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Your guided tour of the world of growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, marketing, and life.
Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and have some fun talking about data-driven growth and lessons learned!
Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your
host, Ty DeGrange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance
marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth,
marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and
have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Always Be Testing podcast, and I'm your
host, Ty DeGrange. I am very excited to talk to Brian Marcus. What's up,
Brian? Hey, Ty. Good to see you. Good to see you too, man. It's gonna be a
good one. So for those of you who don't know, Brian Marcus is the senior
director of product marketing at Impact, and I would say one of the
most experienced professionals in affiliate marketing. Hands down,
some may have called him the, the godfather of affiliate marketing or maybe the Don't do
it. Know he talked about.
I feel like I'm listing out all your your nicknames, without you. Do are those true?
Well, Yoda, I'll take from the wisdom standpoint, but not from the age
standpoint that, I'm not quite that old. But, I've been around for a while, so
perhaps it it's fitting to say that in this space, if there's a Yoda, you
know you know, they've probably experienced some of the things I've seen and have done. Yeah. What
were some of the other ones, Ty? I feel like, the godfather of soul
rock and roll gets thrown around a lot, so I thought maybe, you know, could be applicable for your
experience level in affiliate. Well, I do love music, and I'm sure we'll get to that at some point in time.
So, there are some hints of truth to those, but, you could just call me Brian.
That's a good one too. That works. So excited to dive in and share some
of your knowledge and experience with the listeners out there and in in the in the community that we're
in. You know, maybe you can start off by sharing with people a little bit about your background
and how you got into this space in the first place. Sure. I, you know, I
I literally, when I like to think of I go back about two decades plus in
this space and try to figure out how I ended up here. I often think about the fact that I
almost literally fell into affiliate marketing, and I I think a lot of people when they're in
this space fall into a fa affiliate marketing. For me, it was, really
on the early days of ecommerce As someone who had graduated business
school and was sort of thinking through what what my next steps were gonna be, ecommerce was,
just starting out, and I had a good shot at, working in ecommerce
for an old cataloger. A hundred drill cataloger, specialty
types of items. I applied the same kinds of concepts of marketing as I as I,
offline as I I thought sort of online. And I took over as the head of Internet
marketing for a cataloger. And I ended up actually finding all sorts of
really interesting things about marketing channels. A number of marketing channels that the
cataloger didn't use included things like paid search, comparison shopping, data
feeds like eBay. I worked for an auto a specialty auto
accessories company. There was this thing called affiliate marketing where I had one
person working, running two networks, a network called Performix at the time
and the network called Commission Junction. And, that person was really in
charge of what was our one of our largest channels and one that I knew
little to nothing about. And so as I, was starting to dig
in, new to the job, freshly minted MBA, trying to figure out all the
metrics. And, I really had some really deep questions about
this channel. Like, well, what is this thing? And and where, you know, how
does it work? And why do we have two of these networks
working for us? Who's in them, etcetera? So I I dove in a whole bunch and that's where I got my
first taste of affiliate marketing was was really diving in to figure out
what seemed too good to be true and why was it so
good. And, that's where I got my first taste. I love it. It makes me
think of if one were to come in fresh now, what would
they think? What would they say? Would it be a similar reaction that you had as a
freshly minted NBA seeing all the the things that were going on? I
think affiliate I I hope at least. And I think there's been quite a bit of maturity
built into the affiliate channel since the time that I I stumbled into it. But I
think there is no less mystique around it in some ways because it's
a channel of all different types of entities on the web. I mean, it's very hard
to put it into one box. And if you were to say, is it paid
search? You know, that's very clearly defined by what it does, how you optimize it, what
levers you have. And in fact, it's in some ways automatic and programmatic,
so you can go put a coin in and figure out what you wanted to optimize. So it
hasn't I'd say the number of permutations in affiliate marketing and ways to make
money, ways to monetize, ways to grow continue to change. That's one of the
defining characteristics of affiliate. So you'll never answer all those questions. And in fact, that's
probably the beauty of it. Right? Is it is an ever changing and evolving channel.
