Building Brands That Move as Fast as Consumers

Lily Comba

Chicago is the best. I like to say that it's just a beach town. If Paul if Paul is joining, if Paul is on, you know, he's he he will agree. He's born and raised here. But we're getting a crazy storm. So hopefully it's not just I leave and it's in Sarah, it's up to you. We'll make it work. We're just gonna be yapping away anyway. Fun, fun. Okay, chat's working. Hi everybody. hi Paul.

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Jay Hunter

Everything.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah

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Jay Hunter

Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, all good.

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Sarah Crow

We'll make it work.

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Lily Comba

Look at that, Victor. another Ofello Lillian. my god, I love that.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

Hi Jen. I feel like such a I don't know why we never like welcome everybody on an individual basis, but today we're doing that. Awesome. Your mom? Shut up. My mom. Conn!

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Jay Hunter

I it. see my mom, my mom's in the chat, my number one supporter. yeah. Me and my mom work closely together. Yeah. We worked at Mary Roos together for many years. So yeah.

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Sarah Crow

She

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Lily Comba

No, I know. my God, we should actually talk about that. How Mary Ruth's was basically a family business, but a a Jay a Hunter family business.

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Sarah Crow

My gosh.

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Jay Hunter

A lot of Mary's family worked there also, know, it's just like leaving family, you know, so.

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Lily Comba

Yeah Are you bringing them over to Sprinter? It's a point of contention.

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Jay Hunter

No, no, still have great rapport with the married family and I think my mom and brother are over there still. They're so much fun. They love it. It's a great business, so.

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Lily Comba

Yeah. it seem you know, it seems like a great business. You had such a great team. I know you brought some of the some of the influencer team with you to Sprinter as well. I recognize some of those names, so seems just like goodness. Yeah. So good. It's such a good culture over there. yes, this will be recorded. it's so funny. I feel like my mom sometimes joins these calls too. As does yours, Sarah, right? You're done.

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Jay Hunter

So yeah, think Catalina ended up joining me. yeah.

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for sure.

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Sarah Crow

My dad, yeah.

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Jay Hunter

I love it.

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Lily Comba

Connie is in the house.

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Sarah Crow

They say, I don't know what you guys are saying, but you sound so smart.

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Lily Comba

Same with my mom. If you see a Kim popping up in the chat, Kim's not gonna have a single idea what a CPA or a ROAS number is, but she's gonna pretend that she knows. Amazing. Okay, we're three minutes in, people are trickling in, this will be recorded, it'll be distributed, and it actually is gonna be a part of the very first versions of our podcast. So we're turning Field Notes into a podcast, it'll be on all streaming platforms.

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Jay Hunter

You

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Jay Hunter

I you.

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Lily Comba

We got a lot of feedback that people listen to this without video and just audio. You know, they're out on walks, they're out on their lunch break learning, which we love. So we we just want to meet people where they're at. and if you can't join live, it'll be published as a podcast. So you can just hear the three of us yap, yep, yapping away in your ears whenever you want to. cool. Well, with that being said.

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Let's get into it. Jay, would you like to begin? Obviously Sarah and I know why you're here. and we've done plenty of marketing, so the people who are attending know why you're here. but would you would you care to give give the people a bit of an introduction? I feel like you're such a fascinating guest for us, so let's have you do it in your own words.

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Sarah Crow

Ha ha.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, sure. You know, Jay Hunter, I'm CEO of K2O by Kylie Jenner, which is a hydration beauty brand. We just launched about 70 days ago, so still very early. But you know, it's going well. I I told people we're cheating a little bit because we've got Kylie Jenner and she's amazing. And yeah, you know, I've been in the sort of e-commerce space a long time now. I spent seven years at Mary Roos, which is a great VMS brand.

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Lily Comba

Crazy.

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Sarah Crow

Crazy.

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Lily Comba

We'll talk about that.

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Jay Hunter

And then you'll spend some years before that just sort of in the Amazon game. So yeah.

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Lily Comba

Yeah. Seventy days? That's it.

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Jay Hunter

70 days we've been live 70 days. Yes hasn't been long

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Sarah Crow

Did you guys launch at Coachella?

