Matt Herbert: A brand is what people talk about you when you're not in the room. You'll have key attributes and our brands will have key attributes you're looking to own. Whether it's price, quality, range of products, sustainability, trust. If you have your annual budget, divide that over 12 months and spend consistently across the year in the areas and the channels that you know are working for you. Rather than $100,000 blast and going dark for 11 months.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading E commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush catches up with Australian e commerce leaders to get all the insights, tips and lessons to keep you at the top of the e commerce game and of course, keep your customers adding to cart. Here's your host, Bush
Nathan Bush: Foreign.
Nathan Bush: Have you ever wondered what people say about you when you're not around? I'd rather not know if I'm honest. But of course you have. I mean, we all do. Now, I can't do much for your personal life, but if you're a brand, my guest today can help you listen in, tell you what people are saying in almost real time and increase the chances that what is being said is is actually positive. Matt Herbert is the co founder and the Co CEO of Tracksuit, a B2B SaaS marketing platform delivering affordable market research and brand tracking to help consumer brands. Answer the question is what we're doing. Working with over 1300 clients, including some crackers like Heaps, Normal Culture Kings, Bondi, Sands and Guzman and Gomez, Tracksuit raised $5 million at the start of the year and is now expanding into. Matt shares how Tracksuit gathers quality insights about your brand. He shares the calculator that allocates budget to maximum effect. And one we would all like to know how best to survive the downturn. So thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Paclio, here's our conversation with Matt Herbert, co founder and co CEO of Tracksuit. Matt, welcome to ADD to cart.
Matt Herbert: Yeah, thanks, Nathan. That's a nice way to spend a Friday afternoon.
Nathan Bush: It is, isn't it? And it's my fault we're doing it on a Friday afternoon because I totally screwed up our recording earlier in the week, so we've rescheduled. Thank you for taking the Friday afternoon.
Matt Herbert: That's good, that's good.
Nathan Bush: You've been a busy man. I hear you're picking up awards left, right and center.
Nathan Bush: A bit of a 30 under 30
Nathan Bush: award coming your way this month.
Matt Herbert: Yeah, nice recognition a month ago. We've got a growing team over in Sydney, so it was a good chance to take everybody along to B and T and to pick up the award was. Yeah, it was a nice recognition of what's been going on.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, congratulations. All right, we're going to get into what's going on. You are heading up a brand and we're going to talk a lot about brand called Tracksuit. Before we get into what you do, why the name Tracksuit? You're not wearing a tracksuit, actually, just for people's imagery as they're listening to this.
Matt Herbert: Matt is not in a tracksuit. Our tracksuits are currently at the embroiderers getting refreshed for the team and our customers. So, yes, we do have Tracksuits as well as being called Tracksuit. And I think I'm pleased you asked about that. And I think without getting too much into Tracksuit just yet, within market research and brand tracking, which is the specifics of what we're building here is traditionally it's been done with people wearing suits around a boardroom. Slow, rigid, a little bit boring. And so a couple of years ago we said, hey, look, we want to flip this and we want to build a product that reflects being nimble, fun, comfortable and built for performance at the same time. So hence the name Tracksuit, which has been quite timely and we're having a lot of fun along the way with it.
Nathan Bush: I could imagine. I hear you're off to Cannes soon for an awards, is it?
Matt Herbert: We're heading along to Cannes in a month or so. Yeah. We recently went through our first external investment rounds. One of those partners now essential who own Walk World Advertising Research center and Cannes lions are now backing Tracksuit. And so a chance for us to go over there and we're presenting some research on Main Stage as well. So a good opportunity and a good excuse to spend the time in a Euro summer, I guess.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Well, we are going to pick your brains on all things brand and what that means for e commerce retailers, just so that they have context in your head. We will dive into the Tracksuit platform later. But can you give us your elevator pitch on what Tracksuit does for retailers first?
Matt Herbert: Absolutely, absolutely. So Tracksuit, beautiful, affordable, always on brand tracking, taking enterprise level concepts of brand tracking and market research, all the biggest businesses combank, Qantas, Unilever, Procter and Gamble have been tracking their brands for the last 30, 40, 50 years. And so for e commerce retailers, what we're doing is we're taking enterprise level market research, turning it into a way that is easy to digest and communicate. Helping marketers and people have no idea about marketing, communicate and value the impact of their brand building efforts and also understand and answer the question is what we're doing working from a brain tracking perspective? We have hundreds and thousands of surveys going out on a weekly basis, real surveys to real humans asking fundamentals around brand building. How big's your market, how well are you known, who's considering you, what are you known for and how does that compare to your competitor? Set within the thinking of it's incredibly hard to sell to someone that's never heard of you. And so really looking at that top of funnel, balancing the mix of performance measurement and then brand building efforts with Tracksuit, great.