But I'd say today, hopefully, people come into digital marketing
programs knowing that affiliate marketing is likely your top one
or two drivers of growth. If you're in the retail space, if you're in the
financial services space, even in now b two b and and other places, affiliate
marketing, influencer marketing, business to business marketing, those are the drivers
outside of the the core channels that really grow the business. I actually
teach a course at, University of Washington on affiliate marketing, And
I I I made it my point to actually go in there and build it into the
curriculum. I actually started on the advisory board, and I I was able to convince
them given my work, at at eBay that, you know, this is a substantial drive
that all digital marketers need to know. And they asked me to not only
describe it and write a class on it, but to teach it. And so I go in, at least now
these days, I go in once a half and I teach my my class
and, and I ensure that people coming into the world getting their digital marketing
certificate know that affiliate marketing is a big driver. And I actually usually
recruit one or two people out of the process because I find out who's who's really who
gets really excited about it. I love that. It's a it couldn't be better, and it's such an
awesome ideal individual to do that and to be an evangelist and educator for
for something that is you know, as we have talked about, it can be very misunderstood. But
at at the same time, if it's managed correctly, it can be so valuable and so impactful for
brands. As you kind of identify the the future stars of affiliate marketing, what was it
that kind of sealed it for you? You kind of alluded to some of those
characteristics. But when you were going through that discovery process, where was your, maybe
moment that was like, oh, man. This is really interesting to me. I wanna work in this field, or
what clicked for you? What clicks for me about the channel
and what clicks for me when I find people that I wanna hire and and to bring on board is is
actually the same thing. It's it's where the moment that everything that you used to
see one way completely changes. And so affiliate marketing, much like that movie, the
it's like the matrix. Right? I always tell my students, you can't unsee it. And
so when I first started when I asked the question, what is this thing and how does
it work? And I started getting a number of examples of it in different business
models that comprised it. I started to realize that it was everywhere
and it was omnipresent. And and it was something that I could almost see in almost any
interaction or transaction that took place on the web. I I could now trace
those movements from my click to someplace else, some other destination,
and find myself buying, and I couldn't unsee it. So I think the the moments for
me that really make this a special channel is the fact that it's part of practically
everything we do. It really boils down to referral in many ways,
not the classic customer referral or for a friend, but the idea that
some entity, some information takes you from where you are to where you need to
be. In this case, a buying opportunity or an opportunity to get
interested about a product. And that entity, that that publisher
warms up your experience. I like to call them like pre sellers. They're value
added pre sellers. They take your where you were going. They intercept you
and inject value into the transaction so that by the time you land on the landing page
or you're about to go buy something, you've got something of value that you didn't have before, and you're
more prime than ever to go buy. Yeah. I jumps into my brain. I
feel I feel it in my the unseen comment really resonates with me. And I
think about, like, Wall Street Journal's buy side. You think about Wirecutter. What
great examples, right, of of kind of presenting that discovery and sharing that education with
consumers. And, you know, it's funny. I I didn't share this with a ton of people, but the
NFL did a kind of collaboration with Google recently where they were touting the NFL.
And they were like, Aaron Donald was, like, cruising into the stadium with his, like, decked
out suit looking good and had, like, a designer bag. And it was all about
that kind of fan experience and then making that shoppable. And I thought,
wow. There it is. Another example of affiliate marketing in a in a great context.
Yeah. It it's almost like any surface is game. I mean, you you can't think of
an opportunity. If there's content, There's an opportunity typically in our type
of world these days where, things become shoppable, and
you're creating, you're facilitating that for someone who's gonna do it
anyway. So the the point is if you have an interest or a passion around a certain topic and
you're you're publishing content out there already, this is an opportunity for you
to to be able to create an audience and prime that audience, for
something that you love or something that you're very interested in. And who better to serve you
those that information than someone who knows their their stuff versus, call
it sort of sort of poorly targeted ad, an ad that doesn't know who you are, doesn't
care about the things you care about, just wants to get you to to buy. I mean, this is really about
a trusted source, a source that is able to anticipate the questions you
may have and or help you compare and or help you go deeper into a
product for the case of Wall Street Journal or any of those content sites where
you can actually find out a whole lot of information about something that you need to
know armed and ready to go to buy. Love it. Yeah. What a great what a great
context and a way to tee that up. You've had some awesome experiences in your career and some big
brands and and great ones. We talked a little bit about Google and would you know,
just curious to kinda share maybe some of the interesting learnings that you gathered from that
experience. So Performix, just for by way of context, Performix
was, acquired by DoubleClick, and DoubleClick was acquired by Google. In
the span of about eight and a half years, my same team, you know, the
wallpaper changed a whole bunch every couple years. And and at one point, it became very
bright primary colors, and we found ourselves at Google. And one of the the most
amazing things that really happened to our team is, number one, we were a fully
contained unit. So we were based in Chicago, and, Performix,
was based in Chicago. And so our entire leadership team, for the most part, was based in
Chicago. We operated our Google affiliate network, what became a Google affiliate network out of our
Chicago office. So we were the only team like that. So
meaning, there was no other affiliate team. There was no other leadership team that knew it. We were the experts in
affiliate, and we landed in a time where content was becoming
much more important. Affiliate marketing was was we were sitting in the same rooms as
the AdWords teams talking about the same budget at
the same time and trying to help them figure out where they wanna allocate. And we also
found ourselves early on, and this is what probably got us before we were able to launch
change your name from Performix to Google affiliate network. We were able to actually help Google
achieve something that I think today when I look back on it, it was pretty miraculous.
