TOP CMO: John Sheldon, Smile Direct Club - 'Marketing Disruption Unleashed'

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  00:00

We're really focused on making sure the iconography of our brand is mentally available to our potential customer. So it starts even before you said a word. And then what you have to do is guide people through the experience so they can find the content that they want.

‍

Ben Kaplan  00:12

This is the podcast where we go around the globe, marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies, and most disruptive startups,

‍

00:21

great ideas packaged a certain way want to spread, they want to be told that someone else's simple, surprising and significant data to unlocking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable.

‍

Ben Kaplan  00:34

This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan. today I'm chatting with John Sheldon, Chief Marketing Officer at Smile Direct Club. That's the teledentistry company that makes 3d printed clear aligners to straighten your teeth and alternative to traditional braces. John is a self described quant or performance marketing oriented CMO, who previously served as the company's chief digital officer and has played a significant role in guiding the brand through global expansion. Throughout his career, John has worked in a senior marketing role for notable brands such as MasterCard, eBay, and Cadillac to name a few. His specialty business transformation, digital marketing and E commerce. So how does the brand shift from aided to unaided awareness in a category where a well known competitor already has a significant brand advantage? Let's find out with John Sheldon. What is it like in an industry where you have to educate people that there's an option, your option that's maybe different than what they expect? If they want to have orthodontics works done? You've got to educate them and get them to a comfort level to do this in a different way? What was that challenge, like over the past few years to get people to accept the new method?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  01:57

Yeah, as a company that came in and challenged 100 year old orthodontic industry, you know, as a, as a disrupter, we had to spend a good amount of our marketing efforts in educating people. Now we had some benefits to us. Number one is, obviously we have, because of the way that we go to market, we have a major price advantage. And so we've opened up the market to send people to get teeth straightening that's never had access before. And so actually, the very beginning, they were like, wait two grand, for me to straighten my teeth sign me up, it was, you know, there was apples laying on the ground there, there was a latent demand that we could tap into. But obviously, along the way, we've had to educate people about about the effectiveness of our model and, and the depth and the doctor part of our model, which is, you know, the managing that relationship with the doctor in a remote way, but the doctor is prescribing things and following along with your treatment, and to end and so, you know, managing through that, how the process works. Ensuring that the credibility is there, you know, really important parts of the efforts that we put in place early on in our business. At the same time, what we've tried to do is meet, meet the customer where they are in terms of getting started, right, some people are comfortable with a fully remote approach to this, the some people come into our smile shops and have the Apple store like experience and get to talk to somebody before they begin the process. And other people really want to look at their doctor in the eyes or dentist in the eyes and ensure that they're gonna have somebody who's who's keeping an eye on them all through the process. And it's really about ensuring the right way for them to get started.

‍

Ben Kaplan  03:38

How do you think about your different personas you target are different ideal customers of different types. Because even now, looking at demographic differences, you have some people that may be typically from an older generation, I want to know the person doing this, I want to make sure you know, I want to look them in the eye, I want to meet them. And then you have some people where they're signing up for let's not say teledentistry. But just any service. And like if you have to make me go on a phone call and do a meeting. That's the last thing I kind of just sign up in the app. Is there some of the way? So how do you think about that? When it's like very two different groups of people you want to meet people where they are you want that your marketing to meet them? Where they are, where they want to be? How do you think about that when one person's feature is another person's bug?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  04:19

Yeah, well, that's why we've offered those multiple options, right? I mean, I think that's the first that's the first piece is we've we've created multiple lanes for people to kind of self select what approaches are gonna work best for them. You know, when I started with the business four and a half years ago, our customer was pretty clearly a 20, something woman who might have had braces before, and didn't wear her retainer. And now it's coming back to, you know, to basically finish the job and get it right this time. But what's happened over the course of my time here is that that customer has greatly expanded. I mean, we have customers into their 70s that have actually signed up and are going through treatment. And obviously the teen market is a huge market in orthodontics, and we're seeing an increase in the teen market for us as well. And so, you know, but the point is to make sure that we offer customer experiences that match up to their needs.

