EP 46: How to Scale a "Cool" Brand Without Losing Its Soul

A big part of modern commerce is just moving in front of shelves. But once in a while, a brand comes along that makes people feel like they're a part of a secret club. It happens in the way you hold a cup of coffee or the confidence you feel putting on a jacket that actually fix your life. Our guest today is a master of that feeling. Alicia Moore has spent her career at the intersection of high-end aesthetics and mass market reality as the VP of marketing at half-days and the former head of brand at Lakalob Coffee. She's the one who's figured out how to keep a cool brand from losing its soul as it scales thousands of locations and millions of people. Today, we are digging into the art of branding and how that drives the revenue that businesses need. We're talking about the psychology of taste. Why creativity is a business requirement and how to build a brand that people don't just buy but actually obsess over. My name is Anish and I'm Jinks. And this is the art of commerce. Let's get into it. We're going to have an actionable insights for the modern market. Alicia, so great to have you. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. It's our pleasure. So we gave the background on Alicia, but another fact about her was she was with Lakalob. She was in Philly. So, you know, I have the love for Philly as everyone knows who listen to that. But now she's in Colorado. She's in Boulder. Yep. We're all relatively local, even though we're on the inner webs today, but we're all relatively local. So I have a great pleasure of seeing her live and in person every now and again. So I hope everyone in the pod after the listen gets the same. But Alicia, so great to have you. We are really excited because as an East end the beginning, you know, you're running a brand. You're running by the way a really cool brand that for those that don't know about it, Alicia will give you all the rundown because it is awesome. So before we get into what you're doing today and all that, I just love to hear your background. Like how did you get into marketing? How did you get into coffee? How did you get into half days, which is an amazing ski line and more. Like I'd love to hear about it. Yeah, absolutely. I think from as long as I can remember, I have been like a steward of brands. I've always consumed brands in a different way than like most people have. Like I have studied them and I'm like, I buy based on story, like the brand story and like they're the white space they take up the reason why they exist. And so that has always been kind of a through line for me. And even early in my career when I had first started, I cut my teeth and agency. So I started off in agencies. It was in the earned media space. So I spent many, many years working in PR and social. At some of the massive agencies like the IPG agencies where I worked on behalf of some like huge legacy brands like McDonald's and Verizon wireless. And I always found myself attracted to consumer brands. So I was never like a B2B girl. Like that was just not for me. And I always loved the stories. And so anyway, I spent my spend many, many years there. And then I eventually left the agency world and went to Locke Lone. I think that happens a lot for young folks who are in agencies. It's like you kind of you cut your teeth and agencies. You work on behalf of many brands. You figure out what you love. Maybe what you don't love. And then if you have the opportunity, you go in house. I had met Todd at an event and was just like he's very charismatic. And he had this like beautiful vision for what Locke Lone could be. It was very early on and at the Locke Lone journey. I think we had three cafes. We didn't even have a CPG business at all. So there was no growth, three business. We were just standing up e-commerce. So it was really a cafe and wholesale business. And I have I had long been a fan. And so I ended up taking a job as a marketing manager. And I spent almost 10 years there. It was like just over eight years. I spent the first half of my career leading brand marketing or working on brand marketing and eventually leading the team. So that was everything and earned media creative. And then I eventually went over to channel marketing and I led like sales strategy for our cafe channel and our hospitality channel. So worked really closely in the hospitality was a bit of B2B because we were trying to attract folks like you know, Marriott group or chefs and restaurant chairs. And so anyway, it was an amazing journey. We were acquired by Chobani. I left shortly after that. And then started it half days. And now I be the marketing team at half days. That's unbelievable. So for the folks listening like what are the lessons you like because that's that's like an amazing run like like just so when she says Todd, she's talking about Todd Carmichael the founder of lock alone, you know, the guy that appeared on dangerous grounds. If you were watch that show, which I love. And he started it. And so you really started on the ground and before there was even like package goods. Like you said, and now lock alone is everywhere even before the Chobani acquisition. I feel like like because we have a lot of love for Billy. It's a really brand. I'd be like, oh, Billy brand. Yeah. So like what did you learn about like scale and and like, you know, just as you drive to that scale. Like what did you learn about like driving a marketing team. Building culture like I love to hear about that because we really talk to people in your shoes. Yeah, I think this is a