Mobile Collapsed the Marketing Funnel, now what?

Welcome back to at Landia. We have got a great guest today, Rachel Typographic, founder and CEO of mic Mac. We wanted to have women entrepreneurs who are reshaping the commerce and retail experience continue, so we asked Rachel to

join us. Two of my favorite things that part of this retail blitz, I guess we'll call it going into the Holidays shopping season is one the explosion of women that are entrepreneurs, not just in shopping from a design and product standpoint, but from a software an experience standpoint.

I think it's really telling that women are trying to take back the shopping experience into their own hands, whether in real life, as we talked about with Amanda in the last episode or with what Rachel's do to kind of minimize friction in the e commerce shopping experience. And too, I just loved that I learned and interview you passed me that she recently did on chatter that the original name of Mick Mac was Chak and I thought that that was great. But I'm a little and we argued

about that. We don't argue much, but we we disagreed on that. Well, we do argue, but I know we save everybody. We save everybody the argument. So, some cool disruptions happening. I don't know if we would call them cool disruptions. Maybe about for them for their cool disruptions, but continued sort of turbulence in what could presumably become an e commerce platform on Snapchat, if freaking should be

any commerce platform. And the fact that Snapchat didn't go hard into actually creating ways for brands to come in and sell product um automatically like ray DALs product is amazing to me. I mean, there's so many opportunities. And so today Snapchat announced that ten Cent bought a twelve percent steak in the company and now owns twelve percent

of snap Um. I'm just sad about it because I feel like Snap has and had so many opportunities to diversify their content from like kind of traditional advertising, and they've gone down the more traditional advertising route with media company partners and publishers. I remember the lowest common denominator right in scale and efficiency and looking to bring people in in droves and volume and self created, but they

still have drop. But Laura, don't you agree that they would still have droves of volume they just went for the lowest common denominator in format. Yeah, well, they didn't diversify the product portfolio within that low hanging fruit, and so now you're in this phase where they're obviously selling off stakes the company, but potentially missing alternative revenue streams in the process, which I think people like Rachel Typograph are trying to help them solve from a software standpoint.

But yeah, it seems like it was a blind swing early out of the gate that they could have capitalized on early days when you have such a highly saturated audience of people, you know, engaging many many times over on the platform multiple times a day, especially in the millennials,

you know age demographic. So I think it's a huge miss opportunity for companies that own the pipe, right like Snap owns their pipe to not have thought through solutions, like a software solution like what we're going to hear that Rachel created. And I think that they still have the opportunity to be thinking down this line. I mean, I don't see any reason why Snap couldn't become a

major commerce platform or software platform for commerce. Presumably it's the inverted model, right, It's starting with content to get to conversion versus Amazon starting from conversion with the potential to build out content. And so I think what Rachel's going to talk about is where scale exists. And you know, she believes starting with performance is the way. You know, all of these brands that start getting into the e

commerce space need to think about first. So with that, Rachel Typograph, another killer female entrepreneur reshaping the retail world. We'll be right back. Welcome back, everybody, We're here with Rachel Typograph, founder and CEO of mic MAC. Welcome Rachel, Hey Rachel, thanks for having me. We're doing like a little bit of like what I would say is the

min A series on the future of retail. So we had Amando Latifian last week, Yeah, last week, last episode, and we're getting into our favorite season, holiday shopping season, and you and I love. We have two women that are going to be on the show, you being one of them. That is totally disrupting commerce and retail, and that just makes sense. We control all the dollars. We do control all the dollars. So tell us a little bit about micmac. Because you started as one thing, you've pivoted.

Now you have a couple of products and a studio, explained mcmac. So at mcmac, we create commerce experiences for the social video generation. I truly believe that the future of commerce is going to be deeply rooted and distributed social video. When I launched the company June of two fifteen, it was the same thesis, just a different execution. So people called us QVC for the Snapchat generation. We were an iOS app. I would release fun new videos where

I had comedians talking products. Everything was about impulse by, but the business model didn't make sense. The reason why the business model didn't make sense is big aha moment that I think most of the marketing and retail world have realized, which is the app boom is over. What happens with apps is you have to sink costs into customer acquisition, customer retention plus for me video production and not owning my inventory, I was making pennies on every transaction.