Because we had contracts, performance based contracts with over three
hundred, four hundred top retailers and direct to consumer
at the time or direct response types of con of of brands. They already
had embedded pricing models and contracts with those
clients through us, and they wanted to test their first ever sort of product
based ad. And they had to find a quick way to go do it, and it was right before
the holiday season. And who better to help them launch that as a test than
our team? And so my team on at the time, I know we skipped a few steps
to to get me there, but I was running client services. I was running over a thousand programs
and, many of which were retail clients. I became sort of at the center of
this test where they were trying out what became product listing ads, helping
them take it from this concept to a reality to getting to the
point where they had to figure out how we're gonna how we're gonna stop it or start it at scale, I should say.
Make it scale up much wider than it was. So I got an opportunity
just as one example to be at this place. You know, we all found ourselves
there, this world where anything can happen. And, our little team, which
had very little brand recognition, performance, double click, All of a sudden, we
became a real go to spot for how to scale up what would be
product based ads in the search engine. And it became so successful so
quickly that they literally had to take it away from us immediately in order for it to scale because we were too small of a
team, and we didn't have the technology at the time to be able to scale it up. But it was pretty
wild. That's awesome. Yeah. And to to be able to say that that you are
the the small group in charge of testing, you know, a digital product
ad as ubiquitous as product listing ads and as powerful and what such a big
percentage of the the marketing mind share, right, for a lot of performance marketers. It's cool that
you were part of that on the ground floor. It is. I I believe it's their one of their best, if
not best products that they now, their their best moneymaker, so
to speak. And so to think that that came out of that I mean, I remember sitting actually in a
meeting. I got called into a video conference, and there I was,
like, air dropped into this room with, Susan Wojcicki and
Dennis Woodside who ran the mobile business at the time and a whole bunch of
other Googlers that, like, you know, getting access to. It was like, I just I was in the middle of this,
and they were saying, how do we make this bigger? What do you need? How many people do you
need? How do we know it's not eating into our search business? Like, all these questions that very
quickly came into focus when I realized that we had hit something really powerful.
And, it was it was humbling, to say the least, to be, to go from,
Chicago, affiliate agency to this to the center of gravity.
And, and I think it actually, I can't quite remember the order of events, but
one of the things that we wanted to do as DoubleClick performance was to really start to
associate a better way of doing affiliate marketing with Google. And so
we boldly went after the name Google Affiliate Network, pairing the
world's best brand with a I'll call it at the time a fledgling sort of
marketing channel that needed some authority and some gravity to
it. And we were able to convince them that this was the right time to start to step up
the profile of affiliate marketing. And what better way to do that than to put the Google brand
behind it? And we launched as Google Affiliate Network, which was another great exciting moment, at the
time. Absolutely. I mean, so many big things you've achieved in the affiliate
world. I mean, it it almost makes me think of, you know, how
much did that moment and that evolution improve
and move forward the industry that we know is affiliate marketing. I don't know if
you have a thought on that, but I'd love to hear it given you kinda went through it. I do have a thought on
it. And, you know, I I I gotta, like, really put it in perspective. I think one of the
things it really enabled, it sort of well, so Google affiliate network didn't
actually last forever. And I think the biggest impact it had,
no no pun intended as we will start to talk about impact, is that one of
the things that when an affiliate network of the size of Google affiliate network and commission
junction, other other when big events happened, it shook the world that you could feel it.
It was like a cataclysmic sort of event where if something like, a brand like
Google Affiliate Network shuts down or CJ loses a big client, you know, everybody feels
it. And in the case I had left Google affiliate network at the time, about a
year before they, they end up shutting down. But what I do know is the clients that
we manage, the the brands under our purview, were the largest retailers
and largest financial service companies in the world. And when and
Google was their trusted source to bring them affiliate marketing traffic. And
when that shut down, it gave them some some opportunity to sort of look under the hood
and to figure out how much control they wanted to how much they wanted to invest in this channel and
who are the right players to invest in. So that opportunity alone set off a
chain of events where a number of the largest retailers and financial services companies were looking for
a new home. And in that question and quest to find a new home, they had
to ask themselves, could we build this ourselves? Can we lease the software?
