Pixels & Pores: A Chief Digital Officer's Guide to Beauty
We’re getting into The Juice with David Baker, the chief digital officer for skin and bodycare brand Beekman 1802. In this episode, we discuss David’s background in beauty, the current state of beauty trends, and how Beekman 1802 has evolved over time. From the science behind Beekman's revolutionary goat milk-based products to their strategic omnichannel presence, David gives us the inside scoop on how Beekman uses innovative technology to empower customers. Imagine an AI facial scan or a one-on-one video consultation that could revolutionize your skincare routine – it is happening at Beekman. Join us for a discussion that blends innovation, strategy, and consumer insights, all stirred into one must-listen episode of The Juice with Jess Cervellon.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Jess Servion,
and I'm super excited to bring you my new podcast,
The Juice With Jess.
This podcast is gonna be about everything
in your customer's journey.
We're talking acquisition, awareness, making that purchase,
retaining that customer, bringing them back around,
and everything in between.
This is gonna be all about delivering dope brand experiences
and talking to some really amazing people
who are in the customer experience space,
the marketing space, and everything in between.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to another episode of The Juice With Jess.
I'm Jess.
You're co, wait, you're co-host.
- You're co-host.
- I'm the host.
- I'm the guest, you're just the host.
- You know, David's my co-host today.
- Hi.
- I am super excited about this episode.
We have David Baker, David Baker,
and joining us who is the Chief Digital Officer
for Beakman 1802, I will let him take it away
and tell you all about Beakman and himself.
- Yeah, so my name is David Baker.
As Jess said, I'm Chief Digital Officer at Beakman 1802,
so I lead all of our direct-to-consumer e-commerce.
I lead our Amazon business.
I lead all of our digital advertising,
really helping drive digital growth for this brand.
And it's a brand that is a skin health brand
that focuses on the two key ingredients
and the science behind them of the science of goat milk
and of kindness in improving your skin health.
And so what that means for us is really
how do we make products specific to skin care,
whether your face or your body,
that improve your condition.
So we found that goat milk has 31 active nutrients
that help restore your skin barrier
and keep you in your skin in really healthy condition.
And it's perfect for sensitive skin.
So for us, that's a key ingredient.
We've delved into the science there,
as well as kindness,
where when you're kind to yourself,
when you're kind to your skin,
you have a better life.
And so really we're a brand that does that.
But before Beakman,
I've been all around in the digital space,
all around in--
- Business bitch.
- I have been a business bitch.
I've worked,
I got my start working on political ad campaigns,
being the digital guy for many years.
And then pivoted my career, worked at Google,
where I spent about four years working on
all sorts of non-profit government clients,
really helping to drive the non-bottom line
of those organizations.
And then took those skills
and translated them into the beauty industry,
where I worked as a consultant and a fractional CMO
for a lot of different brands,
including Trishato, Keels, as well as the Novos,
and then moved to L'Oreal full-time.
So I then worked at L'Oreal
on the CMO team at L'Oreal.
So overseeing all of our digital media
for all the brands,
and then moved into a brand at L'Oreal Paris,
where I worked on digital marketing for them,
and digital strategy and data strategy,
personalization, customization,
as well as running a hair color brand, L'Oreal Paris,
Feria.
Did that work again in on agency side and consulting,
and then came over to Beakman?
So I've been in the digital space
for what feels like an ancient amount of time
in this community.
I've been working in digital for close to 15 years.
I was working in digital before Facebook had ads.
- Wow.
- Which is scary to think about.
- Yeah.
Well, I think what's really important though,
and why I'm so excited to have you on
and talk about all of these things,
is because this podcast is very much about acquisition,
the buying behavior, the consumer behavior,
whether you're on B2B or B2C,
and I think it's a really interesting perspective
from you, David, to share with the audience
coming from that digital marketing piece,
because you're really involved in the customer behavior
and the buying and awareness,
and retaining them, capturing them, all of it.
- Absolutely.
Where do you want us to start?
'Cause that's four different things.
- I know.
- I think there's a big piece in pretty beauty
around awareness, around getting your brand out there,
and what do you stand for, and how are you different
from everybody else who is selling skincare,
or cosmetics, which I think is one piece.
And then you have, how do you then acquire those people?
How do you retain them?
How do you make them loyal, and all of that underpinned
by the data that helps drive that?
- Yeah, well, I think what's really important is,
okay, so let's just talk about
the beauty and skincare industry, right?
So the beauty and skincare industry is like ever evolving.
It's always changing.
There's always something new.
There's always like the next hot thing, right?
- Yep.
- How do you, as a marketer, stay competitive
in that landscape?
- Yeah, I think beauty as a whole,
which typically will break down into a handful
of subcategories around hair, both care and color,
cosmetics, and then skincare,
really is trend-driven and cycle-driven.
