In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Shaun Greenblo, Managing Director of Boody, who make high quality, sustainable clothing essentials, including underwear. Boody began when Shaun’s dad, David and his friend, Neil, wanted to bring their experience in fashion and pharmacy together to force sustainable change. Now, their sons run the business and have taken it to new heights, with their sustainable everyday basic range of clothing selling in 15 countries globally and counting. In this chat, Shaun shares insights into Boody’s DNA, the power of earned media and how Boody convinced the GOAT of sustainability and a living legend…to front their most recent underwear campaign. Just a quick heads up. Shaun recorded the episode from the new Boody offices in Surrey Hills. Like all office moves, the wifi isn’t at its peak yet so there may be a couple of moments of low-fi interruption.
“There’s plenty of reasons in any partnership you can say why not to do things, but you can also give yourself a bit of licence to have fun“
Shaun Greenblo
Jane Goodall
“Boody being a challenger brand, we didn’t have the budget to compete with the big guys out there, so we really recognise that as part of this campaign, being our first above the line campaign, what we needed to do was earn a huge amount of earned media on top if it, so getting Jane (Goodall) onboard was able to achieve that.
There’s been a huge amount of talk about, what’s this amazing GOAT, 88-year-old woman fronting an underwear campaign? It’s been incredible, it really has. We talk often about the mix. I know your audience is very, very focused or excited around e-commerce. We talk about the mix between digital performance marketing and above the line, and the funnel, the marketing funnel. We’ve actually seen a lift in our e-commerce business as a result of the campaign and all that, and media as well, which has been fantastic.”
Earned media
“It was something we really had to wrap our heads around, as we’ve been very much above the line, below the line, revenue and profit-driven business over the last decade. Since we built our e-commerce, I built our e-commerce business in 2015, literally just working, plugging away myself at a Shopify store. We focused on digital marketing and ROAS, and that’s been the lens in which we viewed our marketing. Spend a dollar, how much are we going to earn?
This is a whole different world, but what we did recognize with that was the power of brand in creating value and impacting our community. That forced us, well, not forced us, but excited us to start opening up our thinking and coming to terms with the fact that this might not be a ROAS play. It was about awareness. It was about earned media. It was about exciting and engaging our community. As they say, 100% of your marketing spend, 50% will work but you don’t know which 50%.”
Customers don’t like products
“When you actually look at Boody as a business and our product, one of our co-founders, David, who’s also my father, essentially applied in Boody … He didn’t apply, rather, the mistakes that he learned from 30-plus years in fashion. That’s really the core, or the core pillars of what our product’s all about, which is non-seasonal, no embellishments that the customer can complain about.
One thing that he really learned about product is customers don’t ‘like’ products. They ‘don’t like’ products. If you can make that purchasing decision easier by taking out points where they can criticize or complain about the product, you have a much better chance of converting the customer and keeping the customer. Boody is all about the basic essentials. We’re not interested in the fancy-schmancy. We’re not interested in the embellishments. We are about great quality, basic essentials that are made to be the most comfortable underwear, innerwear, outerwear that you’ll ever wear.”
Questions answered in this episode include…
- What’s Boody’s secret to building a strong team?
- How did you go about getting an icon like Jane Goodall to front your latest campaign?
- What brands do you look to for inspiration?
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