Do we go with the network? And I think that actually that sunset became the
sunrise for, the SaaS industry and opened up
some really great doors for players like Impact to be able to show what they had
already been building and companies like Tune where they had already been building SaaS
products. And so, that was the opportunity that it created. And because
of that, I think it showed a real maturity of the business itself
that, a channel which was very hard to manage initially and very, very wild west,
very unhard to contain, all of a sudden became doable not only by
yourself, but with tools that you could use and lease and run your own program where
control, in the case of like an eBay program where you had full control over your entire
partner network, you could build your own tools. That was one extreme. Or you could go to
someone like Impact and you could let an expert who does nothing but build
these these platforms all day long, manage that software for you. Or you can
go to a network where the size and scale take some of the take some of the
burden off of you. And I think that that was the moment that the industry changed again. I like
to think that at least that was moment. Yeah. What an amazing segue. And I think, you know,
you you and I got to experience the eBay experience in different ways in different
times, and that was just just such an example. You know, it's where you were after Google
affiliate network, after Performix, and they were kind of the the shining
example in some ways of of building it. You're building it. Maybe an
interesting question and maybe it's a little too philosophical for some in the audience, but I'm
curious to know, do you think there what's a is there cases where you really
advocate for brands to really strongly consider maybe a build.
And and I know that maybe counter to the offering of impact, which is
obviously a great solution in your current employer, and we've collaborated on a number of
things. But I'm curious to know, is that is there cases where you kinda say, hey. You might wanna consider
that or a hybrid or, you know because I think there's people out there that probably think, well, I can I can build it
all myself? That that's the holy grail. How do how would you coach maybe a
brand on that? I look at it as a question of core competencies. Right?
So, you know, eBay one of the reason I went to eBay is from Google directly was it
was an opportunity to build a product and eBay was heavily invested in building
their own software. They believed that at the time that the control was the most
important thing. They had run into a ton of, issues with fraud, and the only way they
could actually get into the stay in that space was if they had controlled a hundred percent of the
experience. So at that time, I think maybe that at at that time, that was the reason why you'd
go build your own product as you have you have low, low trust in the
software in the industry, but you need to participate. It's a necessary evil, and you
have to live with something. So what better way to do that than build it yourself? I mean, that's
an edge case today these days, and I can explain why that is. But I believe
that, if your business is to run a network of
affiliates, maybe you should build it yourself. If you're not in the business of
of running an affiliate network, there is no great reason to do that because
there are those that spend nothing but all of their time thinking about those issues and the issues you
wouldn't be thinking about unless you were running a software platform. And that's that's actually the
conclusion I came to at eBay. I mean, I went to eBay really, and and I
think eBay was an amazing experience. I had a tremendous team. I had access to
resources that were second to none. I mean, it it is it was really a dream for me to be able to
run a channel and run a marketing channel and build a product at the same time
within one of the most innovative companies really on the Internet. And
what I really quickly realized though at the time was the issues themselves
that you face when you when you run an affiliate program, They are
many. And what I what I mean by that is you're dealing with so many
distinct types of partnerships, so many forces of nature
like fraud and emerging business models,
etcetera, that unless you have a core competency in those areas, you are
always playing catch up. And at eBay, I realized at that time that I was there,
we were quickly not going to be in a position. We ran a a very, very
large program, but we're quickly not gonna be in a position where we could stay out in front of
those those trends. And, that's what got me thinking and getting really
interested in the concept of SaaS, which was actually a new a new concept at the
time. And letting somebody else do that stuff so we could focus on the things that really
mattered, which were the partnerships themselves. And so I would say back to
your question, I mean, if you have a case where you, your businesses
it'd be hard to imagine actually a business that is so low trust that they'd wanna actually go
into a channel unless they felt compelled to do so. And maybe that's the only case I
could think of. Yeah. Where building yourself is the only way to to do that. I just
think there's a lot of potholes and issues with that. Yeah.
And then not you know, we we in some ways, you know, live through them in different moments. And I think your
experience is spot on given you are leading that, you know, entire program. And I
feel like what your statement is or was around this, at that moment
in time with the available technology, the size of their program, given the pain
points they went through, it certainly made a heck of a lot of sense to say,
we're gonna we're gonna build this. We're we're gonna own the experience. And where
now, fast forward, a lot has changed in SaaS and, you know, enter, you know, your
next experience in tune and now at Impact. So I think that's a really good kinda
segue in your per career progression. I think that that was kinda my assessment of what you
shared, which is awesome. It's funny. I mean, the tune and impact worlds were this is such
a small space that, like, I literally experienced them together at the same time at one
place. And it was actually the day that, Google Affiliate announced they were
shutting down. I was actually at an event. Gino Prusikov had an event, in San
Francisco. And, at the time, Todd Crawford, I believe, was speaking,
at that event, as were the folks at TUNE. They were in the other
room pitching SAS software, and I was there talking about eBay's program and
how, at the time, I believed you shouldn't be actually leasing
software from somebody else or or doing that. I was actually convinced at that moment in
that place that I was wrong. And so I checked my assumptions upon leaving
that event going, okay. Well, this is interesting. Like, my world of
running your own deal with sixteen engineers of your
own building your own software to do something when it's not your core competency,
It it may be that that idea may be limited, and it was really interesting. I I I
met a number of people that day that I think that moment was like an an inflection point in my
career where I sort of said, I think I was even asked at that show, hey, do
you see this only for companies like eBay? And I was like, you need the scale.
