Ep 578: How Breath Death Cracked TikTok Shop: Funnels, Affiliates, and $0 Creator Content

0:00I think a lot of people will be like, that's saturated, that's done. But there's a lot of way to reignite buzz or PR or celebrity endorsements and keep the ball rolling on it. Because once you have that traction, you don't want to let it go. If you can't set up automations to align your email communications with your customer's intent, you're already lost. TikTok Shop is by far our strongest channel, and we think about that as a strategic strength. You always kind of want to look at who's the legacy player and how do you kind of compete and disrupt the space. We're already, you know, in the top 100 best-selling food and beverages brands on TikTok.

0:34Any of the big breath fresheners that have been around forever are not even a part of that conversation. And so we know we can win in that space. And so we're hyper-focused on that. Like, that's where we stand out.

0:53Thomas Robinson:This episode is brought to you by Contentful. Marketers, you know that feeling when your creative clicks, when that social post sends engagement through the roof? When your outside-of-the-box campaign hits ROI positive? When a personalized homepage turns prospects into customers? It's utter marketing bliss. Contentful helps you create tailored omni-channel experiences without working overtime. No stress, no limits, only possibilities. Get the feels at contentful.com. Welcome to the D2C Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Thomas Robinson, a D2C growth operator who's built full funnel engines for brands like Tiege Henley, and now one of the most fun and fast moving new brands out there, BreathDeath.

1:37Thomas Robinson:He's one of the few people who's cracked influencer marketing skills, especially on YouTube. He's got a killer eye for turning chaotic traction into real structured growth. So welcome to the D2C Podcast, Thomas. I'm glad we could connect. Eric, I'm super excited to be here. I wanted to just actually just maybe start the podcast just by freshening up a little bit here. Like actually experiencing the crystal breath experience. The pop, breath mints as pop rocks. I cannot believe this has not been done before. What drew you to breath death as an opportunity as a fractional CMO? The main thing is the team cultural fit.

2:12Like the team that's leading and founded the company are just rock stars with successful companies under their belt. and I think I'm always like excited to be a part of like a company that has incredible product market fit a very strong perception of what their brand is and who they want to be and a very innovative product and there's nothing quite as fun as like jumping into a company on the ground floor and just being a part of the rise and you know fixing all the problems like that come along with it but like there's that feeling that's contagious of that like zero to a million a million to 10 million, like hitting the big milestones and like every day is different.

2:52So finding the right company that's set up to hit those results and then just being a part of the hyper growth is like, you know, it's just contagious. It's so fun to be a part of.

3:00Thomas Robinson:What's the TAM of gums and mint? It's pretty massive. It's a huge industry across, you know, across the world. Everyone seems to use some sort of breath freshener, whether it's a gum, a mint, a spray, a strip, like there's all these different variations now and we're the ones that's coming up with like a new delivery device to you know to freshen your breath on the go that's kind of addictive it's super fun so it's something that most you know coffee drinkers want they keep it in their pocket you know most people use gum but this is like a very strong alternative to that and I think when you start to use it you just want that instant freshness that icy freshness that you get with like a a mouthwash.

3:42And I don't think any alternative like delivers that.

3:44Thomas Robinson:Talk to me about initial results with this because it's, it's funny. Like I'm, I'm a elder millennial gen Xer and I, and I have so the nostalgia effect of pop rocks is so real, but it seems like a really gen Z geared brand. Who is this resonating with most right now? It's hard because it's like the chicken or the egg. A lot of our ads are kind of geared to that like 18 to 25. So we're, you know, that's who we're resonating with. We're really kind of seeing hyper-focused on building content and pipelines that resonate with that demographic. US only for now, but we're going to look to expand. But we're definitely interested in, as we move into YouTube and YouTube influencers, we're seeing older demographics come in, still mostly male.

4:27But again, we don't know if that's a by-product of the brand or just that's where like our ads are going right now. So definitely Gen Z, Gen Z from like conception. But, you know, I think over time we'll find that that's like a limiting assumption. And I'm excited to test different, you know, demographics, different audiences as we scale.

4:47Thomas Robinson:How much learning can you take from like liquid death as an example? Because I feel like there's a lot of, well, obviously there's death in the brand, but there's similarities in the sort of tone of the brand, I would say. Is there anything you think you can learn from the way they've been able to scale up so big? Yeah, I think absolutely. I think just the buzz around such aggressive positioning just strikes conversation. You love it or you hate it. And being talked about is always a good thing. You want people to be kind of on different spectrums of how they feel about a brand that's kind of going all out.