Nathan Bush: And you've got some amazing brands on board that I can see from the outside with beautiful brands, Heaps Normal, Eucalyptus Guzman and Gomez, Bondi Sands, some big names there with beautiful brands. Why did you go down this path in the first place?
Matt Herbert: Two years ago we came together as we were founding Tracksuit, just to say, why are consumer brands going on these rapid growth and plateauing and this challenge of building brands sustainably over the long term? And a challenge that we saw time and time again with cost of acquisition increasing, with growth slowing down, and came back to the concept of what gets measured, gets managed and the understanding or the insight that we're doing a fantastic job at being able to understand bottom of the funnel conversions, click through rates, impressions, sales. But there was no easy and affordable way to understand how well are we bringing people in at the top of the funnel? How are we building our brands, making more people aware of us, making more people consider us, why would they be doing that? And so that was the challenge that we were looking to solve, is to take traditional market research that had been prohibitively expensive for growing consumer brands to say, hey, let's take the same standards, best in class market research and brand strategy and turn Tracksuit into a measurement and a platform and an affordable tool to sit alongside performance metrics, but really own the way that brand is measured, communicated and understood.
Nathan Bush: Is your strategy to go after brands that already have strong brands that need measurement, or is it to go after others that you see aren't actually putting effort into branding?
Matt Herbert: I mean, we were fortunate to have an incredible group of customers and supporters that we were able to support ourselves with the likes of Bondi and Frank, Body and Culture Kings, the likes of that. The list goes on. You know, really leading retailers in Australia and the markets that we're supporting in terms of where we're going at. One of the big problems we identified over the last few years is to say especially E commerce and retail is that we've gone through this area the last 10 to 15 years of growth hacking the ability to grow brands for essentially free. You put a dollar into performance marketing and you get a dollar fifty out. And now we're starting to see that the efficiency and effectiveness of performance marketing is reaching a ceiling and plateauing of growth. And so as that happens, starting to look at great continue to convert and sell. But now let's start to look at building brands sustainably over the long term. And so it's those brands that are balancing that short term and that long term, what we call future demand and existing demands and supporting that. So consumer focused and definitely in the E commerce and retail space is one that we're able to work closely with and partner with with effectiveness.
Nathan Bush: It's a really interesting point. I was hosting a roundtable yesterday at the Digital Retail Summit and our topic was around the impending downturn or whether we're in the downturn. No one really knows. One of the retailers brought up a really good point and they have a beautiful brand. I won't name them here, but they were talking about the importance of upholding your brand even when times come get really tough. And it's almost like don't all of a sudden because you are running at sales really hard and struggling to make numbers, don't act desperate and give up your brand. Is that what you're seeing in market?
Matt Herbert: Yeah, absolutely. And the research continues to show that in periods of downturns and economic instability is that those brands that stay online with their brand building activities keep consistent and keep in the minds and top of minds for consumers. They come out the best at the back end of a recession. For example, if you turn off and go dark in another couple of years you're going to have to rebuild all those efforts. And so what we're working with on our customers and brands that we're supporting is to essentially Warren Buffett your brands. It spreads your investment out across 12 months. Stay online, stay consistently and then continue to day trade your performance marketing. And that's going to be putting brands, and especially E commerce and retailers in a strong position to survive the next couple of years or however this long is and also take market share while a lot of competitors will be turning off and cutting marketing budgets.
Nathan Bush: The intelligent brand investor hey, hey.
Matt Herbert: Something like that.
[Ad]: Ready to go back and flip burgers for a living?
Nathan Bush: Nah, me neither.
[Ad]: But one of the most surprising Results that came out of Shopify's recent global survey was that despite the cost of living pressures on customers, two thirds of customers are still open to splurging on themselves at least monthly. The most common splurge?
Nathan Bush: Takeaway food.
[Ad]: But even if you aren't in the grease game, it is promising because no matter how how price orientated the market is, customers will find opportunities to treat themselves. You've just got to find the right moment to wave the smell of that juicy burger under their noses. Something to think about as you're planning 2023. To view more resources to help with your 2023 planning and see how Shopify can take your e commerce business to the next level, visit shopify.com au today.
Nathan Bush: So brand for a lot of people,
Nathan Bush: especially if you haven't been in the marketing world, if you're coming from a retail perspective or a technology perspective, brand can be this really hazy term that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What do you see? Brand is incorporating.