Sometimes things are up, sometimes they're down,
and really is understanding where the market is
at a macro level and adjusting it,
and as well, brands can help make that market
and make a new entrant in there and push there.
But if we think back to it,
cosmetics is an easy one for anything people to grasp.
There have been trends from sort of natural
no-makeup makeup look all the way to 10 years ago
where it was full-faced, glam, contouring.
Thank you, Kardashians, for driving so much
in that space.
- Yeah.
- And it varies, and individuals are very different in that.
There's a lot of people who never wanted to contour,
but that shifted the whole market for a period of time,
and then that came back.
COVID had a very big impact in those trends
because people were wearing masks.
So how do you express your individualism
if you can't wear a cute lip?
And so that brought in a rise in hair color.
- And eye makeup?
- Yeah, eye makeup as well.
- And eye brows became a hot one.
- Eyed brows became a hot thing.
Mascara was huge.
I went to hair color 'cause that was the brand
I was working on during COVID.
But sometimes you get it right,
sometimes you get it wrong.
You have to stay on top of those trends
and be able to pivot.
Sometimes big massive machines as quickly as you can,
sometimes small startups.
So for example, when COVID hit,
I was working with our hair color team at L'Oreal Paris,
and we knew that just like there had been a run
on toilet paper, there was gonna be a run on hair color
because all the salons were closed.
- Oh yeah.
- And every woman who is going to the salon
and getting her hair done and colored
was now faced with a choice.
Do I go natural?
Do I let the grays come in?
Do I reach for the box dye?
Which some people will not do.
So how do we pull that in?
- Yeah.
- And L'Oreal really thought there was gonna be a huge market
in gray coverage in people who had been dying their hair
because they were going gray.
And so really needed to capture that.
So we pivoted and focused a lot of our efforts there.
And what we missed in that trend,
and we caught it very quickly.
But what we missed in the initial trend was,
actually people were gonna be expressing themselves
not through both color lip but through both color hair.
So we needed to have bleach on the market in a big way
so people could reset their hair to bleach
and then color it, reds and blues and purples and pinks
and bring that expression and that funness to it.
So I think that trend cycle really matters.
And so staying on top of that is really critical.
And right now we're facing a wonderful lift
in a focus in skincare.
If you look at most foundations now,
talk about the skincare benefits.
There's, I just saw an ad during the Grammys
for L'Oreal Paris skincare,
where they are for cosmetics,
where they are talking about the hyalamic acid,
the squaline in the foundation.
Because they're talking about the skincare benefits
of it not how it makes your skin, how it covers.
- So, okay, as a consumer,
like for me when I walk into a Sephora
or any sort of makeup place,
I'm instantly overwhelmed.
I'm instantly overwhelmed and I'm just like,
I don't really know what I want.
So it's like, what we're talking about is trends here,
but what I'm curious in from your just like marketer
perspective, maybe even beakman
could be a good case study of this,
how do you, when you're in the digital world,
like how do you personalize that experience
to ensure that your customer is choosing the right product
for them and educating them at the same time?
That's a loaded question, but.
- It is a very loaded question.
It's a very complex one.
So I think I will take, you gave me an out there,
there are two different paths I can take.
We'll take both. - Okay.
- But I think it is about education
and then it's about personalization.
So if you have a consumer who is low education,
low intent, they don't know what they don't know.
It's about signaling and providing that.
I think there's a reason every bottle of shampoo
says wash, rinse, repeat.
Because they need to provide that education
and assume the lowest common denominator.
When we talk about, when we launch a new product,
we are always wanting to have in our communication,
have in our emails, in our on our PDPs,
on everything we're talking about,
how does this fit into your routine?
Where do I put this step?
So we have a facial toner, which I got right here
and we'll show off in a second,
but our milkshake facial toner, which is a facial mist.
So it's a moisturizing toning mist.
You can actually, this one is challenging
because you can actually,
so versatile you can use it at multiple steps.
You can use it both under your makeup as a toner.
So you cleanse, tone, hydrate, treat.
Or you can also use it as a like setting spray
and a refresher.
So without the day, even though you have your makeup on,
you can refresh with this product
and it keeps your pores minimized and hydrated,
which is really great.
But it comes into how do you educate there,
assuming they have no knowledge.
- 'Cause I'm already overwhelmed.
I just wanna like spray myself in the face.
- Go spray yourself in the face.
- Alright, alright.
- Take a shake break.
- Okay, shake break, shake break.
- Close your mouth, close your mouth when you do it.
But here, so I like to do like four or five,
just 'cause like I was--
- I only did two.
- I was out in nature this weekend,
so I've got a little bit of a dryness.
- Mm-hmm.
- Oh, I need to do it like you.
