Amanda Wall

Former Glossier COO Henry Davis brought the house down last week at our NYC happy hour. People were absolutely stoked to hear from him, so I wanted to share 3 key takeaways for the ecomm ops leaders who weren't able to join us: 1. Prioritize planning. Early and often. It's probably not a supply chain problem — it's a planning problem. 2. Remember what you're selling and why people care. Why are customers buying something from YOU at 50% margin? Create the delivery experience that furthers the brand. 3. Ops people have a unique POV on the business but don't always have the muscle for getting their ideas in front of leadership. Here's how Henry recommends getting buy-in with execs: 1) tie ideas to gross profit dollars vs. gross margin and 2) present the info in a way that makes your boss feel clever (and relieved that you're at the helm). Thanks again for joining me, Henry. Really enjoyed the chat.

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Too often, I hear how some business leaders “don’t get” brand. The funny thing is *everyone gets brand.* Because we choose one over another all day long. 👉🏽 Call a Lyft over Uber. 👉🏽 Use Asana over Trello. 👉🏽 Get a salad from Sweetgreen over Mixt. 👉🏽 Buy athleisure from Athleta over Lululemon. 👉🏽 Order a puffy jacket from Patagonia over The North Face. Why? Preference. There’s something about the experience we have with one brand that we like better than others. It’s a feeling. An emotional connection, which is not always easy to explain – or measure. But it sure does drive our buying decisions. 💰 So we keep going back to the same brands over and over. We trust them. We become loyal to them. 🥰 Sometimes, it doesn’t even make sense why we stick with a brand. For example, I’ve seen photos from Android phones that are so much better than the ones my iPhone takes – but I keep getting iPhones. I’ve even questioned this choice. But I trust Apple enough not to want to try another brand – even if I prefer what that other brand offers. It’s not a rational decision – it’s emotional. Not convinced that brand drives business success? Try an experiment that can save you money for the next 6 months, but may cost you long-term customer loyalty: 💀 Think of brand development as an “extra,” not a must-have 💀 Rely on AI to form a connection with your customers 💀 Focus only on immediate, measurable financial results *Please report back. I'm genuinely curious if this can achieve long-term growth.* What do you think Nike has to say about this? 😬 Brand and marketing leaders: How do you respond when business leaders express confusion about the value of brand development?

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You don't want your brand to be like Liquid Death. I immediately roll my eyes when people want to be like brands like Oatly, Innocent Smoothies, Surreal, Wendy's ( people like clients; creatives; me, myself and I on a Teams call when I ask my team how our clients can be more like Liquid Death). And it's not because these brands haven't done a brilliant job in disruption, positioning, route to market, tone, voice and ultimately, commercial success (I don't know how Wendy's is doing commercially, please don't @ me). They are all masterclasses in defying category conventions and building a strong and clear positioning that drives business, brand and marketing strategy. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of brands willing to do that. But we are all missing the point when we say we want to be like Oatly and Liquid Death. It's not just about executing one funny campaign or having quirky packaging. You cannot pick and choose which bits of THAT particular strategy play you want to mimic. It doesn't work that way. Most brands want to be known for the cool stuff, but they don't want any of the flack for the risks. So they play it safe, which means they do it wrong. Liquid Death chose to be provocative and defiant and do things that any CEO would probably die before agreeing to. But that isn't why they are winning. They are not winning because they are being provocative in a single OOH billboard, or even because they are being provocative at all. They are winning because they have a positioning and they go all in on it. Do or die. And I am sure they get their distribution, logistics, sales channels, retail strategy right as well. They are the sum of their parts, not just one tweet that went viral. And you don't have to be a provocative brand to win. You have to find your positioning, define a tone of voice, and stick with it. Repeat. Kit Kat is not provocative as a brand at all, and they're doing pretty well. There is nothing controversial about having a break. We are all a bit too hung up on chasing something new and trendy (like acting like Liquid Death), when we should be executing on something that is already built into our DNA. Of course, you have to define that thing first, and I think THAT's where we should be focusing our attention.

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