So the model only could work at insane scale. And you see, any company like mine that tried to go mobile at first either change their business model or die. Do you have people that you consider competitors like you mean in the current business model, the old business the current business model. So was there in the old business model? I mean, in the old business model. At the end of the day, my competitor was Amazon, right, like everyone competitor is Amazon. Yeah, You're not the only one with

that problem right now? Exactly? You discover things and Micmac and then I couldn't control the fact that you would find some you know, black market third party pricing on Amazon. Now that makes sense. Okay, So that was the old business model. What's the new business model? So the new business model is Listen, if I'm right, which I'm betting my entire career and being right, the future of commerce is going to be deeply routed and distributed social video.

No one disagrees with me. It's why we've now worked with over three hundred brands the challenges. If everyone believes I'm right, what's preventing everyone from operating like MICMAC today? I totally agree? And why wouldn't Amazon just buy you? Bezos? Are you there? So for us, we went on this R and D quest and what I wanted to understand is if some of the biggest brands in the world were working with us or wanted to work with us,

what was preventing them from operating like MCMAC today. And what I learned is that every company has the same three pain points. Pain Point number one video production. People feel like it's either too expensive, it takes too much time, or it's the opposite. They've been created all this video content. It's not driving their bottom line, and now they're like, huh, maybe we've been creating the wrong types of video content, so we need to beat the ship out of that

in a few minutes, keep going. I like this pain point number two attribution. At the end of the month, everyone reports last click. As a result, it's impossible for people to answer the question of which video drove a sale and Y. And then pain point number three, my

favorite one. In the year two thousand seventeen, the most progressive brands in the world still say to me that social media is still a small piece of the overall eCOM conversion and if they are seeing it, it's only coming from paid And what's that's about is the friction that exists today between engaging with social content and that end checkout experience. So when every brand is saying the same thing to me, I'm like, all right, it's clear I need to go build software to solve those problems.

So today you come to micmac to license our software to solve those problems. I'll talk about our main product, which is called mcmacattached. It's a commerce layer for vertical video content experiences. As a result, the primary use case is an environments like Instagram, Stories and Snap but it's a web application, so it actually can live anywhere that

you put a U R out. So can you, like, just if we're going to break it down into layman terms, because sometimes my grandmother listens to the show, can you walk us through what that looks like from the consumer standpoint before you kind of dig into the software needs and why this is a tremendous white space for you from a software standpoint totally. So let's take my client at bows you are following Bows on Instagram. You are looking at their Instagram story and there's a call to

action to swipe up. You swipe up. You're brought into mcmacattached. Here you can watch endless product videos. You can hit more info see more product information. So that's product name, price description, photography fee. You hit add to cart and boom, that item goes directly into Bose's cart. Now, the reason why we brought this product to market is that when environments like Instagram, Stories and Snap came out, partners were just linking to their regular old product pages. They were

experiencing bounce rate. Why you're going from these highly engaging vertical video content experiences to your boring static more often than not not optimized for mobile product landing page. Let's just throw a mic drop right in there, so listen, in this ecosystem, there's obviously a lot of people that are in this space. Every other company and thought leader in this space has been focusing on what I call

the pre click pre swipe. So how do we optimize everything that's happening and feed from content, from targeting, from ad buying. All that's freaking meaningless if the other side is broken totally. Yeah, I'm focusing on the other side, and no one else really knows how to connect it. What are some of the numbers you're seeing early days? By minimizing the layers deep, I need to go from

that initial experience. Yep. So we've completely inverted the bounce right, so most people experience bounce rate with mic maciel experience ten wo Right, So let's pivots to the content space because I think you had some great points around why these dots need to be connected. So my business is two parts. One is software service what we were just talking about, and then the other part is creative services,

which we call micmac Studios. All of my software clients touch micmac Studios in at least one way, which is optimizing their own creative because if you give me ship creative, you will get ship results. My software can't fix ship creative, so we need to fix it before hello Hello. I just want everyone to hear that my software can't fix ship creative, so we have to fix it before it goes into my software, so that will always happen, and we build that into sort of our offering of my

clients use us for original creative. Why we've created thousands of product videos. We've flighted millions of video views against them. I can tell you what causes someone to hit by within nearly every consumer package good stuff category. Can you give us an example? Sure? So? Uh. One of my brand partners is Dr Brands can Care, family owned can Care company in Miami, doing very well and revenue. Also available at Sephar and Alta. They have a product called Magnetite.