- Yeah. - Hold on.
- And I used it to score--
- To the audience listening,
we are currently using milkshake and spraying our faces.
- So milkshake is a bi-phase toner.
It uses hyalamic acid and squaline,
which are two very hydrating ingredients
that help minimize your pores.
That is about nine levels of education right there.
We talked about where it fits in the routine,
the ingredients, what they do,
all of that has to start coming through.
And there's, if I think back to 2018,
I think was when really we started to understand
as an industry and as consumers,
that's when it was really pushing
what hyaluron, hyaluronic acid is and does.
- Yeah.
- And the fact that I know it's hyaluronic acid
is because Ava Longoria in the ad
was pushing that.
- Yeah. - And that was all education.
It was education on the ingredient.
- Yeah. - The consumer now,
because they are a digital consumer,
they have Google with their fingertips,
they are born and bred with mobile phones in their pocket
that can tell them anything about the world,
is savvy and we'll look up those ingredients.
What's the efficacy of this?
He's as helpful for my skin, what does it help drive?
So that's a shift that we're able to drive towards.
And I think that's one of the reasons why skin care
is such a growing part of the beauty industry right now.
- Yeah.
But like, okay, so now we've talked about like personalization
and we've talked about the education of it,
but you know, what I'm questioning right now is,
well, actually I have two questions.
I have one question in particular,
because after all this podcast is powered by customer,
which is an omni-channel customer service platform,
I'm curious about what is beakman's,
so beakman's customer journey, right?
Like I come to the website
and you're also available on QVC.
- Or available on QVC, HSN,
we're available at all altodors nationwide
and altas at Target,
and then through several independent retailers.
- Yeah, so very true.
- So we are a very omni-channel brand.
- Very true omni-channel brand.
- As well as Amazon and DTCs,
so go to beakman1802.com.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
Beakman1802.com, we'll put that in the show notes.
So here's the question though,
is when you're thinking about your customer's journey, right?
Like think about overall omni-channel customer journey
and the reason why I brought up the customer thing
was because we do this education opportunities
and we do all these things in all these places,
but what do you do to educate your agents
who are dealing with the humanized experience?
And the reason I ask that is because I'm sure,
I don't know for sure and you'll tell me,
but you have to have a lot of inquiries, you have to,
especially from like, what do I do with this?
Where do I go?
- Outside of the standard, where's my order tickets?
We end up doing a lot on product education
and on routine education.
So where does it fit into my routine?
How do I use this product?
How much do I use?
When do I use it?
This is, it's for morning and night,
do I use it both?
Do I use it twice a day?
Do I pick one?
All of those questions really come in.
So we have to train our CX agents on those pieces.
In fact, at least one, and I believe now two of our agents
are estheticians.
- Oh, interesting.
- So we actually do a, so that's a big part of it.
Really, they oftentimes when we have questions
about the product and they were getting it from Omni Channel.
So a customer on Ulta.com will ping a question in
and they'll say like, hey, does this product minimize my pores?
And while it does say it on the bottle and on the P-page
that that's what it does, they ask that question
and we provide a response.
And that doesn't go to our product team
that actually goes to our CX team
who is that repository of what this does and not.
And then if they don't know, then we go up
to our product development team who built it
and knows the ingredients and the science backwards
and forwards.
- Yeah.
- But we really help drive that.
And what's really interesting and one thing
that we've done to help on that education piece
is we built in a one-to-one skincare consultation.
So you can go to our website
and there are two ways you can sort of help identify
what works for you.
One, you can leverage our AI facial scanning tool
which it's my skin biome.
It will scan your face and identify where you have issues
with fine lines, wrinkles, dryness, redness
and recommend products that are great for you,
which is really helpful.
And if you don't wanna do that, the computer led version,
we can also have you do a 15-minute video consultation
with an esthetician who will take you through,
here's how we layer this in, here's what's different
about our products that don't have silicone in them.
So you may not be used to that.
It's gonna feel a little different when you first try it.
And so we try and bring that education
into everything that we do.
If you can.
- That's insane.
I wanna deep dive into this AI thing
because we do talk a lot about AI on this podcast.
Honestly, whether it was this podcast,
whether it's a newsletter you're reading,
like everything, everything that we do these days have AI.
So I'm really interested on like how this AI tool works.
Like, do I just like take a photo?
Like...
- Yeah, so you take a selfie and it scans your face.
So it's a selfie, but it's actually a video
so you get more frames so it can understand
like different pieces.
It'll validate what lighting you're in
so it can help identify.
And better understand like,
is the dark spots just shadow or is it...
- Yeah.
- So it'll help identify a lot of those pieces.
And then we have, it'll produce a score
of each of those elements.
So fine lines, wrinkles, redness, dryness,
which help identify what products really work well.