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Lily Comba

I was about to ask that. Was that kind of Okay.

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Jay Hunter

Few days before we launched April 8 so like there's a couple days before the Coachella activation and we sort of time those two things together But we're yet we're on day 70. We've done about 4.5 million in sales. So it's going pretty good so far So it's it's moving fast. You know, it's moving fast

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Lily Comba

Wow. Okay. Well, that honestly is the I you could you couldn't have set me up even more perfectly for that, Jay, because seventy days, millions of dollars, multiple, multiple, dozens of millions of dollars in revenue within seventy days, a huge Coachella activation. Obviously you didn't just pull that out of your hat. I mean maybe you did, you make it seem so easy.

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Jay Hunter

Just...

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Jay Hunter

A little bit, yeah.

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Lily Comba

But Mary Ruth's obviously is a huge legacy brand at this point. It's it's a household name that's I think every aspiring company wants to become a household name, and Mary Ruth's is one of them. so from Mary Ruth's to now K2O by Sprinter, what are some of those like core growth principles that you're bringing from Mary Ruth's to a new brand like Sprinter?

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Jay Hunter

Sure, yeah. mean, I think, you for me, the Mary Ruth's Journey, incredibly special one. Like, I started there just as Amazon, and like, I got to learn, like, so many things. I think I, I said this recently somewhere else, but I think, like, what I learned most is, like, it's better to be 100 % like done or taking action and 70 % perfect than it is to be 100 % perfect, you know? So I think at Mary Rue's, I just learned, like, we were very good at just, like, doing things and taking action. I think, yeah, same thing here is, like,

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Lily Comba

Mm.

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Lily Comba

Getting it done.

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Jay Hunter

You can think about what the perfect marketing strategy is or campaign is. It's better just to do something today than wait for tomorrow. And then just try to make it 1 % better every day after that. I think we're doing the same thing here. I've got a great team at K2O and just moving fast. So this is going well.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

How do you move fast while maintaining quality? Because I think a lot of brands kind of stress out. They're like they want I think there is the cultural, the culture that we live in right now puts perfectionism on a pedestal. So how can you kind of embody that 70% perfect? And, you know, people don't see that. On the externally, people don't see that. So how can you move quickly while maintaining quality? Because 70 days to do what you've done so far,

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Sarah Crow

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

My god.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, I mean, I think I think I slightly disagree. I think most people want to see authentic, you know, so I think if you're just honest and like transparent with your customers and your partners, like I think most people will give you some grace on like a hey guys, you know, example might be like we launched this product and like, you know, this is the packaging, just a heads up, like we're improving the packaging over time or like you might get feedback on a flavor that you want. Like we launched our strawberry lychee flavor.

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Lily Comba

Yeah. Yes.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Jay Hunter

which people are loving, but like people had feedback on watermelon line that maybe it was like a little bit like too, you know, line for them. And so like, we can improve that over time. Like those are small changes you can make to make the product better and like make your customers happy. I think if you're just honest about what you're doing and how you're solving some of those problems, like customers will give you a lot more grace than people give them credit for. They just want to know what's happening and like be a part of the journey. And I think that makes them feel great. I think the main thing like you can never sacrifice on is like.

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Lily Comba

It's so good.

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Lily Comba

Mm.

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Jay Hunter

safety and the other important aspects, especially when you're selling a vitamin or supplement product. And so those things, we're moving on. But I think for the other pieces where you can't improve every day, it's like, you just want to get it out there and get real-time feedback. We could talk about what a great marketing campaign is like and then launch it and it might flop. You don't truly know what the customer's going to think until you show it to them. So I think for us, we'd like to get it out there, get real, true feedback from customers, and then improve stuff from there.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

I love that. I think that's so important and I think it's something that brands really underutilize. Sarah, go ahead.

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Sarah Crow

No, I was gonna say too. I mean, I feel like we talk about this all the time with listening to your influencers. Your influencers are usually your best customers. And I feel like to hear a CEO say they're listening to their customers and creators is huge, especially at the beginning.