Matt Herbert: Yeah, I think brand has done a relatively poor job at branding itself and as we look to the bigger impact that we're looking to have at tracks it, it's, it's around how do we help marketing teams and brand leaders communicate the value of their brand building efforts to accountants, C suites their board to say this is where investment's going and this is the impact that we're doing around brand building time and time again. A strong brand and we'll get to, we'll get to brands in a second to say a strong brand helps you acquire customers more easily. It helps you increase lifetime value for customers and it also is your defensible moats when it comes to downturns or competitors and that there when we start to tie it to the commercial outcomes on those three points that now is getting a lot of buy in or simplifying why a brand is important. And now our philosophy to marketing and to brand is around the concept of building future demand. So continue to be bringing people in around awareness and consideration. Those that might not be ready to buy from you right now, today or tomorrow but connecting with them emotionally and looking at the bigger why on their lives as well as existing demands. These people in market ready to buy from you right now connect rationally with promotions and discounts and call to actions and capture that but also continue to look at the future demand that you're, that you're bringing into so awareness and consideration. I think we talk about an interesting one on that and when we're, when we're talking at conferences or panels and having discussions with retailers. To say, you know, a phone example is really good. To say, you know, who has bought or has considering buying a phone in the next fortnight. And when was the last time you bought your phone?
Nathan Bush: Two and a half, two and a half years, I reckon.
Matt Herbert: Maybe. When are you looking for the next one?
Nathan Bush: When this one cars it.
Matt Herbert: Exactly, yeah. So that might be today, that might be tomorrow, that might be a couple of months. Usually when we ask that question, you'll have three or four people that are right in market to buy their new phone in the next fortnight.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Matt Herbert: And then to say who might consider buying a phone in the next two and a half years and the rest of the hands go up. And that's what we're talking about of the future demand and existing demands. There's three people ready to buy from you right now, and there's 97 people that are probably going to consider buying from you in the next two years. And so getting that balance right.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And so from a practical perspective, beyond a logo, a font, the colors that you use, what is a brand?
Matt Herbert: A brand is what people talk about you when you're not in the room. And so as that is, how are you externally facing and how are people connecting with your company? What are they talking about when you're not in the room? That is everything to do with the brand, and that's how we look at it.
Nathan Bush: I think that means my brand's not very good.
Matt Herbert: I've heard good things. I've heard good things. A lot of recommendations before we jumped on this. Now that's good, that's cool.
Nathan Bush: My brand's all right.
Matt Herbert: Cool.
Nathan Bush: The tracking's going okay.
Nathan Bush: So you mentioned there around the commercial
Nathan Bush: outcomes that are tied to brand, what are the key metrics that you find
Matt Herbert: brands should be measured on? I think putting it into the. Into the scope of a brand. And we're looking to really support. And that's taking the. The fundamentals of brand building and effectiveness, whether it's Mark Ritson or Les Burnett and Peter Field. The long and short, the 60, 40, it's this. It is looking at how big is your market and then when it comes to the brand, how well is your brand known, how well is your brand considered? But more importantly, when it comes to your brand positioning, what are the attributes and perceptions you are associated with? And then how well are you owning your unique selling propositions, your point of difference in the market?
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Matt Herbert: So those are the fundamentals that we're looking at and we recommend looking at from a brand building perspective.
Nathan Bush: And given that you have visibility, you're collecting data across all these different brands and leaders in that space. Are there any key takeaways that you've had over the time of tracksuit being around and collecting this data that you were like, oh, there's some real commonalities here around the brands that are doing it well versus the ones who aren't?
Matt Herbert: Yeah, there's. When we have a look at the point of difference or what makes your brand distinctive, is starting to look at not only your own brand metrics, but looking at why are you not being considered and really jumping into there and having a look at what are the perceptions, what are the attributes, what is your brand, who are you in the minds of your potential customers. And then leveraging that to go to market with your marketing, with your communications, with the storytelling is to say, if we have a look at a bigger level of Heineken as an example here, Heineken as a brand is so much more than the little green bottle that produces a relatively standard lager. The green bottle plays into it, but it's the presence and the brand and the emotional connection that has showed up consistently over the last number of decades to make it sold in every single market around the world for a premium price point and is the most valued beer brands in the world when there are a lot of other lagers out there. And so as we look into the data to say do the fundamental functional attributes of your category, if you're an E commerce and a retailer, you know selling clothes is going to be quality that comes into there, there's going to be price point that comes into there. All your competitors are likely doing the same thing. And so what's your point of difference? What's your purpose? And how does someone look at, look at your brand versus your competitors, know exactly why they're coming to you rather than looking purely on features and functionality.
