In this episode, we’re excited to welcome Vivian Chang, a direct-to-consumer expert who recently led the DTC function at Clorox, overseeing brands like Burt’s Bees and Brita. Vivian shares her insights on transforming legacy CPG brands to connect with modern consumers through innovative DTC strategies, subscriptions, and digital marketing. She dives into the importance of collapsing the marketing funnel, using consumer insights, and leveraging omnichannel approaches to stay ahead of the competition.

If you’re looking to drive business growth and adapt to the fast-paced world of e-commerce, you won’t want to miss this conversation!

Tune in for actionable strategies to elevate your brand and connect with customers in new, meaningful ways.

Podcast transcript

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:01.302)

So welcome Vivian, please introduce yourself and share a bit about your extensive expertise.

Vivian Chang (00:08.162)

Hi, Kerry. I'm so happy to be here today. So I most recently helped to build and then lead the direct-to-consumer function at Clorox Company. And underneath Clorox, not everyone knows this, actually has a wide variety of different brands. For example, we ran direct-to-consumer for Burt’s Bees, launched the capability to enable subscriptions for Brita water filters, also for the cleaning wipes and bleach brand, as well as supplements. So a lot of different kinds of industries and categories, different types of audiences, but at the core was figuring out a new way for a legacy CPG business to connect to the consumers. And my career actually has primarily been about helping brands in consumer facing spaces take advantage of new technologies, new approaches to scale and connect in a different and efficient way. So things like launching a mobile app, way back in the day, tell me not, taking advantage of programmatic in-housing efficiencies, and doing things like bringing brand and performance blended ROAs together to evaluate media spends and marketing attribution.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:13.014)

Mm-hmm.

Vivian Chang (01:29.706)

Seven or eight years ago now it's commonplace, but at the time it was a new approach. And so it's been a really fun journey to get to have direct to consumer and e-commerce is blending more of the marketing side, but also the actual nuts and bolts of getting to a transaction with a consumer.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (01:50.23)

Yeah, excellent. Now you're as a consultant helping multiple brands move into the more modern new ways of marketing.

Vivian Chang (02:00.386)

Yes, that's right. And yes, after spending a lot of time in your big Fortune 500 company, I'm really excited just about new founders and startup ideas and helping to bring a little bit of my CPG directly to consumer experience to figure out how to scale early stage businesses.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (02:22.134)

Yeah, no, well, thank you for joining. I'm excited to have you today. So, you and I talked a bit about how D2C brands need to move faster and kind of move out of old ways to new ways of doing this. So talk a bit about just the more modern approach for a go-to-market and e-commerce plan for the direct-to-consumer brands.

Vivian Chang (02:47.458)

Sure. I'd say not even just direct to the consumer, but taking a bit of a larger step back, thinking about how marketing has been done. It for a long time has been about traditional marketing funnels. How do you bring a certain consumer's awareness, consideration, purchase? And a lot of it has been focused on audience personas. Who are the two or three target audience groups that we want to go after?

I'd say with new technologies and the prevalence of social and ways to really get one-to-one to consumers, that's really changed. And I don't know that all brands have made that switch in how they're doing planning. And so my recommendation for brands now is actually instead of creating these fairly static personas is to …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (03:43.49)

Mm-hmm.

Vivian Chang (03:45.57)

… use kind of market research, but focus on your content and telling the story about the product and the different use cases, the different benefits to various audiences, letting the algorithms that are out there kind of find the target audience, but giving them something like five to 10 very different creative iterations that all bring your product to life.

and Mining the Data have post campaigns to identify what are those different audience groups that you have those different audience targets.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (04:22.784)

Yeah, no, it's, it sounds so smart and just efficient, like we were saying, to get to market faster. But I also love the aspect of, yeah, aligning to customer needs. We've all seen that, that meme that shows Ozzy Osbourne and Prince Charles, you know, they fit the same target demographic, but they're two very different people. So it does feel a lot more engaging.

For them to align with the kind of needs of your consumers, versus trying to assume that you know everything about them based on the data points and the personas. So one of the things I found so interesting was how you often find the kind of the data or the needs and solutions that the products find through customer research. And that's, there's also newer ways to do that as …

Vivian Chang (05:23.328)

Yeah, exactly. I think of this almost like the democratization and I can't say that word, democratization of insights and research. So again, traditionally have very large formalized insights functions that are out there doing the focus groups, doing the market research, synthesizing that back and bringing it back to the brand and the marketing teams to do something about.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (05:30.796)

Yeah.

Vivian Chang (05:53.302)

I think today there's data everywhere. There's actually probably too much data for us to make use of. But in that, there's a lot of good nuggets if you know where to look. So we already talked about using post campaign media reporting data to look at what are the demographics or psychographics of your audience that's responding versus not responding. Others have new ones.

