Roger Lee: I'm gonna invent a new word here. The unprofessionalization of marketing.
Adam Furness: What I'll tell you is that Gen Z and Millennials don't trust advertising.
Nathan Bush: If it does scream advertising, it almost screams bullshit to the younger generations, right? 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.
Nathan Bush: Here's your host. Hello, and welcome to a very special another bonus Wednesday exclusive episode of Add to Cart.
Nathan Bush: That's two in a row and just a hint, we've got one more coming
Nathan Bush: for you next week, so what an amazing little run of bonus content we have here. My name is Bushy and I'm joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. And today's episode is brought to you by impact.com yes, our friends over@impact.com and they are a technology platform host helping brands grow through smarter partnerships. Now what if I told you that the traditional marketing funnel is dead?
Nathan Bush: Are we sad about that?
Nathan Bush: Is it controversial? I know many people who will agree with today's guest, Adam Furnesse, who is the APAC managing director@impact.com and he is here to flip the script on how we think about customer journeys. Leading the charge@impact.com, adam has helped the platform become the go to solution for brands looking to scale through innovative partnerships. In this episode of Add to Cart, we are diving deep into how impact.com's technology is transforming the way brands connect with customers, particularly through their partnership automation tools which help businesses scale collaborations with influencers, content creators and other brands, all while driving measurable outcomes. Joining Adam is Roger Lee, who is the head of Digital marketing at Brand Collective. This is is the powerhouse group behind some of Australia's most iconic brands including Reebok, Hushpuppies and Shoes and Socks. Roger shares how Brand collective has used Impact.com's affiliate and influencer management platform to build out a sophisticated partnership strategy across 17 brands. Tapping into the power of content creators, affiliate networks and even cross brand collaborations to drive both sales and and customer advocacy. If you are curious around how partnerships can actually drive sales, we dive into how it is actually a performance channel. In this conversation or you want to hear real examples from brands that are doing it right? You are in the right place. Adam and Roger will break it all down and show you what steps you can take to make partnerships a bigger part of your marketing strategy in 2025.
Nathan Bush: Adam and Roger, welcome to Add to Cart.
Roger Lee: Thank you. Good to Be here.
Adam Furness: Good to be here. Nice. Good to be here.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant to have you both here. Adam, I can't believe that. Longtime supporter of the show impact.com and this is the first time you've got a Guernsey. What's going on?
Adam Furness: Is it really? I can't remember. It does feel like the first time. That's. That is for sure.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And Roger, thank you for joining us from Brand Collective. I'm really keen to hear what's going on in your world, but so I thought with that in mind, let's kick off. We're going to talk a lot about partnerships today, but before we dive into the partnerships world, I want to pull us back because we're recording this at the end of 2024, which hasn't been an easy year for a lot of retail brands. I want to give us a lens on what's happened in marketing in general before we dive into partnerships. Roger, what's been the biggest changes for you in terms of marketing in 2024? What have you had to adjust?
Roger Lee: Yeah, that's a great question. I think perhaps one thing really obvious thing to say, but AI, it's really generally crept into every channel, whether you like it or not. And that's from sort of complex things like market mix modeling, sort of subtle things like ad targeting, budgeting and ad creatives getting optimized on the fly by various platforms. And I think our challenge as digital marketers has been to kind of work out what is that AI we like and what we don't and where we need to be a bit wary, where we're better off without it. And that's a constant changing dynamic as well. So we've seen with things like Meta's Advantage plus targeting, it's getting better and better. When it first came out, we didn't really like it. Felt we could do a better job ourselves. Now we're finding we're getting better results by using it. So there's that. And then I'm going to invent a new word here, the unprofessionalization of marketing. So what I mean by that is we're on this trend where we're moving more towards user generated content. There's more of a reliance on influencers and content creators. So not typical professionals. I know some of these people are professionals and that's what they do for their living. But it's kind of moving away from perhaps polished ad campaigns and particularly with platforms like TikTok, kind of going from strength to strength. So we know what resonates. There is more that UGC feel, I
Nathan Bush: thought you were just having a go at all address standards around the unprofessionalized market.
Adam Furness: Well, there's definitely that.
Nathan Bush: Are you hearing the same thing? I love that term, the unprofessionalization of marketing. Are you seeing the same thing around it becoming a bit more messy for the clients that you're working with in the marketing mix?
Adam Furness: Yeah, I'd say so, yeah. You know what, that's the first time I've heard that term as well, so I don't know if you've coined it, but it's. It's pretty good. It's pretty good, Roger. When I hear, When I hear that, I think about authenticity, you know, I think about human kind of connection, which isn't really polished. And as soon as you start seeing that veneer, start seeing perfection as a human, you kind of. I don't know, I think you don't. You don't really connect with it. So I think that, yeah, it's an interesting kind of concept, I would say, which in the same kind of theme, you know, you talk about AI, I think it's the overarching piece there is doing more with less. And so we've seen that happening across businesses that we work with, whether that's on the brand side or on the publisher side or even our own business, you know, we're all being pushed to do more with less. Where in the past you may be looking at. I think you're just looking at the bottom line a lot more, making sure that you sort of set up for success now and ongoing. So, yeah, more with less. Nath.
