Shifting Gears To DTC | Marina Parejo

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Streaming here

Shifting your entire business model in the midst of a global pandemic may seem like a daunting task. But, as Marina Parejo can attest, it can also be equally rewarding. Listen to Kyle and Tom’s unaired interview with Marina, the former Head of E-Commerce at O2 Industries, as she candidly discusses their pivot from B2B to DTC as COVID-19 broke out, resulting in a whopping 24,000% growth. The three chat about how DTC founders can cut the jargon and optimize their marketing strategies to get tangible results and how Marina approached everything from positioning to retention.

Learn more about our guest:

Marina Parejo, Former head of ecommerce & customer experience @ O2 Industries

Transcript

Tom: Welcome to Commerce Chefs, a quirky and thought-provoking show for a future-focused commerce leaders. We're going to pit the world's most brilliant, inspiring and driven DTC visionaries, the Commerce Chefs with riveting questions to uncover their secret ingredients at the intersection of passion, performance and leadership in practice. 

Kyle: For the past decade, we've led teams of designers, strategists and digital wizards at one of the leading eComm agencies in the country to help brave brands become enduring classics. 

Tom: And we're here to indefinitely borrow the strategies and pro tips that will make us all better leaders and make the brands we lead better, too. 

Kyle: Now that we're officially finished our first season, we've decided to spice things up a little bit over the summer for your listening enjoyment 

Tom: Every two weeks, we're releasing some of our favourite interviews from season one, but in long form so we can share even more delicious insights with you. 

Kyle: The secret good stuff that you didn't get to hear. So listen in. Grab a marg-ear-ita. 

Tom: No, no, that's awful. Awful sounding and probably tasting too. 

Kyle: OK. OK, grab a daiq-ear-i. Enjoy some easy, breezy listening by the poolside with your favorite podcast hosts and let us know what you think and the reviews section. 

Tom: This episode, we're airing our interview with Marina Parejo from our CEX episode, she was formerly at Shopify and the head of e-commerce at O2 Industries. 

Kyle: What was so interesting about this conversation was that at the time we spoke O2 had recently pivoted into DTC space from B2B due to the global pandemic and was growing at an incredible pace at twenty four thousand percent. 

Tom: And that shift changed the way that Marina approached everything from customer acquisition to retention and the way that they positioned and packaged their brand. 

Kyle: She discusses what the gold standard of Ecomm truly is, how it's changing and who is truly redefining it. 

Tom: Plus what retention means for brands today and how the evolution of ads has created initial distrust from customers.

Kyle: And fun fact, Tom. During the interview, we discovered that I went to high school with Marina's husband. 

Tom: Oh, well, that's a fact for sure. Not sure it's fun, but let's dig in. 

Marina: I'm Marina Parejo, head of e-commerce and customer experience at a brand called O2 Industries. It's a brand that's been designing respiratory technology for about four or five years now. They were primarily B2B, but due to recent global events have been catapulted into the DTC world. So we've been learning and figuring out how to create the customer experience, but also build operations for a DTC business from the ground up. 

Tom: Yeah, and that that's always been fascinating to me is this tectonic shift from B2B to DTC although those acronyms sound really similar, they're really, really not. When you get into the mechanics of what it what it means to operate, how you facilitate sales, acquisition, conversion, retention, all of this approach inside and outside of the company is completely different. So what does that look like? And how has your role as head of e-commerce really played so far, like even in the last year, really into transforming that approach? 