So if you have, if your skin is very dry, very, very dry,
we have a moisturizer that's hyper-hydrating.
Versus something that is sort of an everyday.
- This is so insane.
So how did, so it just literally knows
what type of skin you have based off of the image.
- So we've worked with...
- I'm shook.
I'm shook it.
- It definitely, I would recommend you go try it out.
- Okay.
- But I think it's a really cool tool there.
I think that to me is one where that we're leveraging AI
in machine learning more than AI, than true AI there.
And it's something we've been doing
sort of before the generative AI boom that we're in right now.
'Cause I do think there's a lot of things
that sort of just put AI on it to be cool,
but that aren't driving that.
So I think that's one area.
The other that we're leveraging is we're leveraging
and inspired by you, we're leveraging AI on our chatbot.
- We love an AI chatbot.
- We love an AI chatbot to help reduce our ticket volume
and engage with our consumers and provide them
information faster than our CX team can get to.
- Yeah.
- But it's something where we pride ourselves
in our response time outside of that
and really in driving our CSAT as well.
- Yeah.
- And incredible work that our CX team has done.
- Yeah, I think it's really important.
So it's like, I think it's really, honestly a game changer
of like how you're utilizing the AI tool
for like that digital experience.
But I mean, going back to the CX piece of it,
you have to think like if you're in a beauty brand,
so if I'm in a beauty brand or if maybe I'm in a brand
that's very complex, right?
Not every support agent that you have
is going to be highly educated like an esthetician
or maybe it's a protein company
and you know, they have like a health and wellness background,
right?
Some of these people are learning as they go.
And I think that's incredibly amazing
that you're utilizing AI like on that digital experience
piece of it, but also in the chatbot piece of it
because it's helping your internal agents
deliver information very quickly
and like actually good information,
not just like a, let me check on that.
And then my whole average handle time
is going to be like through the roof.
I don't know, that's just honestly an opinion.
I think that's like pretty amazing
of like where you're utilizing AI within beak-man.
- Yeah, I think it's something where it's very important
for us to I think have that right balance.
I think we don't want to be in a world
where everything is AI driven for our customers.
I think that is useful for some customers,
but like the individual nuances of skin
and what goes with what for your skin type, et cetera,
there are going to be nuances
where you might want to talk to someone
who's very professional in that regard.
And so really we're leveraging that,
I think more to free up time for our agents
to have those conversations instead of WISML.
- Right, absolutely.
And I think that that piece of it, right?
So it's like, okay, so you deliver this digital experience
through like educating the customer
and offering a product.
You also have it in like the customer experience,
like support version of it, right?
And I think you hit the nail on the head though
is that AI isn't here to replace anybody or take your job.
It's really to help like enhance your team
and then allow your team to be able
to deliver that humanized experience
because you have such a nuanced product.
Like you're going to be able to like deflect the tickets
that need to be deflected, right?
And then on the other end of it,
those agents will have the ability
to deliver that humanized experience.
I do have one question though,
because I think as we talk about AI
and like all these things, especially if you're like
scanning people's faces and obviously in like chatbot,
like how are you guys thinking about privacy?
Yeah, so privacy is really huge for us.
So we operate on a double opt-in.
So our consumers who are doing that face-scanning app
have to opt in for that permission,
make certain that they are understanding
and validating that.
That's table stakes, I think as well.
We process that data very quickly
and on device where possible
so that we don't hold onto that data.
It gets refreshed and deleted so that it gets cleared out.
Because I think I have been,
I have worked over the course of my career
at various levels of organization
whose belief on privacy is very.
Again, I worked in the political space
in the start of my career.
So I'm very familiar with all of the things that went on there.
And I left that for a reason.
I've worked at companies where we had
an entire chief data officer team and legal
and privacy was very keen on that.
And I worked hand in hand with them
to make certain we were better than better.
Better than best.
And so really for me, our responsibility on
the data we collect is really critical.
Especially because how we collect that data
helps us with personalization.
But it has to be useful and usable in order to do that.
I'm not gonna collect a piece of data to have it
unless we can do something with it
that helps the consumer.
So for instance, we leverage quizzes to collect information
and that really helps us understand
what routine is right for you on some broad pieces.
So what's your skin type?
Do you have dry skin, oily skin, combination skill,
skin, dull skin, sensitive skin?
How, that's one of our biggest filtering.
Because you have products that are really effective
for each one of those types.
And then what's your main skin concern?
Are you blemish-prone?
Do you have scarring?
Do you suffer from redness?
Are you, do you have bumps that you're trying to get rid of
and smooth it out?
And so that can help us provide more tailored
communications, more tailored information
to our consumers, to our neighbors.
That's what we call our customers by the way,
our neighbors.