5:22I think that's what we've learned from them is hold steady on our positioning. need to hold steady on, you know, we're not for everyone. But if you're, you know, kind of a bold person that's open to new experiences, we're right for you. Instead of trying to appease to kind of every single type of person that may be more modest or more conservative. I think that's like a really strong approach. So I think just not trying to not offend or fit every single type of consumer, I think is a good strategy. And Liquid Death did that best, you know, there's not a lot of a lot lot of people drinking water out of that bowl of a can, it wouldn't make sense to them.

5:58But then obviously, there was a huge group of people that were like, this is awesome.

6:02Thomas Robinson:Yeah, I think making people choose is something I hear a lot. And I think it's Yeah, never, never a bad idea. Talk to me a little bit about your move. So you've got this brand, it's innovative. It's an innovative product. It's got this neat, unique form factor, it has traction with with some core audiences, there's unlimited potential for content with Crystal Breath or Breath Death or all these fun things. So how have you approached it in terms of turning that traction into something scalable? Yeah, I think it's like, again, I came on and the founding team already had such a great vision built out for it in terms of the brand and the targeting of Gen Z, like building a roster of incredible ambassadors, connections with like the UFC, WWE, Machine Gun Kelly, Logan Paul, like these were founders that were part of the journey from conception.

6:51And I think what I've really done well is taking that initial buzz, that initial traction, and then building like funnels that kind of sustain themselves over time, you know, cutting up Mr. Beast resonates with a certain type of person and putting that in the right spot and building landing pages and retention flows that resonate for him. Whereas someone like Jake Paul is a bit more of an extreme character and a bit more of a, you know, you love him or you hate him type of guy and, you know, using those assets more strategically for the right cohorts of customers. So it's like taking what was successful, what was already generating buzz, what was getting great CPMs and incredible engagement, and then building out dedicated like funnels for each of these assets that we had already.

7:35Thomas Robinson:I think that's a super great concept because these things are are like just blips in time often too, right? Like you get this huge hit from these associations, but unless you're prepared to build, you know, what you're talking about here, it can be something that just fades over time because we live in such a moment by moment society. Yeah. Like, and I think if you think of something like, uh, I actually have it like, uh, what is it called? Yeah. NeuroGum. Like they had a moment where Joe Rogan organically mentioned them and and they blew it up. And they were like kind of the goats of taking that asset.

8:09And they could have just, you know, had that initial buzz and then let it fade. But instead, they, you know, stitched it together with ads, and they kept the momentum up. And they took that moment and they expanded on it. And so I think a lot of people will be like, that's saturated, that's done. But there's a lot of way to reignite kind of buzz or PR or celebrity endorsements, and keep the ball rolling on it. Because once you have that traction, you don't want to let it go.

8:33Thomas Robinson:So I think you kind of mentioned it in brief there, but give me an example maybe of one of the moments that you were able to turn into a more always on funnel and where it worked, how it worked. Yeah, like one clear example is Aiden Ross, who's a YouTuber, podcaster, Twitch streamer, had MrBeast on. And Aiden Ross is like an ambassador for the brand, had the product with him, handed it to MrBeast, and he just like took a swig of it. And just his organic, authentic reaction to trying the product. And that moment could have died on the live stream, but we snipped it, we cut it up. and that moment we've sustained it.

9:15And Mr. Beast just has such loyalty, such credibility. I think the fact that it was an authentic reaction to trying the product was like even more engaging than if we gave him a script or anything like that. And, you know, he's, we have a whole campaigns isolated to that one 30 second authentic, beautiful reaction. And we kept it going and it served us very well.

9:38Thomas Robinson:And so does that then translate into the video that you're posting on TikTok through to the landing page. Talk to me about a little bit about the nitty gritty, about what you actually do with that clip to turn it into a full funnel. Yeah, so I always think about meta ads and like in threes, hook integration, like the sales messaging and then a call to action. So taking strong hooks is actually one of the, you know, best things you can do for lowering CPMs, getting the strong engagement rates and, you know, getting attention quickly. So Mr. B's taking a swig of it, showing his face is one of the best hooks.