Marina: Yeah, I think that the biggest thing for any brand is really kind of creating that definition around what the customer experience actually is and should be based on your principles as an organization. Right. So we have the like standard definition that's being created, let's say, on our behalf by by companies like Amazon. Right? And so their definition of the customer relationship and the customer experience really is convenience. Right? And it's like fewer clicks, fewer dollars, fewer days. And you have to decide as a brand whether that's how you want your operations to be built. And I hear a lot of brands talk about things like, well, Amazon's already defined this. They've already set the standard that consumers expect. And I kind of don't think that that's true, because if you can align with and we're seeing brands do it across the board every day. Right? They're changing those standards and making it easier for them to insert their principles in that process and build a relationship through those principles. So give you an example. It's like fewer clicks. Well, you have brands like Gorjana, for example, that you build and layer your own necklaces and jewelry. And so I would say that they're not fewer clicks, and yet they're an incredibly successful brand. I would love to see their session depth data and their time on site data, because I imagine people spend a lot of time because they're engaging in that kind of unique experience. When you look at something like people will say, Amazon has set the standard for cheaper product. Well, I mean, there's luxury brands out there that obviously price isn't a thing or setting the standard for free shipping. Well, I know from experience that I have purchased from brands like Tentree and and totally willing to pay that shipping fee, because I know that with that shipping fee, they're going to plant 10 trees and neutralize my carbon footprint of shipping my product. There's so many examples, even even things like fewer days, like fewer days. I just purchased from a brand called Wholesome Culture. And they told me out the gate that it would take five to six weeks for me to get my product because they're running a sustainable business, because they are print on demand to kind of reduce their footprint. And like they they have built this beautiful post purchase automation to give me touch points and reminders as to why my product is taking so long, because they are so dedicated and aligned to their mission and their principles. And I now become a part of that community. And so I think their brands just across the world kind of shaking up what the definition of like the consumer experience to the consumer journey looks like. We don't have to believe or live in this definition created by Amazon, so going back to your question, I think my first step as head of e-commerce and customer experience is really figuring out and defining what are the principles that we want to align with and how do we build a tech stack that allows us to execute on that and create that community with our consumers. 

Tom: So it really is about defining what's important and that this is not an exact science. Customer experience or relationship building. This is more of an art. You can't replicate results. You can't replicate experiences. You have to really go with it. It's what's important. And I think we've all grown up with this knowledge that good things take time. So whether you're waiting five or six weeks because it has to be made or there's particular parameters that this this business and brand is looking to follow, it's the time part of that. That is important. That time is what it takes to build a relationship. And I feel anyway, and I certainly would love to hear you say to this, there are some areas where the standard words like de facto, and that's just how it's done. And we deal with this all the time when we're talking about UX and UI and Dev, you know, best practices and it's just how you do it. We're big believers, too, of, well, you know, is it or does it have to be or just the simple question of why. So what's the most important part of building this vision, this intent behind the customer relationship? 

Marina: Yeah, I mean, like I mentioned, it really starts with that definition. But from there, I think the most important part is actually building and fostering communication with your audience or, you know, your community, whatever that might be. I happen to believe that the brands of the future are. How do I put this so OK, let's go back to the example of Amazon, right? And it's like, yeah, you get that brown box at your door and I don't know if this is your experience, but this is certainly mine. I don't always remember what's in the brown box. 

Tom: Never, because I never.

Marina: Like why I bought it when I bought it. I know it's probably two days ago, because.  But, you know, and that that's like to Amazon, that means nailing the customer experience. Right? Because they've kind of closed that on convenience. So much so that I'm confused about it. But I think that the brands of the future and the brands that take the time to listen and build their communities actually build that with this foundation not of convenience and lowest cost, but on that foundation of unique experiences, that foundation of belonging and having shared values. [00:10:05]And I just really think that there's this this world where we're going to or the expectation of the consumer is that the brand will become or should become peer and actually listen and engage and communicate. And it's kind of difficult for a brand to communicate with an audience without the the other, let's just say, walled gardens that exist when when you're talking about social media. So building the touch points and building those communication points with your customer wherever you can throughout your tech stack is really, really important. [41.8s] And when you get that feedback from a customer, whether it be a review or a response or an email that goes out to your CEX team, whatever the engagement is, really listen to it, collect it. And I think that that's where in e-commerce we get the opportunity to select and build the tech stacks that allows you to do those things. And with those different tools and technologies out there, combining them and pulling them together in order to really and properly communicate with your audience or with your customer base. You know, every single one of those tools is evolving and getting better and and more intelligent. And they have brands that are taking those tools and bringing them to another level, too, and building on top of those tools in order to create these really exclusive experiences, but also just opening up that communication channel so the brand is no longer telling the consumer what to buy. The consumer is telling the brand what they want or the community is telling the brand what they want. And I think that that really is like the future of commerce and how it will evolve. 

