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This is Reinamoto's Podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone, welcome to The Creative Mindset, a podcast about what the future holds at the
intersection of creativity and technology. I am Reinamoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York and Tokyo. In today's episode, we speak with Julie
Channing, the former and original CMO and the global VP of marketing of Orbers, a New Zealand
and American company that became famous for its wool-based, really comfortable shoes.
It is also one of the early pioneers of direct consumer business movement over the last decade.
Julie is a marketing leader with a track record of building and nurturing world-class brands.
In 2020, she was chosen in Adweek 50 a list of quote,
indispensable execs who stepped up for their brands when it mattered most, unquote.
She is also featured as an instructor at Section, an online mini MBA school for business
professionals. She is currently an independent consultant and a fractional CMO working for
various brands and startups. In part 1 of my conversation with Julie, we get into her time
at Orbers and what it was like in its early days and, as usual, 3 key takeaways that I
think will be useful for anyone working in marketing and branding. So, let's get started.
Hi, Julie. Good to see you.
You too, Ray. So fun to be here.
I know. It's been so many years. We, you know, we used to work together many,
many years ago, many, many moons ago.
Well, I recall you and PJ, who was a recent guest as well.
Yes.
Coming in more or less at the same time I had been at AKQA, previous to the arrival of the
two of you and having the two of you come as this sort of package deal of creative excellence.
And, you know, at first I was thinking, how is this going to work with co-creative directors?
And I was so instantly just impressed, but also excited about what it meant for the agency.
I'd been there for a few years. I was very, very excited about AKQA's future. And I just
thought you both brought like a different kind of skill set and energy that we longed for.
And so I was very pumped. That's kind of what I remember is just thinking,
wow, you know, Tom and Ajaz have made a very smart decision with this one.
You're being too kind.
I'm not.
I think you were the account director for the Palm client.
I was.
There was a product, you know, Palm Pilot.
And Palm Pilot.
I mean, some of the listeners might be too young to know what the hell is that, right?
Yes.
Yeah. So before the iPhone, before the Android phones,
there were BlackBerrys and Palm Pilots. And Palm was a big client of ours.
And so you'll be having respectful but intense conversations about, you know,
what we should do, what we should present. You know, is this the right idea? Is this a better
idea? So yeah, that must have been back in 2000, gosh, five, 2006-ish.
Yeah, it must have been. I think I started there in 2002.
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So and well, that's a fun memory that you have because the three of us were quite a trio. And
I'm actually still very close to both of them today. And I look at what we did perspectively,
and we balanced each other out in the camaraderie amongst our crew. It was a highlight of my career,
even though I've gone and done a lot of things since then.
You were at AKQA on the agency side. And since then, you've gone through a few different rounds
of different types of clients and industries, you know, technology, consumer brands, and most
recently, a startup. So I want to start the conversation there. And we might sort of rewind
the time clock a little bit just to compare, you know, your experience in your notes from other
brands that you work for. But what I wanted to start off with was the most recent brand
that you worked for was Oberst.
Yeah, I'm happy to sort of relive that chapter. It was very exciting, and to your point,
you know, an experience that kind of, if you're lucky, you get once in your career.
But when I started working with Allbirds, it was fall of 2015. So it was about six-ish months before
the company even officially launched. The launch was in March of 2016. And so when I came on board,
I was actually consulting at the time. I thought I'd try consulting after my time at Nest. And so
it was my first client, which very quickly became my next full-time home.
But I was introduced to one of the two co-founders, and it was right at the tail end of them closing
their seed round. So very early days. They had just closed their seed round. They had named the
company. They obviously had a really amazing concept for both the business and the product
itself, and were pretty far along in the journey of the product development, but really nascent in
the forming of the brand. Like I said, it was essentially an idea and a name at the time that
I jumped on board. And so I came on with the two co-founders and the charge in those early months
was really help us figure out how to craft this brand from the ground up. And everything from the
positioning, the targeting, the identity, the story, all the way through to thinking about
what kind of PR firm do we need in order to help us enter into the world? How do we need to think
about structuring the marketing organization? What hires do we need pre-launch versus post?
And so it was a really big challenge for me, quite honestly. I certainly had, by that point
of my career, worked on behalf of a lot of different types of brands and different stages of growth.
And I'd been very lucky to work on a number of purpose-led brands, but I'd never had the
challenge of, if you take all the institutional knowledge that you've amassed, could you help
birth a brand and help it realize its potential and sit alongside the likes of some of
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these incredibly beloved, iconic, world-class brands that I'd had the good fortune of working
on in the past? Yeah. So you said the fall of 2015, and it was five, four, five, six months before the
company officially launched. And am I correct in assuming that by that point, the products,
the first product was ready? It wasn't out in the market, but was ready? Or were they still
developing the product? They were still, it was still in prototype phase. The company,
the idea for the company had started actually with one of the co-founders in particular,
Tim Brown. And it was something that he had started and launched a Kickstarter to support.
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. That's a famous, one of the famous Kickstarter campaigns, isn't it?
Exactly. And so there was a concept shoe that he had taken into development to support the
Kickstarter. And if you could see that original shoe versus what the original Allbirds shoe looked
like, you could see the similarities, but it had definitely evolved. And so, like I said, when I
came on board, they were still very much working through the prototyping and just the phases that
you go through of developing and refining the product itself. But the concept was there.