It's perfect for the world that we live in. So it looks like a mud mask. The piece of creative has two girls. They're each putting the mask on each other and they're literally doing it for the first time. So the reactions are completely genuine. And if you ever put this mask on your face, starts to tingle immediately, and you have to keep it on your face for five minutes and then you remove it with a magnet and you watch it come off. So you see the

entire transformation from beginning to end. And we did it in five second video clip, ten second, thirty seconds, just like different variations, and we have the genuine reactions. I wish you guys would have done that in the studio today. We could have done Instagram. I need good skincare dr brand skin care. So there's a formula, and we know exactly what needs to happen within the first quartile, second quartile, third and fourth and we do it over and over

and over again. It's why I quit my job at Gap and fell in love with the infomercial industry. There's a freaking formula. There are a few people who really understand that content truly is the sticky to brand product or purchase, except Jeff Bezos right early on totally understood. Now I still hear marketers saying, we have to do great content. We have to do great content, but there is no connection between that content and the bottom line.

Why when you talk to a marketer, what is the disconnect? Why is that equation still so hard to create and to also kind of like operationalize in a marketing team. So when I was at Gap, the marketing leadership team like never cared about direct response creative. They didn't even see it, but that was what was driving the bottom line. You want to know, it's completely changed that the mobile phone.

So if you just think about Facebook feed, Facebook is now said to the world, Hey, the future of brand marketing is direct response marketing. You will see a bud Light Super Bowl spot next to Electric Razor for fifty off video in the same feed. So, d your marketing now is brand marketing before a CMO it Can you go back repeat that? So the mobile feed has collapsed the marketing funnel because you will have a I'm pumping. I'm like, I'm looking at Rachel right now and literally

pumping my fist. Yeah, if everyone would open up their Facebook app right now, you would see a beautiful piece of creative produced by Widen and Kennedy, your Droga five and it's gorgeous, don't get me wrong, next to a really shitty Razor ad or Mattress Company ad yep. Fifteen years ago. That would have never happened in media. The Drug of five creative would be in premium television or an aspirational magazine, and that Mattress would be in the

back of the village voice. Right, it's all in one place now, no one gives a fuck, and cmos have to start not giving a fuck, and well they actually have to give a fucking fight harder and understand. Not

only has the funnel collapsed, it's gotten narrower. Right, So the path from one place to the next is so much faster, and what you've done is accelerated it even more so, Can I ask a question reach on the super fascinating because you know there's still this fork in the road in terms of brands who are still very focused on brand building and then others that are obviously gone the way of performance markets and depending on what category and you're which probably leans more towards the ladder.

But are there brands who are talking you saying, since this whole funnel has collapsed, what attributes are best practices can we take from those product videos? Presumably things that get people to click faster, knowing attention spans are shrinking and feeds are moving faster, and all those sorts of things, so that we can, in the first three seconds of a brand video, for example, start to drop more explicit

direct hits on what that messaging. Maybe maybe I'm not necessarily selling a product, but a director response or behavior we want to elicit based on some of the best practices you've learned from e commerce. Does that make sense? Yeah? Totally. Listen. When you work with Micmac as a software client, our first kickoff call, I'm like, I'm giving keeps to the castle like literally, you can go fire your creative agency now because I'm telling you exactly what you should be doing,

and it's highly applicable. And I'll say it here like here is free knowledge. Go tell me if I'm wrong. I encourage you to go produce videos this way and tell me if I'm wrong. So first and foremost, and it's again the reason why I quit my job at GAP.

It's what psychologists call a para social relationship. When you have a host like flow from Progressive, you begin to build an emotional connection with that person through repetition, and psychologists call it a pair of social relationship because you the viewer, believe that I the host of your friend, and when you buy from me, you get the same

emotional benefit as friendship. So put a freaking human in your video and do it often through repetition, and you will begin to build that brand friendship relationship with the viewer. That's one two In the first three seconds, put the product in full view. You wouldn't believe how many creative assets come across micmac where it takes seven to fifteen seconds to see the product. We live in a world where most people don't even watch the first three seconds

of a video, right. And then lastly, color and optimism. If you put black and white creative out and do an A B test against color creative, I promise you color creative is going to perform better. That's really interesting. I mean those three simple things, those three simple things. So you said something that I wrote down earlier that I wanted to ask you because I'm obsessed Mic mac in audio because when you talk about what what did you call it? Par I mean, this is the definition

of it. It is in you heard you do the commercials. Yeah, you're the para social relationship. Why aren't we doing this with you? I know, listen, we're talking to my My biggest investor is and you know this is Gary Bannerchuk. Oh well he's going hard into audio hard Why because right now, and I'm not saying what you guys do

is easy, but there's very little competition. Right. So, investing in audio right now, you're getting in on the ground floor and you're going to get someone to listen for forty minutes because the average US commune is forty minutes, and you're going to build such a deep emotional connection with your audience. You already doing it. Are you doing it. We're all doing it, so I mean I should advertise on this show. But but I'm talking about Mac, so