You need the name to run your own program. And little did I know at that time how fast
technology would progress. Little did I know about all these things that have come
together to make it much more accessible for anybody who wants to run a program
large or small. And, the world has changed quite a bit in a very short period of time. So it's,
it's nice to Yeah. Look back and see where you're on and to see to see where
how interesting the world turns out. Well, I I think that's a really good
pivot point in, like, elaboration on you as a leader and as a person, as a marketer. And I think
that the stronger, high EQ, high intelligence
capable folks that are in the game that are willing to kind of change their position and not
necessarily be holding on to those data points or beliefs or positions that that
do change and evolve. And so I think it's really commendable to you to you to kinda see that
trend coming when you did and and know when it was time to pivot position in a way
that was real based on data in the industry. We you know, and I think that that's
impressive. Not everybody is able to kind of catch that next wave in a in appropriate fashion as
you did. I've had some really great mentors in my day. I mean, I go back to
Stuart Frankel at Performix who ended up riding the wave of AI, machine learning
AI, finding a company called Narrative Science, where I learned really a lot
about the space in in pivoting. Dan Green over at GAN, Google Affiliate
Network, he was a navy pilot prior to coming to Google, and he taught taught me a lot
about sort of just facing facing different scenarios and learning how to prioritize,
like, what's really important, what's not. And then Robert Chantwani over at,
eBay who really I mean, he took me it took a a real special person
to get me to dislodge myself from Google and to try something so unique as
eBay that he actually had some very big ideas for what I could do
there. And I think that that mentality, if you're gonna be in the affiliate
performance marketing and now even beyond that, the creator space,
referral customer referral space, you need to have a mentality that everything changes all the time, and you have
to you have to be testing. Right? Isn't that the name of this podcast? Right? You have to be
willing Yeah. To enjoy that uncomfortable place where you
may in fact be wrong. Yeah. So, it's been fun to to learn from folks like that in
my past. I love that. Yeah. I mean, he there's so many talent, talented
people that have come out of the organizations you've been a part of, and eBay was certainly
an example. And I've heard some amazing things about Robert. And, you know, for him to be able to
kind of weave that story and support and and see the the talent and potential
is impressive. And I've heard multiple people say great things about his leadership. I got to experience
some of that myself. And I and maybe it's an interesting thought of when you're building
out teams, when you're looking at building out the right talent, the right time,
and right see and capabilities. What are some of those things that you're kind of
trying to optimize for as a leader as you've you've really been a great one
over the years in this space? What maybe what's things that folks should maybe think
about or maybe stuff that you see is lacking. I'd love to hear maybe your perspective for
either leader leaders or aspiring leaders or what you find. I do look for
people who have the capacity to sort of shape shift in different
scenarios being having a good mix of emotional intelligence and critical thinking.
I think that's a great blend. I'm a liberal arts student from a very small liberal arts college, and I
learned very quickly that it's good to know a lot of things about a lot of things
and to be tuned in because you can you can actually participate in many
conversations and be able to have points of view on things, having a broad view of things.
I also learned from consulting, and I spent ten years in consulting before I ever, got
to ecommerce, that patterns pattern matching and being able to
see patterns and be able to sort of elevate them and use those as frameworks.
Those capabilities of being able to take a situation, generalize
it, and then apply it are very, very, interesting to me, and I typically find
myself associated with people from my teams that understand the value of
frameworks, understand the value of how to the theory and the application, and
that's worked well for me. And then lastly, I think some of the things I'm learning from being
at places like Google and eBay, it's about people who see the possibility. And I
think possibility, having an openness, and a curiosity to
explore and not be satisfied with just what you got and taking that
extra step, not being told to do so. Those are the types of people that tend to
do well on my teams. They're teaching me, and they're they're showing
me things I never I never thought about. And so I
really, I tend to be a a person who is
not afraid to say when I don't know something. And I I tend to be the first to say when I
do when I do know something. So I think there's times and places for you to exert ex
your expertise. And one of the things that I I really one of the things I love about this space
is it's given me an opportunity to develop a deep knowledge in something.
And that's when when I'm in the at the UW teaching my class and and I see
that person that, like, really wants to go deep on something
and is, like, not bored by the topic of CBA, you know, you know you
found something pretty special. And I've I've found a couple great students that I was like, immediately
was like, you're the the the eyes you know, it's like, I know you.