10:14And then you can just make iteration after iteration on different integrations. You know, whether it's a sensation seeker that just wants to know what it's like with exploding crystals, whether it's problem solution of you have bad breath. This is the best way to cure it on the go, whether it's a confidence thing or credibility thing or a healthy ingredients component. And so you could stitch that hook with multiple integrations with multiple different CTAs. So a call to action of buying, you know, a bundle pack on a discount or becoming a subscriber and saving or a one-time purchase, try it risk-free without any kind of offer attached to it.

10:52And so once you get, when you think about it in threes and you stitch it in so many different ways, eventually you find a winning combination of the three. And then, you know, the last piece of outside of how it's stitched together is ensuring cohesiveness across the landing page, right? So we have Mr. Beast there with his endorsement on the page that from the ad, because I think if you send someone to a website after, you know, they probably stopped because it was Mr. Beast. if you just don't keep that journey cohesive, you can kill momentum right there and just have high bounce rates, low conversion rates.

11:29So, you know, getting the ad completely dialed in, finding the right combinations, and then building dedicated landing pages for them.

11:36Thomas Robinson:And TikTok Shop is just built for this as well. Is that where the bulk of the sales are coming now? Or give me a little breakdown of where the bulk of the sales are coming from now. Yeah. So I think, you know, we're kind of the classic D2C3, right? TikTok Shop, Shopify and Amazon. TikTok Shop is by far our strongest channel and we think about that as the most incremental strategic strength and you always kind of want to look at you know who's the legacy player and how do you kind of compete and disrupt the space and we're already you know in the top 100 best-selling food and beverages brands on TikTok Shop.

12:12Any of the the big breath fresheners that have been around forever are not even a part of that conversation. And so we know we can win in that space. And so we're hyper-focused on that. Like that's where we stand out. Amazon, you know, I'm an Amazon expert. I spent a lot of my career focusing on Amazon. I've worked at Amazon. You know, we climbed, but that's not because of, you know, very technical PPC stuff we did on Amazon. That's because of the halo from TikTok shop, from GMV Max, from, you know, the 600 new affiliates that we sign up every single month. You know, the 1400 organic pieces of content from all these people talking about us a month.

12:53And so you got to think of your sales channels, not in isolation, but holistically, TikTok shop is the reason why we're doing so low on Amazon. You know, you can see it from the brand search volume of breath death on Amazon, and how it corresponds with the impressions engagement we get. TikTok shop by far is, you know, it's a wild west sale, but the people that have figured it out, it's just a massive, massive channel, especially if you're going into kind of a legacy industry, like dominated by people that have been around forever.

13:26Thomas Robinson:And then affiliates, that's the other, TikTok shop and affiliates just are so great. I remember it was Tab's Sex Chocolate actually came on the podcast in our first year and they were doing really well before, Or even before I think the affiliate program came out with like, just basically, they were kind of making affiliate accounts on their own. I think they're using Social Snowball. Are there any tools that go into your affiliate program? Or do you just kind of use the native TikTok affiliate capabilities? You know, we set up some automations. I always think, you know, you can think of affiliates and threes too, like conceptually of like, you know, nano, micro, like mid-tier and then macro influencers.

14:02and for the smaller creators, let's say sub 5 ,000 followers, a lot of that we do through automated systems, automated onboarding, automated reach out, kind of send them a repository of like speaking notes and guardrails, lower commission. And we just do that at scale. Having a lower AOV product, seeding isn't an issue for us. You can seed out lots of product. And if half the micro influencers post once and drive two sales, the economics work out. But when you get to like the bigger creators, you really want to stop them from being a part of like automated outreach. And you kind of want to do a little bit more white glove service for them.

14:43Because then it's not just about the video and the commission you're giving them. It's about building a relationship, making them feel a part of the brand, part of the journey. Usually there's some sort of contractual like flat fee payment involved in the million plus follower accounts. And so those we do through, you know, we have automated systems in place, but there's not a particular tool that helps. It's more about the relationship building and finding ways to foster a relationship without them feeling like, oh, I'm just getting an automated AI message. And so you definitely don't want to burn bridges.

15:18I've seen brands reach out to very credible, very strategic brand partners with an automated AI email. You're going to burn a bridge right out of the gate with that.

15:30Thomas Robinson:And so you got to be careful. I should know this, but is TikTok shop the same as Amazon in that you don't get the customer email? You technically get it. You don't get marketing consent through it. Got it. There's no kind of Shopify. You can have something at checkout where you get that automatically. You get their shipping address, you get their email, you get their phone number, but you don't get marketing consent. Because we still fulfill it through our Shopify 3PL, right? So it's like Amazon, you don't get any of that because they fulfill the order, so they don't need to give it to you. You're big on YouTube as a growth channel.