Nathan Bush: I'd say that's not very inspiring, but I think it's very true. I think it's absolutely true from what we're hearing out there now, you've presented your keynote speech at ipx, which I was lucky enough to be trusted with the MC duties on. It was just such an awesome day. It was so much fun. But your keynote speech, Adam, you basically threw out the Bible for marketers. And your keynote was all about how we no longer have a funnel, but we have a circle. What kind of bloodstream is this, mate?
Adam Furness: I know, I know. And you did a great job as an mc. And thanks for, you know, keeping it all together. I had food poisoning that day, you may recall. So I was really, really struggling. Look, in the past, we sort of viewed marketing as a funnel. You know, we have talked a lot about this principle of ada, attention, interest, desire, action, and looked at it through that lens of discovered research, engagement, conversion, and then sort of retention. And where this is moving, if you can just close your eyes and imagine that that does sort of look like a funnel, but where you introduce advocacy in there, that's kind of now at the. If it was a funnel, the bottom of the funnel, which then returns back to that discovery stage. So you're now sort of closing this loop. And advocacy is where customers and other businesses are referring you business, which then kind of brings you new business and it starts that cycle again, which is if you still got your eyes closed, you can sort of pitch to that circle.
Roger Lee: Right?
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Adam Furness: Good, good. Squeeze it out there, Nate.
Nathan Bush: Mine's kind of going like a funnel, but it's got like a long spout. And the spout goes back into the funnel.
Adam Furness: Yes, it's a returning spout. Returning spout. You could all that could be a handle of the funnel as well. But you know, we sort of look at that as. As a circle. So customers now introducing new customers to your business and that advocacy closes the loop.
Nathan Bush: So instead of advocacy sitting down the bottom of a funnel, kind of like Tasmania at the bottom of Australia, it's now connected to the mainland and is kind of this returning loop to amplify everything along the way. Sorry to all the Tasmanians listening.
Adam Furness: Questionable analogy, but sure, let's go with it.
Nathan Bush: I look at our podcast stats regularly and there's not many people from Tasmania, so I'm quite comfortable with it. So, Adam, before we dive into the world of partnerships and we unpack this circle, tell me what does partnerships mean in your world? Because it means something different to everyone. Everyone I talk to about partnerships, their mind goes to somewhere totally different because there are so many different options. When we talk partnerships, what are you talking?
Adam Furness: Yeah, it's true. Your mind does go quite broad. So when we refer to partnerships, we're talking about businesses that are working with content creators and influencers, businesses that are working with websites, businesses that are working with other businesses, businesses that are working with your traditional affiliates, cashback coupons. So we're talking about that in a referral style, paid on business outcome type of relationship.
Nathan Bush: Is it always paid on business outcome?
Adam Furness: Not always. Not always. But majority of it is paid on business outcome. When I talk about business outcome, it's like a sale typically, or an acquisition. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Which is obviously very attractive to most retailers especially. And I think it's really important to emphasize because it's not a fluffy concept, because I think it's easy sometimes to put partnerships over here as this nice addition. We've got performance over Here and you've got partnerships over here, but they're actually. It's actually a performance medium as well.
Adam Furness: Exactly. And the thread is actually through all the other mediums, which no doubt we'll talk more about today.
Nathan Bush: Roger, how does that sit with you as a marketer for a very long time? Obviously funnel is in all our textbooks. Do you see that happening in your business?
Roger Lee: We're still quite fond of the funnel. I suppose there's the various stages that we need to get consumers through. And it's kind of easy to think of it that way in terms of what your objective is with each campaign, in terms of how that creative is and who your target audience is and how you're delivering that. So it still holds some relevance. But yeah, I like the analogy of the circle. I think it makes sense like that advocacy marketing, it's growing and it's growing and it's becoming increasingly important and we can't ignore it. We have to kind of actively promote it now as marketers. It has to form an extra part of our strategy so that we are making the most of it really.
Nathan Bush: And there's so many more avenues now to amplify that advocacy. Adam, can you help us bring that to life? So if we are connecting the Tasmania of the world advocacy into discovery, if that is one connected loop, which it wasn't previously, what are some of the techniques that you're seeing brands using to really turn customers who are advocates of your brand into essentially media to amplify that experience to potential new customers? Yeah.
Adam Furness: Okay, let me give you an example. I actually gave this example at IPXS as well. So Frank Body, familiar with Frank Body, Very familiar.
Nathan Bush: Still scarred by how you talked about
Adam Furness: them at the keynote, but it's coming, it's coming. You ready?
Nathan Bush: Okay. You ready?
Adam Furness: Let me kind of walk you through this. I'm going to use you as an example here, Nathan. Okay, so Frank Body, you're online, you see a creating video that introduces you to a product of Frank Body. And that product is the Perky Body sculpting hydrator.
Nathan Bush: Right?
Adam Furness: And you love it. So then what you do after you've seen that creator talk about it is you do your own research, you go to your favorite sort of publications, you go to creators on YouTube as well, and you kind of do your own research. Your interest is then peaked. And so then you start following the brand and you do that on social media, you go on their website, you constantly kind of engage with their content, user generated and other type of content, and then you're about to purchase this product, but because you're a savvy customer, savvy consumer, you want a discount. So then you go and you find yourself a discount through, you know, some kind of cash back or rewards sort of site and do that just before you trigger the purchase. And so then you buy the product after you got that discount and you love the product and you love it so much that you sign up to their program because you want to refer your friends. So they got a referral friend program. I think they call theirs something like refer a babe or something like that. So then you start referring your babes and, and they get additional discounts and you get discounts and then you're bringing new customers back into kind of frank body there. So you can see there's a number of ways that they've engaged with you along that, along that journey and really brought you along. And then you're then referring customers to them, which are your friends and your family and they're really happy because they've got discounts and you're really happy because you've got a discount or more product and then you're sort of closing that loop.