Kyle: I'm just going to jump in and ask a question on listening, because I think it's such an interesting point of this idea of like listening to that community and that kind of like feedback loop that is more than just something that you you see on a review and do nothing about. How do you go about like balancing? What I can only imagine is a mammoth of amount of feedback. So we've got to turn on our listening as brands. But then how do you balance it when you've got so many data points and also probably think of yourself such a diversity of thoughts of where they want the product to go, where they want the brand together? Like what? What do we do with it? 

Marina: I think that there are different categories that you can break everything out into. Right, so it's like, OK, can I get feedback that goes back to my R&D team and product teams for maybe maybe things like size material, hearing from the community and saying like, hey, you know, it's really cool that you have developed the product to look like this, but we would love for the materials that you use to also be organic and vegan and all of these things. So it's like at the very least, I think it's important to collect and categorize the data and be able to take that information back to the product. At the end of the day, having everyone at the table and different parts of the beautiful thing about e-commerce is it kind of touches every part of the business, right. So when you have data that can go right to your product team or quality team or R&D team, and then you have other data that might be UX focused, like, hey, it's really awkward. You know, this particular workflow is really awkward or I had a hard time finding your subscription button or whatever it might be. I think the important part is, yes, there's too much data and all of the information, but if you work with the right tools, it gives you the opportunity to slice and dice and categorize that data and give it to other parts of the organization we like here. Here's all of the product feedback. Now, you guys do your work in in parsing it and figuring out. This is what the customer has asked for. Now let's figure out what's possible and building out a roadmap and a strategy for how to achieve those things or deciding whether something is important or unimportant and can be tabled for later. 

Kyle: Well said.

Tom: So with your experience moving O2 from primarily B2B, now very much DTC. I'm sure you're balancing actually a lot of competing priorities and approaches between those two. But I would assume that the strategy and the tactics for gaining that visibility and attention and acquisition for those customers is extremely different than the approach, strategy and tactics on the B2B side. And I think typically in the acquisition is the sexy, fun, really appealing hot right now buzzword who wore it best kind of thing. But I guess moving past the exciting part, you've acquired somebody there on your site. They've converted. What's the real focus that time? So if I've if I've purchased what now happens with me and what are the things that you're looking at once somebody is, let's call it in in the community 

Marina: And take a step back for a half a second, because my background is actually in programmatic advertising, ad operations like the the logic behind all of those auctions that happened in the blink of an eye. And I think that there's like this world of acquisition where everyone, you know, we've just again, the way it's been done is like those acquisition channels, display ads or advertising in general is the way that you've always engaged with consumers. And that's the way that you build, acquire, create that visibility, create those communities. But there's been this this challenge that's been happening in the industry for actually a really long time. I think commerce being on the publishing side of the world, the only way that they make money is through advertising. And therefore, they've really pushed advertising technology to essentially its limits to the point where a like the surface of the answer is acquisition is is a lot more expensive than it used to be. So invest in retention strategies and retention marketing because it's cheaper, like that's super surface level. But I think that the deeper and the more fundamental issue with the way that the industry has evolved is that people invested so much in advertising and have made advertising so intrusive and difficult for people to recognize and understand what is an ad you have ads today that ask you questions and survey you, and it's difficult to to figure out or identify what is an ad. I don't know if you guys are fans of South Park, but there's a three part series on advertising. And I think the show is just absolutely brilliant. And it hits the nail on the head. It's like Wendy is an ad and Tim is the only one who can figure out like or identify who is an ad and who's not an ad in their communities and the people around them. And I think it's so beautiful because it really shows you that people have lost trust in advertising, but that actually means that they've lost trust in brands. Right? And so when you look at it, I think I read a stat recently that said something like, eighty four percent of millennials are more likely to take buying advice from a stranger online than to talk to a sales rep or to believe anything that comes out of the brand's mouth directly. And I think it's important thing for people to double click on.

Kyle: It doesn't even sound surprising, actually, when you say that. That sounds about right. 