‍

Ben Kaplan  05:12

So how does that affect your marketing mix? When you have someone in there that needs high touch to sign up and you have someone that wants low touch and just wants some quick reassurance? How do you map out those different consumer decision journeys?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  05:25

Yeah, it's really about marrying up the messaging to where the person is in the customer journey, right? At first, they don't need to know whether they're starting it remotely or in person, what they want, what they need to believe is, hey, there's high value for me in getting my teeth straightened. I've always wanted to do this, or I'm just starting to think about it now. And we just have to talk to them that can be done. And that can be can be easy, and it can be done for less money than they think it's going to cost down the funnel, we can we start to introduce, hey, there's three ways to get started here in the process. And we explain that to them. Our CRM work is a workhorse in our marketing mix. I mean, it's as good and as robust, that I've ever seen in a company and

‍

Ben Kaplan  06:03

you're tracking interactions, you're categorizing people, you're able to view into an individual person and really understand how they're engaging with you. What do you mean by that?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  06:12

Yeah, I mean, between mapping up messaging to their behaviors, for example, on our website, or within our app, where they are in the process, whether they've just just just given us an email, or have become a lead, or whether they have, you know, submitted for for us to validate their insurance covers off on that on the treatment, those people are very, very different. And so we can go through and we marry up our messaging to, you know, the behaviors that they have demonstrated on our site or or, you know, in the process. So as

‍

Ben Kaplan  06:40

you advance and you say, Hey, there's this alternate way to traditional orthodontics, there's a teledentistry approach, and you get over that hurdle, then you have an additional hurdle, which is an interesting one, for anyone that has a competitor or a player in their industry that their brand becomes synonymous with the term we'll mention quickly, we'll say Invisalign, where people because of their marketing early on, and maybe some high profile, folks, I remember backstories back in the day, like Tom Cruise is getting braces, you know, you think of like handsome guys doing and I remember stories like that early on, are kind of the 200 pound gorilla in the field in terms of a brand. So how do you start thinking, what do you start doing to get the brand awareness you need to grow, to start taking up Share of Voice, start taking market share, and also position yourself in a different way?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  07:25

Yeah, and then that story has evolved for us over time, right? When we started, we were just introducing something brand new, that hadn't been done this idea of, of remote teledentistry, right. And we had this opportunity, this latent demand that was there from the fact that 60% of the counties in the United States don't have a single orthodontist, and then 60% of the counties now operating remotely, we can actually we can do business with in all of those counties. And so that was created a chance for us to start the conversation that way. So we started with this disruption piece, there's a hey, there's a brand new way of doing teeth straightening. We evolved that I once we once we were confident that we were providing as good a solution to most people as as as Invisalign was which we shifted that language to being a challenger brand. And we had, you know, calling them out by name, you know, type of TV spots and advertising. Actually, you know, even on our website, we've got comparison charts, there, we're calling them out by me and me be direct.

‍

08:20

Some people are paying more than double for teeth, straightening with Invisalign, and then their smile, direct club.

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  08:26

But actually, what's interesting is we're shifting again away from that because of the investments in innovation that we've made, to really starting to talk about ourselves as the inevitable leader in the space. And so you know, that we're kind of evolving away from worrying about those guys, and really focusing on expanding the category bringing more people into the category. And building up are the benefits in that way. So that story has evolved over time as we've grown, and then service 1.8 million plus customers who've gotten their teeth straightened with our with our solution.

‍

Ben Kaplan  09:01

And one thing is interesting about marketing. And you mentioned kind of Challenger brands and knowing if you're the incumbent brand, or if you're the challenger brand can have a big impact on how you act. And I remember chatting with Sergio diamond is kind of former like iconic CMO of Coca Cola and and you talked to him about New Coke. And he'll tell you like, hey, we lost our way a new coke because we started thinking, we're a challenger brand, or we're not we're the incumbent, and we've kind of lost our way on that. And yet Pepsi in that market, challenger brand positioning will come in and you know, they'll go to the Super Bowl, take an ad out and win Super Bowls in Atlanta and pokes hometown in every single billboard. And, like, we're sticking it to you coke because they're, they're the challenger brand. So it's not so easy necessarily to go from one to the other. If you're evolving from a more aggressive, you know, challenger brand mentality to something else. How do you do that? How do you shift that? It's not as easy as just saying it?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  09:55