Nathan Bush: How important is consistency in that brand experience? I love the green bottle example of Heineken. If they turned around tomorrow and started selling beer out of clear plastic bottles, it could do damage to sales. You would, you would assume what are
Nathan Bush: the parts of brand that you just
Nathan Bush: have to keep consistent versus others where you can actually have a bit of fun and experimentation.
Matt Herbert: I think consistency and turning up consistently is the biggest piece that a brand can do and really lean in and own that. If you are chopping and changing your visual identity, your product looks, your communications, that long term closeness or Familiarity, when it comes to brands and your potential customers, you're going to lose that. And so consistency and connecting and understanding and aligning with what your potential customers are looking for, but show up consistently in the way that you want to have that point of difference. That's the biggest thing around the brand.
Nathan Bush: Do you need to have a big budget to have a good brand?
Matt Herbert: I think that's one of the interesting things that we've seen with Tracksuit over the last two years. We now work with over 250 customers tracking over 200 categories and 3,000 brands. And there's everywhere from Goodman Fielders to Bondi Sands to Culture Kings to Heaps Normal, a Big span and different budgets. And it's to say that you don't necessarily need to have a Unilever or a Procter and Gamble style budget to make shifts and incredible shifts in market share. Looking at that, going back to the Warren Buffett, your brand is to say if you have your annual budget, divide that over 12 months and spend consistently across the year in the areas and the channels that you know are working for you. Rather than $100,000 blast and going dark for 11 months.
Nathan Bush: Do you think that approach is a shift for how branding works today? Like if we go back and we think about the days of the big beer ads, which might be a big campaign, and you know, obviously they would target it towards September when footy finals is on and that would be, you know, the Carlton draft, big AD, 80% of the budget goes in there, super bowl, all those kind of things. And that's just one example of big campaigns. Do you think that's shifting now to being that more consistent spend?
Matt Herbert: I think the Carltons, the Carltons of the world, have big enough budgets that brand campaigns happen relatively consistently through the year and you might double or triple the million dollar spend that goes into a Super super bowl or an AFL grand final. And so when we're looking at the growing consumer brands that don't have that amount, follow the lead of where brand building has been really successful. It might not be an $8 million budget that you have. You might have a $300,000 budget, but do the most that you can with that across the year to create that consistency and familiarity. Rather than dropping a 100,000 on one campaign, which is likely to be swallowed up by the Carltons, who are outspending and outperforming noise across especially all online channels, there's a lot happening. So to cut through that noise, you're better off to distribute that across the year. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: So when you're talking about people talking about you in a room, you don't necessarily have to go for the dance hall or the stadium of people talking about. You can actually find your own little rooms with the right people talking about you at the right budget. Oh, I want to ask you, is
Nathan Bush: there a brand of a small or
Nathan Bush: medium retailer that stands out to you as doing this really well?
Matt Herbert: I think one brand or retailer that's doing it really well and crossing the online and in store experiences. You know, Culture Kings and the growth that you've seen in Australia. And I think that's one of the challenges for online and retail, specifically online brands, is that you, you don't have the luxury of sight, smell, touch, sound, taste that you do when you have that brick and mortar in real life experience. And so when you have a look at somewhere like Culture Kings, where the sensory overload and experience is so, you know, this is the in store, this is the brand in real life is as an online retailer, how do you lean into your online presence and connecting with customers on a one to one basis and building that community online and looking to. I think the storytelling, the community building is really important to alleviate not having the luxury of all the different physical in store experiences. And so I'd say Culture Kings would be one that's top of mind, that's looking at that online and in store balance really well and doing it fit for the channel.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love what they've done. Brand. Obviously the best example of that that I see is when you get dads of kids who love Culture Kings but their dads go, my kid loves this so much, I've got to go in and experience it. And then they're so awkward. And I'm talking about guys my age and older, but so awkward, but they're doing it because they just go, I just got to be a part of that and just see it, even though it's not me. That brand goes beyond their room.
Matt Herbert: Right? Exactly. Nate, do you, do you ever pop in there and shoot a few basketball hoops?
Nathan Bush: I would not even attempt to try
Nathan Bush: and be cool enough to shoot basketball hoops.
Nathan Bush: I do it as like the weird
Nathan Bush: retailer stalker who just goes in to have a look. I have no credibility in that place at all. Moving on.