bit of a sweet spot for me coming in at a brand that has been around long enough to be resourced and has built somewhat of a reputation. But maybe isn't nationally known or doesn't have like really wide brand awareness. And then being able to build that into something that like really has just like high household penetration and a lot of people are aware of it. That was certainly the case for lock home and we're seeing that the case for half days. Half days has done an amazing job over the past five years of being really relevant to its core customers. And then recently we started to kind of tap into customers well beyond the group of girls that shop half days by partnering with Hoka and just like expanding our reach pretty significantly. There's so much there's so much opportunity in front of us. So I just I think that this is a bit of my sweet spot is coming in early and being able to scale. And that has never scared me like the idea of scaling. I think scares a lot of people and particularly in the coffee industry where people are all about like counter culture and it's all about like the underground scene. You want to be like the first to know. You know for many folks at lock home in the early stages, it was like do we want to be that big and I'm like to me it's like I know so many brands that are cool that have scaled to be that big like who doesn't like I mean look at Ralph Lauren and I've got the Olympics on my mind or even Nike. I got the Olympics on my mind. It's like these brands are so huge and they are. I've been around for decades and they have scaled beyond my wildest dreams. However, they're still cool. And so I just think that there's a way if you're like hyper focused on your customer and your your why to be able to go from like small but like brand that like only the cool who's who know about to everybody knows about it yet it's still like remains authentic. I like love that again, like I'm such a nerd about like branding, but that's like such a thing for me. It's just a fun opportunity to to work on brands that are already for that. So is that how you like so if we're trying to get the the takeaway for the listener like is that the way you stay cool basically is like understand your core target is understand your customer and be a maniacally authentic for lack of better term to them. I think so. Yeah, I think it's bad. It's like really being hyper focused on like why you even exist and like the value offer. And then there's always the layer of like being culturally relevant like if you have no idea what's going on in the world and how people are consuming things that how he's supposed to elicit an emotional reaction and any of the content that you're producing or in any of the things that you're doing in the experience is that you're hosting or whatever like the whole point of all of this is to make people feel a certain way and then you drive the behavior and they're like the behavior change. And so for me it's like it's and I think a way to make people feel is either to be like incredibly authentic. You're like that person knows who they are they get who they are in case of a brand that brand guess who they are. Or to meet people where they are and some of that is just being like really dialed into what the like cultural like guys looks like and what the world looks like at the time that you're launching something. And it's all that it says you got to make people feel something. They can feel something. 100% speaking your language. What does that look like in practice because we we talk about this spiritual or the philosophical approach of brand new all the time right like you got to be culturally relevant. You got to have strong positioning know your wise but can you give us a few examples of what that looks like in practice in your current role at half days. Yeah, absolutely. So I think a good example of this could be our winter campaign. So our winter can we watch our winter ski collection in October of this past year and the campaign all hinged on this idea about a girls trip. I think like you know if it's as simple as it's like okay a girl's trip what does that even mean but if you like dig into the life. of the emotional layers of what a girl's trip means. It's like, it elicits this response, it's nostalgia, it's giggles, it's this feeling that you're like free of whatever ways you down on a day to day because you're like hitting the road with your girlfriend's from college, you get to leave your kids at home and you're going on a girls trip and like what happened on a girls trip stays on a girls trip. It is this like, you know, this like very exciting, highly emotional feeling. And so when we discuss this, we were like, we know our girl travels to ski. She very much lives in New York or Los Angeles or Seattle. And so she's often traveling or Denver. And in which case, even if it's Denver, she's still like driving to the mountains. So there's an aspect of travel that's like really vital for us. And then there is, or important to this story. And then there's this aspect of friendship, which is deeply rooted in who we are. Like we were started by two friends. And we have very much this like, like this like camaraderie, you know, this girl's camaraderie, that's like cord to our brand. And then we know what it means to go on a girls trip. Like we just like feel it in our bones. And so we're like, how does that show up? And when we decided we were going to do this, we, you know, the first thing was like from a creative standpoint, when we shot this, we hired three models and we made sure they were friends. We