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, you know, three years ago, three and a half years ago, there were some other, you know, upstart competitors on the DTC space, you know, the business is hard, and they just, they've really struggled to, to get any kind of foothold. But, you know, I would constantly tell the team, they're gonna, they're gonna bang on us all day long, we're gonna pretend they don't exist, right, because outside of, you know, in the DTC space, we're the leader, right. But then we said, we're not just in the DSC space, we're in the T straightening space. And so we're the challenger to Invisalign. So we made that choice. And again, now that we've gotten some of our new technologies, you know, aligned around using your mobile phone, for example, to get an initial scan, to understand how your teeth are gonna move, or some of our automated treatment planning software that uses AI, and allows us to get better plans than then than anyone in the business, you know, with these, you know, innovations that put us on top in terms of comfort in terms of efficacy, and so on. We don't want to talk about the people that don't have those things. We just want to talk about why, why we're why we're the inevitable leader. And so that is that shift that we are making, and we'll move away from talking about other folks and really just focus on, you know, what are the benefits of straightening your teeth of, of oral care in general, because we've launched a number of other products, right, we've got teeth whitening products, we've got water flosser products that we sell in 14,000, Walmart's and CVS and Walgreens you know, around the United States and Canada, and we're really evolving to become is the leading world care provider because we use technology the right way. And that's really the conversation that we want to have now with customers about our business and our brand.

‍

Ben Kaplan  11:31

Smile Direct Club is a great example of the combination of left brain data analysis and right brain storytelling that is needed by a modern CMO. In a market defined by a larger well known competitor, Invisalign, you've got to use analytical thinking to find whitespace opportunities where you can conquest and win. But as you win individual battles and experience overall growth, at some point, you have to grow your brand equity. And that takes creative positioning and storytelling, the combination of the two sides of the brain, two different but complementary approaches, allows David's to take on the Vioxx and defeat them on your own terms.

‍

Ben Kaplan  12:13

We've done a lot of work as a marketing agency for companies like Bowflex, where traditional exercise equipment, and they have aI driven equipment. And I think one of the things you start thinking about as you do marketing, and especially I know you identify as a performance marketer, a quantitative guy, or a person who likes optimizing things, which is near and dear to my heart. So we'll get along on that basis. But when you start doing this, and you start being like, let's position the technology, or let's speak about the technology, well, the issue becomes, there's some people like myself, you're marketing to me, you're like, Yes, show me all the cool stuff. Show me all that. And there's some people that are just like, I just want straight teeth, you know, I just want to know, so how do you think about the messaging, and we're talking about performance marketing, landing pages, ads, copy that relate to all those types of people, even as you use? It sounds like technology to Halo market leadership?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  13:00

Yes, we've been first thing is, before you can get into that part of the conversation, you have to build your brand, right? I'm a big believer in the how brands grow Byron sharp world of you know, being mentally and physically available for your customers, building out your brand iconography repeating that over and over again, you know, we've done in my time. So many of the elements that he talks about Sonic branding, we've built the character up, you know, we our colors and fonts are really solid, you can freeze frame any one of our ads, and you know, anybody who's ever seen our ads will say, Oh, that's, that's smiledirectclub because of the way that looks at any moment in time, you know, we're really focused on just making sure the iconography of our brand is mentally available to our potential customer. So it starts, even before you said a word, even before you've really leaned into what the features and benefits are. And then what do you have to do is, again, guide people through the experience so they can find the content that they want, right? When people come to our website, one of the most popular things on our website, is people go to the before and after the results page. And we watch really like hot jars or whatever those things, you know, whatever that is, and people will scroll that for 20 minutes, and just give me 20 more, give me 20 more, give me 20 More, and they just they just love seeing those results. And that's one set of people, other people show up in the first thing they do, like how much does it cost? And that's what they go to right away. Right. And that's and that's that's their experience. And so what we've tried to do is build an overall digital experience that allows a person to kind of find what they want really quickly and kind of guide themselves through the path and then we try to narrow them into into a conversion funnel. You know, thereafter, this is a pretty high consideration product, right? It's $2,000 and you're doing something physically to your body. Not a lot of brands get the permission to kind of live in your body for six months we do but that's not something people take lightly and so we get multiple bites at the apple to have that conversation with them as they're going through the consideration