16:08Thomas Robinson:Why do you think it's so overlooked? I think it's just because it's less, in many brands' minds, it's less scalable, less more manual, less of that immediate jump. People love a TikTok affiliate because you drop it into GMV Max. You get the paid reach. If it converts, it gets picked up through the systems. It's low risk because if it's not picked up by GMV Max and it's just to their audience, you just pay on a portion of sale. YouTube, you're never really going to find that. There is YouTube affiliates. I've never seen a lot of people get traction on it. You might get 5 % of your creator sales through people signing up to your evergreen affiliate offer on YouTube.

16:51But really, YouTube is about looking at different verticals that have your TAM. For breath death, it would be 90 % US males between 18 and 25 interested in dating and fashion, like in fitness and, or cigar smokers that want to fix their breath and then getting very clear about what you want to do. And then it's, it's manual relationship building. It's contacting them, getting their rates, coming to a deal, you know, building long-term partnerships. Because like, if you think about how much work it is to do everything I just said, if you're thinking about a YouTube influencer as one deployment and then they're gone.

17:31You just did all that work for nothing, right? You may not hit your CPA after one deployment. It's all about building long-term, you know, two deployments a month for six months, and then it compounds. And it's also a self-service, like, retargeting funnel, right? If you follow a certain creator, they deploy once, you're like, oh, that looks cool, but I forgot. The second time you see it, you're like, oh, like, now I actually want to try it. Like whatever you said this second time resonated and it keeps compounding over time. It doesn't have that big spike of a TikTok or a meta where it hits. You spend against it, you get all the sales, you turn it off and it crashes.

18:11YouTube, you can have a video about, you know, something evergreen, like top 10 ways to impress, you know, a date. That video can drive sales for years to come. And so if you look at it holistically, you're not worried about an instant spike of sales. And you just look at all the money you spend on YouTube, how many sales you're getting, you do it right. Often it could be your most efficient channel because a lot of brands don't want to go through the hassle of kind of everything I just said of like being patient, finding the right people, building relationships and letting it compound over time.

18:45Thomas Robinson:The gift that keeps on giving because it's and you're using their connection to their audience each time their audience is growing at the same time. It's just more of a flywheel than a one time ad. Exactly. It's great for SEO. It's great for domain authority. It's great for generative like AI search optimization. Like I think there's a reason we do so well on ChatGPT and organically it's because we have so much authority in this space. there's no affiliate UTMs attached to it. So it does better for SEO. It's, it's a beautiful, beautiful strategy. Are you talked about on Reddit? I feel like Reddit fuels so much of the, you know, the LLMs that having a good vibes on Reddit has got to be good for, for SEO as well.

19:27You know what, like we are good on Reddit. And we've done that, you know, we've, we've considered so many kind of Reddit growth strategists, but a lot of them are a black hat of like, we're going to get all these robotic accounts, create all these subreddits. And so I always am hesitant of that because it can kill a brand's credibility so quickly. So being able to foster a real authentic community, be a part of the conversations on Reddit, that is a massive opportunity. I just haven't found a credible way to do it. Because like you said, a lot of the Reddit strategy isn't going to be through direct click and buys.

20:09It's going to be through domain authority, SEO, AI search, appearing in LOMs, etc.

20:17Thomas Robinson:Talk to me about the meta environment when you're trying to sell a product as low an AOV as this one is. That one's got to be a challenge. Yeah. I think you need to win the game of lower CPMs through very strong hooks. It just like, you know, if you think about Google, you win on a keyword bid from a combination of the bid you set and the relevance of the ad. On meta, it's the bid you set and the quality of the ad. And so highly engaged ads, you can get lower CPMs with the same audience. And so if you, you know, you got to find what angle you have to win. And if you can't win on contribution margin on a transactional level or AOV, then you've got to win through better CPMs and then having landing pages that have high conversion rates.

21:10So, you know, impressions, your CPM, your click through rate, your landing page CVR, you know, look at them across the board, you know, and then have targets for them. If my CPM isn't here, it's probably never going to work. If I can't get people off the ad to my landing page, it's probably not going to work. And if they land on the page and they're not converting, something's broken. So looking at the three for each ad or each campaign and being like, oh, I can see the issue here. It's the landing page conversion rate. I got to fix that. Or my CPMs are high because no one's engaging in my ads.