Marina: And so it's like, cool, you've succeeded brand. You've acquired someone because you advertise to them properly. Not to say that that's not a difficult task, but in the world, in the fog of social media, it's easy to click and buy something. It's like harder than it's ever been for brands, but also easier than it's ever been for brands to get someone to convert. But the trust building exercise actually happens post purchase because that's where you get to rebuild the trust and credibility that your brand is a real because it's hard to figure that out these days. What is just a random drop shipping business that doesn't even care whether that product gets to you and what is a legitimate brand that cares about you that you want to align with and work with. And so everything that happens post purchase is where you either gain a raving fan or lose the trust of the customer or even just like prove them right. Because I think most customers start from a place of like, let's see where this goes. 

Tom: Yeah, we've we've all been there. And I think it's bang on the hard work the every relationship has to go into. And we'll sort of pull back to the theme here is trust. And it is fascinating and a little ironic that the trust that's being built now more than ever is with the stranger. But if the hard work of building trust happens after, after the conversion, after the sale, then how can eCom leaders mindfully and cost effectively build their brands in a way that focuses on this stage, the the long term, the hard work, rather than just counting conversions? 

Marina: So I think that there are some pretty low resistance ways of doing it as a brand, so something as simple as planning and being strategic about all of your touch points post purchase, right. So building a strategy with not only regular touch points, but something that sort of reinforces the principles that you have as a brand and reinforces why that individual should want to be part of this community or give them the opportunity to feel like they're a part of it by engaging with them. And not only regular email or SMS touch points post purchase. That reinforces those things, but also just like general information that you can share about where a package is, letting them know ahead of time whether there's going to be a delay in a package. I mean, there are technologies out there that are able to predict the path of a particular package and tell you that there's a great chance that this package, because the last 10 packages that had a similar path as yours were delayed due to customs or whatever it might be. And so giving having those touch points to build trust with the customer before they've received the product, but also really, like from an e-commerce perspective, having frictionless returns and exchanges is a massive a massive thing that is sometimes overlooked. So you have brands that will kind of not really talk about returns or exchanges or whether it's possible as though hiding it is the way it is going to make it so that customers don't don't recognize or realize it. But so having a return policy that's front and center and even building up on that that return or exchange experience. So making it super easy so you can use different tools that build automation or that that introduce automation to your reverse logistics flow. Right. And so you work with a tool like that and it allows you to a because no customer is going to blame you for a shirt, not fitting them or the color not being right. We have this expectation that we we can try things on. And if we can send it back then and if we can create a frictionless experience for returning and exchanging products, then that again builds trust and credibility between the customer and the brand, but also recognizing as a brand that a return is not necessarily a refund. Right. So it's actually a new opportunity for you to build trust and relationship. And it's almost like a second chance at a first impression because you get that opportunity to resell to the customer again and say, hey, we get it. You know, the size didn't work for you. We'd love to collect that feedback and understand, like, was it too big or was it so we can go and adapt and build more robust sizing charts or whatever that might be. But also coming back to the concept of building on your principles, you have brands like, say, for example, Allbirds. Allbirds. They work with this non for profit. I think it's called like soles for souls. I might have that wrong, but that non for profit, essentially, you can return your shoes at any point in time, even after trying them on and wearing them. And the reverse logistics is actually just sending it to this organization that will then donate the shoes. So you can feel actually good about the fact that if I do need to process a return or exchange, I can do it easily. But also I'm doing it a good thing by returning exchanging. And it also makes me feel like we can challenge the concepts of things being final sale will go back to the Tentree example. I'm like totally fine with buying something that's final sale for Tentree because I know if that shirt doesn't fit me, I can give it to my sister or to a friend. But I did a good thing by making the purchase in the first place. Would I have spent 40 dollars on planting 40 trees? So we can use technology to build and create these experiences, build and create more trust and credibility through the process and also from an operation side, using these technologies makes it more efficient, less expensive, which allows us to invest more dollars in sustainable practices and things like that. 

Tom: I want to play a little game for a second here. We at PB&J, we like to play a game called Edges. You may have heard of it. Really, what it's intended to do is essentially goes like this. If you took away the assumption of how things were and you looked at, let's say, polar opposites, so if you kind of live in the gray edges would be you have white and you have black over here. And you ask the question, what if we reframed this by adjusting the edges? What if this were closer to black or what if this were closer to white? So the game is is this Marina? What if you couldn't run ads? What if you had no acquisition as a possibility? 