And you were employee number what?
One. When I started, it was just the two of them and myself.
Oh, wow. So you were employee number one. Wow.
Yeah. It was a leap of faith. I will be honest. Like I said, I started initially in a consulting
capacity and I thought, oh, this will be interesting. I will help these two guys
figure out really what is the story and how to bring it to life in a meaningful way. And
a lot of the things, like I mentioned, that go into really setting the stage for a brand
launch. And a few months into that journey, they asked if I'd be willing to come on full
time and head up marketing. And it was a moment that took me a little while to come around to,
just more because it felt very fraught with risk. I, at the time, was living in San Francisco,
the breadwinner, two kids, a mortgage. The rational side of me was saying, you're crazy.
Obviously, when you go into working for a startup, particularly at that early stage,
the salary cut that I was going to need to take was significant. Obviously, the upside of that
is you're getting in early from an equity perspective, but that's a bet. You don't know
how that's going to shake out. And it was these two guys who had never run a company before.
It was a concept that, on the face of it, as I was talking to friends in my circle and
network about just evaluating what to do and soliciting some thoughts and ideas. They're
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like, this concept of wool shoe, and they think they can compete with the likes of Nike and Adidas.
It just, on the face of it, it seemed very risky. And yet, what I kept coming back to
was two things, really. One, again, I've been so fortunate to work on some of the most incredibly
beloved brands around the world. And I felt like Allbirds had all the makings of. I felt like it
had a very pure purpose that the world needed to see fulfilled on. I felt like the product,
while it was still in the development stage, it was different. And it had this
immediate comfort experience that was unparalleled, that begged to be talked about.
And I think, for me, it was that ultimate challenge of, can you do this? Can you get out
of your comfort zone and take everything that you learned and really help build a brand from scratch?
And for me, that was a really exciting professional challenge. And then the other
thing was that I really liked Tim and Joey. I really felt like what we were starting to create
together was special and different. And work was fun. Ironically, I went from having,
I think at the time when I had left Nest, my budget that I was managing was, call it in the
60 to $70 million range. And I went to Allbirds and my first year budget was genuinely less than
I would have spent on a single event in my time at Levi's. And so I'm sitting here going, how am
I supposed to do this with so few resources? But I think, again, the turning point for me was just
like, you know what? Do it for a year. See if you can do this, if you enjoy doing this. And if
nothing else, I will have this new set of skills and experiences to sort of round out what I've
already accomplished. I've done the big brand thing. I've done the big global organization.
I've done the agency thing. I've done hyper growth stage with Nest based on when I joined.
And this was a new bucket of opportunity to develop some new skills and learnings. And
so I ultimately, after a lot of thoughtful discussion and consideration, I just said,
let's do it. And that was, I think officially I decided to come on just at the tail end of 2015.
And like I said, we launched in March of 16. Yeah. Wow. So you, from a branding and marketing
perspective, and you as the first employee, official employee, other than founders,
and the first person to do marketing, and especially for a consumer product like this,
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you know, marketing is the key differentiator in many, many ways. There's of course the product,
but how you talk about the product and how you market the brand. What was the first thing that
you did at Oberst? So after, I mean, the first thing that we did was just the fundamentals of
the brand, getting really clear on what is our unique reason for being, what is the promise that
we can make to our consumers? And, you know, how do we fulfill on that from a principal's point of
view, just the building blocks to give you that North star that would then help dictate the
stories that we needed to tell to whom and how. So once that was very clear and in focus and,
you know, associated with that, the tone of voice and the look and feel and some of those
things that are important about building a brand foundation. What was the purpose, the clear purpose
that you set for Oberst and how did you come up with it? The clear purpose for Allbirds
is built around the idea that we can reverse climate change through better business.
And so it starts with this different way. If you start with that as your thesis, you are going to
make things differently and you're going to evaluate the impact of those things before you
make them, not after. And so that's really what led to this, you know, the summary phrase of being
about making better things in a better way. And, you know, Allbirds is an incredible brand that has
really changed the trajectory of the industry in a lot of ways, you know, to not only be
taking the lead on some of this innovation, the brand that made the very first ever
green alternative to EVA, which is the primary material makeup of the sole of your shoes.
Allbirds kind of stopped at, you know, we found a better way and we're going to keep that to
ourselves. But because of that purpose that we can reverse climate change through better business,
Allbirds knew it could not accomplish that goal if it kept all of its innovations to itself,
because it will never be on the size and scale of, you know, well, hopefully someday it will
be the size and scale of a Nike or an Adidas, but one little brand isn't going to make a difference.
It's about many brands embracing this new way of operating. And so the decision was made to
open source. Once we created the innovation, we made it available via open source so that other
brands would indeed adopt that material. And it's that kind of courage to say, okay, if this is our
purpose, we have to live up to this purpose, not just in what we make, but how we push the industry
forward. Yeah. I mean, having done this many, many years and, you know, you the same coming up with
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just a few words to describe a very high level concept is much more difficult. You know, it's
easier said than done, right? Reverse climate change through better business. Was that through
a course of conversations that you had with the founders? Was it you workshopping with them?