‍

Ben Kaplan  14:53

plan. I know one of your goals to go from challenger to market leadership status and overall oral care Is to really increase not just your we're talking about brand awareness, we do a brand awareness or a brand lift study, right? We're talking like aided brand awareness you they see your name and unless people identify you or unaided, I know you want to lift unaided brand awareness. What are the channels that you leverage to do this? I mean, how many of these are like traditional and expensive channels, mass media? How much of these are more focused, digital, more targeted channels? How do you go about lifting unaided brand awareness?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  15:25

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a mix, short version is it's a mix, and we spent a lot of money, you know, to kind of help or build our brand awareness. Right? When I started, the business we were at, we were at, you have 16% aided awareness, we're now at 62%. Aided awareness, right, so we've flipped the script on that and really built the brand, you know, in that aided way, we're now really focusing on that unaided part of the equation and, and to do that, you know, we, we spend money on TV, we spent money, sponsoring podcasts, you know, we've done a number of things like that, but we've also, you know, really spent the predominance of our monies in in things like paid social and, and the like, and, and what we found and working with our media mix modeling partner that we use, is that those things complement each other really well. Right, and spending money on whatever Facebook and Instagram makes your TV more effective spending money in TV, make sure your digital work much more effective. And so, you know, that virtuous cycle allows us to make investments in both places because they build on each other in all the right ways.

‍

Ben Kaplan  16:31

If you enjoy this show, you'll love TOP CEO. TOP CEO is a business school case study telling the story behind the story and what you can learn from it from those who have faced the fire and come out the other side.

‍

16:47

That was the challenge the team was faced 25% of

‍

16:50

it was gone. I found myself $282,000 in debt, how would you navigate

‍

Ben Kaplan  16:53

through these trials and transform them into opportunities for growth and success? How do you build back up the business and get out of debt and get anything in, nobody can come to work right in any of our factory in any of the factories. This is TOP CEO available wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things about being a teledentistry model is like you said you can be everywhere you can market in a lot of places, you can mark it all over. You're not confined by physical location. But one of the new service models that you have that is coming soon is a model that starts in the local dentist chair, I believe you call it Care Plus. And the idea is that dentists who would normally refer to an orthodontist be able to offer and be that point of contact through your service and do that. But that's a different business model. It's more local, you've got to start thinking differently. So how do you start thinking about launching that I know you're doing a few dma's or metro areas to start, but how do you reset your mindset from direct to consumer everywhere? We're just like a click or a phone call away to something that becomes more localized based for that type of service.

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  18:05

Yeah, I mean, first of all, it starts with understanding who the target is for this this product, right. And so what happened when we launched our traditional product is we again, we opened up the market to people who had never had access to this before, we saw that actually, we kind of started going up the chain, if you will, from a socio economic perspective as we continue to grow our business. But one thing, one area that we hadn't quite penetrated at the levels that we care about are what I would call your traditional orthodontic customers, right. These are either high net worth individuals or parents of teens, primarily in the teen market, the parent a teen market. And by the way, in the United States, the teen market is 75% of all orthodontic case starts in the US. And so that's a really big part of the market. It's not for clear aligners. It's about 25% clear aligners, it's about 75% of case starts. So, you know, when we went to go find out, you know, hey, what do we have to do in order to penetrate that market more fully. And what they said to us is, I just want to confidence that somebody's got my back and I can look somebody in the face when I when I need it. And by the way, the parents of teens said, I need somebody who's gonna look my kid in the face and hold them accountable. Cuz maybe I don't want to do that. Right. And so not all parents, but some. And so the intention of starting with the local dentist was to really appeal first and foremost, to that traditional orthodontic customer who's looking for a little bit higher touch even though against the same pieces of plastics gonna do exactly the same work, but they just want to have that extra confidence of knowing that the person taking care of them in part is also nearby. Right. And so, you know, we're doing that and our part and our dentists or orthodontists are partnering up with that local dentist and so you get kind of a two for one, right? You someone who can verify that your oral health, you know, in real time is is is prepared for clear aligners, and can we do that in other ways in the traditional model, and then and then And then we've got our orthodontist on the back end, you know, creating for you a treatment plan that that's going to, you know, help you get that straight shooter smile?