Marina: I love the concept of that world to be honest I mean, having the the background, we could do a whole other podcast on why the room escape. And like the ad ops, eco system is broken and and actually rigged for the biggest players. Surprise, surprise. Right. But when you actually understand, like, the deep intricacies of those auctions and how they operate, you're like, I hope that there's a day that this fails and we can't advertise this way. So it will force brands to be smarter. Right. And and to engage. And I think I think the real way to do that, if you can't acquire with a billboard of sorts, whether it's online or offline, how do you build and create visibility? And I think that the answer to that is adding value in other ways. So other forms of content that allows your consumer to engage. And this can be a challenge for merchants to kind of bridge that gap between content and commerce, because in the e-commerce world, content you call Shopify CMS. If C equals product images and pricing. Sure. But like in the world of publishing, content is actually words, video, images that allow them to build authority, be a voice, be a thought leader on a topic. And I think that there are brands that funny enough like have nailed this. And because they are the authority on that topic and have built a community around the topic, they are then able to convert faster and easier and have these repeat customers because they know that this brand actually knows what they're talking about and are trying to share information and add value from like a knowledge perspective, not just like the only exchange here is, is I sell you a product. The exchange is also content information, but also community building. And I think a brand that actually absolutely knows this is IHeartDogs.com. I have been following these guys for too long because, yes, I am a crazy dog, mom. I love all of the information that they provide, but they have their content first organization, so they share information on how to care for your dog and then only align with products or create their own products that are reflective of how to properly take care of your your dog. Then on top of that, the percentage of all of their sales goes to giving food to dog shelters across the US. So it's like it nails everything because you feel good as a consumer going and getting your knowledge from this particular merchant. You feel good about making a purchase because you're giving back while making that purchase. But also you know that you can trust them because they are an authority on pet products and an authority on how to take care of your dog. They know how to do it. And so I should be getting advice from them. Again, it's credibility and trust building. I think it always comes back to that. 

Tom: Love it. 

Kyle: What do you think prevents us from focusing more on that, on helping people? Basically, what's the allure of putting so much of our resources into acquisition when perhaps the real opportunities in retention, trust building, helping people.

Marina: It's frictionless and frictionless on purpose, like tech companies have have built this and made it possible. When I look at like the world of making money online, I kind of think of it in three buckets. There's like the acquisition, the checkout and the post purchase experience. If you think about it there, there are owners and platforms in the acquisition world, right? So like the social media companies come to mind even Google acquisition is easy, there's a template, there's a playbook for acquisition checkout. Well, you've got a lot of different e-commerce platforms out there that allow you to kind of check the boxes of what a checkout experience needs to look like. There are owners of that space. Nobody owns post purchase and no one's figured it out yet. And so there isn't a template sized way, a frictionless way for you to build a post purchase tech stack or for you to build engagement with your community that you own it. That's not an easy or inexpensive thing to do. 

Tom: Yeah, and it is is fascinating and know we've sort of spoke about this before the recording, but we see this the spacing in those three circles as well, acquisition. And we we sort of call it conversion and then retention, but that's a tough space to commodify, productify and put an algorithm behind, because that's where we actually at the end of the day. After a transaction, you have the choice and the responsibility to either care for the human interaction that now comes or not care and just be cranking it out, as it were. So I think if we zoom all the way back out to what you'd said a little bit earlier, Marina, around the the content reflecting the ethos and the beliefs and the values, I think it is a little bit around the topic of continuity of character. And when we look at relationships with other people, the more you get to know somebody that continuity of character comes out. It's what allows us to answer questions like somebody to ask me, like, OK, if this situation came up, what would Kyle do? Like, easy, this is what he would do. And that comes with years of listening to Kyle, learning about Kyle having friction points with Kyle. Big victories like it comes with time, it comes with interaction. And if continuity of character is critical in building trust, but as you said, it's expensive, it isn't super sexy and hard work rarely is. So is that investment worth it? And is is this really the untapped opportunity moving into the future of commerce? That really is something that, you know, get on it and you're going to see those returns? 

