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RIP Marketing Funnels: Exploring the New Age of Partnerships with Adam Furness from Impact.com and Roger Lee from Brand Collective | #460

In this episode of Add To Cart, we sit down with Adam Furness, Managing Director of Impact.com APAC, and Roger Lee, Head of Digital Marketing at Brand Collective. To take a look at the future of partnership strategies. Adam discusses how partnerships are transforming the growth of global brands like Uber, Airbnb, and Canva by automating and scaling collaboration with influencers, affiliates, and more—driving as much as 30% of total revenue for some brands. They discuss why brands are trading traditional funnels for continuous advocacy loops and Roger reveals how they’re leveraging Impact.com to build efficient and scalable affiliate programs across Brand Collective’s 17 brands, including Reebok and Hush Puppies, contributing to a 20% uplift in online sales.

This episode was brought to you by:

Impact.com

About your guests:

Adam Furness is the Managing Director of Impact.com APAC, where he is transforming how brands leverage partnerships to drive growth and engagement. With over two decades of experience in digital and media technology, Adam has helped global brands such as Uber, Airbnb, and Ticketmaster unlock the full potential of partnership automation. Under his leadership, Impact.com has become the leading platform for managing all types of partnerships, from influencers and affiliate marketing to B2B collaborations and content commerce.

Roger Lee has spent two decades in digital marketing, helping retailers drive additional online sales through paid marketing channels. Roger currently heads up the performance marketing team at Brand Collective, managing the paid search, paid social, affiliate and programmatic advertising for 17 brands including Reebok, Superdry and Shoes & Sox. From Commission Junction in the UK and GrowthOps in Australia, Roger has a deep history in affiliate marketing and is a long time partner of Impact.com.

About your host:

Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and a leading ecommerce transformation consultant. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn, Twitter or via email.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duration:: 53m
Broadcast on:: 29 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