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Lily Comba

What about the Coachella? Like in hindsight, how did that come together? Obviously, you launched like day the the brand itself, K2O, launched days before Coach before Coachella. So this kind of my mindset or this mentality behind just getting it out there, getting it done, kind of how did that manifest with with the Coachella activation? Because that was a lot of people, whether you were at Coachella or just watching it from afar, like Sarah and I, that was our first experience with K2O by Sprinter. So

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Jay Hunter

Sure.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah, I thought it was just vodka. I was like, whoa, what's happening?

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Lily Comba

Yeah. We thought Sprint we thought Sprinter was just vaga.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah. I mean, look, I think, you know, sort of a blessing of being part of like the, you know, Kardashian Jenner network is like all the brands, you know, sort of Actives family as well. Right. So like that outpost event at Coachella was hosted by 818, which is Kendall Jenner's, uh, to do the brand. And so, you know, they sort of let us tag along, right? They were like, Hey, we have an open booth. Love to have you there. We know you have the new product.

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Lily Comba

Mm? Yes.

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Jay Hunter

And like, you know, they've been great. a lot of the other sister brands have been really amazing in showing us support. And so that's sort of how we got a slot. So we sort of got to sneak in where it might otherwise be hard to do. And that was a huge help for us to like get like a good splashy early moment. So, you know, we're very grateful for them for letting us tag along.

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Lily Comba

I love that.

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Lily Comba

And also just like so well done too. I it it didn't seem like it was done last minute.

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Sarah Crow

So well done.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like even there, like they had great like booth partners that we got to work with or like merge partners. It's like, you know, like we did, we had the product sort of like on tap there. So like people could try the product pretty easily. And like they helped us with the vendor for that and like how to get the mixing right. And like, you know, they had some like really great additional partners that they let us tap into that helped a lot. So.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Lily Comba

Totally. we have some questions about you mentioned obviously the sisters being the Kardashian Jenner squad. the sisters being like, let's not name them, but it's who the it's literally the original influencers. we have some questions about Kylie. but because this is a podcast about influencer marketing and I know that like, my gosh, I think you got with your s experience with super fill like you had creators as one of your core growth principles from day one, it seemed like. So

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, sure.

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Lily Comba

Kind of what have you learned from the influencer marketing channel that you're applying now to your growth strategy at s at s at K two O by Sprinter?

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, I mean, it was always a big part of our strategy at Mary Ruse. I think like the best performing content is still, you know, creator or influencer content for sure. And look, I think like right now, if you were to go pull like every person who's graduating high school, like what's their number one dream profession? I think it's be a creator, you know? And so like, I just think like you want to convert a lot of your regular customers into creators. And I just think there's like, know, there's more creators now than there ever has been. And there's still like the main marketing lever to...

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Lily Comba

Yes. Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

Even if you're gonna run paid ads, you would probably run it on creator content, right? So for me, I knew early it was gonna be big. And I do think like Kylie sort of helped us unlock like the excitement for creators very early. was like sort of the special effect there. Like we had a huge wait list. They were up and running with Super Affiliated in like the first two weeks of launch. And we had a list of like a thousand people that wanted to be an ambassador for the brand like so quickly. And so like, you know, I'm not...

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Lily Comba

Crazy.

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Sarah Crow

Well.

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Jay Hunter

Unhumbled that like you know we got that mainly because Kylie's involved and people are very interested in that But I do think like after that, you know, you want to take care of the creators build a program That's good for them. Like I'm a firm believer in any partnership I have whether that's like with my co-manufacturer or creators It's like what a partnership that's like win-win You want to create a great product that customers like you want to give a good offer that the creators can sort of share with those? That audience and then like you want to help the creator make money also, right? So like that they are excited about promoting your product. So

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Lily Comba

Mm.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah. Are you guys kind of you're hitting on all the questions that we already have written? So this is both awesome, but also yeah, it's great. I'm curious though, with I'm curious though, with having someone like Kylie, the Kardashians, the Jenners in general, like to be honest, they're probably some of like the OG influencers we all think of. Are you integrating Kylie into the same kind of like

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Jay Hunter

Alright, like that.

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Lily Comba

Meeting's over.

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Huh.