‍

Ben Kaplan  20:07

And how do you approach the marketing for that a lot of partner marketing, for sure, because you're working with dentists who are in your model, and hopefully are just promoting it. But to your point earlier, if people hear about it from different ways, it might increase their likelihood to respond. So how are you thinking about that marketing mix local, in one of these dma's that you're starting with?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  20:26

Yeah, we would welcome of course, all of the in share referrals that those dentists might do as they're cleaning teeth and going through, you know, the regular, you know, treatment with their customer base. But actually, our expectation is that we're going to be driving the predominance of the traffic that's going to go into this Care Plus model through our own marketing. And so we are launching in for, for DMA, as for metro areas, starting next week. And the intention is to be highly targeted target that traditional orthodontic customer, direct them into understand more about this model and how it can work for them and meets the needs that they tend to state. And then we'll drive them into that doctor to get that higher touch service model that gives them the confidence that they want.

‍

Ben Kaplan  21:08

How does all of this? How does that translate internationally? How do you think about it? I know you I mean, not just in the US, but you're in a lot of English speaking countries, UK, Australia, Ireland, other places like that. And I'll give you one little story about about differences around the world, especially with orthodontics. I'm part Thai. So I go sometimes to Thailand with my mom. And if you go to Thailand, there are billboards all over for orthodontics, and it's all adults, and it's a status symbol almost. If you're getting your teeth straightened, it's totally different. And it blew me away. I was like, Well, why are there all these billboards for orthodontics around? So how do you think about some of these country differences in how people think about wanting straight teeth?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  21:46

Yeah, so first of all, we do research for a start by understanding the differences in the local market. At one point, we actually were alive and launched in Germany, Germany passed a telemedicine law that had nothing to do with our business at all, by the way, but it made it made our current our model in Germany not viable. So we've since exited. But but but I'm gonna use them as an example, because culturally so incredibly different, right? Nobody in Germany wants that cheesy American Hollywood smile. And that's one thing that came up over and over again. So we really had to focus on the health benefits of teeth straightening of which are many. And in our messaging, and the other thing that they talked about, was just how important that doctor was in the process. And so we were very Dr. foward, in all of our advertising. You know, when we were in Germany, they literally call them godson white, like with the white lab coats, that's the kind of a nickname for doctors. And so it's just a much higher vaunted status in their culture. And so we so we've leaned into that as part of our as part of our marketing. And when we go to the UK and Canada and Ireland and Australia, it's very, very similar we find to the general culture in the US with some differences around around insurance and, and that kind of thing but but really holistically that attitudes about teeth straightening, and they'll and alike are really very well aligned in those countries. And so we found that our messaging is most effective, and then that environment.

‍

Ben Kaplan  23:11

Navigating the world of international markets is not a one size fits all endeavor. In Thailand, undergoing teeth, straightening as an adult is commonplace and a status symbol. But in Germany, it's not about chasing that Hollywood grin, but rather focusing on health benefits, and putting doctors on a pedestal. The key for businesses growing internationally is to be curious, adaptable, and open to embracing the diverse cultures they encountered.