Nathan Bush: But what I love about what you've
Nathan Bush: done with tracksuit is that you've done, you've taken that feeling that we talked about there with Culture Kings is like when people, you say, why do you love Culture Kings? People don't talk about the product, they don't talk about the prices, they talk about the feeling and the experience and what the overall sensory part of that was. What I love about Tracksuit is that you've been able to take that and actually give retailers and brands numbers to track that feeling. Can you take us through the process of what a typical tracking looks like for a brand from collecting the data all the way through to what they see within the platform?
Matt Herbert: Yeah, absolutely. And I think Tracksuit, as a brand and company ourselves, we're a B2B SaaS marketing platform but we're also wanting to show up and live and breathe what our customers are doing as well. So acting in that consumer focused, brand led way while also continuing to develop a really fun, enjoyable but credible way of giving these metrics to these brands. And so what we've done is we have taken enterprise level research and so looking at target groups of Australians, access to tens of millions of people potentially to talk to and going in there and, and four of each of our customers going and finding your target group of potential customers, making sure that we are always speaking to who you are building your brand within. Surveys go out on a weekly basis, hundreds of surveys on a weekly basis to your relevant broader target and bringing through the fundamentals of what it looks like to measure effectiveness and prove is what we're doing working.
Nathan Bush: So asking them so collecting that data obviously survey driven. How does that survey go out? Is it one big survey that goes out on behalf of all your brands that you track and that you see who comes back unaided in terms of recall or are you doing custom surveys for each brand?
Matt Herbert: Yeah. So every time we're working with our customers, those surveys are designed specifically for our customers where, where our customers are picking their competitor set, are tracking against their key brand pillars and brand statements that they're looking to really own. The way we conduct our survey is the same way that a Carlton would be doing their survey. So when we work with Heaps Normal, which is a fantastic brand, leading the non out beer space is to say the same people that we're talking to for Tim and the team at Heaps Normal is the same way that if you were in the Insights or marketing team at Asahi or Lion or Carlton would be accessing. So it's the same quality of respondents pulled through for Heaps Normal looking at their competitor set their category and specifically crafted around some of the custom brand statements that you know, Heaps Normal are looking to really own and positioning and what's leading to their brand doing so well. So one to one basis with our customers. But at scale is the way that the surveys are working right now.
Nathan Bush: You've refreshed your website. The new range is about to drop. You've never had more customer service options. Hey, but take a look over there at that boring pile of packaging boxes.
Nathan Bush: Ugly.
Nathan Bush: Time to give that some love. Luckily, Paclio is here to bring some joy to your customers delivery and unboxing experience. It's been ignored for way too long with with vibrant colors, cool designs and eco friendly credentials. There are no more excuses for boring boxes. Even better, Paclio is Australian owned and operated with same day dispatch and 14 day returns. There's nothing boring about that. Check out the Paclio range of ecommerce packaging options@paclio.com that's Paclio P A C K L E O paclio.com.
Nathan Bush: Are those respondents on those surveys selected based on demographics psychographics? How do you work out who to send what to for each brand?
Matt Herbert: Absolutely. So we work with each brand and we're having a look at who's that broader target customer. We go out to a nationally representative population of Australians and we'll then qualify, ask some specific questions and find out where these respondents should be going to make it relevant to each of our customers. Key demographics, age, gender, region, household income, ethnicity to really inform if you're a brand, an online retailer, an E commerce segments that allow you to target your marketing and spend more effectively and efficiently based on those different consumer profiles that you're looking at.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. So could Heaps Normal and I don't know anything about their marketing so I'm making things up here. Could Heaps Normal come to you and say we're really exploring going down the path of targeting triathletes. Can we get a gauge on how we're seen in the triathlete community?
Matt Herbert: I'm not entirely sure how many Australians are competing in triathlons right now. Fundamentally we can survey if more than one in five Australians are potential customers at some point. We can survey for you. I'd have to go and have a look at the triathlon numbers. More than 20% of Australians competing or active in triathlons. I'm not sure.
Nathan Bush: We're not that active. We're not as active as you New Zealanders. No. Okay, got it.
Nathan Bush: So it's got to have a critical
Nathan Bush: mass there to be able to get a good read.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Matt Herbert: One in one in five Australians. If more than one in five Australians are potential customers, we can look after you.
Nathan Bush: Great.
Nathan Bush: And what are some of the most common questions that you ask in those surveys or the types of questions.