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Sarah Crow

influencer type campaigns or is she just kind of like out on her own doing her thing and then you guys are just like, this is totally separate.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, I mean, she's very involved, right? Like she's very big on like, is the product good? Does it taste great? Like, does it actually work? Like she's like, you she gives a lot of feedback around that. And then she's very in touch with the marketing, right? Especially what we're doing around meta and IG specifically. I think she's like very in touch there. And so she likes to weigh in. I think like her ability to understand like what creators could be famous in the next is like uncanny, like, like nothing I've ever seen. But I do think like for most brands and even for this brand, like the

Lily Comba

Lily Comba

Wow.

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Jay Hunter

the sales and the conversion still lies with the everyday creator. If you want to have scale, you really got to tap in there. So I think we're doing a little bit of both. We're mixing kind into the marketing, but we're also just tapping into the everyday creator as well. And we're spending a lot of time there, especially on TikTok shops. It's just a little bit of a mix, I would say right now.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Yeah. When you meant you mentioned TikTok shop and like how are you thinking about creators as part of the commerce engine, specifically with TikTok shop, D to C, Amazon, retail, iHerb, you're everywhere. So how are you thinking about how are you integrating creators kind of into the broader almost like retail strategy?

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, yeah.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, I mean, think right now we haven't quite finalized it, but we want to create like the greatest influencer program that anyone could be a part of. Right. So we want you to be like, you know, if you're a creator, you probably have a TikTok account. You probably also have an Instagram account. Like we want you to be able to post on either about the product. We want it to be natural. Right. Like we sort of treating creators same way we would treat Kylie is like we made a product that she would love and she wants to use every day so that when she makes content, it just feels natural. Like sometimes you just post an Instagram story that's like.

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Lily Comba

Mm.

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Jay Hunter

Hey, I'm drinking my Sprinter in the morning and my HydroDug, you know, and like, that's pretty authentic and honest, which people like. But we also want to make that like what creators make. And then we want to make a program where like, if they're part of our TikTok shop, you know, Discord group, they can still earn commission if they post a TikTok shop video and they can make money there. But if they want to make an IG, they could be a part of our super affiliate brand ambassador program and they can make money there. We sort of want to like give them something where like they can make money everywhere. And we want to make that as like low lift as possible. So like today,

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you know, we use a new tool called tribe where we can like take people's Tik TOK content and then easily white list it, on meta. and that's been helping a lot. And that way creators can earn like sort of commission from driving sales on, on our website as well, which is very similar to like the Tik TOK shop strategy. Yeah. And so we're just trying to make more and more things like that. Like what's like through super affiliate, if you're an ambassador and you got three sales, like what's kind of free gift can we incentivize you at three sales or five sales or 10 sales to like help you.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

Very lucrative, yeah.

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Jay Hunter

be excited about promoting the brand and the product sport, but also to like make money and like get stuff you would actually like like, you know.

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Lily Comba

This is, I think, the true embodiment of being relationship first in your influencer program. Like, truly, because you are thinking about not only the benefit of creator to K2O by Sprinter, but you're thinking about the financial benefit and the partnership that's to that's evolving and developing with these creators that are sometimes microcreators, nano-creators, that aren't even getting a second, second glance at some of these other brands. And this is really how you build.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

relationships and you build a community around a brand, which like that's no notes

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Jay Hunter

For sure, I mean, I do think today, like, you know, in the early days of TikTok, even for us at Mary Rue, it was very like, try to work with every creator, work with as many micro creators as possible. I think that strategy is like a bit harder today. Like, it does require more of the traditional white love creator approach, right? Like you have to meet creators where they're at. Like some creators are gonna wanna text you, some creators like email, some creators will join your Discord group, some wanna communicate through IGDM. And I think like as a brand, like you have to do the extra work to like.

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Lily Comba

It's Yeah, it's more expensive than ever.

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Lily Comba

Mm.

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Sarah Crow

Totally.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Jay Hunter

talk to them where they want to talk to you. And then you also have to like go out of your way to like make the relationship personal, right? Like you got to host dinners in cities where some of your creators are, or like you have to know when your creators, you know, when anniversary is and like, are their kids names? And like, can you send them stuff? Like, you gotta treat, you know, everyone knows I'm big on family, but you gotta treat the critters like family too. Or like, it's just, it's not authentic or it'll just cost you a lot of money. And then it's difficult for the partnership to like make sense for both sides, you know? So.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

It is true.