micmac attached should be an audio I know. So. In fact, we were just on a panel with a guy who has a you need to look this up, who has a company called Instraumatic. I mean he's basically doing clickable audio ads. Yes, Mac, Micmac should be going hard. He's a cool guy. Stass. I'm sorry, but I just found

your competition. But that's where you should. I mean, like, because no one's actually figured out how to take the forget let's just call it live reads right now, just live reads, because there's a lot of cool creative spaces that we can do with host reads, and lots of cool content and audio. But the fact that there is no clickable and you people are listening on their mobile phone for the most part until we get like everyone

listening in their car without their phone. But I'd also love to know in this in the same sort of behavior you're figuring out from visual cues right you talked,

what are the audio right exactly? What are sort of those key triggers or pneumonics or phrases or you know, there are certain things that Alex and I are are building equity and around things that we'll do in a few minutes, like our favorite Killed by d I Y. Where when people start identifying with those things, what would you call ax audio identity or language identity that people you know have synonymous with the show. So yeah, it's super interesting. Wait can we build this with you? I

want to build BECA. We tested our show. We pilot the Dead series. We're going to pilot this because I also would love to know because well, Apple podcasts only gives do you know this like virtual purchases. Well no, no, no, but they only give podcast networks and podcast hosts. You only know certain amount of information. They hold back all the data. Now they're going to be releasing more data this fall, but it's still like not not what you need.

If you had your software in this space, we could start looking at not just download times and understanding like day parts. We could start actually dissecting content and understanding audiences in a totally different way in the actual content, not just the ad content well husiastic writing. I'm bringing up we launched a new product today in data with one of our clients that would be right for you guys in this next So while we keep talking, I'll

pull it up. So, Yeah, the one thing, and I think it's really important because Alex and I have been on a crusade to basically, you know, kind of make sure this industry does not bastardize um audio in the same way we have digital in terms of display banner with host reads and sort of prerecorded reads and kind of explaining that the contextual nature, as you alluded to, you know earlier, Reachil we're building equity, right, we're building relationships,

is very intimate in your ears environment, and for us, we are adamant that preserving the integrity of that creative and that context is more important than stuffing it with prerecorded ads that become the sort of automated algorithm UM that we've kind of you know, fallen behold into within digital. So if we're able to prove that out, um, it's something I would totally be interested in doing. So we created this product called attach rate. You'll swipe up, you'll

be brought into this new layer. You can see endless amount of product videos, but there's this little rotund of call to actions. So right now I'm watching a skincare video and there's a call to action that says I try this, I can indicate between one or five stars. If I would boom five stars, next one on her skin is goals two stars. All of a sudden, a brand is collecting all this first party data around people's emotional reactions, just like it's a little mobile game if

you're highly engaged. You just saw before I served an email capture unit where you can unlock a deal. Or while all this is happening, I'm generating new audiences. So if someone said I try this, they go into a cookie pool that we provide to our audience to go retarget. So that's just one of the SIXT can break down content so that exactly so people are listening and I was talking about, you know DRS new brand marketing, we can be collecting all that first party data for you.

I love that. Or we can also say do you have a question for Alexa and Laura or Ray each all around Why d R is right, Why DR is coming back for me? Interactivity is the new form of creativity with all of the short form. I actually think that d R in this capacity that you're showing us and talking about is actually going to upend and gut marketing. If you look at any early stage startup or any of the darling companies that everyone talks about, their first

marketing higher is a performance marketer. And the powers that be, the four companies that control the internet slash the world, also don't want us to be able to do that because this is how they profit. That's right. Like the biggest I don't know if you guys have talked about this on the show or how deep you get into at tech, but the scariest thing right now that's happening in attack that very few people are talking about is the fact that Apple is going to be preventing third

party cookies within Safari. The entire attack industry is based on the ability to cookie people, right, That's right. So if we have not talked about that, but they take that away, billions of dollars of companies are at stake and we're all going to probably have to be paying Apple to do that. Well, that's the whole point, and that that's what I'm talking about. But I think they're

going that way with content. I think they're going that way with a right content like visual content, audio, all of that they're starting to pull they're starting to pull back. So what does that mean. I think we gotta go build our own pipes. Yeah, I mean I listened to I listened to your Bendet's episode, and that's what he said, right in terms of d I Y, He's like, I want to build my own pipes. Yeah, you have to. Yeah,