Marina: I think that it's untapped in that it's like unchartered waters. Right. Like, I gave some examples of brands that are creating these unique experiences that allow them to engage and interact a little bit better. I think a wicked example of this is Nix and how they have like their virtual fitting rooms. You get to, like, engage with a customer service rep, I guess, and figure out like how to how to size and everything. And you're getting like this very real time feedback and conversation with the customer. No, no question. That was an investment. Right. Like, it's not an easy thing for you to build or create, especially for brands that are starting out. And that's why it's easy for brands like. Invest in other components because the templates are out there, and I don't mean to sound like terribly cynical, but it's like advertising is like a trillion dollar business, right. And it supports all of these other platforms and it supports the big guys in every way. And then it leaves the smaller brands and advertisers like we can call them merchants, advertisers in this space that trying to connect with people. It leaves it so that we we are having to kind of foot the bill on these experiences. But if you think about it, if you stopped contributing, if you stopped spending your dollars on the other side of it, how much more could you spend and dedicated to figuring out what these experiences need to be, what your community is actually asking for, what would benefit them in, you know, and so it becomes a business problem and it becomes a budget and cost problem. But if if we were to for a moment, ignore the best practices and the way that everyone's always done it, can we take those dollars and convert them into into an experience that is unique and customized? And it sounds like a challenging thing to do. But I mean, I'm from I went to the University of Waterloo, I it's this engineering school. It's a math and engineering school. We've got the most talented devs on the planet, you know, and we get access to those devs and we get the opportunity to build and create whatever we want to. We just have to think outside the box a little bit more and figure out ways to engage. But I think there are also other strategies that, you know, when you look at content creators and the way that they have been able to communicate with their audiences and tap into those communities and sell them products, I mean, they're outpacing the biggest and baddest of retailers because they tapped into audiences extension strategies. They they figured out ways to share their networks with one another in order to grow their organic audiences and then in turn sell products and create experiences that are really great for their community specifically. You know, so I think there's just this big shift that needs to happen in the way we think about advertising dollars or creating reach, because we're talking the whole topic of this podcast is retention and really creating raving fans. What better way to acquire a new customer than through an existing customer? Right. So I could doubling down on that. Let's call it audience extension. I think that there are a lot of definitions around audience extension and what that could look like. But the way that I am using the term is to say, OK, how do we figure out a way for this community in this audience that loves us and benefit, you know, that we have this mutual relationship where we're doing good for the planet together and we're on this mission together. How do you get that audience to to want to talk to other people about what you're doing? Social media has created power in communities. People are now heard someone say recently like voting with their dollars. And I think it's so powerful to think of it like.

Tom: Episode one of Commerce Chefs talks about voting with your dollars. 

Marina: I bet that's where I've heard it.

Kyle: If it was, I totally stole that from a B Corp campaign. So but. I'm just curious, this is like a futurist question, so if you put your future hat on, do you see, though, like kind of community and that kind of like peer to peer trust becoming eroded to a point where it's like it becomes mistrusted, kind of like how advertising has become like, is there the danger of that or is there is there something inherent about it that won't cause it to spoil? 

Marina: I mean, it could always spoil, but if it is rooted in things like. Saving our planet, you know, and it's like, OK, so even if that the community of it all was somehow spoiled, but you had this ultimate mission and dollars going to improving the fashion industry on reducing our carbon footprint, on killing, you know, the traditional, like, arbitrage models that have sort of ruined ruined industry and in trust with consumers like would it be so bad if ultimately we were all still working toward a bigger, badder goal, which was to improve our logistics or reverse logistics, to improve or using the Tentree plant trees every time you interact? I don't know. Like I agree with you at some point or another, you're going to not be able to like those communities will grow so big that there will be bad actors that enter them and kind of ruin it for everyone. But at the end of the day, you stick to your principles and are trying to do a good thing. Maybe it'll at least get us farther ahead. 

Kyle: That's fair. 