were like, we need three beautiful women who were friends with each other who like have some sort of relationships. So when they're like pretending to joke, they're like not inauthentic. And so we shot with many models, which was kind of a new thing for us. Typically we don't have a ton of people on site when we're shooting, especially on mountain because it's complicated. And then all of the creative kind of came together with that. And then there was like layers and layers of what we were gonna do. Like we did a whole ad campaign at DIA. And we were like, people are traveling. They're traveling in, they're coming to DIA as like a Denver International Airport for those that might not be local. And then they're voyaging off into the mountains. And so like it was everything from like our creative concept to our media buys. We did a girls trip, trip with a bunch of influencers, but they were friends. So like it wasn't so much of an influencer trip. It was more of like a brand host of trip. And they were friends and they were amazing spheres. And so we were able to tell our technical story, but we were able to do it through this lens that felt emotional. And so yeah, I think that they're like, once you latch onto that key insight and you understand like what your drives your behavior. We were like, this is it. This is what the season's going to look like. And it's gonna be like really rooted in and how you feel when you go on this trip. - In the listening group, half me is calm. When I first saw that website and the merchandising the sky of them is just, the story that was coming out, it blew my mind. I've worked in Merchandising because of James. He got me on his key, my sling to work on Merchandising. James is an incomers native too. And man, it's telling that we're telling what that webpage, it blew my mind and now that we talk about it, the authenticity like actually recruiting models, people, it's telling kind of friends and that relationship dynamic comes to naturally. Now it all makes sense now that I've heard this story. - Yeah, I was going to exactly what I was going to say in issues that even the authenticity and the casting, right, you didn't go and get through random people and then it's like, no, it felt real. And that's awesome. I will say, let's take a little bit of a step back 'cause why don't you explain to the people they don't know about half days and about that story that you're crafting? - Yeah, absolutely. So okay, so half days have been around for five years. We were founded by three women, one of which is an Olympian skier. She skied in areas. She was actually just there this week. So I mean, when I've seen some of the coverage of Herbie and Onside and kind of seeing her former her former like teammate skiing, but she's a phenomenal skier. And her and Ariana, one of our other founders got together and then many years ago when they were kind of looking at the skiing landscape and the outdoor industry just holistically and they they saw a very clear like gap in the market. And that was this intersection of technical and fashion. And so what they they set out to do was create products that would perform, would perform for people who love to be outside. I mean, we have an Olympian skier as our founder. So it had to hold up on mountain and compete with these legacy brands that already exist. And then something that felt good, that made you feel good, that like fit a woman's body. And you know, Kylie and Ari say it so well that like early in the industry, they would refer to it as hinkit and shrink it. And that was kind of what these legacy brands would do is they would create, they would create products that were based on men's clothes and they would shrink it down and make it a pink color or a lighter color or whatever it is. And then they'd be like, this is now the female collection. Correct. And it is such an old school approach to that industry when most people are mountain are women right now. Like if you look at any of the recent metrics that came out in some of the reporting from bail, it's like women early adopters to the skiing and they're the ones that are learning and spending time on the mountain and bringing their family out. And so it's just like so vital that we tap into this female market. So they set out to create products both technical and fashionable and have done just that. And so it's been five years in the making and we have a full collection. We started and we cut our teeth in winter sports and have since launched a year round business really focused on owning the mountain and creating a technical apparel. So everything from hike and trail to lifestyle wear that would have a place in mountain towns to skiing snowboard. That's awesome. You hit something, you founder, one of the founders was an Olympian, right? I'm good. I alluded to a little bit about the Olympics, but can you tell our audience and walk us to the journey? 