Did they already have that statement? Tell us a little bit about how you arrived those specific
six words. Yeah. So I think those specific six words came about a few years into the brand's
existence that was not on the page when we first launched. The idea was the central idea was
when we launched, we definitely had that notion of we make better shoes in a better way through
natural materials. That idea was very clear. And I think succinctly described in a way that people
could embrace it. And that was developed through a series of conversations with myself, with the
co-founders. And also we worked with Brett Antler was our partner on the brand identity work in
those early months. And so it was very much a collaborative effort of just sort of putting
the intent at the center and then trying to massage the words to say it to your point in the
most succinct and compelling way. And then with that idea of reversing climate change through
better business, that came at a point when we were sort of in an inflection point of growth
in saying a lot of things have changed. We are no longer just about making shoes. We are no longer
just about wool. We are no longer just online. We have moved into retail. We are in so many more
countries. We need to get even sharper on communicating our why so that as our network
grows, everybody is singing from the same song sheet. And so again, I think there was some
institutional knowledge that had been in the minds of some of the early employees that we just needed
to pull out and kind of look at again and make sure like, yeah, we're saying this in the way that
we think is as clear and compelling as it could be and also as aspirational as a purpose needs to
be. And that for me was the moment when it was like, how we fulfill on our purpose is by making
better shoes in a better way. But actually, the thing that sits above that is much bigger. And
that's what's going to make us make the decisions around things like trying to move the industry to
you know, put a carbon score on the products we buy, much like calories are on food packaging.
Previously, you were at Nest, you were at Levi's, you had worked on multiple brands when you were
on the agency side. But so why did you do that the first thing based on your previous branding
experience? Really, then when I put on the marketing hat, the two things that we placed greatest
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emphasis on were PR and social media, we knew that we had a brand story and a product offering
that begs to be talked about, like it was so different on so many levels, that from a marketing
perspective, the task at hand was really just to get it in the right hands or on the right feet,
as it were, of the right people. And then to, you know, just sort of build those relationships
in a very genuine way, I would say from the first days of all birds, when we started to engage
with people, we created fans. And we did that because we were very human in our approach.
We did that because, you know, there was a very clear opponent, if you want to call it that in
terms of the way that things are made and bought, it's, it's really detrimental to the environment.
And this is something that we all need to care about and rally around. And so finding those
opportunities to get the story really tight, and then to tell it to the right people and give them
those firsthand experiences with the product, so they could have their own aha moment of like, wow,
not only does this feel incredibly good on my feet, but I feel like I'm doing something better
for the planet in buying and in, you know, buying the product and endorsing the brand.
It just became such a powerful engine for us.
You said the first emphasis that you wanted to put was PR and social media. And the line between
social media and PR might be a lot more blurred than it used to. And in hindsight, it definitely
makes sense that you focused on those activities and those territories. But how did you, it's
difficult to calculate, you know, the rate of success in PR and social media, because a lot
of it depends on how people outside a company react to what you say and what you make. Right?
So how did you know whatever that you were going to do, and you were doing would create enough buzz
to make Ober's a known brand? Or was it, you know what, like, let's see what happens.
Right. I wish I could tell you that I was just that futuristic. And I had that crystal ball.
But you know, the honest answer is I just had faith. I had faith in the brand story. I had faith
in the product. And I had faith that if we could get the right people to experience it, they would
want to talk about it. You know, it wasn't about us begging them. It was in a lot of cases, in the
early days, people would just relax poetic about it, because they were so excited about something
new and different that was trying to balance profits and principles. And so, you know, of
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course, like, could we have predicted that Time magazine would be so kind as to call us the
comfiest shoe in the world at launch? No. But, you know, it was also just a testament to the
hard work that had been done in crafting a really clear purpose for the company and a product that
reinforced that purpose very clearly. So, and this is a making it more simplistic
than it usually is. But did you come up with a tagline? Did you like when you say a story,
a story can, you know, you and I do this sort of thing for living, but it could manifest
in different ways. What were, let's say, top three things that told the Allbirds story
in PR and in social media? Were they tagline? Were they visual assets? What were specific things that
that you started to craft? I would say, you know, some of it was consistency of messaging,
but it was almost like all of the parts working together. We had clarity of purpose, like I said,
and over time, we got a little bit better about clearly articulating that in a way that was
essentially this idea that we believe we can reverse climate change through better business.
But again, we're talking about back in 2015, 2016, people were not motivated to buy just because
something was sustainable, it needed to live up to slash exceed expectations. And then, you know,
if it was also made sustainably without compromise, it was a win win. And so the way that we started to
communicate that in a more externally facing way was we said that we were in the business of making
better things in a better way. And then from there, there was sort of these three pillars that
held that up. You know, those three pillars being around simplicity and design. And we had this
little mantra around just the right amount of nothing. And that applied as much to the product
as it did to the voice of the brand. You know, we tried to like take the fluff out of it and just be
really human in our approach. And, you know, I used to say to the team as the team grew over time,
our job as marketers for this brand in particular, is edutainment, we need to get people to care
about sustainability in a way they never have before, through entertaining means, through
storytelling, through humor, you know, through simplifying very complex ideas, and, you know,
kind of turning the science into art, if you will. And so I think a lot of the early visuals did that,
you know, we could say, our superfine New Zealand merino wool is one fifth the diameter of a human
hair, and we would like see people's eyes glaze over. Or we could say, you know, it's so soft and
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comfy, it's like walking on clouds, and you get just a different visual. Because again, we were
trying to combat the perceptions of people thinking that will wool is really hot and itchy, why would
I put that on my feet? So we had to debunk the myth by creating that, you know, helping them
imagine the coziness, like, you know, a hug for your toes kind of thing. And so that simplicity
and design was a really key component of our messaging, the comfort was a really key component
of our messaging, the superior comfort that, you know, you've truly never experienced before.