I understand you. Come work for me. Let's figure something out. I love
it. That, you know, recruiting kind of community mentality that
it kinda sucks you in when when you find like minded individuals. It's awesome. And
people that don't always think like you is also like, I I really wanna make sure it's clear.
Like, I don't look for just people like me. I actually think diversity and thought
is the is the way to build a great decision and a great set of goals and
and solution. So I look for different points of view and
different just diversity and thought, I think, is really important. Yeah. The
diversity and thought resonates big time. That's a that's a key one. And maybe,
for building product for the next topic, like, what do you think is is maybe
something to be mindful of when you're when you're kind of we you know, talking about leadership, we're talking about
affiliate marketing, we're talking about performance marketing, we're talking about building product. You know, are
there kind of specific things that you kinda look for in in that
in that recipe of building product and and thinking about product in this
industry and maybe perhaps others? It's really it's no different than any industry.
Different, I guess, not to sound cliche, the pain points that they they encounter.
Yep. One of the reasons I stay in this space is that and especially today as
I'm working in product marketing, I feel like I I have been that customer. I know
that I've been the customer and I've been on multiple sides of this business, like, thinking about
it from an advertiser perspective, from a publisher perspective, and a network perspective. I've
run acquisition programs that, in you know, we spent a tremendous amount of
money driving, with very large companies. And at the same time, I also work
very closely with product marketers and product management folks that,
turn these ideas into requirements. And so, I like to think of myself
as someone who thinks deeply about the customer and understands this this business. And
I think as a product management team, you have to be super focused
on those things. That's what should drive absolutely everything you do. And I think that, you know, in a business
like ours where you have so many different types of buying centers I mean, we are in
the, performance space where we serve affiliates, affiliate marketing programs. We're
in the the influencer space where we serve creative programs. Recently, we
acquired a company that is in the customer referral space, which which serves actual
individuals, micro influencers, if you will, that wanna help companies grow,
just because they love the product. That creates quite a bit of
mental gymnastics when you're trying to prioritize your product roadmap and think through
what's important and and what goes first and what goes last. So I mean, it becomes very,
very complex in a business like ours. Yeah. Absolutely. I love it. Maybe a little
segue, because we could get nerdy on on product stuff much
longer. But maybe give us a little bit of background on Lollapalooza, Google. There's a little
story there. What what what do you got for us? Yeah. One one of the things you learn when you work when you work at
Google is you do have these things they call sort of your Google moment. Right? It's like you
are in this really amazing place in environment
where it feels like, like, again, back to possibilities, almost anything is possible. Moonshots.
Mhmm. And so one of the things so I'm a I'm a big music fan, and, I'm a
writer. I believe in, I I think music is a a lot of what sort of inspires
me. And, I had an opportunity at Google. I was one of the, we actually
were while Lollapalooza was in Chicago, the head of our office at the time, Jim
Lesinski, had offered up to the office. He's like, hey. If anybody's interested,
I wanna build a Lollapalooza experience in the Google office.
Text me. Here's my number. And tell me if you wanna sign up, and you go run that thing. We'll we'll open
all the resources of Google to you. And I literally by the time he had finished his
sentence, I had a a a note in on his on his phone. He was like, oh, we got
one. And it was me. And I said, I wanna I wanna lead it. I wanna figure
out what we're gonna do with it, and then I wanna create an experience that that lives on. And, that's what
we did. We actually that year, Google plus was launching,
and they had they had taken over one of the stages, that
was already purchased, and they they did it like a a reveal. And on that
stage, we were given opportunities to go work with a number of different bands that were already
playing that stage. And I got thrown right in the thick of it. I had to figure out, number
one, how am I gonna put on a show in a office building in downtown Chicago? How am
I going to, invite people fairly and get them into this this room?
And then third, how do we create the environment in Lollapalooza? So multiple things around music
in our office that day. How do I create that? And so, I actually built this thing
called, Google Palooza, which I'm sure was trademark infringing,
at the time. And I and I'm sure if they knew that I was doing it at the time, they probably would have shut me down pretty
quickly. They shut down my T shirt pretty quickly. We have I have a vintage, Google
Palooza t shirt still in my drawer. But, we got the band Cold War Kids,
who, of course, I didn't really know much about at the time, but they were big, and they were headlining one of
the stages. I got them to come in the office, play a rooftop set.
We got the YouTube folks that were new at the time at streaming
to to well, they they taped the event, actually. It was the guy who, filmed
Coachella. He he actually came in and he filmed the event. And I got to interview
him, introduce him, take him around. And then I also built a stand
for, in our lunchroom for the guy, who worked he was a
collaborator with Lady Gaga. This guy DJ Shadow came in, and he worked
the cafeteria. And I also got a woman who ran one of the was a head
of industry. Her husband owned a studio in Chicago where they used to record cable
cable TV shows with every band you've ever imagined. We got them to host one of the
smaller bands and put on a concert. Like, it was honestly, it was outside of affiliate
marketing, which I I I tend to think is among the most fun things I get to do. That
moment, I got brought my wife to the office. We we were just like in heaven.