But it allows us to provide that information
so that we can get them the right thing at the right time.
Right.
I'm not going to collect that diversion just to sit on it.
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It's too big of a risk.
I think it's too big of a risk,
but I also think that a lot of information
that we collect today is actually being underutilized.
Like I have several questions.
Like I will get to the second question in a second.
But, okay, we've talked a lot about personalization.
We've talked a lot about like,
okay, you're gonna use this information
to give them something else
in their consumer journey, right?
So I'm curious of what are your favorite segmenting?
Segments that you, I know I'm saying segmented segments.
But how do you think about it from a segmentation perspective?
Not on a demographic, but like,
or yeah, just tell me about that.
- Yeah, so I think for me, the segmentation,
the way we've approached segmentation,
I think has come through a few different lenses.
I think understanding that skin type
is really critical for us.
I think it's very similar to say,
if you're in cosmetics and are looking
but filtering off of shade.
So if I have a particular skin type or skin tone,
and I always use this shade of foundation,
you're gonna personalize messaging in that way.
With the products that are in that line,
we'll do the same thing with our products for dry skin
versus oily skin.
We have products that work for both,
but an oily skin user using our facial oil
that is super hydrating and can leave a little bit of oiliness.
It doesn't leave a lot, but like it can.
So when it's super oily skin, that may not be the best.
So we really recommend that for people
who have more combination or dry skin.
- Yeah.
- So I think that's one factor.
We'd leverage RFM,
so reach frequency and monetization.
I know how you feel about acronyms.
But reach frequency and monetization.
So those are models that we leverage through various tools.
So we use Clavio and Peele to help with that,
but that can help us understand how our consumers
buying with us.
And then as well, we use site behavior data.
So as a consumer has bought in on one product three times,
we're gonna recommend,
what's the next best thing that they haven't tried yet?
- Yeah.
- And that to me is where you get in from segmentation
to personalization, which is sort of the way
I look at it from a crawl walk run,
it's broadcast, same message to everybody.
Segmentation, you get into the RFM,
you get into a little bit of the zero party data evolution,
and then you get into personalization,
which is tailored communications based off
of what you've been exhibiting.
You can jump straight to that if you are small in nimble,
but I think many organizations need to crawl walk run.
- Absolutely.
I think it's really interesting that you see
a lot of these organizations that then they're like,
okay, I have so much data, right?
And they're like, okay, great.
I'm gonna go do these massive campaigns
and I'm gonna do all these things, but then they don't hit.
And then they're like, well, why didn't you hit?
But it's because you have to do the crawl walk run.
You have to do the segmentation to the personalization,
to understanding what works, what does it work,
to get to the next phase of it.
- Yeah.
- And when you're starting out,
you don't know what's gonna be that right lever.
- Right.
And your audience can be completely different.
- Correct.
- Your beakman audience can be completely different
to like L'Oreal.
- Correct, absolutely.
I think there's definitely is gonna be crossover,
but I think it's gonna be very different.
- Yeah.
- But I think what's interesting is taking as well
that data, I feel like the difference to me
between segmentation and personalization
is between declared data and inferred data.
So declared data is zero-party data I,
as a consumer, have given you this piece of information
because you asked a direct question.
What is your skin type?
Infered data, you've only bought things for dry skin.
You've bought them five times.
I can make an assumption that you have dry skin.
That is where it starts to get into personalization.
And it gets to the edge cases.
Like they're not clean, but organizations oftentimes,
and I've been places where they didn't wanna take that step
at all, can make that jump.
- Yeah.
- And I think it's really helpful especially.
So in our body care line, we have soap, hand wash,
lotion, hand cream, and whipped body cream.
In so five different products, different sizes
of those products, and we have them across
multiple different scents.
So understanding what scent someone really likes
and if they're only buying into florals,
recommending another floral scent to them.
- Right.
- That's not something where I'm gonna spend the time
to ask, hey, rank short for me, florals, fruit, citrus,
herbal, or non-scented.
- Yeah.
- I'm gonna infer that behavior
and then start to segment off of that.
- Yeah.
Okay, so I have a question.
- Okay.
- No.
- I don't know if you're gonna know the answer to this,
but I'm kind of curious because we talk a lot about,
we talk about the external customer
and we talk about the internal customer
and we like briefly touch on like the agents
and like the AI and stuff,
but I'm so curious that because you as a marketing leader,
right, you do do so much of like the segmenting
and this personalization.
Anywhere in the customer experience journey,
and I mean like support and in the community side,
are you utilizing this data
or like this like personalization
to kind of captivate your audience in a different way?
Like does that make sense?
- Yeah.
So I think we're using that in terms of more life cycle
marketing than I would say on our CX agent side.
- Yeah.
- I think our CX agent side is more of an input into that
than an output.