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Lily Comba

It's true.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah. We've kind of come back full circle in that. I feel like around the time when probably like the three of us started an influencer, it was very hands-on like this. And then it went to scale really quickly. And now it's kind of coming back full circle to that moment of like how do we connect and stand out with some of these creators because they're getting hundreds of offers a day sometimes. I guess to kind of tie in a lot of what you're saying, Jay, is answering some of the chats that like the QA that's coming up.

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Jay Hunter

For sure.

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Jay Hunter

for

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Sarah Crow

but one of the things you were talking about was being able to have that pipeline from affiliate partners or creators all the way through whitelisting. and the follow-up that this person had was, are you thinking about your affiliates and your flat fee creators separately when you're doing that? Or are you just kind of like testing across the board and seeing what works?

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Jay Hunter

think usually we're thinking about them a little bit separately. For us, the ideal creator is commission based. That way the partnership always makes sense. They post, they drive sales, and we pay X dollars. I do think for some it's hard because they don't know if they're going to drive sales and you might have to do some flat fees. I just like to keep it reasonable. We're pretty honest. Hey, we can only afford X if it's going to be flat fee and we're not sure what your ROI is going to be yet.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Jay Hunter

Otherwise, we can offer this commission rates and you know, sort of skies the limit and as you grow and get more sales, we can work on a better commission rate. Like I'm very big on the partnership making sense for both sides and making money. I think for us, we just explained that to the creators. Like, hey, we can't afford, let's just say it's $500 a video is like a little outside our price range. And if it flops, that would be tough. It would be hard for us to do another partnership with you. And we're just pretty honest about that, which I think some brands are like very scared to say.

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Lily Comba

Mm.

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Mm.

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Lily Comba

Communicate it. Mm-hmm.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

But it's better to not work with the creator if you can't afford their rate and they're not willing to budge if you don't think it's going to be successful because the like one and done partnerships are not beneficial to either party. One, the brand will have wasted some money. And then for the creator, like they're also trying to build an audience that like follows them around. And if they're just doing all these one and done deals, like it's actually won't be great for them longterm. It's like, you just want to be like, sometimes we just tell partnerships like, Hey, we don't think it's going to work. It's amazing. We still want to send you some product. We'd love for you to just have the product if you like it. Don't have to post and like,

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Lily Comba

It's a first.

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Jay Hunter

keep your relationship open later in case you're like, I love this, I would love to promote it, you know, works out. But I you just have to be honest about it.

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Lily Comba

Yeah, I love that. I go ahead, Sarah.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah, for sure. I go ahead. I was gonna go into a new question, so go ahead.

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Lily Comba

I was just gonna I was yeah, you hold that question. I was just gonna say it's it's this mindset that you know, the Field Notes is all about kind of getting rid of the gatekeeping that is happening within our industry. And I think brands are also withholding a lot of information from creators. And so this idea that it's like we're gonna

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Sarah Crow

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

We're gonna tell you what engagement, what what engagement rate we're seeing on your profile. We're gonna pret or predict or forecast the type of revenue you're gonna drive. And this is how we're able to anchor your rate. Like those types of communications a lot of brands are not having with creators, but it is so mutually beneficial. And so I've always admired that about n that was this a very much a strategy that you had at Mary Roots, and it's refreshing that you're also bringing it to K2O. You're kind of like maintaining that level of integrity within your program, which I think so many brands forget about. So

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I love that.

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Jay Hunter

Sure. Mary Roos, like one of the strategies that really worked well for us is like, we just ultimately, after we had enough data, we just figured out there was like a cap, which for us at Mary Ruth's was like three grand to work with a creator for like, you know, a certain number of videos. And what we found with that strategy is like, we would work with 10 creators and sometimes six of them would not do very well and ROI was not good. But if you kept the rates low under three grand, it's possible that four that did well could make enough money to pay for the 10, right? But if you paid all those 10 creators 10 grand,

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Jay Hunter

the four could not pay for the 10, the amount of sales they needed to generate was too great. And so like understanding what your version of that is as a brand is I think is very important. That way you can take some swings on craters you're not sure that are gonna be, like maybe feel like a fit but you don't know for sure. That way you can still test them without essentially running out of budget or having to shut down your program because you overspent.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm. Right. And the only way to know that that's your limit is to experiment and to have a culture within your influencer team where yeah, you're gonna experiment you're we're gonna experiment, we may fail, but we also are gonna find those diamonds in the rough and we're just gonna lean into what's working. So another really good mindset to kind of happen. Go ahead, Sarah.

