[00:00:00] Suzy Davidkhanian: Hi, everyone. Today is Wednesday, July 8th. Welcome to EMARKETER's weekly retail show, Reimagining Retail. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives. I'm your host, Suzy Davidkhanian, and on today's episode, we're talking about one of the toughest challenges in marketing: how do you stay relevant?

[00:00:22] Because for brands in low-frequency purchase categories, success isn't just about winning the sale, it's about earning a place in the consumer's minds long before they're ready to buy. I'm so excited 'cause we're all in the studio today. Joining me is podcast regular analyst Rachel Wolff. Hey, Rachel.

[00:00:38] Rachel Wolff: Hello, everyone.

[00:00:39] Happy to be here.

[00:00:40] Suzy Davidkhanian: I'm so excited. And special guest, Joe McCambley, CMO of Saatva. Hey, Joe.

[00:00:45] Joe McCambley: Longtime listener- I- ... first-time attendee. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:49] Suzy Davidkhanian: I'm so excited that you could join us. This is a really interesting topic. But before we get started, let's do a speed intro. In 30 seconds or less, Joe, tell us what you do [00:01:00] in a sentence.

[00:01:00] Joe McCambley: My role is to drive consumers either to our site, our stores, or our phones, where they can make purchases.

[00:01:09] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that, our phones. Tell us, what's your favorite, you pick one, book, podcast, TV show that you're watching right now, movie?

[00:01:18] Joe McCambley: Oh my gosh, I... It's so hard to n- I, I love fiction. It's so hard to narrow down to one.

[00:01:23] I know you're looking for a quick answer, but I would say for me- Cannery Row, John Steinbeck is my all-time favorite book. Yep. Best opening paragraph ever written, I think. Oh

[00:01:34] Suzy Davidkhanian: my gosh. Of any book. Yeah. Now I really have to read it. Have you read it? I have

[00:01:36] Rachel Wolff: not read it.

[00:01:37] Joe McCambley: Awesome book. Yeah. It's on, on

[00:01:37] Rachel Wolff: my list

[00:01:38] Joe McCambley: now.

[00:01:38] Okay, good. It-

[00:01:38] Suzy Davidkhanian: me too. That's not usually my style, but I'm excited to read it. I love first best opening paragraph.

[00:01:44] Joe McCambley: Good. Good.

[00:01:45] Suzy Davidkhanian: Okay. So most marketers spend a lot of time thinking about how to convert shoppers who are ready to buy. But what happens when your customers aren't in the market for years, like for mattresses?

[00:01:56] How do you stay part of that conversation? How do you build trust? And how do you [00:02:00] make sure your brand is one of the first ones they think about when the time finally comes to make that purchase? Today, we're using Saatva as a case study to explore how brands stay relevant between purchases, from partnerships and education to changing consumer discovery habits, and what role will AI play in shaping the next generation of brand building.

[00:02:20] Okay, but before we get started, what's the last purchase you made that you knew you wouldn't have to think about again for years to come? Rachel.

[00:02:30] Rachel Wolff: Ooh, um, I guess my laptop.

[00:02:32] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yes.

[00:02:33] Rachel Wolff: Um, I- must've been last year or two years ago, but I knew that it was gonna be with me for at least another five years. I hope.

[00:02:41] Unless I drop it into the bath one day.

[00:02:43] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah. It's an interesting laptop because it's kind of like a duopoly of sorts, so it's a- Yeah ... little bit easier to stay top of mind. What about you?

[00:02:50] Joe McCambley: My wife and I bought an EV in 2020, and we made the decision when we bought it that we were going to hold it until it became a classic car.

[00:02:57] Suzy Davidkhanian: Oh, I love that.

[00:02:58] Joe McCambley: So 20 years. Wow.

[00:02:59] Suzy Davidkhanian: [00:03:00] Wow. That's amazing. I have to confess that I bought a small kitchen electronic kettle, and it took me way longer than I wanted it to because the brand I was looking for was no longer available in the style I wanted. And so it's like how do you then, you know, help me get over that to think about what's next?

[00:03:17] Yeah. So I'm very excited. Joe, you guys sell a product that people only buy every 10 years or so. And so if you've done your job well as a brand, the item lasts even longer potentially, right? Right, right. So there's this weird tension. Most marketers look at it and think, "How do I possibly stay relevant?"

[00:03:35] But also, how do you think about selling quality, high-end amazingness, but also, you know, wanting people to keep coming back to you sooner and sooner? Um, how do you stay in that conversation?