Nathan Bush: So yeah, and congratulations to you because you only said perky once then as opposed to how many times you said it before. So thank you for that.
Adam Furness: I didn't want to embarrass you.
Nathan Bush: Nate, I've had therapy to get over your keynote. It's a great example. Do you find now that customers. Yes, and I totally see that. It's almost like a game, right? It's like I want to go and out and bargain hunt and I want to make sure that I get the best deal, but I also want to engage with the brand and see what other people are saying about it. Do you find that people who are in the advocate part of the circle, are they really keen to continue that journey and create content and to really get involved in referring friends? What kind of incentives do you need to offer to encourage them to continue that journey with you?
Adam Furness: I mean, sometimes you don't even need to offer them that that much if they've loved the experience. I think, you know, people get a lot of value out of sharing with their friends and their family. Like the great stuff that they've been out there, they've been able to find as well. So look, it could be a discount, it could be a sign up to a club, it could be a new product. So there's various ways you can do it with some, some people just do it just through the goodness of Their of their heart. But discounts products where they win and their friends win is the way to go.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of social credibility in being able to refer a product that people are confident about. I mean, we still see word of mouth in the top three sources for convincing shoppers to buy. Right. It is still so prominent. Despite how much is being spent on Google, how much is being spent on meta, Word of mouth continues to be up there as the most influential source for new.
Adam Furness: You know, Nate, that's how I got onto ADD to Cart. I never used to listen, really, I never used to listen to add to Cart. And then, and then someone, I think it was Peter Bray. Peter Bray said, hey, you gotta listen to ADD to Cart.
Nathan Bush: With advocates like Peter Bray, who knows what kind of riff raff we're getting in the audience. Roger, how do you turn your customers? So they've been through that part of the circle. You've acquired them, you've engaged them, you've converted them. They've loved the experience, love the product. What techniques do you have in play across your brands to really help them amplify that experience to their friends, families, even general public, who in Adam's example, might just be searching and find the content along the way.
Roger Lee: So this is a bit of a work in progress for us, but at the moment we've got an affiliate partner called Serretto Live with Reebok that allows customers, after they've purchased, to save, I think it's 15% and then provide that 15% discount onto whoever they're referring to as well. So that's just started last month and we've got kind of unique tracking codes and that kind of thing, so we can analyze how it's actually working. But yeah, that's pretty exciting. But yeah, we're in our infancy in this space. There's definitely lots more to do. We've got some fairly complex loyalty programs with brands like shoes and socks that we're keen to kind of build advocacy into. So kind of watch this space for that over the next few months. And Impact's obviously got is its own advocate program. I'm doing a job for you now, Adam. We're kind of keen to explore that and I think we'll probably kick that off with a couple of brands as well and see how that works for us. Because as we sort of been talking about, it's really vital area now for us to kind of improve and supercharge. There definitely are people doing stuff organically and that's amazing. But, you know, if we can incentivize them and, and kind of get top of the queue and get a bit more exposure, then, then that's really the dream for us.
Nathan Bush: When you came up with that 15% referral for you and a friend, and I know it's in its infancy, but when you're putting forward the idea for that, are you coming up with that as part of the marketing budget or is it above and beyond your existing marketing mix?
Roger Lee: It's kind of a bit of both because when the 15% to the referrer is off their next future sale purchase, so that's kind of a win anyway. That's probably an extra sale that we might not have got anyway because they've got that discount. And so we don't really see that as a marketing spend because it's a discount rather than that with the 15% that goes to the customer, that actually does come out of the marketing budget. So, yeah, it's a bit of both.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Great. Adam, question for you. So, just like the marketing funnel, obviously the circle isn't one size fits all. Lots of talk at the moment around different generations and how every generation is shopping, especially as the younger generations come through. Tell me about the circle in where you're seeing different generations shop differently at different parts of the circle.
Adam Furness: Great question. So we recently released a report and something like 90% of millennials turn to referrals before making their first purchase. So I'd say that in that millennial sort of place, it's probably higher value. You know, they place high value what their friends say. So let's say that's that advocacy sort of part. Gen X may be more on the research part, but not 100% sure on that. But what I'll tell you is that Gen Z and millennials don't trust advertising, right? So to get them to listen, you need to get them via trusted sources. And for them, that trusted sources of information is their friends, their family, those content creat influencers that they're following and those publications that they regularly engage with.
Nathan Bush: I love that. It's really interesting because I'm currently working with a premium alcohol client who are very premium, very boutique, and they're chasing an audience, but they've produced a lot of really slick video that would traditionally be in the advertising world. And it's just not performing on social media. And so having those conversations around, actually we need this to be more relatable, more lo fi. But still, premium is an interesting mix to play around with. But if it does scream advertising. It almost screams bullshit to the younger generations.
