what that looks like is not like doing planned obsolescence and creating less durable products and making sure that you have to buy a bidet every two years.

25:00It's continuously innovating our bidets, obviously, but also adding in other products to the portfolio. So we've rolled out in the last year, we've always had bamboo toilet paper that's 100 % unbleached, three ply, and it's pretty impressive. We rolled out our scents collection last year. We've got toilet sprays and room sprays. And then we have a really, really, really exciting um new product innovation that i'm really excited for um i can't say exactly what it is just yet but you but think like from as our ceo would like to say from gut to butt to bowl and what that means for tushy um is where innovation is going um so really excited about those products yeah exactly to to create subscription opportunities to create those