‍

Ben Kaplan  23:44

What is your recommendation for other CMO, you're someone who started out much more embracing performance marketing, more analytical side. But as you've gone on, and now you have this unaided brand awareness goal, you've leaned more and more into brand and hacky sound like a brand Ford marketing team, when you're talking about iconography and keeping things consistent all that so do you recommend that for other CMOS? Do you recommend left brain first and add on some right brain? Or what do you recommend as the path of my follow, or others who are maybe great CMOS, but kind of rely on one side of the brain? Yeah, I

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  24:13

mean, I would say to be a great CMO, you have to do both right? Now you can come from one side or the other. But to be a great CMO, you have to have both of those skills. I just happen to come from the performance side. And I was very fortunate I got to spend time working at Ogilvy where that, you know, that's like the teaching hospital of the advertising industry. And I you know, learn brand from from from some of the some of the greats in the US. And so I was really fortunate in that regard. But the short version is, and I say this to say what's the most important thing is a performance marketer can do right now. And the answer to that question is build your brand in a world where all this privacy work is going on. And we're losing some of the tool sets from from some of the regulatory environments and the like, ensuring that there's something behind your brand that that people know what you stand for and what you believe Even as a brand becomes increasingly evermore important, and so, I don't think it's like you could do one and not the other, I think you have to be both. And you have to understand the Byron sharp part of the world. And you have to understand the Peter faders, you know, a lifetime value part of the world. And I put both of those together and really build, you know, CAC to LTV type of environment, but but one where there's broad audience awareness of your, you know, what you can bring to the marketplace.

‍

Ben Kaplan  25:27

And I want to end on talking about and get your take on some of the companies that are known for their marketing and what you gain from them. I want to start off by one which is Apple, which has a very distinctive style of marketing and you look especially like a billboard you drive by, you know, it's apple, it's not gonna be a lot of words and nothing. The logo, you know what it is, and I know you alluded to your 150, I think he's called Smile club serves as Apple like. So what does Apple do that you find noteworthy remarkable that you would, in some regard? emulate it in your physical locations? Yeah,

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  25:56

I mean, I think if you take it, take a look at an Apple store, right? It's a fulfillment center that people walk in with an idea of generally what they're looking for already. Right? Nobody walks in and says, I don't know maybe I need a computer, they know when they walk in the door, but what they do a terrific job of is hearing you in on exactly what you do need and how and how you can use it. And it's in a really clean, clear environment, excellently trained personnel, I mean, which is exactly what we do, we do exactly the same thing. We worked really hard on our customer experience on our scenarios that we teach them how to handle, you know, all through the process. And you know, we keep those shops very clean, but not sterile, right, not like a dentist office with beige on the walls, you know, that they got that Blurple color everywhere, and there's very happy smiling people all over the place. And you know, it's got fun music playing and you know, it's a little it's a little bit different environment for people to kind of go through go through this experience, and it's one, we get great, great reviews on, you'd be stunned. I can't share, but you'd be stunned at what percentage of people that walk through the door, you know, end up walking out sign up for clear aligners. It's, it's remarkable. But oh, by the way, all of that is set up before they walk through the door. Right? It's set up by the site and the app and the CRM work that goes into that nobody walks through the door without an appointment, everybody comes in, they already have the appointment, they made that appointment online. And they've been educated before they show up by a huge litany of work that the team does, just to make sure that that experience is fulfilling, and they get the answers that they need.

‍

Ben Kaplan  27:26

Another company, one that you have direct experience with is MasterCard. And when you think of MasterCard, you think of tagline think of priceless. You think of being ubiquitous, you work there a number of years, what does MasterCard do really well, from a marketing perspective,

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  27:42

I think they elevate their brand. And the funny part about MasterCard, when you're talking about consumer marketing, MasterCards customers aren't the consumer MasterCards customers are banks, right? They need a bank to decide that they're the right network for their cards, right. But what they want, what they want is consumers to specifically ask for a MasterCard, right? So they have to stand for something really important. And MasterCard has a priceless is one of those things that they've done a terrific job building building up. And the other thing that they've done, and this is probably a little bit more niche, but it's an area that I worked on is they did a huge investment in talking about financial inclusion connecting people to the formal financial systems. And for folks who understand the importance of that they've really taken a huge lead in in bringing that to life. And it just connects banks and consumers to the MasterCard brand more completely. And so they just do a great job of remaining relevant in the minds of consumers, such that the banks, they're asking the banks for this.