Adam Furness: Right, absolutely. And I'd also say, I think about some of the search as well. Search marketing, search advertising. Those younger generations, they don't search on Google anymore, right. They'll go straight into TikTok, straight into Insta and they'll like put in their search term in there and then get the video straight away and get the content straight away. You know, they may be traveling and they're put in, they may. I'm in Singapore at the moment, so in Singapore, you know, top five restaurants to go out to and it's like here's the top five that have come through and you can watch the videos of the restaurant. So they're actually using TikTok and Insta as their new search engine.
Nathan Bush: All you need to do is go to the markets in Singapore. Best food ever.
Nathan Bush: Just do that.
Adam Furness: This is true, this is true.
Nathan Bush: That just shows our age. Roger, you have a group of brands there, all with very different audiences and very different demographics shopping with you. How do you approach the circle and trying to give a great experience for each brand? I could imagine that you're trying to get some sort of economies of scale by doing as much the same as possible, but catering to different audiences in the way that they want to shop. How do you manage that?
Roger Lee: Yeah, we've got a really diverse range of brands that we retail online and there's 17 different brands there. So brands like shoes and socks cater for people taking their first steps and then other brands like Black Pepper might be for more mature age market and everything kind of in between. But it's not just age and gender, it's also price point interests. So yes, where we can scale across different partners then that's brilliant. Things like cashback and loyalty, they've got quite a wide reaching kind of customer set and that kind of works quite well for pretty much all our brands. So that's brilliant. We'll utilize that as much as we can and try and drive as many sales as we can that way. But then also it's how do we cater for the nuances and the different audiences that we really need to, to target through partnerships. And that generally comes through the kind of content type partners that we work with. So things like influencers, content creators, but blogs as well, news sites, those kind of things I think is where we can find an audience that will, our brand will resonate with.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, awesome. Can imagine that it's not always nice. Right. It sounds like it can get messy at times and the world of partnerships I think has exploded in the last 12 months. If you think about all the different ways you can partner with, not only with other brands, but with influencers, content creators, media, there are so many options now for a marketing team. Adam, you're at the forefront of this obviously with impact.com and, you know, still doing affiliates is a really key part of your business. But expanding into influencers and then cashback sites and all these emerging ways of partnering. What are you seeing in terms of how marketers are approaching partnerships and prioritizing their efforts in where they should start?
Adam Furness: You know, brands are thinking about, I think some of the really good ones, they think about the day in the life of their customer or their consumer and they're partnering with those touch points along that journey. Let's stick with the example I used before of Front Body. If you think about, I don't know, I'm going to make this up. So, like their typical customer, right, they get up in the morning, they check their phone, they go to the gym, they come home, have a shower, they eat, they catch public transport to work where they suss out what's happening in the world on their phone. And the way, on the way to work, they get to work, you know, they may have a morning tea break, I don't know if they have tea, they may have coffee, they chat to some friends about what's the gospel, what's kind of going on. They get back to work, they look online at lunchtime, then in the afternoon they might travel home on the bus, they eat dinner, watch nobody wants this on Netflix. I've just started watch that by the way. And you know, you know, while they're watching that, they're scrolling in their socials and then they go to bed. So there's many different points along that journey that Frankbody could, could partner with a touchpoint if you like. So there's influences that their customers follow. You know, there's publications that they're reading, they may be getting their entertainment news, that type of thing, or just hardcore news. There's brands that their customers kind of interacting with across the day. There's discount sites where they may be going to get like deals on things they're sort of thinking about. And there's their friends that may already be customers of Frankbody as well. So along each one of those touch points in the customer's daily routine, there's an opportunity to partner. And that partnership can look like anything, but it's about authentically getting a message in front of that potential customer along that journey.
Nathan Bush: You Paint a really good picture there because I think it just amplifies how many opportunities there are to partner in so many different ways and so many different scenarios. What kind of data are you seeing clients look at in the platform to help them know which opportunities to double down on and put their efforts into? Because I can imagine it's not just a budget piece, it, it's also a time and effort thing because we're all stretched. And as we talked about at ipx, good partnerships are authentic and they take time and they take investment. Like actually getting to know the other side of the partnership and making sure it is real. Is there any particular data that you're seeing your clients use within the platform to identify what to double down on?
Adam Furness: One of the great parts of the platform that our customers tell us they love seeing is the consumer journey kind of part. So in the platform there's the ability to have a look at that journey to purchase and what touch points across that journey to purchase has a consumer going to come through. So what maybe were the introducing parts of that journey that may be an influencer because we're tracking every sort of touch point and then what actually might be that the closing part of that journey, which might be a deal site or cash back coupon or something like that, so they're able to see that journey and see which influence which participated and which kind of closed and based on that, look at other parties within those certain areas and then also negotiate commercial terms which may make more sense. So maybe you're not paying someone everything on that last touch. Maybe you're actually paying someone initially for a first touch in that journey. Maybe you're actually paying some content creators which you've seen really participate, not just based on performance, but actually building out content so you're giving them spot bonuses and those type of things through the platform. So I think that's the customer journey. Tracking in the platform is what they look at and look at what roles different kind of touch points played and then be able to, you know, build commercial terms around that and understand which parts to double down on. I'd say that's probably the thing that stands out most to me. Nice.