Like more one-to-one ways of getting insights from consumers. So for example, Verve, which I was introduced to recently, allows consumers to actually give video feedback about a product. So you think about how valuable that is when you used to have to bring 30 people into a room, do focus groups. You only get a small segment of real consumer data.

Now you could easily have hundreds of thousands of insights utilizing an AI layer to mine what are the real important takeaways from that. You can start to think about what is the new way of getting consumer insights. There's also really small things. So for example, with Burt's Bees, we obviously have really loyal consumers.

And I got a ton of interest when we set up the SMS channel and program. And we basically asked, instead of using SMS as a push channel, where we're just talking about new products or promotions, what if we actually used it to start surveying consumers, asking them what they want, asking them more about themselves? And we saw tremendous engagement. And so of course, that both enhances the consumer data.

That you know about someone on a true one-to-one basis. But then on the other side, we're able to kind of seed what are early R&D product innovation ideas? What are people excited about? What are their favorite products that they're looking forward to, right? And so you just start to see like how you can get data and insights and kind of research from lots of different places.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:12.544)

Yeah, no, that's interesting. And I think too that the social listening aspect is so key as well, kind of getting into that, hearing what the needs are and especially feedback on the product once it's live. And then we also, yeah, so go ahead.

Vivian Chang (08:27.754)

Yeah, exactly. I think trend sensing is one of those things like speed and speed to market is tremendously important now for brands, right? In the supplement space, you'll all of a sudden, maybe turmeric or ashwagandha become a trendy ingredient. You want to be one of the brands who's like, hey, we have a product as people are first hearing about it. And so social lessening.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:47.849)

Yep.

Vivian Chang (08:55.306)

And even mining things like Amazon searches, Google searches are tremendous ways of getting a finger on the pulse of what people are talking about.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (08:58.358)

Yeah. And I loved your suggestion as well for when brands can't afford a verve partner, just the interviewing, the people you know, the kind of in your network and your friends and family and getting their take on it as well. I think wherever you can get it, those different insights are super valuable.

Vivian Chang (09:28.246)

Yeah, exactly.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (09:29.856)

Yeah. So, you know what, what I love about this approach as well as, as you'd call it, like collapsing the funnel or kind of backing into and collapsing the funnel, especially when budgets are tighter and every dollar needs to work harder. So, once you have the data, the insights, like talk a bit of how you kind of use that content to really connect with the consumers.

Vivian Chang (09:57.258)

Yeah, I love actually what you were just saying of your friends and family are just as valuable as a source of inspiration. The real goal is just to have lots of different forms of content, preferably in video format, that show a consumer why your product is good, why it fits into their lives, in a very personable one-to-one way. So the creative and the content really is an anchor point of how to build effective marketing plans today. I think the other piece of it is thinking about how to utilize similar content in lots of different formats, right? And so I think the challenge often is you build separate, you have separate teams running and so you have separate content for Amazon versus what's going to a retailer versus what's on a D2C website versus there's so much more efficiency gain when you focus on.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (10:40.332)

Yeah.

Vivian Chang (11:01.314)

Similar set of products that you're pushing at a seasonal period and you have cohesive storytelling against it, right? So, yeah, sometimes I think people's concerns are, well, what if all these different, you know, five to 10 use cases that I'm showing are disjointed?

There is still the importance of an overarching brand layer, right? Like same look and feel and not saying, you know, go out there and create things that don't fit together because you want a cohesive through line for that consumer so that regardless of where they're seeing a message, whether it's organic or paid and then where they're shopping, they know all of those are contributing to that brand awareness, right?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (11:24.832)

Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Vivian Chang (11:50.914)

It takes you something like 10 to 15 touch points often for someone to be ready to convert. But you also are saying now with influencers and with social commerce, maybe it's just one or two really good creative and someone's ready to purchase right away. So you have to get both the mechanics right to allow that and have that be a seamless experience and also have that storytelling.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:05.344)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (12:17.118)

Yeah. Well, and that's where it goes into like collapsing the funnel, right? Really good content can be that introducer to build awareness and give enough information and have the right call to action. You know, whether it's all the first kind of the first time the consumer sees it or just to your point, like the familiarity that it builds, but you can operate the consumer can respond a more quickly to that data. And so speaking of data, you were talking about too, like you can move more quickly when you're operating with these shorter kinds of direct response or direct response in the way that you're getting data back more quickly. So talk about the importance of the data layer and enabling this.

Vivian Chang (13:09.888)

Yeah, one point before I forget it earlier about kind of collapsing the funnel, because I think sometimes it happens to us is the trap is you're only thinking about your advertising creative in one silo and then the website and your PDP experience is completely separate. Where we really saw the most efficiency

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:24.15)

Right.

Vivian Chang (13:35.936)

The strongest result is when you really were thinking about it from the consumer journey perspective of what is the ad, what kind of landing page or website experience does it land on? And then if you can get an email or an SMS number, then continue on that conversation. I think every day, us as consumers, that's what we want. And then on the other hand, that's also how you get the best …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (13:56.108)

Yeah.