And then, and then the importance of being sustainable in everything that we do, and just
thinking about how important it is for material innovation to be at the forefront of that, and that,
you know, shouldn't you care about the way that things are made? And how can you actually be
smarter about the material makeup of the things that you buy and wear, and that imagining these
materials actually feel better on your skin, and they're better for the environment, something
that's natural, just inherently feels better than something that's synthetic. And so those were sort
of the story strands that we leaned into both visually, as well as, you know, from a, from more
of a verbal comms standpoint, and yeah, and it worked, people understood that, oh, Allbirds makes
better things in a better way, because they found a way to combine simple design with the superior
comfort with this, you know, commitment to making things more sustainably. And that is the secret
sauce. It's no longer an either or it's a both and. Yeah. I mean, 2016 isn't that long ago. But
when you think about the evolution of Allbirds as a brand, as well as many other companies that sort
of copied your approach to become the next hot darling of the DTC world, and you know, other
types of industries, but back in say 2016, what were some of the early wins that you had as a
brand, either in PR or social media? What were, what moments do you recall that were, okay, like
now we're taking to the next level and to the next level, like what were the things that were making
a visible difference to you as a marketer? You know, I referenced the Time Magazine article,
that was a really big one, certainly made us feel like we'd arrived. We gave them a lot of great
information, but we did not feed them that line. They came up with that on their own. And that was
the headline of their article on the day the company launched. Oh, wow. I see.
So we had obviously, again, we had a really clear point of view and a tight story. And we worked
very, very hard to get in front of the right people as a lead up to the launch. And, you know,
we, that's probably some combination of hard work and luck.
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Yeah. So other than the Time Magazine, what other moments do you recall?
You know, I think, like I said, it was a series of little things. We started, we had a series of
wonderful PR hits on the back of that, where people were just excited to cover us and to
discover the brand. And so I think, you know, there's there are a few other PR hits that maybe
come to mind. Then we started getting a lot of celebrity adoption and people who were very
excited. These were not endorsements. These were just genuine fans of the brand and the product.
And, you know, people like Oprah wearing the shoes, again, in early days, that just doesn't
necessarily happen. And then on the social media side of things, the engagement from the beginning
was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Right. And I've worked on a lot of brands who had social
media presence. And so we just could tell early on that we were getting a very engaged group who was
fanning the flames on our behalf in a way that just catapulted the brand's presence. You know,
we talk about the power of social media and how it's changed the landscape of marketing. And I
think one of the most powerful forms of marketing that has always existed has been word of mouth.
It's why Tupperware parties were started in the first place. And yet you think about how much
that can be amplified on a rate and a scale that you couldn't possibly imagine before with the
introduction of social media. So we were very fortunate that we found some of those early
advocates that wanted to engage with us. We were doing things in the real world with them
and they could not help but want to tell people in their network this was not about paying
influencers to promote our product. This was about aligning with people who really were excited
about what we were trying to do and how we were trying to do it and wanted to root for the
underdog. I think that's, you know, was really important and working in our favor. We're going
up against an industry that has some of the most beloved brands in the entire world in it.
And we're challenging them and saying the way you're doing things is not right for the environment.
You're harming the world and you're relying on this, you know, synthetic dirty old oil and
there's a better way. And I think people really gravitated toward that in terms of what we were
standing for and also that we were backing it with quality product. We weren't just saying it,
we were living it. Well, there are things that, so, you know, you talked about, of course, hard work
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and being strategic about it, but there's a good amount of luck with certain publications covering
you in a way that you may not have expected or certain celebrities picking up your products and
promoting, you know, without you paying them to promote. Those are lucky, I mean, obviously based
on strategic thinking as well as hard work. What are the things that you thought, okay, this is going
to be a good way to promote the brand or to build a brand, but it didn't succeed as much as you
thought or it didn't spread as much as you thought it would on social media? I think, you know, we
tried a lot of different content approaches in the early days, some of which, when I think back to
the level of effort we put into a single post relative to the amount of time it lived in
somebody's feed, maybe you could call that into question or, you know, there were moments where
this was at the time when all of a sudden in social media there was a new, you know, it's National XYZ
Day and, oh, it's National Watermelon Day, so we should play into that, you know, just getting
distracted by things that if you take a step back, you're like, okay, maybe that's a way to
try and be relevant for the conversation on that day, but in the grand scheme of things, is that
important to our business? Is that reinforcing our story? Is that reaching the right audience in the
right way? And so, I think it was more about not being afraid to experiment for sure, but certainly
not everything that we did was a home run. I will say one thing that I, you know, would add in the
bucket of what we did right, and still to this day, I would say across my 25-year career, one of
the best hiring decisions I have ever made is the very first person I hired on the marketing team
at Allbirds, and this was a few months, I guess two months pre the official launch, was our social
media and community manager, and I deliberately hired somebody who was an influencer in her own
right, who was, you know, being paid by brands to promote their wares. And so she lived and breathed
that world and understood it, not just in terms of how to manage social platforms, but how to
create genuine connections with people through social and she was, you know, I gave her a lot of
runway to create an experiment in a way that she actually hadn't had for any of the other brands
that she'd worked with previously, but she's just an intuitively very creative individual. And so
I think that hire was so important because from day one, even pre day one, we were starting to
connect in a very genuine way to the people who lived and breathed social media and weren't
afraid to experiment. And so I just gave you an example of maybe an experiment that wasn't as
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successful, but the bigger lesson there was we were experimenting, and we didn't feel like we had
a lot to lose. When you're at a bigger brand, it feels like the stakes are higher. And we had a
mentality of like, yeah, yeah, let's have fun and try new things. And if it doesn't work, we don't
have that many followers. So it doesn't matter. And it was really freeing, I have to say.