I agree. Curious to know the Rachel typograph Nick mac prediction for what we'll be seeing in terms of e commerce holiday shopping this year. Yeah. I think that a lot of marketers have done a good amount of experimentation across the different social platforms and that they're going to say during the holiday season, we can't take a risk with our media, and they're going to go all in on Facebook and Instagram, and the CPMs are gonna be

as high as they've ever been before. I think that's going to be really interesting because that's where you are going to see conversion. That's what people care about in the holiday season. But because everyone's going to go all in, the prices are going to be insane. So I would say, by Facebook stuff now, because it's about to shoot shoot like crazy, and you saw what happened yesterday with Snap. I mean it's very just but twelve percent of them

because it's cheap. That's the other really interesting thing that I have found actually is that because people are so highly accountable for driving results and cute four, there's not a large appetite for experimentation. So I actually don't feel like people are going to be really inventive. I think they'll be inventive with experiential marketing, but not in digital marketing.

And what are your thoughts in terms of DTC, you know, online specific companies and how they're strategizing against some of the big box retailers, which obviously come with multiple commas and zeros during the holiday season in terms of does that really matter anymore or do you see that volume still by and large drives the bulk of conversion as opposed to a smart content strategy for example, It's a good question. Yeah, I think UM, the big box players,

the strategy is scale. It's encouraging people to increase increase that average order value UM by offering them deals to increase basket size and offer free shipping or click and collect. I think with direct to consumer because they're competing for the same attention, what they need to do and what we continue to see people to do is that they have to band together. So I think you're going to see a lot of collaborations interesting where people then actually

are like putting. So I'm not saying I know this, but let's just say direct to consumer and a has a pixel, they have a like minded brand and maybe a different category and sluggage and fitness, right, they exchange pixels. They go and retarget each other's audiences. They do a

product collaboration, They do sweepstakes. Like if you're doing anywhere between one and fifty million dollars in revenue, go find other companies that are doing one to fifty million dollars in revenue with a like minded audience, create a product bundle and go remarke it to them together. No, I ah, Rachel, so good? All right, so we're here. Kill by d I y. It can be in the retail space, but it doesn't have to be. Yeah, what would you kill?

What would you buy? What would you do yourself? I would kill the industry standard of last click attribution, Yes, And I would buy the universal shopping cart? And I would what does that look like? What's universal shopping cart? I'm mean right now, if I would buy Apple pay or I would buy PayPal, or I buy Shopify, or I buy Amazon exactly and d I y, I would launch my own skin CareLine. Oh, I don't know what's the first product. I see you with Glossier as some

kind of like board member or something. The reason why I say that is that everything that we've done at mic mac, I know the exact type of product that sells in this format, and I can absolutely launch a direct to consumer social video consumer product brand knowing what me know, what's your first product? Uh, it'll probably be a product that removes oil from your skin and trying to come up with a clever name for it. But

we already have one. Um Rachel typograph amazing conversation. Where can people reach you for these free audio pilots that we're gonna be doing. My email is Rachel at micmac, dot tv, AM k M A k M I k M A k dot TV and one plug. If you have the opportunity to go here, Rachel speak Yes, brilliant, brilliant, Thanks Rachel, Rachel, I'll have a good thank you thanks. Episode twenty in the books. It's in the books. I'm getting really excited for the holidays. I've got to think

about what I want to buy you. Now it's your birthday and it's my birthday. First of all, I suck at buying presents, and I have been doing over what to get you for like weeks, and I get to a point where I just get annoyed and I'm like, I should just ask her, So what do you want? What do you want for your birthday? I think I'll make you a pinterest sport. My birthday is November thirty, so we have a little bit of fun. It's too much effort. I'm also thinking about doing a fundraiser for

my birthday. This is a new thing I've been seeing people do on Facebook where they're donating to a cause for their birthday. So I'm thinking about starting something like that. So maybe it's something we can share with Atlandia. Okay, I love that idea. UM. So on that note, Laura's birthdays coming up at Landia, which are a happy birthday?

What is it? Um? Thank you Cameron Drew's we Love You, Cameron Drew's we Love You Cameron not turk, Andy Bowers, all of our friends and family epanically and Atlantia keep talking to us. We're getting awesome. Emails, lots of great tweets. Yes, we love the emails. We've been getting awesome ones from a lot of college graduates, people looking for their first job or their next job. Keep hollering at us at Landia Podcast at gmail, or you can find us on

Twitter out Atlantia Podcast. We're totally opening to connecting the dots for our listeners. Thanks for following, and we'll be back in two weeks. M Full disclosure, our opinions, our own