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Sarah Crow

For sure.

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Sarah Crow

I at this point too, Jay, you've kind of like danced around this question like a little bit in what you just said, but we have a question from the audience too. When working with high flat fee creators or just I would say flat fee creators in general, are you optimizing for GMV GMV goals or awareness to attract more commission focused creators? Like how are you thinking about reporting on those flat fee creators? Are they getting links and codes still?

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, I I think I almost always like to provide a code, right? Because I want some semblance of attribution for most creators. But I do think you have to make a judgment call. Like, I think there are some creators that build awareness. And in my opinion, like they help make your brand cooler. And then there's some creators you're working with specifically to drive sales.

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Lily Comba

Yes.

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Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

I do think you need appropriate mix, right? For me, that's like a little easier to distinguish, right? Like I have Kylie and other macro creators like that. And those are the ones that are like, did a partnership with that you should probably recently and like she makes the product cool for sure. Did that exact pose drive more sales than maybe a smaller creator that is more conversion focused? Maybe not, but it drives a lot of awareness that well, you know, I people all the time, right? Yeah, it's like,

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Sarah Crow

All clout.

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Lily Comba

It's like a halo effect.

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Jay Hunter

It's the same as like, you know, running ads to the site, right? Like, you know, let's say you run some meta ads, people visit your site, later they get an email from you. Maybe they go to Amazon, see your Amazon ad, they click the product, they buy it. You know, what part of the funnel did you need? The answer is all of those things. Otherwise you wouldn't have got the sale. The same thing is true as like the influencer space, right? Like people see like a really, you know, cool or popular creator and they're like, oh wow, they take this. And then later in everyday creator tells them like, oh, I bought it and I actually loved it. And then they're convinced to buy it. And you sort of need both those things for sure. I think like.

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It's a little bit of art figuring out like how much of each I would always lean conversion first, but I do think you got to work in some awareness or just you won't have enough people that like know about the brand or think it's cool to like really. So.

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Lily Comba

Art and science. Yeah.

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Lily Comba

Right.

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Yeah, I it's a it's such a balance of art and science. I think that's like it's left brain, right brain. That's my favorite part about influencer marketing. It's it's always a dance and an oscillation between the two. when it comes to kind of goals, this is a big thing that I'm hyper fixated on at the moment. Goals should evolve. That's just kind of my stance. And I feel like how are your goals for creator evolving or how do you plan for them to evolve since launch?

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Jay Hunter

Ooh, that's a good question. think the ultimate goal is always more sales. I do think, but I do think like for us, know, not announcing.

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Lily Comba

Yeah yeah, sales aside.

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Like from launch, where have your goal even seventy days ago? Like what were your goals for creators almost at launch versus what they are now versus where you think they may be around holiday?

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, I mean, they're definitely going to evolve later this year to be a little bit more retail focused. We've got two of the largest retailers in the country launching. I can't disclose this yet, but like both those launches, those are going to be really big nationwide launches. And so I will want to drive like a lot of the creators to talk about retail because, you know, retail is just a great channel. I think at launch it was very TikTok focused. So it's like very performance drive sales on TikTok.

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Lily Comba

Yeah. Cool.

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Jay Hunter

We have a little bit of inventory challenges this month, just because sales has been a bit better than I thought. But like next month is when we're going to spin up our sort of. Meta or like outside of regular Tik TOK or Tik TOK shops strategy. And I think when we do that, it'll be a bit more awareness focused, I would say. And then some of it will be persona focused, right? So like we built some personas around like one is like,

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Lily Comba

Good problem to have.