[00:03:49] Joe McCambley: A couple things, Suzy. Um, first, you know, there's a popular narrative that people buy a mattress every 10 or 12 years, and I think the truth is, for our customers, we, we sell a luxury bed, so [00:04:00] most of our customers are fairly affluent.

[00:04:01] They're married. They have children. They have four or five bedrooms. So when you think of five bedrooms, you're, you're probably buying a new bed every two to three years, not really every, every 12 years. And a lot of them have two homes. So it's still every two years or so that they're making that purchase.

[00:04:18] Uh, one of the things, and, and the Olympic sponsorship is, is, or the LA28 sponsorship is something that, um, brought this about for us. But we, we advertise ourselves now. We used to talk about ourselves as the affordable luxury brand, and that was all about the bed. It's an a- it's an a- a luxury mattress that's affordable.

[00:04:39] Now we've repositioned ourselves to be the restorative sleep brand. And, uh, an affordable luxury mattress is something you need every two to 10 years. Restorative sleep is something you need every day. Mm. So what we try to do with our advertising in, you know, in a very subtle way, we don't say these words, but we're trying to build mental availability even in an audience [00:05:00] that may not buy a bed for two years.

[00:05:02] But at the subtle message that comes through our advertising is go to bed.

[00:05:06] Rachel Wolff: Hmm.

[00:05:06] Joe McCambley: You know, the best thing you can do to live a healthier life, to have greater mental acuity, is to go to bed earlier and to sleep longer. And, and you, you raised something that I thought was really interesting. So You know, how do you stay in people's minds when they're not gonna buy you for another two years?

[00:05:23] The, the flip side of that is once they've purchased you, how do you make sure they remember you frequently? And, and for us, making sure that the bed is, is so damn good that every night you get into that bed and you think, "Wow, this is a great bed." I, I feel that all the time. I feel that way about LASIK surgery.

[00:05:44] I wake up every morning, every morning for the past 15 years, I wake up and I think, "Oh my God, I g- I'm so happy I did that." And that's, that's the same kind of feeling you're trying to instill in your audience. Mental, um, uh, availability when they're not in market so that they [00:06:00] remember you when they are in market, and then constant reminders through quality product that they made a really good choice.

[00:06:06] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that, 'cause it sounds like you guys did so much research to really understand the life cycle-

[00:06:10] Joe McCambley: Yes ...

[00:06:11] Suzy Davidkhanian: and the purchase habits. And the critical component is how do you stay relevant between the purchases- Right ... and that's your strategy. Yes. And that includes things like education and partnerships and amazing products.

[00:06:25] Joe McCambley: Yes. And when you look at our... You know, we have a blog that has about 1,500 articles on it, and the mission of the blog is to answer every question a person might have about mattresses, sleep, or sleep health. Yeah. The narrative running through all 1,500 articles is go to bed.

[00:06:38] Suzy Davidkhanian: Go to bed. I love that. Rachel, as you think about retail and you look across all the different brands, how are some of them trying to stay relevant between those purchases?

[00:06:48] What do you think some of the brands are doing really well?

[00:06:50] Rachel Wolff: So I think, like Joe, as you mentioned, it's, like, also about building that emotional connection, right? Like, every time you go to sleep, the customer has that emotional connection to the bed, to the sheets, to that [00:07:00] whole experience. And I think that just a lot more brands are going down that route because, as you said, it's a great way to stay top of mind.

[00:07:07] Um, but one that comes to mind is Lowe's, and I think the way that Lowe's is approaching it is kind of interesting, which is that they are adding a lot of kid-focused perks to their loyalty program. They have a kids' club. You can have kids' birthday parties in the store. So you really are building that emotional connection from a very young age, I guess, but also engaging the entire family so that you come to the store even if you maybe don't have a DIY project, or your kids get excited about the prospect of going to a Lowe's store.

[00:07:35] Suzy Davidkhanian: Get them young.

[00:07:35] Rachel Wolff: Yeah, get them young.

[00:07:36] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that. For me too, it's about br- building... We're seeing more and more brands building a lifestyle brand- Yeah ... and trying to be part of a conversation versus create a conversation- Yep ... that I think really helps earn attention before the customer is even ready to buy something.

[00:07:51] Joe McCambley: It, it's true. And that, one of the other things I love that Lowe's does is I often go to Lowe's because they have so many how-to videos. You know, whether it's, you know, how to put together a string [00:08:00] trimmer, which I, every time I change a string in my trimmer, I go to Lowe's because I cannot remember from one video to the next.