Just to get more specifically into the nitty gritties of social media, and when you say
social media, there are different types of social media, right? And I would say just based
on my personal experience, certain people are good at certain platforms. Just because you're
good at Twitter doesn't mean that you'll be good at Instagram. And just because you're good at
Instagram doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be good at YouTube and whatnot. Was there a platform
that you focused on? And in this case, you mentioned about this first employee that you
had hired, who was a bit of an influencer herself. Was there a particular medium that she was good
at? And that happened to be a good match? Yeah, we were definitely most focused on
Instagram at the outset. And that was also the platform that she was most active on.
And I think it was a platform that was right for us, not to say we didn't make sure that we
established a presence on Facebook and Twitter and evaluated the others when it was time to expand.
But Instagram for us was just such a right platform, because it was very visual in nature.
And obviously, we had a product that is a physical product. But beyond being a physical product,
just the texture of the product, the visual storytelling that was really going to help
people wrap their heads around this amorphous concept called sustainability in a far more
tangible way. It was a really powerful platform for us to be able to do that kind of storytelling.
Yeah, yeah. And I would say, and I don't necessarily shift the conversation too much on, say,
Instagram, but what are, say, like the top three do's and don'ts on social media as a brand?
I would say, you know, social media has just completely changed the power dynamic between
a brand and its consumers. And so you, you have to embrace it. And in embracing it, it means that
you have to embrace the fact that the consumer has a lot of power today, that didn't exist
previously. And so in the do bucket, I would say acknowledging that, and knowing how important it
is to be incredibly authentic, because of that, because they will sniff it out so fast, if you're
saying one thing, and you're doing another. And it's no longer just the stories you feed people,
it's the actions that you take. And so that the importance of just being really, again,
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clear on your purpose, and then true to your purpose. And I feel like the word authenticity
is kind of overused in our industry as of late, but I don't have a better way of saying it, you
know, it's just that genuine way of being and consistently demonstrating your commitment to
your purpose. Yeah. I would say being a really, really good listener. There's so much insight
to be found. If you listen carefully, and mine the comments for that. I'll give you a good example
of where I think we did this quite well in the early days of all birds. When we first launched,
we actually used to offer different colors of shoes for two men versus women. So we would
deliberately choose Oh, because you're a man, you'd want this set of colors versus a woman that set of
colors. And besides the colors, there was no difference in the shoes. And there was this
one color in particular that we launched called Katari blue, that women were it was launched for
men and women were crying out for it. They wanted it so badly. And we were seeing this in the social
comments. Over and over. We were also seeing that the men's size eight was selling out at, you know,
far faster rate than any other, suggesting to us that women with larger feet sizes who could fit
into a men's eight were buying it for themselves. And so we didn't just sit on that information and
say, Oh, that's nice to know, we got together and said, we can't ignore this. Like, what are we
going to do about this. And so we took that very insightful feedback. And some of the comments in
particular were incredibly heartfelt. And we decided to not only make that color available for women,
we we that was the moment in time where we decided to do away with different colors by gender. So from
that point forward, we made the colors available to both and let them decide what color was right
for them. And on the back end, we you know, we could with some sophisticated merchandising, just
adjust the buys accordingly. But rather than you know, we didn't just stop there. We didn't just
say, Oh, that was a great insight. We acted on it. And then we took it a step further. And when we
decided to relaunch the color and make it available for women, we announced it in social
we tagged, we called attention to one post in particular that a very supportive fan had said
that was something along the lines of, please bring this back. I'm dying for it. And I know
I'm not alone. And so we said, Well, you know, at whatever her handle was, thanks so much for the
feedback, we heard you. And here it is. And that was a moment where I think people realized,
this brand really cares what we have to say. They're not just forcing, you know, their agenda
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on us. They're trying to improve based on the insights and the information we're sharing. And
so we just saw a lot more openness from that point on, of people giving us really helpful feedback.
And sometimes we were in a position to act on it. And sometimes we weren't. But I think it's
just a good example of back to the question that you asked me, how to do social right.