‍

Ben Kaplan  28:42

What about a company like Nike? It's the swoosh, just do it. They have a whole advertising approach that's designed to evoke emotion. And it's this you know, yes, the pie celebrate some victory, but they celebrate the journey of this. What about companies like Nike? What do you take from that, as you look to build your brand? And so the maybe the Nike of your field?

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  29:03

Well, I think you can talk about some of that Byron sharp stuff that I was talking about before, I think Nikes as good as anybody at doing that, right, what they what they stand for their brand iconography, they are about, you know, getting off your bum, right and going and living living your life in the world. That's important. And the piece that I take away from our businesses, our biggest customer, our biggest competitor is not Invisalign, and it's not braces, our biggest competitor is complacency, right. And so I think there's an element of the urgency that Nike brings to getting started right now in taking control of your fitness, life lifestyle, with their brand in the world that I look, I look at all the time and try to find ways to bring into the way that we talk about our brand, because that urgency is really important and there are massive benefits to straighten your teeth and so yeah, how do we how do we get a person to go from me? I'll do that tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow to I got to do this now. And to me that's, that's something I've learned a lot from the Nike brand is that you Reading that sense of connectedness and urgency.

‍

Ben Kaplan  30:02

Where do you see all of marketing headed with some of the latest advances in tools and technology? There's a lot of talk now about how AI and artificial intelligence since everyone's sort of discovered, wow, chat GPT can answer all my problems? Maybe it can, maybe it's got a little ways to go. But how do you think this feels? Where do you think we'll be five years from now 10 years from now and how we think about marketing, given some technological advances, and some disruptions, like the death of third party cookies and other things that are changing the model of how we market what is your prediction for where we'll be, and if you come back on the podcast five or 10 years from now, what we'll be talking about,

‍

John Sheldon - Smile Direct Club  30:39

this is a grand age of personalization. Right now, it's coming to a close because some of some of the tools are getting clipped? Well, from a regulatory standpoint, and from some of the key technology players, you know, in the marketplace, you know, Apple with its iOS 14, five update is a great example of that. And so we're going to need to do is just be better about modeling the limited behavior that we have, you can see and starting to make sure that again, like I said, before, building your brand may be the most important thing you can do from a performance standpoint, you know, in the business, it's not all going away. Of course not. But you know, making sure that you're able to create a valuable experience all the way through the marketing cycle, that customer experience, you know, will help you continue to be able to personalize that as opposed to waiting until the end. But we are starting to lose some of those tools. And and I think, you know, making sure that people have an emotional connection with your brand and what you what your brand can stand for. And what you can do for them is really critical. I mean, I think it take a look at our brand. We're a transformation brand. You look at those before and after photos on our site that I mentioned before, and you look at the befores and afters, you can tell that we are not the only transformation most of those people are going through, right, it's very clear that we're just a part of a much bigger transformation journey. Sometimes we're the most visible part, by the way, but not always. And what's what's interesting is the honor, we have to treat that with right that we're their partner along on a broader journey. We're not patting ourselves on the back for what happens at the end, you know, we want to we want to pat them on the back for taking control of of their lives. And I think as long as you can represent your brand in a way where you're side by side with with your customers, helping them get where they want to go. You know, that's going to be the critical response mechanism that gets folks to refer people to your brand, folks to talk about your brand in general, you know, these are the ways we're going to grow the business in the future. And obviously, you know, we'll do as much as we can with performance tooling to pull folks through but but it's going to start there with making sure that customer journey is is customer focused as possible.

‍

Ben Kaplan  32:42

According to John Sheldon, the modern CMO skill set is an evolution. If you're a performance marketer, it's time to bolster your sense of brand. If you're a brand first CMO, it's time to get your hands dirty with some data and analytics. So embrace new trends and technology. Don't be afraid to take on a larger competitor, but carefully pick and choose your battles, even as you deliberately build your brand equity to go head to head. Think globally. embrace cultural diversity and each market you enter and acknowledge the unique traits of each country when expanding like Smile Direct Club teeth straighteners, stay aligned, aligned with your team aligned with your CEO and align with your one three and five year marketing plan. For TOP CMO, I'm Ben Kaplan.

‍