[00:08:07] But, you know, providing helpful advice and service, even though it might not result in a sale

[00:08:14] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that. And it kind of tees up this idea of brand partnerships as well. Joe, as you think about creating those partnerships, and here I'm thinking about LA '28, the Olympics, but it could be any partnership, how do you think about that as creating value?

[00:08:28] What separates it from just a good marketing partner to something that's really strengthening your brand?

[00:08:33] Joe McCambley: Our LA '28 story is there, there was the, the Paris Games, there were some athletes that complained about the sleeping arrangements, and our CEO wrote to our COO and said, "You know, what can we do about this?"

[00:08:44] And the answer was, "Well, nothing. We- the, the Games are going on. We can't get beds to Europe." And his answer was, "This can never happen again to an American athlete." So that began our journey for the LA '28 sponsorship. And at that time, we were the affordable luxury mattress brand. [00:09:00] And, and what we learned prior to the sponsorship, we have so much data that shows that there's a, uh, statistically significant and highly predictable relationship between upper funnel TV impressions and so many downstream effects: direct visits, non-branded search results, branded search results, branded search quantity, market share growth, so many downstream effects.

[00:09:22] When we sponsored the Olympics, uh, the-- When we, when we agreed to do the LA '28 sponsorship, we had to spend a lot of money, much more money than we'd ever spent before. So during the, the Winter Games, we put many fewer impressions in market than we had over the previous 18 months. And we were expecting a disaster.

[00:09:42] And what we learned was that every metric that mattered to us went off the charts because of the Olympic sponsorship. We don't have the data yet to tell us exactly why that happened. We're still trying to figure it out. But I think the answer is that, you know, when you advertise in sports, say, it's kinda transactional.

[00:09:58] Mm-hmm. You need a mattress, we're here for [00:10:00] you. When you become a sponsor of Team USA, and when you're ever present for all the events, and when you have signage everywhere, it shows the world that you care about this team and this event, and your cultural relevance just goes off the charts. At least it did for us.

[00:10:18] The other thing that we learned and that we believe is that when you're, when you sign on to be a sponsor for something like LA '28, you have 100% share of voice.

[00:10:26] Suzy Davidkhanian: Hmm.

[00:10:26] Joe McCambley: And for us, we've learned share of voice matters as much as anything we do. So if our share of voice is greater than our market share, our market share is gonna go up.

[00:10:34] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah.

[00:10:35] Joe McCambley: If our share of voice is 100% during a culturally relevant event like the, like the LA '28 It's like a gold mine.

[00:10:43] Suzy Davidkhanian: I love that. I wanna talk about measurement, but before we do, I think there's also something about, again, you've inserted yourself in a conversation that's deeply authentic- Yes ... to sports, right?

[00:10:52] This idea of performance and sleeping well, and everyone's talking about health and wellness. There is this authenticity with that sponsorship [00:11:00] that seems to go so well with what you're doing and your brand strategy. It's not replacing it, but it's additive.

[00:11:05] Joe McCambley: Right. Right. I, I... One of the tests I, I think about is if you were to take the logo off of a product that is sponsoring an event, would it matter?

[00:11:15] And I think corn chips, beverages like soda probably doesn't matter to the Olympics. It matters to Super Bowl watch parties. Mm-hmm. It ma- it matters to concerts, so there's cultural relevance there. For us, every athlete needs restorative sleep, especially Olympic athletes that are competing, you know, seven times in a week, where they're just exhausted at the end of their event and they need to get to bed quickly and recover overnight.

[00:11:37] I

[00:11:37] Suzy Davidkhanian: love that. It's, like, such a natural way to insert yourself into a conversation- Yes ... and be part of it- Yeah ... and to lead the conversation.

[00:11:44] Joe McCambley: Yeah.

[00:11:44] Suzy Davidkhanian: So let's talk about measurement. It's an important thing, right? You kind of started with that. So you guys focus on everything from partnerships to education to you even have other products outside of mattresses.

[00:11:55] How are you thinking about measurement? 'Cause some of that doesn't drive [00:12:00] immediate sales. It's more long-term. How are you thinking- Right ... about that? You did start with share of voice. Yeah. What are some of the other things you look at?

[00:12:07] Joe McCambley: So many things. So y- you- we all know that upper funnel advertising has a long-term impact.

