What’s Working (and Why) for Lacoste on Amazon

What’s Working (and Why) for Lacoste on Amazon Speaker 2: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Better Advertising with BTR Media podcast. Today I'm incredibly excited to have another fellow BTR team member. So today we have Cal Kildow. Cal, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast. Speaker 1: Of course, I'm so excited to be here. Speaker 2: I am excited to have you on. I think there's a lot of things that we're going to dive in today. One of those things being incredible results you've recently had for one of our largest clients. But before that, let's dive into just a quick backstory of one, how we know each other. And I want to hear your kind of I want to hear your side of the story of learning Amazon advertising and getting ramped up at BTR. So do you want to tell a little bit of everyone of your kind of background, history, dive into softball a little bit? We can go from there. Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, I'll start from the top. So I grew up in the same hometown as Destaney. I remember like we both played basketball, same coach, everything. And I remember going to basketball camps when I was peewee in middle school. And I always looked up to Destaney so much. It was so cool. And definitely just wanted to take after her and Then I kind of, let's see, I graduated high school. I played softball for the University of Arkansas for three years where we won. Speaker 2: Put more emphasis on that, Cal. Like you have such an incredible backstory. You played D1 softball for the University of Arkansas. That is absolutely incredible. Speaker 1: Yes. And it was nothing short of spectacular. We won two SEC championships and To be able to have such an amazing team around me and just make so many connections with people, it was just an amazing, amazing experience. So that was incredible. I got my apparel merchandising and product development degree from there and graduated early. And then I still had one year left of eligibility. So I transferred to Florida Atlantic to play by the beach and fulfill my dream of living by the beach. And I played for one year down there where we also won a conference championship. Speaker 2: All you do is win inherently so I mean it was a seamless transition to BTR at that point. Speaker 1: It was, absolutely. I'm very familiar with winning but then I graduated from Florida Atlantic with a little bit of grad school experience and I was trying to find a job and I was thinking of anyone I knew from Arkansas that lived in South Florida because ultimately I wanted to stay in the sun. And I realized that Destaney lived in West Palm and I was like, just shot her a message and was like, Hey, do you have any openings? I would love to explore something with you guys and Just kind of ran with it from there. Speaker 2: You hopped in at like peak chaos, I think, because it was in the middle of the rebrand or around the time of the rebrand. I feel like I had just moved down to Florida and the timing was impeccable. Regardless, I probably would have still wanted to have a conversation if I wasn't here, but I think it worked out really well that I was so close because we were able to meet up in person quite a few times before you made it back to Arkansas. But I think it's been incredible for me because I've been doing nothing but Amazon advertising for almost seven years now. And I feel like it took me four to five years to really get ramped up and get comfortable. To be fair, I mean, my prior agency, terrible and had no training and I didn't really have that mentorship that I feel like Adam's been able to build out here. So my ramp up time took four to five years. We have had incredible success with people like Cal, and I would say you are an outlier because you have the work ethic and the winning mentality. So you jumped in and, you know, exceptional results so early on. But it's been really cool for me to see how quickly you ramped up in this space. I mean, you are managing brands and accounts that took me years To understand how to communicate to and how to maximize their performance. So for me, I'm like, all right, let's go. What else can we do? Get you on a podcast, get these case studies out there. Cause I'm like, you're going to 10 X anything I ever did. So that's, that's been one of the coolest things I think for me to see is just your growth and how quickly you've been able to achieve everything you have. Speaker 1: Absolutely and I think I have to give a testament to the team and just always being so supportive and any questions I have just coming at me with straight factual like just anything I need they are there for me and yeah also just jumping in and like not being hesitant and just. going for it and not... Speaker 2: The confidence. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: And it's not a cockiness. I think that's something that I would probably say comes up when people think of BTR because I will be on every single podcast and I'm like who wants to have a slow pitch tournament? Who wants to have a 3v3 basketball tournament? But something that I really appreciate in the culture that we built is it's all highly competitive, whether or not you are a D1 collegiate athlete, which I think over 40% of our team is at this point. It's also humble and just really excited about the industry. And I think that's something that's also helped us curate a little bit of the reputation that we have in this space is you hop in, but you're You are open to any of the challenges. You don't come in with the mindset of like, I already know what's best here. And that's been really cool to curate and see how it's kind of reflected with the retention rate that we own and the clients and the feedback that we've gotten. It's also about the relationships, not just the results, which we've done an exceptional job, but also maintaining and valuing those relationships with the clients that you have. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I think, yeah, definitely jumping into something brand new. It's like, OK, what can I take from my past experience and utilize those skills to make me better in this space? Speaker 2: Absolutely, which I think leads us to the next point. One of the reasons that we are here, I know you pulled a lot of your numbers. Let's talk first about that 200% number. Can you give us a quick shout out of exactly what that growth rate looks like? Speaker 1: Yes. So this Prime Day, the four-day Prime Day, we were up 214% year over year. I know a lot of people are going to say, well, you did have two extra days. So I would like to combat that with the fact that we are up month over month or year over year for July 86%. Month over month, we are just continually growing and just trying to keep that momentum going. Speaker 2: I think that's incredible, especially considering the timing. It's been how many months? Six months? Four months? Speaker 1: Yeah, around a little over six. Speaker 2: A little over six. Which means a lot because the brand that you're managing has how many SKUs do you know on average? Speaker 1: It's over 13,000. 13,000. That is incredible. Speaker 2: Now it is in the apparel category, which in my opinion is one of the more complicated categories because everyone who follows BTR knows that we run a very granular strategy. We do really small things like align the keywords we're targeting with the appropriate creative and the appropriate landing page in your sponsored brand ad. We create ranking campaigns based off market share. That's easy when you have five products. When you have as many ASINs as you have, you really have to prioritize. And I know this was a bit of a difficulty with Lacoste when we originally onboarded them is, you know, how do you prioritize the SKU line? Can you give us a little insight of how you guys started and looked at that portfolio? Speaker 1: Absolutely. So first we started out by just breaking everything out by category and product. And then we took, I would say to begin with, we took probably the top 30 ASINs that we wanted to prioritize and put spend behind. And from there, just kind of ran with that and then have broken it out or we've expanded that to almost 70 aces, around 70 aces that we're advertising on now. So continuing to build that out, but definitely honing in on those best sellers and making sure that we're growing their market share. Speaker 2: That's amazing because another thing to mention is it's a limited budget in terms of, again, the amount of ASINs. You have to really prioritize and you can't spread yourself too thin. So I think a lot of the areas I've seen you all lean really well into is, again, those bestsellers. How do we highlight and promote the things that are working well and improve their positioning on the page? So it's kind of the rising tide lifts all shifts situation. Another area I've seen you do exceptionally well is you've leaned into sponsored brands. I love sponsor brands for apparel. Apparel is typically purchased, you know, from an aesthetic perspective and then everything like comfort and size comes next. So you all have leaned into that and I think it's really advantageous for a brand that is having to maximize their budget because you get to advertise multiple products for the price of one click. Your custom image can cross sell your portfolio. You typically have three ASINs attached, but you guys have kind of taken it to the next level. I mean, we were recently auditing another apparel brand that we're looking at and you were showing me some of your Father's Day initiatives that you ran with Lacoste and you were creating custom deal sponsored brand ads, targeting your top keywords with all of your promoted deal ASINs. And I think those are the little things that really have taken this brand to the next level. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And something to hit on, on that, on the SPV note, we, one of our biggest struggles with Lacoste was kind of within the underwear category, like breaking in, because I would like to say that that's probably the most competitive category apparel category that there is. There's just so many well-known great brands that have a lot of market share. So we, First of all, we had a lot of creative video creatives come through from Lacoste over Taylor Zachar. And he, if none of you guys know, he's an American actor, but he is very good looking. So that gave us some great creatives to take these sponsored brand videos and, and really step into that category and breakthrough. Speaker 2: That makes a ton of sense being able to lean into that because if you have a fantastic looking model. You're leaning into the scroll stopping aspect of sponsored brands video. So I think that is a huge opportunity, not to mention Amazon's doing a lot to expand video on there. And so it gives us a lot more capabilities when we're showing up in multiple placements in the PDP or multiple placements in the middle of search. So being able to kind of prioritize that is important. One of the things I would say is difficult for other apparel brands, maybe not Lacoste that I've seen is Scaling creative across all of their SKUs. And that's an area where you could also lean into AI pretty heavily. Amazon's AI video builder has improved exponentially. So one of the tips that we recommend at BTR in general is use your fantastic professional paid for model for, you know, your top 10% of SKUs. But if you have other SKUs that maybe you haven't or you cannot afford to produce video assets for, lean into that AI and get the videos up and running. And as you see whether or not they perform well, you can scale them up and start adding additional assets on the creative or the videography side. That's kind of a general tip that I would give the audience there. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And I would say we're definitely building those out for, you know, our leather goods and our footwear aren't necessarily getting all the creative attention from Lacoste themselves. Just a lot. Of course, they're prioritizing textiles, men's and women's, which rightfully so that is driving a lot. Speaker 2: That makes sense. Now, another area that I think is really important to highlight. I recently hopped on a podcast with Jess and one of the things that she called out is We are helping brands prioritize category comparisons a little bit better. And the reason it's important is we often see brands run in silos and they'll say, you know, Hey, I've grown 20% year over year. I'm happy. But then we'll dive and we'll be like, yes, but the category grew 40%. So you're not really doing anything there. Again, you showed me all of your kind of case studies over at Lacoste and one of the things I think was really cool to see was the category growth. Can you talk a little bit about how you started backing into category data and helping Lacoste understand their performance and their potential opportunities? Speaker 1: Absolutely. So we first took a look at the demographics, just seeing like who our target customer is, what age are they, are they married, all of those things to help us like paint this picture of how we want to reach them and where we can reach them. And then I would say we started by downloading like sponsored product search term reports and just looking at, okay, where are we converting the best? And from there we realized that probably 50% of our converting search terms were competitors. They were competitor search terms. So that was definitely an area we realized that we needed to capitalize on and grow. So once we started targeting those other competitors and it wasn't just your Polo Ralph Lauren and your Tommy Hilfiger, it was like smaller brands that you wouldn't expect. So, Definitely, the competitor conquesting was a big strategic pivot for us. Speaker 2: This is a huge opportunity because the apparel category is filled with sellers that don't necessarily know how to build a brand. I feel like everyone goes to Amazon for your basics and if you're able to lean in and Constantly harvest all of those competitor brand names. It's a big opportunity because Lacoste does have so much authority and evangelism off platform. They didn't necessarily have the organic ranking in the beginning to, I think, sustain some of that. So you guys were able to go after all of those other brands that maybe a customer thought they were interested in, but then they saw Lacoste and like, actually, you know, I want them more because I know them and I have had proven success in the past with them. So that's a really big opportunity. You also dove into a lot of brand metrics data recently, which I thought was really cool. And you were showing me how search volumes within the category have changed. So you are using a lot of branded search insights to say, hey, you know, when we're spending more here, our brand name is definitely being correct more. And that's a really big opportunity. I think a lot of brands miss in the space. Speaker 1: Yes, and it's very interesting that you bring up that point because we've decreased branded spend quite a bit and we're, I think, hovering around like 9% for branded spend. So I think that's just a testament to the awareness tactics that we have been implementing and the category share that we've been building. Speaker 2: That's a huge call out. So branded spin on the search side is decreasing, but you guys are driving a lot more on the awareness side. You're leaning into non-branded, which everyone knows is kind of a big part of BTR strategy is how do we improve our positioning on the shelf? Well, we need to improve our organic rank on the page. How do we do that? Well, we need to invest in terms that are driving more volume and converting better than the category, put most simply. In a perfect world, unlimited budget, you cover 100% of your branded spend and 100% of your non-branded spend. But that's not how brands work. The majority of large brands are on set fiscal budgets. So when you're only given a certain percentage, you have to be very strategic around how you deploy that budget. And covering your branded search is fantastic, but the problem is if someone's searching your brand name, they were probably planning on converting anyways. So we typically lean into taking that bet and shifting our budget to be more focused on non-branded because non-branded spend Absolutely is what's going to increase your total revenue and your positioning on the page, which increases your longevity more than anything else. So I think that's a huge call out and you're also able to justify it in this case with branded spin decreased, but branded search increased because you guys were doing a lot more moving up the funnel, expanding into display, expanding into some of those ad types that maybe are a little bit lower purchase intent, but they're doing a better job of displaying who Lacoste is. Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. And I will say where our branded spend is going. We're not doing just branded search terms. We're using it to cross promote and we're really leaning into sponsored brand like product collections to showcase our other products. Maybe they're looking for a polo shirt. Well, hey, here's our power court shoe or a carnaby shoe that you might like as well. Speaker 2: That is a fantastic call out. I think the two big things that we usually see there is your average order value increases when you do that, but you're also driving a little bit more authority in this space because you're like, not only do we have this, but we have X, Y, Z. So what else do you want? The ad type that she mentioned is product collection. So I think in this scenario, there's two fantastic call outs that we like to lean into is product collection. And product collection is going to allow you to hand select what you're showcasing. So again, Cal is probably very intentionally setting up what products that she thinks are going to cross sell well. I like to look at my store insights and see if there's anything that inherently is being like frequently bought together already. The second thing I like to use in this scenario is a store spotlight ad. So a lot of people are unfamiliar with Sponsored Brand store spotlight ads, but if you create an ad in this format, it allows you to advertise three pages from your store. So let's say Lacoste had their store set up with polos versus shoes versus pants, XYZ. You could actually target a broader keyword set and drive customers to the sub page of your store. Now, where we typically see this fail is if you don't have a good store setup, then customers aren't going to be able to navigate your store spotlight very well. But what Cal is mentioning here is they're kind of controlling that funnel based on what the search term is. What is the intent of the searcher? How can we then lean them down the funnel to purchase more products? So even though their branded spin is branded, it's still working towards them in a probably better fashion than your traditional branded search budget. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And on the like pages, no, or like driving to stores for Father's Day and like definitely intend to do this for other seasonal events. But we created a deal or a page that essentially had all of our deal ASINs on it so that they were just automatically going to Those products, all the Father's Day deal ASINs. Speaker 2: I love that. Apparel is difficult to get because you have so many ASINs and it's so many deals. So if you're able to drive them to their own page, they can kind of maximize seeing all of your products on dealer discount in one quick scroll. Speaker 1: Exactly. Just making it easier for the consumer to Get to your products. Speaker 2: I love it. Is there anything else you feel like we haven't covered well or that you want to shout out with Lacoste or just BTR in general? Speaker 1: Off the top of my head. Speaker 2: I have something else to add if you don't. Speaker 1: Go ahead. Speaker 2: I will shout out that the level of granularity you're going with a brand like Lacoste. I mean, you mentioned scraping search term reports to figure out purchase intent and competitors is absolutely incredible. And I want to highlight that as just a testament to your work ethic and How deep we go into these accounts. And thankfully, you know, we do have Nexus, which helps drive a lot of that. Nexus is our internal technology that helps us with keyword harvesting, campaign setup, category research and things like that. That helps us on the operational efficiency side. But custom creating Father's Day campaigns with Father's Day copy, Father's Day graphics and Father's Day landing pages, that's just Having someone who cares on the account. So I think it's a huge shout out. You've made it sound incredibly easy, especially when they hear your story and you know how young you are. But at the end of the day, what you're doing is incredible and I don't think most brands have that level of dedication on their account. So huge shout out to you, Cal. Speaker 1: Thank you. It's definitely been such a blessing and having an apparel background in college, what more could I ask for with brands like Lacoste? So I definitely felt like I needed to put pedal to the metal and just Full send into it. Speaker 2: That being said, if any apparel brands are listening to this podcast, follow Cal on LinkedIn. If you're not apparel, you can still follow her, but I recommend following her if you are apparel brand and reach out if you have any questions. We're always more than happy to answer questions on LinkedIn or in the comments of this post, this podcast, things like that. I have one final question for you, though. At the next offsite, I believe we're going to have a pool table in Nashville, and I'm going to put you on the spot. If I put you and Dustin in a room for two hours, best of five, who is coming out as the winner? I mean, it has to be me. Speaker 1: What else could I say? Speaker 2: Sorry, Dustin. Speaker 1: Love the confusion, but. Speaker 2: We're going to have to live this. I need someone on the team to figure out like TikTok and reels and shorts and we're going to have to get a whiteboard and actually get a full like end of day tally because I do think Dustin won the last round, right? I think you won one, but he let me know that something happened. So I think he What ended up happening? Speaker 1: We were back and forth. I think we played best of three and I won that round and then the next day we did probably like four or five games. Honestly, we were stuck at the table the whole retreat, but looking forward to it. I have been practicing, so looking forward to it. Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast and thank you for being such an incredible addition to the team, Cal. Speaker 1: Of course. Thank you so much.