Matt Herbert: So the types of questions go back to the fundamentals of brand building. This is prompted unprompted awareness consideration. So which of these brands are you would you consider which is your most preferred brands? Which of these brands have you used? And then around some of the qualitative aspects. And so what comes to mind when you think of heaps normal? What comes to mind when you think of Bondi Sans open ended verbatim Tell us how you really feel. Which gives a really objective way of is your brand positioning and are those key messages resonating with your target customers? And then also looking at okay, you'll have key attributes and our brands will have key attributes you're looking to own, whether it's price, quality, range of products, sustainability, trust or really bespoke, customized. And then prompting respondents, prompting your customers to say how well do you agree that these brands are really doing what they're hoping to? And then that gets used to inform strategy, set strategy, track against it and then you can iterate ongoing based on this objective feedback that's coming back from your potential and customers.
Nathan Bush: Great. So they don't know that it's a heaps normal survey, they just know it's a survey in this category.
Matt Herbert: That's right. So we take industry best practice to the way that our surveys are designed and worded to make sure that you're getting reliable, robust insights that you can build strategies off the back of.
Nathan Bush: As someone who never receives those surveys and I don't know because they've just like just ruled me out as abnormal, how do you find people who are willing to give up their time to answer these kind of surveys and are they representative?
Matt Herbert: Yeah. So we tracksa, we utilize the largest and leading panel providers and so the same way that Qantas and Commbank and Carlton will conduct their surveys, that's how we have access to the Australian population and the different markets that we're in. People answer surveys for all sorts of different reasons. And there's a key one is that humans love giving their opinions. And it comes back to the fundamentals of people want to be heard, want to be listened to and want to be giving their opinions. We make sure that we are getting representative populations for each of our customers that are coming through and are really strict on that so that we do have quality insights. It comes back to people love giving opinions and want to be heard.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And then so going back to that consistency piece, is it how often are these surveys sent for brands to be able to track changes in sentiment over time.
Matt Herbert: Traditionally, brand tracking, or what we find with retailers and E commerce brands is that if you've had the budget, you may have done a piece of research once a year, twice a year. If you're a big online retailer, you have 150,000 plus dollars to access always on or quarterly tracking programs. And so that's what we've wanted to take at Tracksuit is it's an always on brand tracking. And so we're surveying every single week so that as a brand, as a company, you can access live up to date views of your category, your brands, your competitor set. Whether you have a board meeting, whether you have budget reviews, whether you're talking to retailers is to say here is where we're at, this is our understanding rather than relying on data that's 612 months old. So it's always on brand tracking that can be accessed at any time. And you also get the historical trends and insights that you can overlay your marketing and brand activity, whether it's seasonalities or whether it's supply chains or whether it's different marketing. Instead of doing a read in November and then wondering what happens for 11 months before you do it again in November, with Tracksuit you get that full visibility throughout the year.
Nathan Bush: I can imagine for e commerce brands that is gold when trying to compare, especially like for like activity when you're searching for clues on what has changed. Being able to bring a brand sentiment into the mix is something that most wouldn't have previously just nodding, just agreeing, just. I'm doing a sales pitch for you.
Matt Herbert: Yeah, yeah, it's got it then you
Nathan Bush: talked about quantitative and qualitative data that you come back. So obviously you know the numbers side of it, but also giving the feelings, the thoughts around it. How do brands, how do you bring all that information together in a way that's digestible for brands in the dashboard?
Matt Herbert: We live in a world where there is a lot of data out there, there are a lot of analytics, there's lots of data. And so as we've built Tracksuit and into this intuitive, easy to visualize, easy to understand dashboard, that is our intention is to keep this complex ways of surveying and bringing it all together, but presenting it for our customers in an easy to understand and use basis. And so in case it was dashboarded, it's simplified but it gives you the key insights on an ongoing basis.
Nathan Bush: So if I was, let's, let's run with heaps normal, let's keep it going. So if I was Going, oh, I think there's something there around. People are feeling like it's the New Year and they should stop drinking. Therefore, we're on the radar again.
Nathan Bush: Would I be able to have a
Nathan Bush: search through the dashboard to find mentions of New Year or anything like that to understand those keywords?
Matt Herbert: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll aggregate sentiment, and within tracksuit, you're able to look for your own brand strategy and key mentions and campaigns and communications that you hope are coming through. We also start to see that what there is from an objective standpoint that you may not have realized that is associated with your brand, maybe an opportunity to jump on and really tie on is you're getting this best mix of what do you want to be known for? What do you want to find out is that coming through? And then what's the opportunity that you've got that your brand is associated with? Or there's an opportunity in the market to really own that positioning right throughout the year, whether it's New Year or Cyber Mondays and Black Fridays and key purchasing and consumer moments throughout the year, jumping onto that, really owning that and putting your brand in the strongest position you can with the sentiment that's starting to come through on an ongoing basis.