Nathan Bush: Well, it's a great example because, you know, obviously Cashback's having its moment and it's huge at the moment with customers and we had Anthony on here not long ago and just some of the stats are mind blowing, but I can see how easy and tempting it would be as a marketer to go actually maybe we don't need all that other Activity, Maybe we just need the cash back, but it's actually all those touch points along the way throughout the circle that go towards making the cash back work. So I love that. I think that's a really good example. Roger, you mentioned that you are early ish in your partnership journey. We talked about the referral rewards that you're looking into, as well as some partnerships with potentially influencers and content creators. Where are you starting in terms of your activation? What parts of the partnership offering are you looking at?
Roger Lee: Yeah, sorry to clarify, we've been doing affiliate quite a long time, I suppose so in the traditional side of the affiliate kind of space, we've been very active and got that kind of humming, I think. Yeah, it's more this sort of new side of going into allowing the content creators and influencers of the world to kind of get involved where we're at. So we've got Reebok, Hushpuppies and Julius Marlow already available through the Impact platform. We've got a few more brands on the way as well. With those brands, we've had some content creators that we know already to the business. So with Reebok, that's been some AFL players and some gyms. So just working through the process with them to get them signed up and give them custom codes so that they can go and promote the products in that way.
Nathan Bush: Talk us through that because it's purely me being nosy and loving afl. But I love Reebok as a brand. My gym shoes, the Reebok, I wear them everywhere.
Adam Furness: But it's like, was that a paid placement just then? Nice.
Nathan Bush: No, but I'll take free shoes, see
Roger Lee: what we can do.
Nathan Bush: Tell me about that moment of how do you actually put Reebok on the Impact platform and then attract AFL players to say, yes, I want that partnership. Like, how does it actually work?
Roger Lee: Yeah, we're still figuring that out to some degree. But I mean, we've, we've had good relationships just through people in the teams, whether that's been personal relationships or professional. Like we've supplied a lot of shoes through Julius Marlowe for the Brownlows to certain players. So that's sort of one in. But yet where we've known these people, we've said, hey, we want you to promote our products. They've said, great, how do we do this? I think before having a tool like Impact, it would just be, here's some money, do some posts, we'll hope for the best, maybe that kind of helps. Now we're in a position where there's some measurable impact. It might not all be sales, it might be clicks or likes or follows or, you know, all those kind of still good things. But then we can take from that. We actually saw that there was an audience that engaged with this person, that we reached the right audience and that we can assume perhaps sort of more safely that it's actually driving marketing outcomes at the end of the day.
Nathan Bush: So you're still doing your real world outreach and connection and then it's that point where we go, oh, this sounds interesting. It sounds like we've got something. And then you go, okay, cool, direct to the platform. That's where we make the magic happen, basically.
Roger Lee: Exactly. And the idea is to streamline it so that we've got the contracts and things like that in the platform so we don't have to think about it too hard. They don't have to think about it too hard. And we can all just kind of get on with doing the posts and that kind of thing and driving the sales.
Adam Furness: I will just add on that that all that can actually be tracked as well. Right through to an acquisition as well. So you can do all that, all the vanity type metrics, all the likes and reach and all that sort of stuff, but you can also track it all the way through to an acquisition which is pretty cool and unique.
Nathan Bush: So pushing forward. So Roger, say you've got everything down pat. You kind of like got things humming along like you said. You've got affiliates going, you're experimenting with referrals, you're doing some content partnerships. If we were here in 12 months time, what's really exciting about partnerships, like what does the ideal ecosystem look like for. For you? And feel free to choose a brand if you want or speak generally. But I'm really keen to push it further. Like what could a good partnership look like?
Roger Lee: Yeah, great question. I think it fast. It is building on that creator opportunity that's probably the biggest part for the next 12 months of what we want to do and really see where we can go with that. So if anyone's listening and wants to sign up, they're very welcome to and get in touch if they need some help doing that. But the potential is massive. It's quite untapped for us I suppose in that space we have done a bit of kind of individual influencer stuff across various channels and in various platforms and that kind of thing for different brands. But yeah, trying to bring it together so that we can have a bit more of a structured strategy that is replicatable for across the Brands. So we'll see how that goes. And if you want me to come back in 12 months, I can tell you how it went.
Nathan Bush: I would love that. But just on that before we move on, I'm really keen how you're setting up your team. If you're able to give anything away from a marketing perspective, do you see partnerships and managing partnerships as a general skill that you share across the team or are you setting up specialists within the team?
Roger Lee: Yeah, at the moment the idea is for the marketing teams to look after each of their own brands because they've obviously got a much better understanding of who their customer is and which influencer resonate in that space versus us as a centralized digital marketing team. We're really here to facilitate and kind of be I suppose the leaders in terms of what the strategy is to make it work but then yet give them all the tools basically to build those relationships and make that hum to
Nathan Bush: do more with less. As Adam said at the start, essentially
Roger Lee: that's always the game.
Nathan Bush: Yes, Adam, obviously impact.com global organization, leading partnerships all over the world and huge amount of change in the last 12 months. I was blown away by all the announcements and the changes to the platform that you've had since the last ipx. What do you see coming down the pipeline? How's the future of partnerships going to change in the next 12 months?