Tom: Yeah, it got me thinking I feel like anything good can be weaponized if the intent is to do that and anything good can be used for sinister. And that sounds super heavy, but for for not great reasons. And, you know, hey, have you have you ever dreamed of being your own boss? And like, we get these these tiered marketing schemes. If I got a deal for you? You know, you can have. But there's this weaponization of peer to peer community building that that's come from that approach of the reason I'm telling you about this is because I can benefit. But if we can keep the focus on the reason I'm telling you about this is so we all can benefit, then then that principle and that focus that's going to be bigger and stronger always then then leveraging that for sort of personal or corporate gain. But it's a really good point. It's a it's a bit of a cautionary tale, I think, for leaders or people of just watch what you're doing, know why, and things things will have a tendency to be OK. 

Marina: Yeah, I even think about have you guys heard of what's it called Ecosia. It's like the tree Google, but like, no, it's a search engine that every search instead of like for Google, they make their advertising dollars, helps Google. Ecosia every time you search, they actually plant a tree. And and so you have these influencers that are pushing this concept, like use this search engine instead of, you know, you're still going to search things, you're still going to Google things, you know, but at least do it in a way that benefits the world. So, like, if if you're an influencer who's been paid to push Ecosia. All right, cool. Yeah, it's for their benefit, but it also in turn benefits the world. So if we can build. I see it that way. You know, like at the end of the day someone's going to want at least unless there was like a really big shift in the way that we think. And I think that they're we're getting there right. Like we're in the age of Aquarius for some hippie hogwash in here. So, like, you know, there is this transition. You see that people are starting to practice critical thinking when it comes to the way that they're supposed to operate and the things that they're told. As long as we lean in on the principles of giving back or doing good in some way or another, there will be winners in that for sure. And any brand I mean, ultimately, I'd love to be a fully not for profit organization, but but on some level, you do have to balance profits and principles. But as long as you really stand behind those principles, I think we can create these like win win win scenarios, like you said. 

Tom: Absolutely, just looking at the time here, Marina, I've got one more question for you. It wasn't prompted. So this is putting you on the hot, hot seat. Love it. It's the only way we like our seats. Real toasty putting your. Well, it's a bit cheeky, but putting your brand hat aside for a moment, but talking to other brands, what would be your relationship advice? What's the one thing that you would give as relationship advice if if you could personify a brand for a moment like you had them sitting across the table from you. What would be your relationship advice to them? 

Marina: Feel like this is a deep question, need to really be thoughtful about how I answer it, 

Tom: Or you could be funny, we would accept either or bonus points for both. 

Marina: Yeah, I think I think my advice is, is to be a peer with your with your community. I think any successful marriage or relationship is very much a partnership, and when you think about brands like. And the way that society operates today, we're already told what to do and how to live by enough parties in the world. Like whether it's your job or the government or the law, you're told how to behave and how to operate. We do also need to be told what to buy. So can we as brands become peers and really listen and learn and develop products to serve our community and be stewards of what our communities are asking us for, rather than trying to figure out the next high demand product out there and telling people to buy it.

Kyle: I was so good. 

Tom: It was what you can't see is my head nodding ferociously. So double double snap for that. 

Kyle: It was so good, Marina. Thank you so much. 

Tom: For Marina, the future of commerce is about building a long standing relationship between a customer and a brand. 

Kyle: It's about authenticity, using customer feedback in a way that fuels the way that you build products and create your tech stack.

Tom: In other words, let your customers drive your brand, not the other way around. 

Kyle: A big thank you to Marina for sharing her recipes for success with us. 

Kyle: And that's it for today's episode, we hope you found it helpful and gain some new ideas to make the brands you lead even better. 

Tom: If you're looking for even more insights and recipes for success, make sure to follow us on social at Commerce Chefs. 

Kyle: And remember to join the Commerce Chefs community launching this fall. 

Tom: Save your spot and join now at CommerceChefs.com/Community 

Kyle: In the meantime, we're currently deciding which spicy interview to share with you next. Make sure to tune back in on August 19th to find out who it is. 

Tom: And lastly, if you like this episode and you want to support us, you know, you want to. Make sure to hit the subscribe button and leave us a five star rating and review. 

Tom: Until next time. This has been a dash of Tom.

Kyle: And a pinch of Kyle and a few litres of Marina.

Tom: We'll be cooking with you in two weeks.