And to this day, I I really think that that was a a highlight of bringing together the
things I love and and making them work making it work out. I love
that. That it doesn't get any better than that. Kinda combine all those those awesome things. That's really
cool. Feel like you're, you're getting pulled into the to the music as as
usual. And, speaking of, you know, you you did did do a recording with your
wife recently, and what tell us about that. Yeah. I and my wife is a singer
songwriter. She's put out, she is really a talented musician, and,
she's always always, putting out content in music, continually. And I I
I've always Awesome. I've never had a real strong musical sensibility. I mean,
sorry. Let me let me restate it. I actually have a very strong musical sensibility. I don't have the
talent and the I can't play I can play a guitar, but I I don't play
guitar, and I I can't really sing. But what I do love to do probably
it's probably pretty obvious as a marketer. I love to write, and I love to write creatively. And so
since in our twenty it was at the time, our twenty years our twentieth anniversary
happened to hit during COVID. And, we had written a couple of things together where I'd pass
some lyrics over to her, and she'd turn it into a song, and they'd show up on a CD or
two every once in a while. But for our twentieth anniversary, everything shut down. We had plans to go see a
band at Red Rocks with the Avett Brothers, and this was, like, our big twentieth anniversary.
We we were locked in. And, and I I really was trying to say, like, how do we
make this event meaningful for us? And, we agreed that day that
we were going to write an album together. And so we wrote an album
that really, summarized for me. It was like a time capsule of
what was going on both locally, nationally,
globally, how that impacted us as a family and as a family unit, as a couple.
And it was really pretty intense, actually, a pretty intense self reflection
of what was happening. I mean, so much was happening at that time. Yeah. And we were
raising kids. We're locked into our house. Like, they're just there was no outlet to be able
to express that. So we did that in our album called where we're at, and it was just like
a a quick self assessment at twenty years where we're at as a as a couple and how
the events themselves sort of have their, from a global standpoint
to local and regional, it really has an impact on a on a family unit. And,
that was the album to explore that. It's pretty cool. I love that. What are some of the musical influences,
you know, the love of music that you both share? What were some that you guys drew from
for that album? Well, we we really love a lot of the music
that surrounds sort of Americana or alt country. I mean, I think of Wilco.
I think of a lot of more acoustic sort of driven bands. I think of actually the
Avett Brothers are a huge influence. We used to love together, we
discovered, you know, Indigo Girls and lots of things where her voice actually,
you know, really plays to it. And I'd say Brandy Carlisle,
that kind of music where where I hear her in the music that, that they sing. They they
sound they have sort of similar quality. So that draws us in, and we actually had laid
out on our album sort of how like, what feeling we wanted to give it and
what bands inspire us. And we worked with a a producer, an amazing producer we
hired locally that got us that sound on on our album across the album.
And he himself was just it was like another Google moment working with a guy like this.
He himself had, recorded some pretty incredible people at a pretty incredible studio.
We we got triply lucky about maybe it was COVID and business was slow
and they needed they needed us. Love it. But I think he was I think he was really
brought into the story. So he he actually the place we recorded our album
was, the same place that Seattle, like, got on got on the world stage. It was a place called London
Bridge Studios. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Brandy Carlisle got her start
there, Alice in Chains. You name it. It was a pretty hard rock studio. Love. And the person
that produced our album, Jonathan Plumb, he was a sound engineer, nineteen, at
the time that those bands were coming up. And he ended up, the owner who went
on to become, Rick Parshaw, who be became one of the biggest producers of Grunge.