[00:12:11] For us, it's, you know, it, it might take six to 12 months before, from the time somebody sees an ad till the time they, they buy one of our products. But one of the effects that we see almost immediately when we're running upper funnel impressions is branded search lift. Mm. So we see, um, pretty significant increases in branded search that are related to the number of impressions we put in market, and we also know that as branded search goes up, we see consequential lifts in market share as well.

[00:12:41] So as long as our share voice is greater than a market share, we're going to see an increase in branded searches, and then we're going to see an increase in market share. Downstream at the performance layer, we're seeing that, we're seeing better metrics with non-branded search. So, you know, for instance, if your aided awareness is increasing [00:13:00] because of your upper funnel impressions, you should see that your non-branded search results improve.

[00:13:04] So if somebody does a search for best mattress, they see a Saatva ad, that's the trigger that reminds them that they know Saatva. That's, that's what- Yeah ... aided awareness is. With unaided awareness, as you see that growing, because they remember your name, they can go directly to your site, and they're more likely to do that.

[00:13:19] Or they can search for you by name, and they're more likely to do that. So all those metrics that we used to call performance metrics, we're seeing are intricately tied with Awareness metrics as well.

[00:13:31] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah, so like sales is obviously the gold standard of KPIs- Yes ... but there are so many other valuable metrics that you look at-

[00:13:38] Joe McCambley: Yes

[00:13:38] Suzy Davidkhanian: to see if it'll drive sales down the line.

[00:13:40] Joe McCambley: Right. Right.

[00:13:41] Suzy Davidkhanian: So speaking of sales and KPIs, one of the other things, and I mean, you talked a lot about search, so let's think through, you know, consumers are really discovering brands in many new ways, whether- Right ... aided or unaided. Creators, social, now AI. Which of those shifts do you think have the [00:14:00] biggest impact on how brands stay relevant?

[00:14:03] Joe McCambley: It, you know, it's probably different for different brands. A, a fashion brand might rely on, um, creators more or influencers more. And, and my answer is gonna make me sound like I don't care about creators, and that's not the case at all. But I think that I would say AI is more important for us right now at this point in our history because AI will provide you as a recommendation if your business is structurally aligned with what the consumer needs.

[00:14:30] So if you have a blog with 1,500 articles that are giving help and advice to consumers without trying to sell them something, if you're trying to give advice to somebody who, uh, has lower back pain, prefers a firm bed, but has a partner that sleeps hot and they need to take that into account when they buy a mattress, they're going to be searching for that, and you need to have answers for that in your blog.

[00:14:51] You need to make sure that your affiliate partners, like The Wire Cutter, are talking about you consistently the same way that you talk about yourself in your blog. Your TV [00:15:00] advertising has to echo what you're saying about yourself in your blog. So if you have a, a structure within your organization that, um, is designed to help consumers first, then that's gonna make a difference to you.

[00:15:15] We even, we even treat the schema on our blog as if-- You know, we, we ask ourselves, you know, we, we wanna make our blog as convenient as possible for consumers to get answers from it. We wanna make our schema, you know, the code underneath the blog, to make it as easy for an AI to get the answers they need- Mm-hmm

[00:15:32] as we make it for a consumer. So when, when we have answered the need for, you know, to, to show up in AI results, it's caused a lot of structural changes in the organization that not only help us come up as answers in AI, but that dramatically improve the organization.

[00:15:48] Suzy Davidkhanian: It's, it's interesting 'cause you have to, you know, think about...

[00:15:51] So we talk about this a lot at work, and, uh, we have reports around, like, there are now different kinds of consumers, right? There's the AI. Yeah. There's the end-to-end, which we're not quite there [00:16:00] yet. There are people, and so you need to make sure that the way you come up in conversations all looks and feels the same, whether it's a human or AI.

[00:16:08] Joe McCambley: Yeah.

[00:16:08] Rachel Wolff: These AI platforms are gatekeepers, right? And, you know, where you might get served 10 at, 10 different mattress brands through Google Search, now you get maybe two or three mattress recommendations. Yeah. And so it is really important for brands to get in there and to figure out how to make themselves visible on these platforms.

[00:16:22] Joe McCambley: When you look at other brands, are there other brands that are saying, "You know, in two years we're not gonna be selling to consumers"? Yeah. "We're gonna be selling to a consumer's agent, and our, and our agent is going to be selling to an agent."

[00:16:34] Rachel Wolff: I think there are very few retailers that are saying that directly.