Adam Furness: If I just think about some of the areas that will. I think we'll just be doing more in so content commerce, I think that's just going to continue to expand and blow up I suppose. And what that is is that's. That's when publications are writing articles that they want to write about that they want to talk about, whether that's listicles or about products and services that their team typically interact with. And then what they do after they've written the article is they. They include links or products into the article. So you know in the world of advertorials where you'd have advertisers that are influencing what's being written, it's the flip of that. It's the journalists writing what they want to write about and then they're inserting advertising links in there. So that's pretty cool. I think it's a way for them to make money as well publications which then they need to. So there's more of that happening and for brands that's really cool. So we've got a brand that we work with, married people.
Nathan Bush: Danielle and James.
Adam Furness: Danielle and James, yeah. So they have been doing a lot with us all around the world, including in the US and last year they had like, they did some content commerce. I think it was on, on the, the New York Times. And that article, that piece that I think was like, I don't know, top five top ten gumboots or something like that they're writing about. That article, which was written a year ago, is still bringing them sales today. So I think that type of thing is really cool. So that's content commerce.
Nathan Bush: Do you think with content commerce we're going to get to the point where we can transact within media?
Adam Furness: Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Nathan Bush: It makes sense to bridge the gap, doesn't it?
Adam Furness: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's happening now. The other thing, brand to brand, so brands working with other brands, I think that will continue to kind of grow and expand. And it's, I think it's just a. It's a good consumer experience, a good experience for the, for the customer. We've spoken about this in the, in, in the past. I mean, we talk about this example a lot@impact.com but I love it, which is Spotify and Ticketmaster sort of working together. You know, if you're a music lover, you're listening to Spotify and then, you know, there's a link where you can actually buy the tickets to the event or to the concert that the artist that you're listening to is performing, and you click through and you can go through to Ticketmaster to buy that. Just a seamless experience in that world. It's our platform that's sitting in the background doing all the tracking, doing the commercial kind of payments and all the reporting and that sort of stuff for Ticketmaster, who licenses our tech in that example. So I think that brand to brand, I think that's going to continue to
Nathan Bush: grow and Reebok in the AFL getting stronger, that brand connection. I like that.
Roger Lee: It could happen.
Adam Furness: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And then I think customers and community as well. So we've spoken a lot about the advocacy play or customers referring customers, but the other one is, you know, the importance of community. And there's a heap of brands around the world which are doing this really, really well. One that I love, Patagonia. So Patagonia is probably one of the best examples in this space of like the community sort of side. So, you know, aside from donating, I think their entire company to the planet, you know, they sponsor like, environmental and outdoor workshops, encourage customers to participate, like in environmental things. And, you know, they do a lot where they're bringing outdoor professionals and like environment Grants kind of together as well. So a big play on community. And I think any brand that is going to succeed is not only thinking about the customers but they're thinking about how do they play a role with those customers and in their community that makes sense for their brand, product or service and really kind of builds that out.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love it. Three amazing areas to look into if you're not already so content, commerce and hearing that great story about married people. How one amazing piece of content in a really well known publication can live on forever and be generating sales over such a long period of time. That brand to brand connection, finding like minded but not competitive brands to leverage each other's brands and then that audiences into community. How do you turn those advocates into the word of mouth on a major scale rather than just friends and family? Really interesting stuff.
Adam Furness: I want to pitch something for Rogers as well. So Rog talked about, you know, content creators or influencers, you know, should be signing up to brand collective. They absolutely should. And here's the thing about the affiliate kind of space or if you're doing, if you're being paid as a content creator or an influencer based on performance, if you've got a link in your bio or something that you did a year ago or two years ago, you can still be being paid on that today. So you get a residual income in that sort of space. So think about that. If you're a content creator or an influencer where you're building content and then you're putting links in and you've had an agreement with someone like a brand collective where you get paid based on performance, you, you can still be getting that residual income week out, month in month out, year in, year out for, you know, ever.
Nathan Bush: I'm going to start my page right now. Bush's Gym workouts.
Roger Lee: Let's do it.
Nathan Bush: Give me the account handle. You can follow Adam. You can earn me my Reeboks.
Adam Furness: Right? You wear LS KD as well, don't you? You're into that gear.
Nathan Bush: You should.
Adam Furness: They should be paying you. I've heard you talk about LS KD a fair bit.
Nathan Bush: That's true, Rog.
Nathan Bush: I know that that is like I
Nathan Bush: love that suggestion from Adam and I know that's an area that you're looking into from a content creator perspective as you are opening this up and you're looking to bring more content creators on board. What are you looking for in a content creator? Are you looking mass? Are you looking niche? Are you looking local? Are you looking, you know, what Are your parameters at the moment?
Roger Lee: Yeah, at the moment it's all of the above. We've kind of tiered our Reebok creator platform into three tiers. So at the top end we've got people who have massive following. They're famous, they're going to want kind of maybe fixed fees or what have you, probably some free shoes and apparel, that's fine. And then at the bottom end we've got, you know, sort of a self serve model. So just people like, not yourself, but anyone that we don't know that you know, just wants to. They're going to the gym already. Excellent. Yeah, they go to the gym already. They just love the products. The brand advocates, we don't have to send them anything or do anything. It's just like, hey, grab the link, you can say nice things about us. And then we kind of got a middle tier that some people, somewhere in between, maybe they've got somewhere between 10,000 100,000 followers. Again, we're still working this out and it's going to evolve, I'm sure, over the next 12 months. But for us, I think it's really important we have that flexibility for the larger partners so that, you know, it's a win win and that they want to work with us, they want to promote our products and that they get adequately paid for doing so. But yeah, you obviously you can't have a individual agreement with every single partner if you want to scale. So that's kind of the model we're going for at the moment.