I think we'll have all the data on the customer
and what they've worked with either an aesthetician
or that skin tool or just their purchase behavior
in their file.
So our agents can be armed with certain things.
We also when we are able to understand
what was purchased the gift or not,
so we can get on that in an event as well.
- Oh, nice.
- Yeah.
- But so we'll leverage that as where we can
as an output to tailor it.
So if someone's asking,
hey, how does this fit into my routine,
our agents can look at what else they have purchased
from us and sort of say,
oh, you should apply this cleanser
before your Bloom Cream moisturizer.
- Yeah.
- And really just give that little element there
of neighborliness and kindness
and really understanding that consumer
and personalized them on that response.
However, that also feeds into what we do
and it's more on the life cycle marketing, I'd say.
So in our flows, in our emails and text message to consumers,
how do we pull that in and help segment and drive
better communication there?
- Yeah, yeah.
I think it's so interesting.
I think you guys have a really dynamic marketing
and just overall customer experience.
And I don't mean that in just the support piece of it.
I think it's really amazing.
I'm actually shooketh.
Okay, actually switching gears.
I know we're talking a lot about digital stuff,
but recently, and this is my favorite thing
coming from Feastables, David,
you did an in real life brand experience activation.
- Absolutely.
- Can we talk about that?
- Yeah.
So we launched a brand new product called Mushroom Milk.
It is a better aging eye cream.
It is powered by five mushrooms
and 5% hexa peptides, which hexa peptide is a key ingredient
that basically acts like a Botox.
And so those two elements really help drive
and fuel this eye cream because it's made with mushrooms,
which just like mushroom based caffeine drinks,
mushroom coffee, I don't know the right word there,
but the non-caffeine version gives you the energy
without the crash.
A mushroom based eye cream versus a caffeine eye cream
won't dry out your eyes and your eyes won't crash.
So we had noticed in some of this trend as well,
we noticed that caffeine eye creams work
for about three to five hours,
and then they start to dry you out.
And so we built and worked to identify a formula
using five key mushrooms and goat's milk
to help change that.
And so because it's in the realm of mushrooms,
because we're a brand based in upstate New York,
we decided to lean into that for the branding.
And so we were tripping through Texas.
So we had Cody in our mascot in a VW bus
that we had tripped out and had an activation.
We had it in he tripped through Dallas
and the Dallas Fort Worth area.
We were at an event in Dallas,
as well as multiple alta locations.
And then drove down here to Austin,
where we were on South Congress
and I was able to go to that one.
And then took a couple of alta locations here as well in Austin.
- Wow.
- So really invited the community out
to experience the product,
to understand the brand,
to sort of have a key moment.
We invited all of our influencer partners
who were in Texas to come as well,
to really meet up and build a sense of community
because we're building a influencer community
within Beekman as well and help track that.
So it was a really cool way to have a digital brand,
an omni-channel brand that we are,
but have a new experience for us.
- Yeah, absolutely.
I think you guys do a really great job
of taking that digital experience
to like in real life experience.
I'm actually really curious,
and this is kind of going back a little bit,
but we're talking about this in real life brand experience,
this building community, like this educating,
educating on a digital way,
but like you're in so many other locations,
you're in these altas,
you're in QVC, HSN, right?
And Amazon and how do you,
like and I can understand like the flow
into like coming to Beekman 1802,
but then let's just talk about like QVC and HSN.
Like how do you educate the people
that are talking about your products
to ensure that that education is like being passed off
to that audience?
- Yeah, so I'm not an expert on the TV channel
so I don't think so. - Yeah, I'm not, I'd love so.
- But we work with the host at those shows
and bring our own guests in.
So typically our guests are our founders,
Brendan Josh, who are on TV all the time
for QVC and HSN with baby goats,
and they talk about it and they do a very great job
of talking about the incredible aspect of our products.
They do product demonstrations on camera.
They really help drive that education,
you know, in a powerful way.
Over the last few years, we started diversifying that
away from just our founders to add in other key people
in the beauty space who can talk to that product.
And so we brought them on board and they,
they get educated as a part of our brand
and then our guests on the shows.
- Yeah, I think that play of like,
I think what's interesting is like
when you have an organization or a brand or whatever,
like having that founder story is so important,
like for those initial stages,
but then at some point you graduate
and it's not necessarily just like utilizing an influencer,
it's also just like social proof in like,
UGC user generated content, right?
And like in some other form of like being able
to tell that story from like the audience being able to say,
like, hey, I'm one audience,
I'm speaking to the other audience.
And I think you, not just using the founder story
is like actually like really amazing.
- Well, and we're at that point in our journey,
I think to Josh,
from Beacon 1802 was founded 2007, 2008
as by Josh and Brent, our founders.
And we've been around for a while.