I'm going to invent a new word here, the unprofessionalisation of marketing. What I'll tell you is that Gen Z and millennials don't trust advertising. 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. Here's your host, Bushy. Hello and welcome to a very special another bonus Wednesday exclusive episode of Add to Cart. That's two in a row and just a hint, we've got one more coming 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. Today's episode is brought to you by IMPACT.com, yes our friends over at IMPACT.com and they are a technology platform helping brands grow through smarter partnerships. Now what if I told you that the traditional marketing funnel is dead, are we sad about that? Is it controversial? I know many people who will agree with today's guest, Adam Furness, who is the APAC managing director at IMPACT.com and he is here to flip the script on how we think about customer journeys. Leading the charge at 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 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 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. Adam and Roger, welcome to Add to Cart. Thank you. Good to be here. Good to be here, nice. Good to be here. Brilliant to have you both here. Adam, I can't believe that long time supporter of the show, IMPACT.com and this is the first time you've got to go and see what's going on. Is it really? I can't remember. It does feel like the first time, that is for sure. 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 pause 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? Yeah, that's a great question. I think perhaps one thing is 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 complex things like market mix modeling, subtle things like ad targeting and budgeting and ad creatives getting optimised on the fly by various platforms. I think our challenge is digital marketers has been to work out what of the AI we like and what we don't and where we need to be a bit wary, where we're better off without it. It's constant changing dynamic as well, so we've seen with things like metas advantage plus targeting, it's getting better and better when it first came out. We didn't really like it, but 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 unprofessionalisation 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 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 for friends to strength. So we know what resonates there is more that UGC feel. I thought you were just having a go at all our dress standards around the unprofessionalised. Are you hearing the same thing? I love that term, the unprofessionalisation 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? Yeah, I'd say so. You know what, that's the first time I've had that term as well, so I don't know if you've coined it, but it's pretty good. You know, 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 really connect with it, so I think that 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 the overarching piece there is doing more with less, and so I was seeing 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, oh, I think you're just looking at the bottom line a lot more, making sure that you're sort of set up for success now and ongoing, so, yeah, more with less, may I thought so? 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, throughout 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 blood is this? Mate, I know, and you did a great job as an MC, and thanks for 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, you know, looked at it through that lens of, you know, discard research, engagement, conversion, and then sort of a 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, right? Yeah, good. Good. Squeeze it out there, mate. Mine's kind of going like a funnel, but it's got a lot of long spout, and the spout goes back into the funnel. 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 a circle. So customers now introducing new customers to your business, and that advocacy closes the loop. 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 it's kind of, this returning loop to amplify everything along the way, sorry to all the Tasmanian listening. Questionable analogy, but sure, let's go with it. I look at our pot of power 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, then mine goes to somewhere totally different, because there are so many different options. When we talk partnerships, what are you talking? Yeah, it's true. And mine 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, affiliate's cashback coupons. So we're talking about that in a referral style paid on business outcome type of relationship. Is it always paid on business outcome? Not always, not always, but the majority of it is paid on business outcome. When I talk about business outcome, it's like a sale, an acquisition. 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 it's actually a performance medium as well. Exactly. And the thread is actually through all the other mediums, which no doubt we'll talk more about today. 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? 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 that advocacy marketing, it's growing and it's growing and it's becoming increasingly important, and we kind of ignore it. We have to kind of actively promote it now as much as it has to form an extra part of our strategy so that we are making the most of it ready. 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, okay. Let me give you an example. I actually gave this example at IPXs as well, so Frankbody, familiar with Frankbody? Very familiar. Great. Great. I know you talked about them at the keynote, but- It's coming. It's coming. Are you ready? I can't. Are you ready? Let me kind of walk you through this. I'm going to use you as an example here, Nate. Okay. So Frankbody, you're online, you see a creative video that introduces you to a product of Frankbody. And that product is the Perky Body Sculpting Hydrator, right? And you love it. So then what you do after you've seen that creative 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 the website and you constantly kind of engage with their content, use it 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 some kind of cashback or reward 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've got a referral friend program. I think they call there something like referral babe or something like that. So then you start referring your babes, and they get additional discounts, and you get discounts, and then you're bringing new customers back into kind of Frankbody there. So you can see there's a number of ways that they've engaged with you along that chain and really brought you along, and then you're then referring customers to them, which are your friends and the family, and they're really happy because they've got discounts, and you're really happy because you've got a discount on more product, and then you're sort of closing that blue site. 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. I didn't want to embarrass you next. 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? I mean, sometimes you don't even need to offer them that much. If there's lovely 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. Some people will just do it just through the goodness of their heart. But discounts, products where they win and their friends win is the way to go. 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 you. You know, and that's how I got on to Add to Cart. I never used to listen. Really? I never used to listen to Add to Cart, and then someone, I think it was Peter Bray. Peter Bray said, "Hey, you've got to listen to Add to Cart." With advocates like Peter Bray, who knows what kind of riffraff 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, loved 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? This is a bit of a work in progress for us, but at the moment we've got the third partner called Soretto Live with Reebok that allows customers after they've purchased to, say, I think it's 15%, and then provide that 15% discount on to whoever they're referring to as well. That's just started last month, and we've got kind of unique tracking codes and that kind of things we can analyze, how it's actually working. 