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Jay Hunter

you know, the avatar that really cares about skin and like where all the benefits of Verisol that we have in the product and help your skin. One avatar may be like, you know, electric light focus, like they take a different electric light. Can we convince them to take ours? You know, some of those things like that. And we're to have creators speaking about those like sort of specific things that fit those personas that will take customers to the, maybe a landing page that has the same messaging and then the CRM flow that has the same messaging. Right. And so I think it's going to evolve a little bit to be like persona focused in the middle here.

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Lily Comba

Hmm.

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Lily Comba

Fun. Now are those are you using those personas to identify the types of creators you want to work with or is it the type of like brief that they're getting? Is it a mix of both? Like how are the like how are you actually act at how are you how are you actually actioning in those personas?

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Jay Hunter

and then it's gonna lead a little bit of retail later in the year for sure.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, I think it's a mix. Big thing is like, we're trying to look for like which creators talk to that persona audience, right? So maybe that creator is not exactly that persona, it feels like they speak to that person, right? Ideally, so those things are aligned. So I think like that's like the most important thing for us. For sure, yeah.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm. They speak to it. Cool.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm. That takes a lot of due diligence and and watching.

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Jay Hunter

On the brief side, think we're like big, we want creators to always make the content they feel is authentic to them and speaks to their audience. So when we create briefs, it's always like, Hey, make whatever video you want to make. We trust you. You know, we're in vitamins. So it's usually like, Hey, love if you mentioned these things. Here's a couple of things our lawyers, here's a couple of things our lawyers say you can't say. And then usually it's like, Hey, here's a bunch of resources. So we have like these three briefs. We think these would be really great if you want to use them. Here's what we think like are some of the pain points that this persona might have, you know, that we know you speak to.

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Sarah Crow

Yay.

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Lily Comba

Ha ha.

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Lily Comba

Right, do's and don'ts.

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Jay Hunter

Here's some other videos from other creators that have done well. You we never recommend like copying another creator's work for work, but just for inspiration, here's some ideas that have done really well for us. And we just provide that as like a, here's some extra, but please make like what you feel is authentic to you. I think you just all, you have to do that. Like great creators will never want to follow an exact script. They're just not going to be interested in that. And you know, it's not going to work, honestly. So yeah, so yeah. Yeah.

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Sarah Crow

And they shouldn't.

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Lily Comba

Ben, I think I'm doing it right. Thank God. Hell yeah, Jay. Let's go. Let's end it now. Go ahead, Sarah. I think we've got we've got two minutes for our our final final question. We've still got a I mean, we gotta list where Sarah and I are both looking at our listers like how do we how do we end such an I mean maybe with the product expansion, if you want to take kind of my question about that.

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Jay Hunter

So, yeah, I'm out.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah.

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Sarah Crow

my gosh.

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Sarah Crow

I know. I don't know

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Sarah Crow

my gosh. Wait, product extension? What are you

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Lily Comba

Well, so Sprinter, as like we were joking about earlier, Sprinter we knew for vodka. well, it's actually funny. I didn't know Sprinter made vodka until they made K2O, and then I went into like a liquor store and I was like, Sprinter. but Sprinter already had kind of like a strong cultural identity. So what made Beauty led hydration feel like the right expansion for the brand brand? Like we're not even speaking about Creator right now. It's like, why did they launch K2O with Kylie Jenner? Like

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Jay Hunter

Sure.

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Sarah Crow

gosh, yeah.

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Lily Comba

How can brands learn from that? How can brands learn from this expansion? Because it's quite a pivot.

Jay Hunter

Jay Hunter

think for us, think the Voxels are still available, right? So for us is like that was the party moment and we wanted to own the moments around the party as well. we also felt like the expansion was just very natural, right? Like Kylie's just like in a different era. She takes a hydration product every day. She was taking one before we launched this, but now she has her own brand that she takes every day. Like just a little more authentic to where she's at and who she is, you know? And I think.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

Beauty's sort of at the core of everything she does. So was like a natural addition to the electrolyte product that we felt. I think just in general for product expansion and what we're thinking next, like, you know, this is a category where it's not like vitamins, where maybe it's like gummies or liquid, where like you take it and it's pretty quick. Like, you you drink like a 16 ounce bottle of this. So flavor is very important, right? It's like, can we expand to some additional flavors? I think we're going to launch a lemon lime here maybe in September.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm.