And the counterbalance to that is to get the feedback and ignore it, because then people are
going to say, Well, I'm not going to waste my time supporting you, because this is not a balanced
relationship. With things like PR and social media, when things go well, that's great. But we've seen
as recent as in the last couple months or so, brands doing things on social media that blew up
in their face in a way, and had a really negative consequence, and even negative sales. As a
marketer, if you were in a shoe like that, where a decision that you were, say, part of, how should a
marketer react to that sort of situation? Yeah, it's tough. It goes back to the importance of
really knowing your purpose and being willing to defend that purpose at all costs. And I think
that there are a few examples where brands have tried to be a part of a conversation that might
feel like it's of the moment, but they haven't ensured that it's so authentic to be a part of
based on what they stand for as a business, that when they are challenged, they often back down,
because they aren't prepared to fight for the thing that they're saying that they stand for,
because it's not as embedded in the DNA of the brand's reason for being. And then you have
examples like, Nike has done this multiple times where they're willing to take the risk
and support an athlete that has, at times, cost them business. But they know that because they
are so clear on who they are and why they exist, they are also willing to lose those kinds of
customers because those customers aren't aligned to their shared values. And so for me,
obviously, I don't want to get into a conversation around the brands that do it best versus worse.
I just think it all ladders back up to my theme of the day, which is when you have clarity of
purpose, you have to have complete conviction in it and stand up for it at all costs. And sometimes
that will be uncomfortable. And using an Allbirds example that I do feel comfortable speaking to,
because of the nature of the category we played in, we had PETA on us all the time,
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and clogging our feed with information saying, I won't get too into the details of how you
shear a sheep's wool, but there's, let's just say, a really grotesque way of doing it,
that's called mulesing. And then there's a very humane way of doing it. And we only sourced from
farms who did it in a way that met these premium standards, etc. And yet they would post these
grotesque pictures, and tag us in them. And, you know, and, and it was, it's a really
uncomfortable scenario to be in, because then consumers start believing this, and you feel
like you're having to defend yourself. But because our conviction and our purpose was so unequivocal,
we could ride the wave of the noise. And we could stand proudly in defending what we do,
and how we do it, and how, you know, we kind of sleep better at night, knowing that we've
taken all the right steps to ensure that we're adhering to our own principles. So, you know,
it's a tricky one. Yeah. How Allbirds grew its brand by connecting with like local communities.
We're actually tied to this very local program that we had tapped into within a few months of
launching, which was a program that we called Allbirds And. And the genesis of this concept was
essentially, well, let me just paint a little picture of the backdrop, we had sold out a product
sooner than we had anticipated. We were trying to get more inventory. And we wanted to keep
people engaged in the brand. And we're trying to think of new and interesting ways to fill the
content pipeline and to build relationships with people on the ground in our local city being San
Francisco. And also to do more with less, I shared with you that we didn't have a lot of resources.
And so we needed to treat everything that we did is almost like a megaphone of sorts. And so we
started talking about, you know, what could we be doing that makes us feel a little bit bigger than
we are, but more importantly, that helps start to establish the values that the brand holds dear.
And and do that by way of aligning ourselves with other local brands that have a similar set of
values. And at the same time, don't take themselves too seriously. That was so important. Here we are
this brand that, you know, cares very deeply about making better things in a better way and the value
and importance of quality materials and ingredients. But we also had this sort of fun
and irreverence in the way that the brand was showing up in the world. And so that was really,
I would say the foundation of what became this program lovingly named All Birds And.
It was this city by city celebration of locally beloved businesses that had a shared commitment
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to quality craft and imagination, much like ourselves. And so it started in San Francisco,
like I said, a few months into the company's existence. I think the first time we did this
was in July of 2016. And we launched in March. And it was as simple as this. We picked a colorway of
shoe of the of the upper material that was an homage to the city this in this case, San Francisco.
So this lovely gray in honor of Carl, the fog. OK, it was summer in San Francisco. So what what
more appropriate to color use than something that was reminiscent of fog? Because that is
in San Francisco, as we know. And then we reached out to a few different partner brands and ultimately
ended up working with three brands in particular that were very local, locally beloved and,
you know, have this tribe of their own that that love these brands because they were so committed
to, you know, quality of materials or ingredients, had a really rich color story in their own brand
identity. And community was at the core of what they did. And so those brands in the case of San
Francisco, we worked with this floral shop that was also a community center called Ampersand. And
they were notorious for having this really brilliant turquoise facade, beautiful color.
We worked with this artisan bakery called Craftsman and Wolves. And one of the things that
they were most well known for was this particular pastry called the Rebel Within that looked like a
sort of a classic pastry. And then you cut it open and there was a scotch egg inside. And so this
brilliant yellow yolk would ooze out of it. And then we worked with Smitten, which was a
local ice cream shop that was all fresh made, based with, you know, natural ingredients and
made on the spot. And so there was a story to tell with each of those brands that was just,
again, unique and community oriented. And so the way that the program took shape was
not only did we co-create limited edition product with each of them, so literally like imagine
matching a Pantone to the egg yolk, doing, you know, a gray shoe with yellow highlights
and vice versa, the color of the shoe being that turquoise or the red. But then we did a series of
events and activations with them that were nothing to do with selling the shoe and everything to do
with telling our story and getting people engaged in the idea of quality and craftsmanship. So
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people behind the scenes to learn how to make, you know, how do you make the Rebel Within?