Nathan Bush: Is there any examples or stories that come to mind around brands who have looked through that feedback and found links or words or topics or themes that they weren't expecting to be associated with their brand?
Matt Herbert: I think what we see right now in talking to marketers and brand leaders is when you have access to track suit and you start to see sentiment and attributes come through, it does one of two things. It validates your gut and your gut decisions around this is what we expect our brand to do and be known for, and it validates that. Or it gives you the, well, we know that positioning isn't being associated a lot of the time. If you're looking at sustainability or fair trade or trust and quality, is to say, if that's part of your brand, are you owning that sentiment? And are consumers associating you with those strengths more than you thought or less than you thought? And so when it comes to key value propositions, validate the gut feeling or also start to say, wow, okay, we know that we need to shift.
Nathan Bush: Sustainability is a. An interesting one, isn't it? It's like. And I think a lot of marketers are wondering, you know, obviously everyone wants their business practices to be sustainable. Most people do. And marketers are putting real effort into telling the story of sustainability. Do you think that's landing with customers in how important it is into a brand story.
Matt Herbert: Consumers are definitely looking and expecting brands to be owning purpose and responsibility. I think the as a brand leader or as a e commerce retailer is to say there are going to be non negotiables in your category that consumers are looking for. And so the job to be done is to say how well are we positioned on what consumers are expecting. Great. Be recognized for that. And then it's also starting to look at what else do you need to be positioning your brand at as every retailer tries to own that.
Nathan Bush: One of the things that I found
Nathan Bush: fascinating as I was browsing the Tracksuit website was the calculator. Can you tell us about the calculator and the role that that plays for marketers?
Matt Herbert: Yeah, the calculator is sitting on our on our website. The calculator gives brand and brand leaders an effective way of understanding how should we be best allocating budget. Going back to the fundamentals of brand building and our philosophy around building future demands, long term brand building efforts as well as sales activations. The last 10 or so years we've seen this overindulgence in performance marketing taking up 90% of budgets in a lot of cases. And that's because it's been easy to communicate back throughout stakeholders to say we put a dollar in, we get a dollar fifty out. Yeah. When that doesn't work as effectively as it once has. And also why we've gone down that track in terms of performance and sales activations, allocating 90% of budgets that way is that it has allowed us and marketers to go to our stakeholders and talk about marketing in impressions and dollars and cents in numbers that accountants and finance teams and boards get. But what we see now is that performance marketing, sales activations by itself, brands are now starting to see increases in cost of acquisition, smaller than expected customer bases and growth that slowing. And so our calculator is looking at what's the best way of allocating that budget, bringing that balance back to brand building and sales activations. The calculator takes the work done by Peter Field and Les Burnett around the long and the short of it, which some listeners may be familiar with. The 60 40, the most effective brand building if it's 60% allocated to brands, 40% on sales activations. Now we know that that's not relevant for every single brand and every single category. And so we've taken that to say what's the size of your business, what categories are you playing in and what's proven to be the most effective allocation of your Marketing budget between brand building and sales activation. And that's a free tool that's on our site, which is a really effective way of starting to set budget strategies throughout the year and years ahead.
Nathan Bush: Perfect time when everyone's setting their budgets at the moment. So tell us, what does Tracksuit cost? So if we're looking to track a brand, obviously there will be a range, but we mentioned some of those prices that for brand tracking survey activity that was in the hundreds of thousands previously. What are you looking at there to get started with Tracksuit?
Matt Herbert: Yeah, fundamentally Tracksuit is a tenth of the cost of always on traditional tracking programs there or thereabouts. For a brand to get started tracking Australia or a specific market, you're looking at less than $20,000 for a year of always on brand tracking.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. And to set it up, does it take much? How do you get started?
Matt Herbert: Marketers and brand leaders have enough on their plate trying to build brands. And so that's one of the things we wanted to lean into, is make this easy and straightforward. And to get set up, it literally takes our customers a 10 minute form to fill out. Who are your competitors? What are the attributes that you really want to own? It takes 10 minutes to fill out. Tracksuit then takes this sets everything up and your surveys are ready to go out at the beginning of the month. So really straightforward and allows marketers to keep doing the great jobs that they're doing at building their brands with the thousands of other things that are on their plate.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And can you take that data and integrate it into other dashboards or services?