They started this brand,
they really were energized and driving it
to save the farm that they have bought up today.
- Yeah, that's right.
- And because it was their session,
they both lost their job.
So how do we save the farm?
And that's how we started selling goat milk soap.
And so we've grown from there significantly.
But they have been the face of the brand for a long time.
And I think it's about how do we still honor that
and still tell that story.
But the brand has grown in a sizable way.
And so it is about the science of goat milk
and kindness, it's less about the founder story anymore
because you've gotten to that size and scale
where most people who are discovering us,
they're discovering us as they're walking through Ulta.
They're discovering us as they're flipping
through their TV channel.
They're discovering us here in Texas at Bucky's.
They're discovering us online or on Amazon
and not being brought in because of the founder story.
But overall, being brought in because of the ingredients
and the efficacy of the skincare
gives us an ability to tell many more stories,
including the founder story.
- Yeah, hold on.
I want to back up to the Bucky's real.
- Sorry.
- I am so sorry.
- I knew as soon as I sat at it,
I knew Jess was gonna come back to Bucky's.
- For anybody who doesn't know,
it's like kind of a national thing that we,
like people know, right?
- Bucky's is definitely a Texas thing that has spread
to I would say around I-40, like in the south.
- Yeah.
So what is Bucky's?
Let's explain it 'cause I think this is a very interesting
dynamic. - What is Bucky's?
- Bucky's is everything you want it to be.
But effectively, Bucky's is a restop gas station
that prides itself on having the most
and cleanest bathrooms of any restop gas station, et cetera.
- Good barbecue, yeah.
- You pull into a Bucky's and there are,
I want to say 80 pumps.
There it is the square footprint, I would say,
of like a small target.
- Yeah.
- With about 30% of that to bathrooms.
And then use, they sell food, they sell barbecue,
they sell beauty products, they sell apparel.
They sell a lot of different things at Bucky's.
So, and they sell Bekman 1802.
- And so this is why it's really,
this is why I wanted to come back to it
because I think that this again is talking
about like a dynamic audience build,
being everywhere in your customer's journey, right?
Like Bucky's is kind of the target of gas stations.
And I think that that's really interesting
to have this like high-end skincare product
at Bucky's, the gas station, where you can also get barbecue.
- It's a very interesting retailer for us.
I love it as someone who lives here in Texas.
But I think, and I have people who text me photos,
like, oh my, I just saw Bekman at Bucky's.
Do you know you're there?
I'm like, yeah, oh, I know where Bucky's.
- I don't know how much in sales you do.
- We do, we do, it's the eyes-able amount of sales.
- Okay, I love those.
- But we sell, and in particular,
I think bringing us back a little bit.
- Yeah, thanks.
- I think it is about, when it comes to Omni Channel,
you can also get into category segmentation.
So Bucky's given the nature of it being added,
like yes, it is the target of gas stations,
but it is still a gas station.
We have our body care line,
which is a lower price point,
less education forward, very giftable of a product,
versus our facial skincare line,
which needs more education is a higher price point.
Whereas at Ulta, we have primarily our skincare line,
and then a couple of cents of our body care line.
- Yeah.
- Because Ulta, the consumer is in that mindset of skincare.
- Yeah, it's being everywhere that your customer is
in their journey, specifically.
- In their journey, correct.
- Specifically.
So body care, Bucky's makes up.
- Body care is a giftable body care of Bucky's,
because a lot of the items that you would buy,
a lot of the retail Bucky's that isn't food related
is giftable, very highly giftable product.
- Yeah.
- I feel like when you do a transition music into fun.
- I know.
(humming)
- Wayne's world.
Okay, I wanna go into some hot takes.
- Okay.
- So here's a jam.
So besides being an amazing marketer.
- Is this lightning round style like three second answers?
- No, we have like 10 of a whole thing
about what we get into.
- Okay, okay.
- Here's a jam though.
So David, besides being an amazing marketer,
is also just a really amazing leader.
So like some of the hot takes
that I actually wanna get into first is,
who was your best boss and why?
- Ooh.
- Okay.
I've had a lot of bosses in my day across many organizations.
But I think one of my best bosses was Sam Sebastian at Google.
He was my director.
And I think what made him the best boss for me,
I think really was in how he taught and trained his teams
about the work life blend.
And he was very particular to use that word blend,
not balance, because it was about the ebb and flow of it all.
So I got to see him in many stages at Google
over my time there.
But in particular, I learned from him
how he operates and works very much.
He's like, look, I'm gonna be working
from early in the morning from six until about 738.
And then from eight until 10,
I'm not working, I'm dealing with my,
I'm helping with my kids, get them out the door.
Then he works until four or five,
and then he's off, you can't get ahold of him
until the kids are in bed.