Nathan Bush: It's an exciting time with all that ahead of you and such amazing brands behind you. It's not like you're starting a new brand. You've already got brands that have high trust, high desirability and, you know, it opens up your world in terms of the kind of partnerships that you can have in play. I'd like to end by asking both of you for one tip. If we have marketers listening who are very keen to follow your journey, Roger, in dedicating more of their budget and their time to partnerships, whether that be affiliates, whether that be content, whether that be brand to brand, whatever that looks like for them, what's one tip that you would give to them to accelerate their success in partnerships? Roger, I'll start with you.
Roger Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think you've got to take a test and learn approach to partnerships. Some things work, some things don't, but it's fairly risk reduced, particularly where anything that's on a CPA or anything that's even on the CPC you know that you're getting something for your money. So yeah, if you can assign some budget to that, you just got to try it and see what works. But it's simple, but it's effective.
Nathan Bush: Well, as Adam said, it's a long way from old school TV advertising where you have to put the huge budgets up front and then pray that it works. It's. You can absolutely do that test and learn approach as you said. So it's a great tip. So, Rog, we've got people getting excited about getting set up for partnerships and potentially bringing into their Marketing 2025 plan. What are some of the lessons that you've learned along the way that you think people need to be ready for to be able to do partnerships properly?
Roger Lee: First focus is make sure what you're doing is incremental. Not all affiliate activity or partnership activity can be. Sometimes you're not paying for sales you get anyway. So be smart around that so that you can focus your budget on the side of it. That is really incremental and that helps you move forward. I think make it a win win. Sometimes as marketers we get, I'm excited about getting the best possible ROI we can. And that's sort of not a long term strategy. You need to make partners want to work with you. They want to see some profit from promoting you as well. So as long as you're both benefiting, then that's a true partnership that will carry you through the test of time. I think. Be prepared to relinquish some control. You want the partners to put their own spin on any content that they create for you because they know their audience, they know how to present it. They're going to do it in a positive light because you're paying them. There's no point in them kind of trashing your product. So let them go and do that in the way that they want to do it and then just diversify. You can get started pretty quickly with things like cashback and loyalty and coupon type sites, but you want to diversify. What other partnership models are there out there? Adam spoke about a few of them. Things like brand to brand, stuff like that. It's quite exciting. So, yeah, try and explore those opportunities too.
Nathan Bush: Awesome tips. And I can imagine that if people are running single brands, it's going to be a lot easier than running 17 brands. Right.
Roger Lee: Anyway, I would imagine so. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Adam, what about you? One tip. From everything that you've seen, what's the thread of the most successful programs?
Adam Furness: Yeah, I think thinking about custom like the Actual customer. So how do you add value to their world? You know, how do you make their life easier? How do you make their day better? How do you take away pain? How do you give pleasure? Then think about the various touch points that you could partner with across the day, day in the life of that customer. Their journey to purchase and repurchase your product and service. So the core has to be a customer, get in their sort of head space and then. Yeah. Find ways to partner with those touch points along that journey.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Love it. Fantastic tips. Thank you so much. Last question I've got for you, Adam. Why are you watching? Nobody wants this by yourself while you're traveling overseas without your wife and family.
Adam Furness: Well, I'm not actually watching it now. When I'm at home. I watch it with my wife. And the reason we watch it, Nath, is because we try to find stuff that we can do together and watch on TV together, and there's really nothing. But this was. To be honest, I'm not that into it, but because my wife is into it and I want to find a way to connect with her, I'm watching it with her. I'm still watching Prison break with my 13 year old, though. Like, we're into. Right into Prison Break. If you've watched that, how good is
Nathan Bush: it when you get to go back on your old TV series and you're like, I'm watching with the kids to show them. And it's like just a chance for you to rewatch the stuff you've already watched. We've just gone through all the Adam Sandler movies. All right, so I want to ask both of you, what's next for the next 12 months for you? What are your priorities? And then how can people get in touch? Roger, start with you?
Roger Lee: Yeah. So obviously the creator piece, definitely, that's a huge part of what we want to do over the next 12 months. I think we probably spoke about that in enough detail to this point. The second part is really getting more sophisticated with how we understand our data from an omnichannel approach. So we've recently partnered with a data platform that can do that, that can give us marketing mix, modeling, and so we can see how incremental all our different activities are and how our channels are playing together. Because like you said, looking at just a last click, it doesn't tell you the full picture. And that's not really how we can make sensible decisions to invest our marketing budgets. But equally, you don't just want to sort of spray and pray at the top of the funnel either. So getting that down where we can really get better view of it is going to be huge for us. So that's probably key.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?
Roger Lee: Hit me up at LinkedIn or email me ali.com you beautiful.
Nathan Bush: You're going to have a lot of people asking for Reeboks. Adam, what about you? Next 12 months, what's the priority for you and the team at impact.com?