Matt Herbert: Yeah. So, right, so right now, Tracksuit, you're able to overlay campaign activity and key moments throughout the year to start to draw associations and correlations between what is shifting the needle on your key awareness, consideration, attributes. And we're working on a number of different integrations that allow Tracksuit data and insights to be integrated and informing strategies and insights ongoing.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great. I didn't realize that Tracksuit is only a bit over two years old. You look like a much more established brand, beautiful brand, but only two years old. Already shaking up the world of brand marketing with great clients, growing team and significant investment. As you alluded to earlier, what is on your radar for the next 12 months? What are the big exciting things coming up?
Matt Herbert: Yeah, big excited. It's a big year coming up. And, and I think the first piece that we want us to do is be quite considered in the way that we launch and grow Tracksuit in the markets that we're in. Founded in New Zealand. A lot of our New Zealand customers said, New Zealand's a great market. We have a lot of revenue, we have a lot of focus over in Australia. And so we're almost pulled into Australia by our initial customer base. From there scaling in and partnering and now supporting some of Australia's best marketers across Heaps Normal and Culture Kings and Bondi Sands and Eucalyptus, to name a few. Which has enabled us to now be building out a team. We have seven staff, soon to be 10 in our Sydney office, and a real focus on tracksuit and brand tracking that is relevant and effective for growing Australian brands. At the same time as the team has grown from four to nearly 40, now starting to look at and launching the US and the UK and so continuing to focus on Australia. With the team expanding, increasing momentum and at the same time launching two markets or increasing the expansion in two markets being the US and the uk. So a fair bit on, but we're excited the team's going. We get to work with the best brands and the best people at those brands. And so four markets by the end of the year up and running. That's what's coming up. Connor, my co founder and I are on a plane to New York tomorrow for a week and then we're off to Cannes lion and Sydney and New York and London and growing alongside.
Nathan Bush: Sounds like a party.
Matt Herbert: Brands. I promise there's good work in there as well.
Nathan Bush: Oh, great stuff.
Nathan Bush: So if we've got marketers who are
Nathan Bush: excited by listening to this, they want to check out the calculator or get in touch with one of the team to learn more how it could apply to their brand. What's the best way to go about that best way?
Matt Herbert: Website gotracksuit.com or feel free to give me an email, Matt. Gotracksuit.com and we can put you in touch with the with the right team members on the team and chat about building your brands and succeeding over the long term. So, you know, love to have a chat. It's a great fit for a lot of brands and we're, you know, happy to explore how we can be supportive.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Matt, thank you for joining me on a Friday afternoon.
Matt Herbert: Nath, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Nathan Bush: Gosh, I'm a sucker for a good brand conversation and that one really hit the spot. In my previous life, I worked at an ad agency and witnessed firsthand how expensive and lagging those brand tracking reports can be. It seems funny that it's taken this long for someone to shake it up so that brand tracking actually actually can sit alongside the usual e commerce tracking that we monitor on a day to day basis. And I love that tracksuit are shaking this up and it's coming straight out of New Zealand. Here are the three lessons I took from my conversation with Matt. Number one the 6040 rule. You may have heard Matt refer to the 6040 rule in there and I failed to ask him the follow up question. What an interviewer I am. The 6040 rule was created in in 2013 by Les Bin? A and Peter Field. At its simplest, it says that brands should spend 60% of their efforts on brand building activities and 40% on activations such as promotions. The idea being that you build brand equity up over time which amplifies your activations. Now, given the rise of performance media since then, it has rightly come under some scrutiny. It is a good exercise though to take a look at the percentage that you spend in advertising on brand versus that you do on activations. Is it out of whack? Are you getting desperate? Number two Consistent measurement of the brand. I bet that you look at your revenue figures every day. You should be. And I bet that you look at your website engagement at least a few times a week. How how often do you check your brand perception, if ever at all? I really like where Matt and the team are going with tracksuit, the ability to see any changes or new opportunities with your brand in almost real time. Checking it once or twice a year will likely be a retrospective activity, and it's not the most conducive to taking advantage of the insights that come from it. Number three Unexpected assault associations of brand terms. Here's a little activity you can do, and you don't even need tracksuit to do it. Don't tell Matt. Find a handful of potential customers. They can even be friends, family, it doesn't matter. Say your brand name and ask them for the first three words that come
Matt Herbert: to mind when you say it.
Nathan Bush: It's a great party trick. Collect and group the outputs. This will give you a good idea of the messages and the stories that are landing with them and the ones that aren't. It might even give you some brand ideas that you haven't considered but are sitting dormant in heads ready to be activated. You might not be the most popular person at the party though. Sorry to get the highlights of today's episode, head on over to add to cart.com and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday. We will send Monday's episode summary links, links and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and Visit us at eSweet. We're a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free e Commerce Salary Guide and sign up to our weekly e Commerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to card.