[00:16:37] I think it's more the AI platform that wants that to be the reality. Mm-hmm. But I think if you're a retailer, obviously you're hesitant about that future where you don't have that direct relationship with the customer. So yeah, I think there's a- Yeah ... mixed messaging, I would say.

[00:16:50] Joe McCambley: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:51] Suzy Davidkhanian: I mean, it does bring up a good point.

[00:16:52] Discovery is very fragmented. This is not a new narrative, it's just we're adding a new channel. Lots is shifting, but are there other channels, [00:17:00] Rachel, that, that brands need to be thinking about, especially when it's these, you know, low frequency purchases? I mean, we talked about creators a little bit- Yeah

[00:17:06] but there might be others.

[00:17:07] Rachel Wolff: Well, I definitely think that social is an important channel for many brands, right? If you're just think- just thinking about discovery, even if the transaction isn't happening on TikTok or Instagram, that's where people go to find products, to find brands that they then may end up buying.

[00:17:21] So I think, you know, there is a lot of need for brands to have at least a creator strategy in place to make sure that you are visible- Yeah ... when people want you to be visible or to be visible where people are spending a lot of their time.

[00:17:34] Suzy Davidkhanian: And I think search too, like we can't forget about traditional search.

[00:17:37] It is morphing a little bit, but people still start there. Um, and I think because we're in the business, we're always talking about AI, but there's a very large group of people who are still starting with Goo- a Google search. Yeah.

[00:17:48] Rachel Wolff: Sure. And I would add physical retail to that as well, right? Like, you still wanna find ways to inspire shoppers to get them excited about your brand, and in many ways, physical retail is the best place to do that.

[00:17:57] Suzy, as you were saying before with these experiential [00:18:00] elements, like having flagship stores, um, I think that is also a really crucial way of staying top of mind.

[00:18:06] Joe McCambley: Rachel, I, I couldn't agree more. I think that, um, we, we, since COVID, we've undercounted the importance of physical availability. So everybody, especially DTC brands, got out of physical retail and, um, we're seeing that, you know, especially for something like mattresses, a large percentage of people won't buy a mattress unless they can try it.

[00:18:24] So physical availability unlocks a huge market for us that we didn't have when we only sold through our website.

[00:18:31] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah, that's a really good point. So I'm gonna ask you one last question, both of you.

[00:18:35] Joe McCambley: We- we're out of time?

[00:18:35] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yes. Oh my God. I know, it goes by so fast. If you could leave marketers with just one piece of advice on how to stay relevant in a category where consumers don't necessarily buy you that often, what would it be?

[00:18:48] Rachel, I'm gonna start with you.

[00:18:50] Rachel Wolff: So I would say you have to focus on what makes your product, your brand special, and what the customer really needs, right? Because that's really the message that gets through to [00:19:00] the customer.

[00:19:00] Joe McCambley: Yeah. I, I, I agree with that. I, I've been saying this for years, um, since the very earliest days of e-commerce, that brands that help sell, and brands that sell don't.

[00:19:12] And, and in between purchases, if you can be like Lowe's and provide help to your audience so that they're constantly coming back to you and seeing that you are their source of help and advice and truth, when it comes time to buy a product, they're going to consider you the same way. So building trust is, is so important, and helping consumers is the key to building trust, I think.

[00:19:33] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah, and I'm just gonna add that from all the things you've said to us, Joe, it's that you really do need an ecosystem, right, to stay relevant. You do. You need to be part of a lot of different conversations a- and be in top of mind for people throughout their time thinking about noodling around what, what do I need?

[00:19:49] When do I need a new mattress? When n- you know, I'm gonna get engaged- Yes ... what ring should I get? So being part of that ecosystem, thinking through that is also, I think, really helpful. AI helps optimize that, but you need to be part of [00:20:00] many different channels.

[00:20:01] Joe McCambley: Right. A- AI recognizes when you make an effort to be as helpful as you can.

[00:20:05] Suzy Davidkhanian: Yeah. Oh my gosh, we could keep going and going, but unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks so much, Joe.

[00:20:11] Joe McCambley: Thank you.

[00:20:12] Suzy Davidkhanian: And thank you- I loved this ... you, me- us, too. Yeah. And thanks, Rachel. Thank you. I had a great time. And thank you listeners and to our team that edits the podcast. Please leave a rating or review, and remember to subscribe.

[00:20:21] I'll see you for more Reimagining Retail next Wednesday. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of Behind the Numbers.