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 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 saw we've 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 if we can incentivize them and kind of get top of the queue and get a bit more exposure, then that's really the dream for us. 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? It's kind of a bit of both, because when the 15% to the referral 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, it actually does come out of the marketing budget, so yeah, it's a bit of both. Yeah, correct. 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. Great question, Nate. So we've 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, then 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, 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 creators, influencers that they're following and those publications that they regularly engage with. 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. And so having those conversations around, actually, we need this to be more relatable, more low-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, right? Absolutely. But I'd also say a thing 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 put in their search term in there, and then get the video straight away and get the content straight away. They may be traveling, and they'll put in, I'm in Singapore at the moment, so in Singapore we go, "Top five restaurants to go out to," and it's like, "Here's the top five that come through," and you can watch the videos of the restaurant, so they're actually using TikTok and Insta as their new search engine. All you need to do is go to the markets in Singapore, best food ever, just do that. Mate, this is true, this is true. 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? Yeah, we've got already diverse range of brands that we retail online, 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 a 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 customer set and that kind of works quite well for pretty much all our brands, so that's brilliant, we'll utilise 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 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, new sites, those kind of things, I think is where we can find an audience that our brand will resonate with. Yeah, awesome, can imagine that it's not always neat, right? It sounds like you 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, 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 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 prioritising their efforts in where they should start? 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 Frank Boddie, 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 boarding, 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 in the way, on the way to work. They get to work, they may have a morning tea break, I don't know, they have tea and they have coffee. They chat to some friends about what's the gossip, 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 watch nobody wants this on Netflix, I'll just start to watch it by the way. And 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 Frank Body could partner with a touch point, if you like. So there's influences that their customers follow, 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 deals on things they're sort of thinking about. And there's their friends that may already be customers of Frank Body as well. So along each one of those touch points in the customers, daily routine, there's an opportunity to partner and that partnership can look like anything, but it's about authentically getting a message in the front of that potential customer along that journey. 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'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? One of the great parts of a platform that our customers tell us they love seeing is their 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 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 the closing part of that journey which might be a deal site or a cashback 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 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. That's a great example because obviously cashbacks 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 cashback but it's actually all those touch points along the way throughout the circle that go towards making the cashback work. So I love that. I think that's a really good example. Rod, 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 activations? What parts of the partnership offering are you looking at? Yeah, so it's clarified and 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 in the world to kind of get involved. Where we're at, so we've got Reebok, Hush Puppies and Julie Smilow 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. 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, but it's like, was that a paid placement just then nice? No, but I'll take free shoes. 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 wanted that partnership. How does it actually work? Yeah, we're still figuring that out to some degree, but I mean, we've had good relationships just through people in the teams where that's been personal relationships or professional. Like we've supplied a lot of shoes through Julius Marley for the brown nose to certain players, so that's sort of one in. But yeah, well, we've known those people and 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 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 more safely that it's actually driving marketing outcomes at the end of the day. 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. 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. 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 on 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. So pushing forward, so Roger, say you've got everything down pat, you kind of like got things humming along, he 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 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? Yeah, great question. I think it faster 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 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 influence and stuff across various channels and 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. 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? Yeah, at the moment, the idea is for 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 influence we 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 you give them all the tools basically to build those relationships and make that hump. To do more with less, as Adam said, at the start, essentially. That's always the game, 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 playing 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 is the future partnerships going to change in the next 12 months? If I just think about some of the areas that we'll, 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. That's when publications are writing articles that they want to write about, that they want to talk about, whether that's listy calls or about products and services that their team typically interact with. Then what they do after they've written the article is they include links or products into the article. The world of advertorials where you have advertisers that are influencing what's being written, it's the flip of that. It's the journal that's writing what they want to write about, and then they're inserting advertising links in there. 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. For brands, that's really cool. We've got a brand that we work with, Mary's People. Daniel and James. Daniel and James. They have been doing a lot with us all around the world, including in the US. Last year, they did some content commerce, I think it was on the New York Times. That article, that piece, I think it was top five, top 10 gumboots or something like that, they're writing about. That article, which was written a year ago, is still bringing them sales today. I think that type of thing is really cool. That's content commerce. You think the content commerce, we're going to get to the point where we can transact within media. Absolutely. For sure. It makes sense to bridge the gap, doesn't it? 