Adam Furness: we want to grow the industry, grow the category. So one of the things that we're doing is we have an online training program which is open to everyone. It's called PXA Partnership Experience Academy and it's open for anyone. So even our competitors can go online and learn about the industry, the space, do training certificates, get all that sort of stuff. We're going to take that live. So as we go to next year of. Well, hopefully she's signed as of as of today, actually pointing someone to run that program externally where you don't have to just go online. We're going to take it. We're going to build out courses with universities, we're going to fill up stadiums and train people on. On the industry via pxa. So our training platform, but bringing that live and to the people. So I'm really excited about that. I think the industry needs to get to the big table, right. This affiliate partnership space. If you think of a marketer, you're a CMO and you're thinking, what am I going to do? They're thinking about maybe they're still doing a fair bit of tv, maybe they're doing some press, they're doing heaps on search and they're with Google and Meta Facebook and they're buying some out of home ads and they're doing all this stuff. And then it gets down to partnerships and affiliates. At the end, we're at a small table. We should not be at a small table. We should be at the big table. And so next year, as we go into FY25, it's all about lifting the industry and getting to the big table.
Nathan Bush: I love that. I love that because the way you position it there, I love that you're training the industry. I'm really passionate about that and I think that's fantastic that you've made it open for anyone to access. But you're absolutely right around partnerships in that partnerships. It doesn't sit tv, social, paid search, partnerships. Partnerships is like the thread that goes through everything to amplify all the activity that you're doing rather than a separate bucket. So. So I love that you're positioning it that way. Thank you both for joining us. Adam, if people want to Learn more around impact.com and how partnerships can be implemented in their marketing strategy, what's the best way to do that?
Adam Furness: Yeah, call me on 0403. No joking. Hit me up on LinkedIn. Adam Finesse, you should be able to find me adamfernessimpact.com I'm on LinkedIn.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful, Adam. Roger, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart. What an awesome conversation as always. I always love talking about partnerships. We've had the pleasure of doing it a few times now and every time I learn something new. Thanks for both sharing your stories and your insights. We'll do it again soon.
Adam Furness: Yeah, thank you Nathan. Thank you, Rog.
Roger Lee: Yeah, thanks both. Look forward to it.
Nathan Bush: I always love those chats where we have someone who is so deep in their service or their technology like Adam is, and then a reaction retailer who is actually playing with it firsthand. So that was such a brilliant chat with Adam and Roger. I always enjoy hearing Adam's fresh perspective on partnerships. No matter how many times I speak with him or how many times I see him on stage, he always has a fresh perspective. And despite my gentle ribbing, I even like his take on the traditional marketing funnel, turning that into a circle because it is a continuous, continuous loop of engagement. We don't just lose our customers at the end of that funnel. We've got to work out how we activate them and use them to bring the next cohort of customers through. And apologies to anyone listening in Tasmania, I meant no offense. Roger's examples of how Brand collective is using impact.com's tools across their brands like Reebok and Hushpuppies really drove home how powerful partnerships can be when done right. But I also liked how humble Roger was in saying that they are on a journey too. Even these brands who are well established, they're still figuring it out as well. Doesn't mean that you can't dive in straight away and get started. All right, here are my three main takeaways from that episode. Number one, partnerships are way more than just affiliates. Adam pointed out how partnerships have gone beyond the typical affiliate programs, and most brands are will have affiliates set up in one way or another. But brands are now working with influencers, content creators, and even other brands to reach new audiences in super creative ways. Whether it's a fitness influencer wearing Reebok or a local gym showcasing their gear definitely won't be me being the Reebok model. But these partnerships create authentic connections with customers. The key is to make sure that every touch point along the customer journey feels natural and valuable, and partnerships, in whatever form they come, are a powerful way to do that. Number two, customer advocacy is your secret weapon. Roger shared how Brand Collective is turning happy customers into their biggest advocates, and with brands like theirs, they have so many advocates that they can then leverage to grow their customer base. Using impact.com, they've set up referral programs like a 15% discount code for both the customer and their friend to get customers excited about sharing the brand. Like we said, word of mouth is so natural for humans, but if we can incentivize it, then that will only add fuel to the fire. By turning customers into advocates, they're not just boosting loyalty, they're actually using word of mouth to bring in new business. This just demonstrates Adam's idea of a circle where advocacy feeds back into growth and is something every brand should be thinking about to fuel that perpetual cycle. And number three, automating for real results. One thing that stood out from both Adam and Roger was how automation is making partnerships easier and more effective. With Impact.com's tools, Roger's team can manage everything from influencer partnerships to affiliate deals in one place, especially the boring bits of it like contracts. They can track which partners are driving real results like sales and pay them accordingly, and then streamline campaigns and save time while getting clear insights into what's working. It's a great reminder that the right tools for a very specific purpose can make a huge difference in scaling your partnership efforts. Like Adam said, it allows us to do more with less. A massive thanks to impact.com for sponsoring this episode. If you are ready to scale your partnerships and see real results, head on over to impact.com and explore how they can help you grow through smarter partnerships. Before you go, we'd love to invite you to join our free e commerce learning platform Add to Cart Campus. Meet other professionals and learn from e commerce experts to take your business and your e commerce career to the next level. Register to join campus@addtocart.com now. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague. Or even better, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. It really makes a difference.