What goes into making the perfect bouquet of locally sourced flowers, et cetera, et cetera.
And I think one of the things that worked so well for us, and it was an experiment, you know,
it was genuinely an experiment at the time, but it was a way to tap into their communities
and to feed our content. You know, there was a lot of beautiful content that came out of that
and storytelling for that, create limited edition product and start to get engaged with something
that people want from us. We didn't have any stores at the time, but we set up our headquarters
and created a little space where we invited people in to do try-on, which again, these were
all early experiments to see what did people want from us? And, you know, we hosted a series
of events at the different partners locations. Actually, our dear friends, PJ and Andrew came
to that initial event over at the very first event we had hosted, in fact, which was awesome to see
just fellow AKQA-ers supporting one another. And so anyways, it was one of those programs
we were like, wow, we were just trying to fill some time, but we're really onto something here.
We felt love from the local community. We learned a lot and we were like, this is a bigger idea than
just this single, you know, our own backyard. This has the potential to become a series. And so that's
what we did. We ended up taking it to Wellington, New Zealand, which was a home base of Tim, one of the
two co-founders. You know, with each edition, it just got more and more sophisticated. In that case,
we did a pop-up store in the Wellington airport, as well as in the city center in conjunction with
the programming. We did a wall mural, we did a limited edition beer. I mean, there's so many
things that spun off of that. We went to LA and again, the program just sort of took on a life
of its own, but the spirit of it was always the same. And I think what it did is it helped embed
us in these really important cities and get local individuals to understand that
Allbirds isn't just, you know, a new shoe brand. There's a meaning behind this that's
aligned to some of these other brands who have an equal value around quality of ingredients and
making it in a better way. Yeah. So it sounds like just to summarize what you just said,
it was to find a local business that shared the same ethos as Allbirds, specifically better things
made in better ways. That sounded like the starting point. And finding a company that
51:03
were making things that had a color story to tell. And then for Allbirds to create,
based on the thematic color of the city, i.e. San Francisco and the grayish fog,
using the accent color from that local store to incorporate into the product, sell the product
on behalf of your brand, but also on the local brand and then creating content and events and
activation around it. You got it. How long did you do it for and how many cities did you go into
with this idea? So the program ran for roughly four weeks per city. Okay. And, you know, we,
again, learned a little bit with each go. And so we would put a spotlight on each partner
for some period of time during that month-long program. And we started in San Francisco,
and then we went to Wellington, New Zealand after that a few months later. And we went to
LA a handful of months after that. And then, you know, we realized that the company was growing
so quickly, and we had new products coming. And that program is successful as it was. It was also
very time consuming and required a lot of resources. And so in terms of going city by city,
we kind of sunset that program, but we applied a lot of learnings to a much bigger collaboration
that we ended up doing with Shake Shack in New York. Oh, okay. So what was that program like?
Yeah, that was a fun one. You know, we hit it off and had a lot of great conversations,
again, about shared values. And on the surface, here are two brands that seemingly don't have
a lot to do with one another, shoes and burgers, but then you just, again, kind of peel back the
layers of the onion. You're like, yeah, but they both, again, pride themselves on making better
things in a better way, albeit in their respective industries. And they aren't afraid to have fun
with their brands. And so wouldn't it be great to try and join forces and think about a way in
which we could bring this new product at the time we had just launched the Tree Runner. So it was
a new material moving away from wool and going into this silhouette that was made out of trees,
eucalyptus tree fiber. And so we decided that it would be really fun to collaborate and do a
one day pop up at their original location in Madison Square Park. And we took it over and
had this installation. And again, it wasn't just about, you know, co branding the shoe,
we took some of the learnings that we had from all birds and and applied it to the
design aesthetic of the shoe. They also made a shake inspired by a New Zealand ice cream called
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Hokey Pokey. So they made a shake. They also we created a custom lace kit that had three custom
laces that were representative of the flavor profile in the shape. And again, just having so
much fun with it. And we did this one day pop up ray and it was seriously one of the highlights of
my time there. I remember waking up in the morning, 530 in the morning to set up and there were I'm
not exaggerating hundreds of people in line. I'm doing the morning. Yes. We sold out of the shoes
within a few hours. And if we had had more hands on the ground, we probably would have sold out of
them more quickly than that. And it was so much fun, because again, it was applying all of these
learnings from this little program that started a few months into our journey in San Francisco
with these principles underlying it. And here we are a couple of years later,
you know, in the biggest city in the world with such a beloved, iconic brand,
doing it on a totally different stage. And so yeah, that that's kind of how that program evolved.
Yeah. Anything else that you would add? Things that, you know, a thing or two that you think
today's brands need to have at the top of their mind to build a brand in the 21st century?
You know, I've kind of reiterated this multiple times, but I'll say it again, just because I'm so
passionate about it. If you start with clarity of purpose, and then you stay relentlessly true to
that purpose, and there are a lot of distractions along the way. You know, for me, that's where
brands start to have missteps when they chase the shiny object or focus on the short term goal.