'Cause I was sitting there watching the Winter Olympics, actually watching Lindsey von Strahl run. So it was great, actually great timing. Although not great outcome later, but at least that part she made it was great. And what did I see in the commercial break? Half day's at and I texted you right away. That's awesome. So can you walk the audience through like, what was the mentality of like, hey, we're gonna have an attempt at Olympics. Like a lot of perception is expensive. This is like the super bowl of winter sports. Walk us through how you got that going and what you did from an execution perspective and how you're measuring it from a success perspective. Totally. Yeah, so I mean, the Olympics is so core to who we are. We say it all the time and again, if you're on the website, you probably see it. It's like a Libby and Founded that is such a huge important piece to us. And I think again, like we, in a lot of ways, reminds people that it is about technical, right? Like it is about making technical clothing and that that is like that we're not just like a pretty, a pretty base, but we like compete. We wanna be first tracks and we wanna be out there. And so for me, the Olympics was such a huge, important moment. I mean, not for nothing, but it also only happens every four years in winter, Olympics, right? So like this, it was like now or never sort of thing or now or not for a long time. - She did. - And so yeah, correct. So we decided that we were gonna really tell our story about the Olympics and some of this was also because we had part of our strategy for this past year was acquiring as many new customers as possible early in the season. And so a lot of what we did was like top of funnel strategies to grab as many people to the site. And so what that meant was that we had a lot of people who maybe didn't even know who we were, who were just like attracted to some ad that was beautiful or saw our DIA ads or came through from organic content or influencer content, but they really didn't know our brand story. And so this was our chance to tell our brand story. And so we re-did our entire about us page to make sure that like it was super clear. - Amazing. - That when you went on our site, you understood who we were. And then we created a full social strategy working with this amazing graphic designer to kind of create a world around that. And so all of our social assets kind of looked felt. And then the same like storyline and they were all very much terrible. And they were all in celebration of the Olympics. So a lot of what we posted leading up to the Olympics and early on was like how to watch the Olympics, where to watch the Olympics, what we're watching, what we're excited about all the amazing athletes that are competing. And then we flew Kylie out to the Olympics with three folks from our team to get like on the ground view of like the Olympics. Like what does it look like to be an Olympian to be at the Olympics? And they were obviously all kidded out on half days. And it was like, they showed ways to style a lot of our core pieces that felt very like go America. And then we ran CTV ads. So the CTV ads were part of the Media Max and part of our full 360 approach for the entire Olympics through weeks. And we ran them in key markets that we had some awareness in Denver was one of the markets. So that's why you received those ads. And it was the ad were built on our brand story. So again, it was like, it was like who are we? Who is Kylie? Why did we make this? What other offering that we're solving for? And why you should shop half days? And I'm thrilled you saw it. Yeah. I was thrilled to get that technology. I sent it to the Slack to the whole team. I was like, guys, it's out in the world. [LAUGHTER] It's been a really exciting couple of weeks. That's amazing. So when it's wrapped up, did you say a couple more days, how are you going to evaluate success? Because I know we talk about that a lot, especially. I mean, look, I even sort of concast, Peacock has the Olympics. And if you're doing CTV, you're charging a premium. I'm sure. or a pink box. So, like, how are you gonna evaluate it? And how do you get buy in from your CEOs that aren't marketers? - Yeah, you know, our leaderships, they are marketers. Like, I think that that's actually, not, it's a little bit different actually than my previous places I've worked, where I have worked for people who were not really that, and didn't like value or understand it as much. You know, they talk a lot about like a CMO, having a seat in the boardroom. Like, and a lot of companies, that's not the case. So, in like our company, like, it is very much the case, like, Ariana and Kylie, they care deeply about marketing, and they don't need much convincing to do things that are top of funnel that maybe are harder to measure. A lot of what we do is kind of intuition based. It's like, I know this is cool, it feels good. I think it's gonna be awesome. So, even like the DIA as NCTD, it's like they're much harder to measure. And when I go into pitching this, I'm like, listen, we can get measurable, we can get results from our CTV ad. They're gonna tell us how many households we reached and what the impressions look like, and we can get some regular data about who that person was and whatever. You know, we also have some data based on like, IP and the click through, and like this person had this screen in this house and they clicked to our site, but it's not like running an ad on meta. Right. And so I always start with like, this is not going to be the same measurable results as something like a meta or Google ad or anything like that. Like this is totally, totally different. And so some of it is just like, kind of level setting expectations and measuring it. There's also like a long tail measurement. So we're like, we're, it's really just about like how many people will recall it and say it to us, frankly. Like how many texts can I get from fields like EJ and say they're like, I saw your ad and I'm like, it works, it's working. Like another, that's not like a conversion, but it is working. And then the last piece I'll say is we recently signed on with Triple Whale to get like full at, to start to fully understand attribution because we had been working off