He He actually passed away at an early age, and Jonathan bought the studio and
continues to curate it as this I mean, it's not a real flashy
place, but it's got all the history. It's like what you'd expect a place where grunge
took place. He maintains that studio. We got an opportunity based on some
local relationships to be able to work with him and have him So cool. Have a hand at that
that album. Give you props and commend you. And I think, like, just exploring that artistic
collaboration with, you know, someone you love, your wife. And I I can imagine, like, you know, she's
singing, you're writing. Like, was there a moment when you when you were, like, just
filled with joy where I I'm surprised. Like, is that something where you were like, I didn't know we could do that,
or did you always know you could team up with her on things like that? One of the things that
really initially drew me to her was she has a beautiful voice, and I and I'm I love the fact
she's an artist. Right? So, one of the things that I think there was a moment
where we were we were like, I think we can do this. And, actually, there were
many moments throughout our that time frame. It took us over a year and a half to
write. Wow. And, we have, you know, something like 10:12 songs on the album. So
we actually used to because of COVID, we had tons of, different free time to be able to
take walks. So we we had something amazing in common to be able to build
together, and that became our central thesis. Like, in outside of our work lives,
we had something that we could focus on that built us up. I love that. It was a really
cohesive time for us to be able to do that. And, Yeah. I
we we love the idea of creating something that we love together and that our kids
could forever understand that moment and be able to look back. And maybe
they'll get some insight one day about who we were as people and not just as parents and
understand that. So that was the the impetus behind behind the album. That's just awesome and
commendable. I think a lot of people wanna strive for something like that, and I think that's just an
awesome representation of art and where you were at the time. Like you said, like,
that's where we're at. That's really cool. But it and also amazing to kind of
get a little taste of Seattle, you know, rock and music history, and
you got to got to be involved in that studio where all that magic happened as well. So that
that's that's amazing. It's a common thread, I think. I think it's a real common thread with
with what I love. Yeah. I mean, I stick with things I really love, and, I love
the performance space. I love music. I love to create. I love creativity, and
I love the creativity within the space itself. And all the the individuals that make
up the space, they are among the smartest and among the most innovative people
I've ever met, and they continue to to impress me every time I meet them. It's
just it's like it's like a well of of, inspiration for me. So I now I
understand it better why these things fit together. Yeah. No. That's amazing. I
I think people, I don't don't think, always realize the
creativity levels that go into product, that go into performance marketing, and that go into
a lot of these things and how much innovation happens at the partner level and
software level and at the marketing level. There's we're all kind of in it together
rowing in a similar direction, and, it's cool and commendable that you you certainly see
that at the at the forefront of it. So I did have an experience at this company called Teespring where it
actually a lot of this stuff came together. The idea was it was a digital platform
to be able to express yourself through creating turning your ideas into physical
product. In the case of us, it was, T shirts. And it also was
heavily dominated by performance marketers because not only the
platform itself was take your idea, upload it onto a t shirt, and then go create
a campaign around that. If you get enough people to buy the t shirt to tip the campaign
and the actual production costs, you know, you could do it for free. You could use the platform for free and the production
cost came down. So it was another one of the cases that attracted sort of
creativity, digital commerce, platforms, and in
particular, seeing the white space, seeing the space where things are not happening, and
being able to go after those. And it was a it it was a fun time. I actually worked with Robert, once again
at Teespring That's awesome. Back in the day when when we explored that that space together. Yep.
I love it. I love it. And now now you get to kinda, yeah, create that
that creativity and innovation and bring that bring that to impact, and that's amazing.
You touched on the Seattle, you know, kind of theme and music, and I'd love to maybe
wrap up with some fun question in around on that. Like, is there a Seattle
artist that you feel is, underrated or one of your faves over the years?
When we were in Chicago getting ready to move here, we were very pulled in by a band,
the Head and the Heart, which it just sort of it had everything. It had sort of the
emotive quality and the drama, the at the
it captured the atmosphere of Seattle quite a bit, just the changing weather and the changing
textures. And we really loved, the head and the heart. So actually on upon our trip
to move out here, we had purchased some tickets to go see them in Chicago, and they were the first show we saw
when we were, when we moved here at the Paramount Theater. And so I I'd say they
I'm a big Brandi Carlile fan. I love that kind of music and
her flexibility in artistry. But Head in the Heart just have
this place for us. It reminds me of Seattle and, and our big change
and being able to take a family that spent the greater part of our lives, you know, in
Chicago and make a big move late later in my life and and be able to
find home, you know, in a new in a new city. So I I'll go with heaven and the heart for the
purposes of this exercise. That's amazing mic drop moment and,
like, inspirational and awesome in some ways. I I'd like to follow-up with
some witty quid, but I think you just you just blew the doors off this spot and, you
impressed the heck. And out of everybody with your experience and the transparency and
honesty with the journey, and I'm I'm grateful, man. It was an amazing amazing chat as always.
Thank you, sir. It's it's always fun to talk to you and to, you know, you've
had plenty of journey yourself, and I feel like our lives keep intertwining. At one
point, you lived here, and then you moved away. Yeah. But, it hasn't it hasn't, kept us
hasn't kept our conversations from, from it just makes more interesting and
expands our our universe a lot more, as we are You bet. Both in places. So it's been
a pleasure to chat with you on this, and thanks for having me on the show. Anytime, Brian. Pleasure
to have you. And, obviously, for those who who are wanting to learn
more, Brian Marcus, senior director of product at Impact. Where can they find you if
they wanna maybe learn more or or reach out or ask questions? They can find
me at brian, dot marcus at impact dot com. Love it. And,
always a pleasure. Have an awesome rest of your evening, and, we'll talk soon. See you, Brian. Thanks, Ty. Take
care.