[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cut guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Emilio Murphy, head of paid media at Muscle Nation, the community and culture driven fitness brand. Before that, Emilio spent three and a half years at hypergrowth startup High Smile, helping them conquer the teeth whitening sector. Emilio, we have had such a great
Nathan Bush: conversation around nerding out on all things paid media on our main episode, but we're here to learn a little bit more about you. I've got five quick questions for you. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Emilio Murphy: I don't want to say bought because it sounds a bit weird, but during COVID I'd actually adopted. My adopted a cat during COVID So it was a really weird experience because I couldn't go to the shelter or I couldn't go to meet him for the first time. So it was really weird. It was like a zoom intro. It's really, really strange.
Nathan Bush: That's cool. What'd you get?
Emilio Murphy: I just got a little domestic, kind of medium hair. He was just a little kind of street cat that found his way into the shelter. So it was cool. It was a really fun kind of experience, but it was really weird. So when people ask me like, what's the weirdest thing you ever bought? It's like, yeah, probably him.
Nathan Bush: That is the weirdest. Yeah, that's, that's a good one. All right. Wasn't that funny? Now looking back, it feels like we've got enough distance from COVID to go. Oh yeah, some of those things did then was a bit weird, but it felt right at the time.
Emilio Murphy: It's really strange.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Emilio Murphy: I have a couple, but I think from an apparel side, I really love, I love ugly.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
Emilio Murphy: I bought so much of their stuff. It's. It's dangerous. Whenever I get an I love ugly email, I know it's, it's, it's game over.
Nathan Bush: Because they're out of New Zealand.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're out of New Zealand.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Beautiful.
Emilio Murphy: And then second of all, I really like a store called Altdrop for those who don't know what old Drop are. They're a kind of a specialty kind of coffee website. So instead of traditionally going to kind of local cafes and kind of being constricted of who supplies beans to your local cafes, you can Jump on the website and just order, like specialty coffee beans from Melbourne or different cafes around Australia. But it's a really cool way to kind of, I guess, taste different coffee.
Nathan Bush: Okay, alt drop. Alt drop.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Okay, good recommendations. Who do you think's nailing it from a paid media perspective? Who do you go? Oh, if I could just look into their accounts, I would love to know what's going on.
Emilio Murphy: Oh, that's a good question. I always look to ones like July. July always does so well. They always seem to hit me just before I'm about to go away. So I don't know how they're doing it, but it's shocking every time we're about to go away. Like, yeah, July hit me up. Damn it. Maybe I do need a new piece of luggage.
Nathan Bush: Will love hearing that. All right, number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Emilio Murphy: Pop ups. Yeah, I hate pop ups. They work, man. Like, sometimes I do well for like giveaways and things like that. But I know when I'm on a website and I'm mid scroll and something pops up and I have to, as lazy as it sounds, having to just redirect my thumb and just closing the pop up, it's so annoying. I just, just. I would be happy if they just all replaced it with a banner and it would be. It'd be fine.
Nathan Bush: It'd be good. What about when it comes to managing paid media campaigns? Is there something in there that you go, I just wish this would stop being a thing?
Emilio Murphy: I think the onus on doubling down all the time on budgets, I think it's about. It sounds like Catch 22, and it sounds like a good problem to have. Being too successful. Sometimes it's probably. It's a bad. Sometimes it's a bad issue because sometimes it's harder to predict kind of stock levels. And sometimes you have like a really good product that you want to preserve. For example, I know for us, say, protein water does really well, and then we want to ensure that we have enough protein water to get us through until kind of Black Friday period. So it's more about maintenance as opposed to doubling down on those campaigns.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I don't think you're going to have much sympathy from listeners on that one, though. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Emilio Murphy: So, funnily enough, as we were chatting about. Chatting on the. On the main episode, going back to read kind of your uni textbooks, I think I've been reading this consumer behavior textbook From Solomon. Solomon's godfather of everything, marketing. Right. So I think it's called Buying Having and I can't remember what it's called. I think it's Buying Having by Solomon. But it's amazing. It's a consumer psychology textbook that you read in your first year of uni. But there are so many key practices in there and so many takeaways that I feel that I can apply now that I've had, you know, sufficient, I guess, practical experience.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And your tip in the main episode around going back and looking at some of those textbooks that you might have studied without the benefit of the experience that you've now got is actually a really good one. And it might not be textbooks, it might be books that you read really early on in your career journey, but now you're looking at them through a whole new lens. I think that's a great tip. Last question I've got for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is, I think
Emilio Murphy: the future of retail is nano influencers. As we kind of move towards a, I guess a world of anybody can become viral, anybody can be discovered. I think the smaller influencers will be, I guess the most important. Hopefully as we move towards platforms that are more shoppable from checkout on platform, I think those nano influencers are going to explode. But I think brands need to look at it in a way that these nano influences aren't always going to drive conversion on the front end. Their posts aren't always going to sell. But it's about finding nano influencers that you're able to collaborate with, have long term commitments with and long term relationships with that produce really good creative that you're able to reuse through the most important parts of the year or just as evergreen campaigns.
Nathan Bush: Okay, in your eyes, what's a nano influencer? How big is their influence?
Emilio Murphy: Sub 1000.
Nathan Bush: Ooh, that is very nano.
Emilio Murphy: Yeah. Tiny, Tiny.
Nathan Bush: And then. But if they're really good, they're going to explode out of that pretty quickly, right?
Emilio Murphy: Yeah, exactly. And if you're able to create like a really good relationships with these really early on, I recommend using things like every platform's got its own like kind of creator marketplace. So Facebook, I think it's called Collaboration center. And then TikTok's got TikTok creator marketplace. So using those and then using those to connect with kind of content creators or influencers and using that to really connect with them and then opening up those relationships and really nurturing those relationships and understanding these content creators are popular for a reason. And they get their engagement. They do for a reason. So don't give them such a strict brief. Give them talking points. And you're attracted to them because of the way they did the creative. So let them do the creative in the way that attracted you.
Nathan Bush: Catch them early and then let them go. Yeah.
Emilio Murphy: Love it.
Nathan Bush: Emilio, thank you for joining us on the checkout. Awesome.
Emilio Murphy: Thanks, Nathan.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Emilio, jump back into episode 345 where Emilio gives us all his tips. He's very, very generous, plus the channels and formats he sees as essential for success in paid media. In E commerce, he reveals the most important lever in his advertising arsenal and shares his predictions for the future of search. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to car.