of like platforms like J4 and other places that had given us some information on where people are coming from, but it didn't feel like it was comprehensive enough and certainly had a bias. And so we signed on with Triple Whale recently and that gives us the ability to look at the entire consumer journey and figure out how many times they were touched by whatever it was. And then we can figure out how they converted. And in a lot of cases, the conversion is coming through as direct or it's coming through from meta or something that is like last click, but I can click in and find and look at a handful of people and go, yes, last click was our Instagram ad. However, they also received four emails. They also received, they also saw the CTV ad, they also saw this and we have all our job jobs and then now we have the punch at the end and that's what's getting the attribution. But it gives me the confidence to make decisions that are a little bit more good because I don't, because I have some insight, even if it's not their last click, that they, that the stuff we're doing is working. - Yeah, no, I love that. And we talk about attribution all the time and it's really impactful whether it's attribution or whether it's portfolio and commentality holdouts, if you're able to do that or whatever to show how these different and not last click methodologies to work because otherwise, I mean, otherwise, if you go to the CFO, basically they're gonna say, well, all right, brand search all day and you're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, stop. Like, I know it's the last, we got a lot of orders, the cost for orders low, but it masks so many things. But I also do love that you said jab jab punch from an attribution perspective, so I'm gonna steal that because I have not used that one in my, in my warehouse though. I do like that. - I mean, it takes about four weeks for anybody to convert for half days, like for new customers to convert for half days and it takes many jobs. Like, it's not like they just can see us once, like, it does not how that works. And so I'm always like, can we study how many jobs? And like, and how many of which are paid jobs versus things that we're doing that's organic because the whole goal is to be able to spend less and be able to rely more heavily on earned media. And that's honestly like, I'm not a performance marketer. So for me, it's like, I'm trying. - You sound like one. - That's kind. No, I'm always looking for ways to be able to validate the work we're doing from earned media standpoint. - Yeah. - Actually, that does lead into a question I had later, but I'm gonna bring it up now, 'cause you talked about your PR background. And working in there, and in my view, because we've worked in similar businesses, in the sense that we do not have unlimited budgets. And yet, we're trying to tackle, there's a lot of noise in the market. You're trying to drive performance, drive sales, all that stuff, but you've tried to create a brand. So how do you think about this earned media elements, PR element, this organic element, and how does that feed into your paid strategy? What, do you have a view on that or something you communicate to the team? - This is so cliche. And I remember very early on in my career, it was like the thing that is like, content is king. Like, I used to be like, I'm so tired of people saying content is king. But as I like think back on it, I'm like, it's kind of true. You know, like, it is really true. Like, you need really good storytelling and really, really good content. And that is the through line. Like, that is so vital. It's what feeds into paid media, but it's what allows you to tell a story and earn media. And so I think that that's just like such an important piece to this. And like content doesn't just show up as like a graphic design or an illustration or whatever. It's like the way we engage with influencers and the content that they're producing and the authenticity for their channels. And it's also the press stories. Like, you know, again, coming from a PR background, it's very easy. It's not easy. Press is not easy to get. But it's easier to get roundups. Top five jackets to wear during ski season this year. And you're listed as one of many. Like, that's really valuable undoubtedly. But what's more valuable is half days, best ski suit on the mountain. And a full story about why we're the best, because of all the technical details that we put into the jackets that make it stand out and feel better. And so when I say content is rinse, right, Bill? It's like, it's not just like, quick turn content you see on social, but it's like at every turn, it's dialed in. There's also another, what was Walt Disney's say, a brand is a culmination of a thousand tiny gestures or something like that. And I think a lot about that, cool, as like, that's the kind of how I feel about brand. And it's role in relation with hormones and paid media is like, at the end of the day, we need a thousand tiny gestures. And maybe 80% of those gestures are brand and 20% are earned media. But we need a thousand tiny gestures that make up who we are in order for people to feel any sort of like brand love or loyalty. - I love that. It could be Jabs, you never know. It could also be Jabs. - Jabs, that would be Jabs. - That would be Jabs. (laughing) (upbeat music) - This is the art of commerce, featuring conversations on creativity and conversions. If you found value in today's episode, follow the show, leave a review, and stay tuned for more insights for the mind's reshaving modern marketing. (upbeat music)