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Lily Comba

Mm.

Jay Hunter

Jay Hunter

and then we have like a crème apple for the fall that will stay around as like a long-term flavor. And then we're to launch some additional products like hydration plus a couple other benefits that we think will come out. Maybe the first one in October, then another in January. I think for us, we're trying to make additional products that are closely adjacent and like can build the cart, but also like natural extension. know, people can take that plus this and both, you know, together. So.

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Lily Comba

Ooh. Ooh.

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Lily Comba

Qual?

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Jay Hunter

I do think in this date, like, you don't want to overlaunch products, but I do think like the attention span of like the algorithms and the customers are pretty short. So like you do need some fresh and new quite frequently. I would say at least once a quarter, especially for creators to like be excited and have something new to talk about. You know, it's sort of tough for creators to talk about the same thing month after month. So.

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Sarah Crow

I'm curious.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Lily Comba

Mm-hmm. Yep.

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Sarah Crow

Mm-hmm.

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Lily Comba

Yeah. Amen.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah, for sure. I'd love I know we're at time. I'd love to wrap things up with this last question that we came in because I think it's something that I have to address all the time as someone that's consulted, especially with like the Skims Good Americans of the Kardashian brands. It's always the like, well, what's Skims doing? And I'm like, Well, Skims

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Lily Comba

Цей

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Sarah Crow

Has Kim? Like, what do you mean? What is Skim's doing? and so this last question is when you're at a smaller startup, maybe you don't have someone like Kylie or Kim behind the brand and you have a more limited budget. Like, do have any advice for some of those programs of like a way to test creator partnerships, what maybe they should do first, all of those kind of things?

Sarah Crow

Jay Hunter

Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

Yeah, mean, I you want to lean to commission focused partnerships early on if you can, or smaller flat rate creators. And I think the thing is like, if you're small, like every dollar counts and you just, you have to do a lot of work, right? Like you should do extra research on what creators are going to be a good fit. It's a little bit of a sales job. Like you got to hunt the creators down. You got to try to reach out to them and you got to sell them a little bit of the dream. Like why should they work with your brand? Like what is sort of old school sales in that way? I would say now.

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Lily Comba

Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

And then as soon as you get a little bit of traction with a creator, then you have to go really deep with them, right? Like let's just say you start with a creator and take their shots and they do really well. Like you gotta hunt that creator down and find their phone number or their email and you gotta call them and it's like, Hey, you did amazing. Like what, we're gonna send you a bunch of products. Like we'd love to take care of you. Can we send your sister some product? Like you have to like really make them feel great so that they go a little bit harder. And then as you build those initial core relationships, you can expand and explore like a little bit bigger budget.

Lily Comba

Lily Comba (30:57.904)

Yeah.

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Jay Hunter

I do think though, like creators are core to it all. So if I was going to spend any marketing dollars, it would be on creators first and then, you know, ad second. I think you can spend a ton of money on paid ads and get nowhere. But with creators, like you can at least generate some content. I think the biggest thing, if you're an early brand is like trying to negotiate some content ownership, at least for a shorter amount of time so that you can do more with it. Even if the core initial post didn't generate a lot of sales. And then, you know, again, as creators do good, you just want to go really deep. So.

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Lily Comba

Yeah, I love that. Well we we Jay Hunter, round of applause. Connie came back, said amazing work, loved this talk, so we got mom's stamp of approval. Let's go. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jay. Thank you to everyone who joined. I know everyone's hopping to their meetings that they're now three minutes late for, so thank you for for hanging with us. But appreciate the time, Jay. As always. Thank you. Bye everyone.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah. Jay Hunter, everyone. That was that was a great

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Jay Hunter

I love it. I love it. love it. Yeah. Amazing.

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Sarah Crow

Yeah. CEO said spend money on creators, so that's all I heard.

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Jay Hunter

Course.

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Jay Hunter

Thanks everyone. Yeah, thanks for having me.

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Sarah Crow

Thank you.

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Jay Hunter

Bye.

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