It's often at, you know, to the detriment of really reinforcing your purpose in a genuine way.
And so I actually, you know, you mentioned, I taught a course on section four, and the whole
concept behind the course was around how to grow your brand without losing your purpose.
And I think that is just what sets the great brands apart from the good ones. They understand
that. And they understand how to balance short and long term. And that is at the end of the day,
I don't think any brand is in the business to just sell a bunch of widgets, they
want to stand the test of time. And so that's just a really non negotiable in my mind.
And then social media, it's fascinating. It's not going anywhere. You talked about
when we first started working together, I remember very distinctly the first
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a Facebook page that we developed for gap, which was essentially just another website,
you know, it was so the way we were thinking about social media at the time could not be
more different from how it has evolved. That's true. And, and so it is about the platforms are
going to change, the big players are going to change. Like if we had had this conversation
five years ago, we would not be talking about tick tock, for instance, right.
But the human desire to connect with other people and to find their tribe, and to use
digital to that on a wholly different scale isn't going anywhere. And so in my mind, for brands of
21st century to succeed, they need to embrace that. And, and really build it to your point
as if you're building a relationship with another human being, and treating it with that kind of
respect and care and openness and being humble, you're going to make mistakes brands, just like
humans, brands aren't perfect. But it's how you react to the the difficult situations that come up
and do do it humbly and with grace and with acknowledgement that, you know, you know that
you have failed your fans. But you know, you're you're really here to support them. Or are you
going to do it and pretend that like they're at arm's length, I think the brands who have the
greatest social communities, which again, we talked about social is the most powerful organic
word of mouth vehicle that exists today. And that's the holy grail for marketers. You know,
CPMs have gotten more expensive budgets are being scrutinized more than ever before.
KPI expectations are fast and furiously changing. But the the need to spread your word at
the most cost effective rate possible has remained unchanged. And so organic word of mouth,
positive organic word of mouth is the holy grail. And if you can really understand how to nurture
social and treat it like the two way relationship that it is, you will be able to see the true
potential of that in driving the health of your brand. That was part one of my conversation with
Julie Channing, a marketing leader with a track record of building world class brands.
So here are my three key takeaways from my chat. Number one, establish your purpose,
promise and principles clearly. Number two, put emphasis on PR and social media through
1:00:01
edutainment. Number three, who is the enemy for your brand? Number one, establish your purpose,
promise and principles. This sounds somewhat obvious, but any of you who might be working
in branding and marketing, it's not as easy as one might think. And once you establish it,
it's super important that the articulation of your purpose, promise and principles are simple
and easy enough for anybody in the company to memorize, to remember, and to repeat whenever
you ask yourself a question. Hey, why are we doing this? How are we doing this? What are we doing
for the brand? In Allbirds case, it was to reverse climate change through better business.
And when it comes to what it was that they were making as a brand, it was better things
in better ways or better shoes in better ways. And it's that kind of simple articulation of why
the brand exists in the first place. They started with shoes, but then they expanded into other
types of products. But the fact that they were in this world to reverse climate change, you know,
that is a pretty lofty and ambitious goal, but it's a very simple purpose. And they were doing
it through better business. They were doing it by making better things in better ways. So having that
purpose, having that clearly articulated and delivering it as a promise by having certain set
of principles that anybody in the company can follow. So key takeaway number one, establish
a purpose, promise principles clearly. Number two, put emphasis on PR and social media through
edutainment. One of the most memorable things that she said in the conversation was that the first
marketing person that she hired at Allbirds was somebody who was in her 20s and somebody who was
a mini influencer on her own right. So really understanding firsthand as an individual, as a
marketer, as a professional, you know, do it for yourself. And then not just to educate people, but
also to entertain. That's why she said, you know, not just education, not just entertainment, but
edutainment on social and PR. So key takeaway number two, put emphasis on PR and social through
edutainment. Key takeaway number three, who is the enemy for your brand? This point was, in hindsight,
I think is obvious. In this case, she wasn't talking about other competitors. But going back to
point number one, you know, what is your purpose? And in the case of Allbirds, the enemy, the opponent
1:03:06
for the brand was climate crisis. You know, how can we reverse climate crisis through better
business. And that was the common enemy as a business that the founders and Julie as employee
number one, clearly articulated and having it as a clear enemy for the brand. You know, just because
the word enemy is a little bit aggressive in some ways, and it's something that you have to defeat.
And of course, in the context of business, you know, you have competitors and sometimes fierce
competitors, but a level above what is the common enemy for the brand. And perhaps, you know, other
companies might have the same enemy as your company might. But having that clear articulated
and having it as part of your purpose becomes especially important when you are creating a
narrative inside and outside of the company as you build your brand. So to summarize the three
key takeaways from my conversation with Julie Channing, number one, establish your purpose,
promise and principles clearly. Number two, put emphasis on PR and social media through
edutainment. And key takeaway number three, who is the enemy for your brand? So this was part one of
my conversation with Julie Channing and talking about building a brand and creating connections
with consumers in the 21st century. In part two, we go more into her career as an individual and
what is needed for marketing and branding professionals. So stay tuned. I'm Reina Moto,
and this is The Creative Mindset. See you next time.