And then he's gonna come back online.
And he really helped teach me that.
And as a good mentor and leader,
how you have that blend and how you operate with that.
And he not only did he do that in his own life,
he made certain, everyone on his team knew that,
knew that that was perfectly okay to time shift
and still get your work done.
And that he would be reliable at those times he said he was.
And all of those factors,
I've imbued into how I lead my team today.
We are a fully remote team on the digital side.
And so I very much have opinions on IRL
versus hybrid, versus remote, et cetera.
We can get into those.
But I think for me, it's about the work getting done
and it's about the call to the work.
And I don't care where you do that or when you do that.
I care that we are doing that together.
And we're on the right path
and we're aligned in the right direction
more so than when you get it done.
And he taught me that.
- Well, I mean, you just went into my other hot take.
What's your thoughts on IRL work or remote?
- I actually think the answer to this probably a year ago
or six months ago is different
than what I'm gonna say now.
I think I'm still a very big proponent of remote work.
I think it opens up so many different doors
as a leader from a talent perspective,
from a operations perspective, benefits to employees, et cetera.
So even if we were in the same city,
I would still opt for remote by default.
But I do think there is extreme value
in regular structured time together.
So for us and our team, that means once every couple of months,
we meet up and we spend a good chunk of time together.
We just had a strategy session with our leadership team
and one of my director of ports was there as well.
And she and I bonded not only in the room,
but in the off-room time.
And we had great coaching sessions on
sort of why of things were said the way they were.
And to me, that's something that,
not because of the camera,
although I think there is an element of that,
but because I think the structure of a calendared meeting
sets an agenda, sets a, like,
this is what we're gonna talk about.
This is the realm versus sort of a free-flowing conversation
after work.
- Yeah.
And now I have my opinion,
but I think IRL versus remote is like really tough
in the type of work that you do.
- Yes, it does matter.
Like I really think that some teams
are just really better spent, like, in real life
versus like some teams that are remote.
I also think it varies very much by like the person too.
- Yep.
I think the person and the company.
Like, I think there are some companies
that are going to struggle to be remote
and some companies that are gonna struggle to be IRL.
And I think that that sits with leadership
in the culture of the company.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, we have one more question.
- Only one, I think we had 10.
- Oh, we have 10, but we only have a few minutes.
- Yeah, that's fair.
- It's a problem.
So if you wanna know more, you just need to call us, maybe.
Okay, so last question, how to take,
is it a sit stand or sit stand?
Do you like to sit at your desk
or do you like to stand at your desk?
- Neither.
- Ooh, what do you do?
- I have a walking treadmill desk.
- Okay, smart.
- And then?
- And it has changed the game.
So I have had a stand-up desk.
It can let me sit down and I was doing
like a mix of sit-down stand-up,
but probably like 60% standing, 40% sitting.
I've got the treadmill and I worked up
over the last couple of months.
And in the last week, I actually didn't sit at all.
It was fully standing and walking the whole time.
I'm averaging like eight miles a day, walking at work.
Do you think like it's not distracting?
- There are, I actually wrote a whole Twitter thread on this.
So you can check it out there,
but I think that there are certain things you can walk
and talk at the same time.
You can walk and type at the same time.
You cannot walk, talk, and type at the same time.
So you have to find accordingly.
So there are meetings where like,
if it's a very conversational meeting
or someone else is presenting,
like I can absolutely walk
and I'll walk at like a one, 1.5 speed.
There are times where it's not meeting time
and it is just like, I need to build some models in Excel
or build some PowerPoint decks or like push on
and make some edits for our PDPs
where I've cranked that thing up to like four and a half,
five and a half.
I'm listening to like dance music
and I am just like, I like walking it out.
- Wow.
- And that actually energizes me.
It tickles something in my brain
where it actually like pushes out all the distractions
that I just get hyper-focused,
which is really great.
I love it.
- Dang, I feel like I need that.
- I feel like I need that.
- I feel like that.
- I'll send you mine.
- Okay, yeah.
- Yeah, I'm down.
I gotta get like a whole new desk set up.
It's like a thing.
Okay, well listen, we had like 10 questions.
I couldn't get to it.
It's honestly, this is one of my favorite humans.
But it all good stuff.
So David, tell the audience where they can find you
if they wanna reach out.
- Absolutely, so I'm on Twitter @datedDavidATX
and I'm on LinkedIn.
Feel free to send me a connection.
But most of my hot takes and spicy comments
are gonna be on Twitter and in the DMs of Twitter.
- He's not wrong.
That's how we met.
- Yeah, it is.
- Well, thank you everybody for joining me
for joining us, my co-host David
for another episode of The Juice with Jess.
And we'll see you next week.
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That means that you like me and I like you,
which also means you should subscribe to this show.
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