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 grow and expand. I think it's a good consumer experience, a good experience for the customer. We've spoken about this in the past. We talked about this example a lot at impact.com, but I love it, which is Spotify and Ticketmaster working together. If you're a music lover, you're listening to Spotify, and then 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. You click through and you can go through the Ticketmaster to buy that just the seamless experience in that world. It's our platform that's sitting in the background doing all the tracking, doing the commercial payments, and all the reporting and that sort of stuff for Ticketmaster who licenses our tech in that example. I think that brand to brand, I think that's going to continue to grow. Rebok and the AFL getting stronger in that brand connection or like that? It could happen, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. I think customers and community as well. I was spoken a lot about advocacy, play or customers, referring customers, but the other one is the importance of community. There's a heap of brands around the world which are doing this really well, one that I love, Patagonia. Patagonia is probably one of the best examples in this space of the community sort of side. Aside from donating, I think their entire company to the planet, they sponsor environmental and outdoor workshops and encourage customers to participate in environmental things. They do a lot where they're bringing outdoor professionals and environment grants together as well. 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. Yeah, I love it. Three amazing areas to look into if you're not already. Content commerce, and here in that great story about Mary 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. I want to pitch something for Rogers as well. So Rogers talked about content creators or influencers 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 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 can still be getting that residual income week out, month in, month out, year in, year out for, you know, ever. I'm going to start my page right now. Bush is gym workouts. Give me the account handle. You can follow Adam. You can earn me my re-box. You wear LSKD as well, don't you? You're into that gear. They should be paying you. I've heard you talk about LSKD and Fabian. That's true. Raj, I know that that is like, I 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? Yeah, at the moment, it's all at the above. We've kind of tiered our re-box, create a 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 yourself, but anyone that we don't know that, you know, just wants to, they're going to the gym already. Excellent. Yeah, they're going to the gym already, they just love the products. They're 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've 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 can't have an 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. 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 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. 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 a CPC, you know, that you're getting something for your money. So, yeah, if you can assign some budget to that, you've just got to try and see what works. It's simple, but it's effective. Well, as Adam said, it's a long way from old school TV advertising where you have to put the huge budgets upfront and then pray that it works. It's, you can absolutely do that. Test that learn approach, as you said, so it's a great tip. So, Roger, we've got people getting excited about getting set up for partnerships and potentially bringing it to 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? First focus is make sure what you're doing is incremental. It's not all affiliate activity or partnership activity can be. Sometimes you're not paying for sales you could get anyway. So, if you smart around that so that you can focus your budget on the side of it that is really incremental and it helps you move forward. I think make it a win-win. Sometimes, as marketers, we get excited about getting the best possible ROI we can and that's sort of a 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 and they're going to do it a positive light because you're paying them. There's no point in them to 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 typesites, but you want to diversify what other partnership models are there out there. Adam spoke about a few of them, things like brands, brands, and stuff like that. It's quite exciting. So, try and explore those opportunities too. Awesome tips. I can imagine that if people are running single brands, it could be a lot easier than running 17 brands right? Anyway. I would imagine so, yeah. Adam, what about you? One tip from everything that you've seen, what's the thread of the most successful programs? Yeah, I think thinking about the actual customer. So, how do you add value to their world? 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 can 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 headspace, and then, yeah, find ways to partner with those touch points along that journey. 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 or you're traveling overseas without your wife and family? 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 now 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. We're into writing to Prison Break if you've watched that. How good is it when you get to go back on your old TV series and you're like, I'm watching it with the kids to show them, it's just a chance for you to rewatch the stuff you've already watched. We've just gone through all the unnecessary other 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. 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've 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. We've recently partnered with a data platform that can do that, that can give us marketing mix modeling. We can see how incremental all our different activities are and how our channels are playing together. 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 a better view of it is going to be huge for us. So that's probably key. Awesome. And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that? Hit me up a LinkedIn or email me, allee@brandclayton.com.edu. Beautiful. You're going to have a lot of people asking for rebox. Adam, what about you next 12 months? What's the priority for you and the team at impact.com? We want to grow the industry and 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 to training certificates, get all that sort of stuff. We're going to take that live. So as we go into next year of, well, hopefully she's signed 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 our courses with universities. We're going to fill out stadiums and train people on the industry via PXA. So our training platform, we're 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. This affiliate partnership space, if you think of a marketer, you're a CMR 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 sorts of 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. 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 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 I love that you're positioning it that way. Thank you both for joining us. Adam, for 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? Yeah, call me on 0403 now, joking. Hit me up on LinkedIn. Adam Finesse. You should be able to find me. Adamfinesseimpact.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Be 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, thank for both sharing your stories and your insights. We'll do it again soon, yeah? Thank you, Nathan. Thank you, Roger. Yeah, thanks, both. Look forward to it. 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 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 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 drive 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. Alright, 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 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 a 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 at Descartes 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 at adtacart.com.au/campus. 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.

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