Vivian Chang (14:05.76)

… have lifetime value and loyalty for your brands. On the data side, I think everything we've talked about right now has data behind it, essentially. All of your media campaigns, you can look at clicks and heat maps on how someone navigates your website, your landing pages. You have certainly open rates and engagement rates as you move into your own channels.

I think it really is about one, how are you enhancing what you know about the consumers? So thinking about the first party data, what are the attributes that you're continually adding to that pool of knowledge? And then two, making sure that you're answering your key questions. So again, is it helping you understand your audience better? Where are consumers getting stuck in the process?

Kerry Curran, RBMA (14:42.646) 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Vivian Chang (15:04.418)

And then really third, it's like, how do we use that data as part of the creative process to brainstorm new content angles or build new landing pages because there seems to be a lot of interest there or how are we engaging with that consumer one-to-one through email or through SMS? And yeah, I think having a strong foundational data layer really enables all of the kind of creativity and kind of the fun part of marketing and what we're into storytelling about the brands.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:39.02)

Mm-hmm.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (15:44.864)

No, I love that. And you were saying too, it's data, it's science, but it's also your gut on kind of what the data is telling you and how you should pivot based on what the data is telling you is resonating with your audiences.

Vivian Chang (15:59.094)

Yeah, no, exactly. I think I'm big, especially as you're figuring out what works. I'm a huge believer in yes, look at the data, but don't wait for the data to be definitive before you go out and try things. In digital today, it's pretty easy to put mock examples out into consumers or just to ask the questions one-on-one.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:07.265)

Mm-hmm.

Vivian Chang (16:27.518)

Start to get some validation. So it's sometimes uncomfortable, think, for people to have to now make decisions that are not locked tight with data. But I think that's also, that's the art of marketing, right? It's like that science plus that gut and intuition.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (16:45.696)

Yeah, no, it's also smart. And then in addition to kind of meeting the consumer where they are in terms of their needs and what's going to resonate, you also talked about, you know, being there in multiple places where the consumer can purchase. Because that's not only that the consumer journey is no longer linear, but they choose their own adventure of where they go to purchase. You know, talk about how you build that into your strategy.

Vivian Chang (17:15.328)

Yeah, I think that is a real challenge for brands today. It's on the channel that we're transaction agnostic. And this was one of the big shifts that we made at Clorox actually, a very heavy in-store retail, wholesale model pivoting to what consumers now want.

The convenience of Amazon, they want to pick up in store at Target, they want direct to consumer for the subscription products so they don't have to think about it. And by the way, there's Instacart and then there's marketplaces and there's so many different places for consumers. So again, I think the real key.

And it's sometimes more organizationally challenging, even though it feels like a really obvious idea is keeping the consumer at the center and having that through line of following him or her through all of it. What are the messages that they're getting? What are the products that they're being recommended and making sure that that is one cohesive story, that it's not that they're getting different promotions and pricing everywhere they turn, right? Or no one needs to see five different cleaning options for Clorox versus just make it easy and tell me this is the one that's gonna be efficient for me when I'm cleaning the kitchen, right? So there's both technology, data, but oftentimes just making sure that people are talking.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (18:36.672)

Right.

Vivian Chang (18:58.867)

internally when you go through that marketing planning process and starting early so that it is planned cohesively at the top before you get into all of the execution details further down.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:13.526)

Right, no, that makes so much sense. And going back to what you said earlier about collecting phone numbers and emails and your SMS strategy with Burt's Bees, the loyalty part of the consumer loop is, I think, an under-invested area as well. They always say it costs, you know, what, 10x to get a new customer versus keeping your existing customers. So I love that you've incorporated kind of into the customer strategy and guess that ties with keeping the customer at the center.

Vivian Chang (19:50.016)

Yeah, exactly. I think it's really interesting. There's research out there for especially Gen Z audiences who notoriously are allergic to ads and don't want to be sold to. But most, they're really actually interested in co-creating with brands, right? Picking brands that they feel like is a part of their value system represents who they are. 

Kerry Curran, RBMA (19:57.218)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Vivian Chang (20:19.092)

I actually really want to give feedback. so, you know, I think brands that capitalize on that, you know, I think ELF is a great brand that does that, right? Like, taking real user feedback and actually turning it into products that you could then buy. You know, I think those are the types of things that brands now need to do to really win that loyalty and …

Kerry Curran, RBMA (20:29.857)

Yes.

Vivian Chang (20:47.532)

… win the long term success.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

You've worked with a variety of brands. What is the most important piece of advice you can share with a brand that's just getting started?

Vivian Chang 

I think it's really thinking broadly about all of the different ways that your product fits into consumers' lives. So the goal of getting to something like 10 different ways of telling the story about your product. And my tip is just talk to friends and family or even your loyal consumers to get that inspiration for how you actually get to that different, multiple different ways of storytelling.

Kerry Curran, RBMA

Thank you.